Everyone, by nature, strives to be the best they can be and is capable of improvement. Regardless of what you have accomplished in life or what you already tried and failed, you can improve and you must strive to better yourself.

Most teachers are motivated to self-improve. Well motivated teachers convey their enthusiasm to their students and this encourages students to learn and achieve. Teachers can be helped to maintain their motivation by knowing that they are doing a good job and that they are helping students to learn and achieve.

Below are five ways that could be adopted to help teachers improve teaching and learning.

Create a Self-Reflective Teaching Portfolio

One very important, but often overlooked, source for improving teaching is self reflection and recording notes.

An example of this are questions to ask yourself based on a taught lesson. These may include:-

1. What worked well in this class, and why?
2. What didn’t, and why?
3. Where did the students seem to have difficulties?
4. Were there any noticeable points where the students seemed very engaged with the material?
5. What types of things may need greater clarification the next time?
6. Were there any particular pedagogical strategies that seemed to work well?
7. What will I change the next time I teach this topic?

SchooliP provides the blogging tools, lesson video recording and analysis. Video-recording is an effective tool for reflecting on teaching, as it enables one to see themselves in action ‘with a fresh pair of eyes’. Review with a coach/mentor helps practitioners develop strategies and how to improve teaching.

Feedback from your Students

Our own students, that we teach, can be a great source of feedback on the teaching and learning, in our classrooms on a day-to-day basis.

Using your department

Departmental meetings are an ideal opportunity to discuss pedagogical strategies as well as departments observing teaching and learning. Observations should not just be a “critique” of your teaching, but also the opportunity to mutually exchange ideas, including a pre-observation and a post-observation discussion.

A pre-observation discussion focuses on the class context; what you will be teaching, types of teaching techniques to be used, the outcome and the focus of the observation. After the observation in the post observation discussion feedback can be provided on the focus of the lesson.

Dialogue with Peers

One of the most powerful resources for improvement is using peers. Many teachers choose to pair up with a peer for observations. Peer collaboration provides an invaluable resource to learn from each other. The reflective monitoring forms and/or video analysis in SchooliP can help provide a framework for peer to peer collaboration.

External professional learning

Booking and attending an external CPD course is often the first choice for a teacher wishing to improve aspects of their teaching. This only has a true impact if they are clear about the aspects of teaching they wish to improve. There are however, in today’s modern world other forms of CPD that can have the desired outcome including research articles, videos, webinars, forums, and coaching.

SchooliP provides the functionality to record and request CPD. CPD requests provide colleagues in the school the opportunity to quality assure course requests before they are booked. A bespoke workflow is created to ensure the course is appropriate, relevant and financially viable etc. The outcome and feedback of the CPD is able to be collated to help signpost other colleagues to quality CPD.