What attributes help teachers to secure a calm, purposeful and cooperative working

atmosphere in the classroom?

What will be most helpful in enabling you to get better at it?

• Practice- doing it in the classroom

• Watching experienced teachers doing it

• Advice from hardened “combat veterans”

• Reading about it

• Lectures and seminars

• Talking about it with fellow students

TDA’s NQT survey -2006

Initial teacher education and pupil behaviour – what next?

TDA’s NQT survey -2007

Haydn, T. (2009) Initial teacher education and the management of pupil behaviour

• What experiences, resources and interventions do students find helpful? In Innovations and Development in Initial Teacher Education: proceedings of the 2008 ESCalate Conference: 153-59.

• Online at: http://escalate.ac.uk/5618

‘Impact’ learning

• Not just a question of giving it more time/slots etc. (Bramble, 2007.. You could devote whole course to it and still there would be some….)

• Inputs can be • a) helpful• b) ‘neutral’• c) worse than useless• Plus – they forget stuff.

Joe Elliott, B4L Conference, University of Warwick 24 May 2007

• It’s about a set of complex and sophisticated skills which can be

learned if you are intelligent, open to learning and

conscientious:

• Composure (‘Coping’)(*r/eye)/Awareness (‘keeping an eye out’)*

• Handling ‘overlapping’ (‘trafficlighting’)*

• Positioning*/Eye contact/Body language

• Coming into the room/Beginnings of lessons/

Transitions/Endings/Sending clear messages*/

Voice/Verbal interaction with pupils*/Timing

(‘pace’)/Planning/Warmth-distance continuum/

Understanding strength of your position in different circs*/

• Initiative with resources/sense of audience*

The ontology of managing pupil behaviour – what is

there to think about? • Planning for learning – stirring and settling activities, interplay of high and

low value activities• Skills of interaction with pupils – tone, manner, confidence• Subject pedagogy – ability to motivate and engage pupils in the subject,

differentiation, broad grasp of purposes of subject• Understanding pupils (Holt quote, Frasier extract)• Literature – Rogers, Cowley etc.• Understanding of school contexts and systems• Control skills – adroit use of rewards and sanctions• Learning from other teachers (differences within as well as between

schools)• Reflective practice and self-awareness (it’s not genetic - Joe Elliott B4L

Conference Keynote 2007)• ‘It depends’ – no easy, universal formula (‘moving pupils’ and ‘getting

class quiet’ extracts)

Impact resources…(‘It even made me cry when they showed that bit from the

Unteachables video’.’)

• Problematising issues and stimulating thought and discussion, not ‘giving the answers/solutions

• 10 point scale: the working atmosphere in the classroom (see handout)

• DVD extracts• Well chosen texts/quotes (Heafford, Cowley, Maclennan, Holt)

• Pupil testimony

A ten point scale for thinking about the working atmosphere in the classroom

– see handout.Level 3?

Level 5?

Some Level 10s

Teacher testimony…• ‘Getting them quiet….’• ‘Coping…’• ‘Sending pupils out…’• ‘Moving/seating plans…’

• Stenhouse idea: the purpose of educational research is for teachers to test ideas out against their own experience.

• Joe Elliott: complex set of sophisticated skills that you develop over time…..

• (Plus a place for instruction/advice…)• Use of metaphors – are you a hobnob or a rich tea biscuit?