Trust the key to teaching: expert

Effective teaching is about gaining pupils' trust and giving plenty of feedback, University of Auckland Professor of Education John Hattie says.

Timaru-born Prof Hattie was speaking at the Assistant Principals Deputy Principals Primary School Leadership Conference held at the Caroline Bay Hall in Timaru last Thursday.

"It is a pleasure to be home," he said.

About 200 deputy principals, assistant principals and senior management from New Zealand primary schools went to the conference.

It was called Outside the Square to encourage delegates from New Zealand primary schools to talk about more innovative ways of teaching.

Prof Hattie told the audience about the results of his meta-analysis - a combination of the results from 50,000 international studies about pupils' achievement.

When his 15-year analysis came to an end last year, his study of the learning patterns of 240 million pupils showed that pupil-teacher interaction was the most important thing to ensure effective learning.

Having pupils' trust was very important for teachers, as this gave the pupils confidence to ask questions in class, Prof Hattie said.

"Teachers should ask themselves `How many of the kids in my classroom are prepared to say, in front of the class, `We need help', or `We don't know what's going on'.' This sort of trust is rare."

Prof Hattie said pupils should be given constant feedback.

This approach enabled the teacher to learn also, encouraging them to recognise the successes and failures of their teaching.

Stimulating pupils' success was about challenging them and giving them clear criteria for success.

"The worst thing anyone can do is to say, `Do your best', because you always do your best anyway and there's no challenge in that.

"[A teacher's] job is to help kids get above their potential, above what they see themselves as. To work out their expectations and raise them."

Teachers often did not take responsibility for their pupils' academic performance.

They worked under the philosophy that if they could teach a child for longer they would be able to make more of a difference, Prof Hattie said.

"I think, you had this child for the year and you failed. Why have them for another?"

When pupils had difficulty learning, educators would often look for a reason to explain why, without considering possible weaknesses in their teaching method, he said.

"We're in a stage of labelling pupils with having Asperger's syndrome at the moment. We try to find a reason they don't learn and what we should be doing is finding an explanation of how to teach them.

"If they learn kinaesthetically, for God's sake, teach them something else."

Teachers needed to start to view the quality of their pupil's performance as a reflection of the quality of their teaching, Prof Hattie said.

There were "hardly any" bad teachers in New Zealand, he said.

Between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of New Zealand teachers already taught in the way that his analysis showed was effective.

However, Prof Hattie encouraged his audience to recognise weaknesses in their teaching and make an effort to improve.

"Go out there, set your standards high and make an impact," he said.

- Cerisse Denhardt.