Teaching Behaviors, Retention and Student Success: what the best teachers know and do

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Teaching Behaviors, Retention and Student
Success what the best teachers know and do

• M. Mark Wasicsko
• Bank of Kentucky Endowed Chair
• College of Education and Human Services
• Northern Kentucky University

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Your Favorite Teacher

• What is the first thing that comes to mind?

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Your Favorite Teacher
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Your Favorite Teacher

• She really enjoyed teaching and cared about
  students.
• She looked for the good in each of us.
• He could teach something and make it fun.
• She held our interest with her lively, humorous
  manner and her thorough knowledge of the subject.
• He believed in me.
• She challenged us.
• He saw us as unique and treated us with respect.
• She really knew her subject and cared that we
  learned it.

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Your Worst Teacher

• What is the first thing that comes to mind?

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Your Worst Teacher
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Your Worst Teacher

• I love to teach, I just cannot stand the
  students.
• I was supposed to teach gifted students but got
  you instead.
• I prepare the best lessons a teacher can prepare
  and they send me the wrong students.
• I teach the best and forget the rest.

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Educator Effectiveness
Degenerative
Transformative
Ineffective Effective
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Transformative Educators

• Facilitates above average growth and learning in
  students
• Increases student engagement in learning and
  improves quality of life
• Uses inner resources, self-knowledge and
  emotional presence as the foundation of teaching
  style

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The Effective Educator as Effective Person

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WHAT MAKES A GOOD EDUCATOR

• Content knowledge
• Pedagogical skills
• Disposition (attitudes, perceptions)

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Content Knowledge

• Dynamic, ever-changing knowledge base
• The human brain as knowledge synthesizer vs.
  storage facility for facts
• Problem-based approach to use of knowledge

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Pedagogical Skills

• Doing and undergoing a la John Dewey
• Individualizing instruction
• Multiple assessments
• Technology as a teaching and learning tool

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Dispositions Inner Resources

• Attitudes, values, beliefs
• The foundation of all behaviors
• Difficult to change

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Dispositional Hypothesis

• The most effective strategy for improving
  learning and growth is to invest in helping
  people become more effective persons by enhancing
  dispositions.
• STARTING WITH THE INSTRUCTOR!

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Understanding Dispositions

• dispositions toward one self
• dispositions toward others
• dispositions about purpose
• general frame of reference

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PERCEPTIONS OF SELF AS Identified

• IDENTIFIED
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• The educator feels a oneness with all mankind.
  He/she perceives him/herself as deeply and
  meaningfully related to persons of every
  description.

• UNIDENTIFIED
• The educator feels generally apart from others.
  His/her feelings of oneness are restricted to
  those of similar beliefs.

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PERCEPTIONS OF OTHERS AS ABLE

• ABLE
• The educator sees others as having capacities to
  deal with their problems. He/she believes others
  are basically able to find adequate solutions to
  events in their own lives.

• UNABLE
• The educator sees others as lacking the
  necessary capacities to deal effectively with
  their problems. He/she doubts their ability to
  make their own decisions and run their own lives.

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PERCEPTION OF PURPOSE AS LARGER

• LARGER
• The educator views events in a broad
  perspective. His/her goals extend beyond the
  immediate to larger implications and contexts.

• SMALLER
• The educator views events in a narrow
  perspective. His/her purposes focus on immediate
  and specific goals.

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A PEOPLE FRAME OF REFERENCE

• PEOPLE
• The educator is concerned with the human aspects
  of affairs. The attitudes, feelings, beliefs,
  and welfare of persons are prime considerations
  in his/her thinking.

• THINGS
• The educator is concerned with the impersonal
  aspects of affairs. Questions of order,
  management, mechanics, and details of things and
  events are prime considerations in his/her
  thinking.

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IMPLICATONS FOR YOU

• Begin an Instructor Fitness Program
• Perceiving, Behaving, Becoming

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Finding The Great Educator Within

• Perceiving envisioning the GREAT TEACHER
• Behaving acting like the greatest teacher
• Becoming enhancing your knowledge, skills, and
  dispositions

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Constantly expand and update your knowledge base.

• Read journals and magazines
• Be active in a professional organization
• Attend workshops and professional development
• Take additional courses/degrees 

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Increase teaching skills become an educational
philosopher, psychologist, and scientist of human
learning

• Laws governing behaviora perceptual view
• What do we mean by that?
• Why did she act that way and how can I help
  improve the situation?
• Where do I find the solution to this problem?
• I dont know, how can we find out?

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Improve your dispositions about self and others

• Treat yourself kindly.
• Find something you like about every student.
• Create your Personal Dispositional Growth Plan
  (PDGP)

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Exploring Dispositions

• Describe your perfect day?
• Tell about a situation in which you helped a
  person or taught a significant lesson.
• How would your students describe you to others?
• How do you maintain a balance in your life
  between work and play?

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Improve Dispositions Toward Self

• Pick frequent personal development projects.
• Balance work and play.
• Learn the difference between pain and suffering.
• Laugh a lot, be abundantly human.

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Improve Dispositions Toward Others

• Find something you like about everyone.
• See the world through their shoes
• Take the time to listen.

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Keep the Long View

• Start each day by laying on your death bed
• How will what I am doing today make me better
  three years from now?
• How will what I do today impact on the growth,
  learning and happiness of the important people in
  my life?

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www.educatordispositions.org

• Join the National Network for the Study of
  Educator Dispositions (NNSED)

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Homework Assignments

• Create a PDGP
• Read about good teaching
• Host a Great Teacher Movie Marathon
• Practice Unanticipated Acts of Kindness