Getting the practical teaching element right: A guide for literacy, numeracy and ESOL teacher educators

Getting the practical teaching element right

> ‘Practise as you preach’ - the role of
modelling

NRDC research reveals positive feedback from trainees where their trainers have
self-consciously and explicitly modelled good teaching practice in taught course
input sessions. One teacher educator, who takes care over this aspect of her
work, told us she gives her lesson plan for every session to her trainees to make
the structure of the training session clear.

‘So, pretty well everything I do with them, I’m doing it explicitly so they're
aware that I'm modelling what I want them to do in the classroom.'

Trainers self-consciously and explicitly modelling good teaching practice is often
called ‘loop input’ (Woodward 1991) or sometimes ‘the mirror’ and is referred to
in the NRDC publication A literature review of research on teacher education in
adult literacy, numeracy and ESOL (Morton 2006):

Teacher education programmes for adult literacy, numeracy and ESOL need to
be based on what is known about how adults learn... in terms of the pedagogies
participants will use with their own learners.

Loop input allows trainees to experience techniques as learners and then step
back and try to evaluate, from outside, as teachers. Microteaching of peers is
another activity that allows for modelling of techniques for trainees. In both
cases trainees get to experience what it feels for learners to be taught in such a
way, particularly through activities that take trainees beyond the threshold of
their own knowledge in maths or through experiencing an unfamiliar script.
Morton reports a consensus in the wider literature on literacy, numeracy and
ESOL teacher education that:

teachers should be taught as they are expected to teach by taking part in
practical professional development activities...which help them to ‘see' the
subject from their learners' point of view.

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