Pedagogical Practices

The Singapore Teaching Practice (STP)

A profession is "work that requires special training and specific skills, and one that is respected because it requires a high level of education" (Cambridge Dictionary, 2018).

Most people would have gone through the education system and would have experienced teaching and learning from a student's perspective. We might have once held the perception that our lived experiences are sufficient to perform the job of a teacher, which is to teach, isn't it?

But what makes teaching a profession, rather than simply a job, is the Singapore Teaching Practice model. This lays out explicitly the skills required for effective teaching and learning in the Singapore context, represented by the orchid.

This would include, at its heart, the set of pedagogical practices that every qualified teacher should be proficient in.

Pedagogical Practices

Four teaching processes

Twenty-four teaching areas

Lesson preparation

Lesson enactment

Assessment and feedback

Positive classroom culture

Positive Classroom Culture

Building trust
Establishing interaction and rapport
Maintaining positive discipline
Setting expectations and routines
Empowering learners

Building trust

The key to a positive TSR

Think positive

Focus on desired behaviour instead of wrong behaviour
Allow anonymity to preserve dignity
Assume positive things about the student

Manage your emotions

Clear mind before going to class
Focus on action rather than student
Do not generalise behaviour
Do not tag emotions to students' actions
Practise emotional regulation techniques e.g delayed engagement, time-out

Make learning enjoyable

Vary teaching strategies
Use appropriate humour or personalised stories related to subject content
Create a classroom identity and culture for students to feel they are part of something special

Establishing interaction and rapport

The key to a positive TSR

Treat students as individuals

Acknowledge students by their names
Be genuinely interested in students' lives and words
Active listening and eye contact
Positive affirmation for students' effort

Connect with students

Find out more about students in terms of aspirations, family background, challenges
Show concern for students when they are back from MC
Personalise lessons with your own experiences to let students know more about yourself

Facilitate student-student interaction

Build a conducive learning environment
Model routines for accountable talk
Teach social and emotional skills
Foster a culture of care and respect in the classroom

Maintain positive discipline

The key to a positive classroom climate

Preparing a conducive learning environment

Culture of trust and mutual respect
Develop a sense of belonging
Seating arrangement should be free of distractions
Duty rosters and class decoration projects
Systematic administrative routines

Monitoring and managing behaviour

Construct rules, routines and expectations together with students, with rationale explained and consequences clearly specified
Acknowledge and affirm positive behaviour
Congruent communication - correct misbehaviours promptly without singling out student e.g non-verbal cues
Take a long-term view of behavioural change - take notes of students' personalities, look for underlying causes, work with them positively
Consequences should be natural / logical, effective and agreed upon by students. Should be consistently enforced.

Managing simultaneous tasks

"With-it-ness", the ability to know what is happening in all areas of the classroom at all times and communicating this to students
Target the correct student for a 'ripple effect' or the more serious misbehaviour

Setting expectations and routines

The key to a positive classroom climate

Starting and ending a lesson

Students to have relevant materials prepared before class.
Stand promptly and quietly once the teacher enters the class. Only allow them to sit when ready.
Students and teacher to thank each other.
Students to prepare for the next lesson in an orderly fashion.

Signalling for students' attention

Identify a location which can easily capture students' attention
Signpost to students when you will signal for attention
Give concrete and specific instructions
Scan for student compliance and to provide positive / negative feedback or mete out consequences
Scan 3 times when expectations are being enforced
Address misbehaviour in the least disruptive way through non-verbal cues e.g eye-contact, proximity, hand-gestures

Expectations and routines

Tailored to the context of student profiles and the type of learning you wish to achieve
Involve students in rule and routine setting

Empowering learners

The key to a positive classroom climate

Give students a choice

Listen to student feedback about lesson delivery formats that engage them
Empower them with decision-making - what tasks they want to work on, how they will be assessed, type of learning materials.
Caters to their autonomy needs in the self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) and may increase motivation.

Inspire students to work for their goals

Provide a fail-safe environment so students dare to try new things in their zone of proximal development (ZPD) and beyond their comfort zone.
Give students opportunities to experience small successes.
Help students think of past successes.

Growth mindset

Believing that every child can learn

Lesson preparation

If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail

Analyse learner profiles

Family BG, learning style, prior knowledge, readiness levels, attitude towards subject, behavioural issues.

Identify learning objectives

Observable and assessable
ABCD - Audience, behaviour, conditions, degree
Usage of Bloom's taxonomy to guide setting of LOs in different domains

Choosing instructional media and teaching aids

Physical means of delivering lesson content
Preview content of material
Think of rationale and appropriateness / practicality

Lesson enactment

The classroom is your stage

Activating prior knowledge

Arousing interest
Recap

Explaining

Providing clear explanation
Encouraging learner engagement
Exercising flexibility
Pacing and momentum
Collaborative learning
Questioning to deepen learning

Concluding the lesson

Summary
Exit pass
Assessment for learning
Homework

Small group teaching

Group activities with clear learning goals
Student-centred learning for nurturing self-directed learners

Group discussions

Group investigations

Jigsaw - home group & expert group peer teaching

Learning centres

Whole class teaching

Address class as a single entity to have more direct control over what is taught and learnt

Direct instruction

Concept teaching - direct presentation

critical attributes of concepts, examples and non-examples

Concept attainment (inductive)

students self-discover through reasoning

Techniques for engagement

Questioning to invite student participation
Repeat-clarify-understand
Identify-affirm-motivate

Assessment and feedback

Checking for understanding
Self-directed learning
Setting meaningful assignments

Assessment for learning

Visible thinking routines
Questioning techniques e.g 5W1H, re-directing, KU/AASE
Clarify-sensitise-influence (CSI)
Exit pass, cues, mini-whiteboards, traffic light cards, T/F questions

Assessment of learning

Assessment as learning

Checklists, concept maps, worksheets / homework

Accountable talk

Connecting to prior learning
Pressing for evidence
Pressing for reasoning
Expanding reasoning

Differentiated Instruction

Improve learning for a diverse classroom profile

By readiness (content / process)

Need to analyse learner profiles

Link to lesson preparation teaching process
Informed via pre-assessments, summative assessments or observation
Focus is on growth mindset - students may not be prepared now but it does not mean they cannot learn

Giving students opportunity to learn in different ways

Different brains interpret information in a different manner
Environment can be varied through flexible grouping, different representation modes (Macro, symbolic, micro / Visual, auditory, kinaesthetic), conducive learning spaces, hooks and emotive strategies
Tasks for different groups should be sufficiently challenging, in students' ZPD e.g worksheets of varying difficulty levels / scaffolding
Equalizer - focus on key knowledge and skills, where tasks are the same but difficulty level is varied using different aspects to achieve LO for all.

By product

How students demonstrate their learning

Multiple means of representation available to activate different parts of the brain and cater to different interests / talents
Gives students more autonomy and may increase motivation
Students use different thinking processes to transform knowledge and activate HOT skills in Bloom's Taxonomy (synthesis / creation)

By environment / interests

Conditions for optimal motivation and conducive learning

Blended or flipped learning so students are able to learn at their own pace
Flexible grouping
Different venues to explore the environment and construct knowledge e.g classroom, science lab, library, around the school, field trips to different venues, learning centres

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