'But what does this look like in the classroom?'
This question generally occurs to educators when they enquire into evidence-based approaches to teaching - and often they will get to the end of a teaching manual only to find that it remains unanswered.
In The Expert Teacher, however, Darren Mead provides many of the answers.
One of the most universally respected teachers in Britain, Darren has devoted his professional life to attaining pedagogical excellence. In this book he examines in depth what expert teachers do to help students progress their learning and strive for academic success.
He lays bare the concept of pedagogical content knowledge and eloquently explains how to utilise it to overcome student misconceptions, create contexts and connections in learning and teach difficult and important content - empowering educators to transform their sub-ject knowledge into multiple means of representing it in teachable ways.
The intention of The Expert Teacher is to help teachers to reflect on what and how they plan, how they teach and how to improvise around these plans, and to pave the way for deep professional thinking about best practice. It is split into two parts - entitled How is Your Subject Learned? and Expert Teaching and Learning - and provides educators with a variety of practical tools, illuminating examples and flexible frameworks geared to help them underpin and reinforce the very ampersand in expert teaching & learning.
A warning though: this book is not for teachers seeking quick fixes or superficial tricks. The Expert Teacher is for educators who are eager to experience the excitement of knowing and teaching their subject masterfully.
Suitable for all teachers in all settings.
Beadle, Phil: - Phil Beadle knows a bit about bringing creative projects to fruit. His self-described 'renaissance dilettantism' is best summed up by Mojo magazine's description of him as a 'burnished voice soul man and left wing educationalist'. He is the author of ten books on a variety of subjects, including the acclaimed Dancing About Architecture, described in Brain Pickings as 'a strong, pointed conceptual vision for the nature and origin of creativity'. As songwriter Philip Kane, his work has been described in Uncut magazine as having 'novelistic range and ambition' and in Mojo as having a 'rare ability to find romance in the dirt' along with 'bleakly literate lyricism'. He has won national awards for both teaching and broadcasting, was a columnist for the Guardian newspaper for nine years and has written for every broadsheet newspaper in the UK, as well as the Sydney Morning Herald. Phil is also one of the most experienced, gifted and funniest public speakers in the UK.
Mead, Darren: - Darren Mead is an experienced science teacher who has been described as 'the Jimi Hendrix of teaching' and 'perhaps the most intellectually engaged of all British teachers'. Based in the North East of England, he shares his classroom-based interpretations of research through his highly respected blog, Sharing Pedagogical Purposes.
