Nine principles of effective teaching

I’ve started ice skating lessons. Think of me not as some pound-shop Christopher Dean in sequined Lycra, but as a middle-aged father talked into supporting his daughters.

I am, by some margin, the oldest person on the ice. Most of the other skaters are young children. The coaches are half my age. The experience is a masterclass in being stranded far outside one’s comfort zone.

I often talk to new teachers about the importance of learning to fall – facing your fears and doing it anyway. Well…

My most spectacular fall occurred the night I had to drive from the arena to give a talk. I lost my footing while forward gliding at speed and fell backwards, cracking my head and back hard on the ice. Later, I hobbled onto the stage like an octogenarian.

The experience, though, has been enlightening. There’s something about learning a new skill – where you are devoid of prior knowledge – that really focuses your attention on the process rather than the content. It has reminded me of Gagné’s nine principles.

In 1965, Robert Gagné (see Gagné et al, 1992) proposed a series of nine events – which I have taken the liberty of paraphrasing below and which offer a useful way of thinking about layering or “chunking” and “sequencing” learning. After each one I have included a few suggested methods for use in your classroom.

1, Gain students’ attentions

Gagné advised that we ensure our students are ready to learn by presenting a stimulus to capture their attention. In practice, this might mean stimulating students with something novel or different.

The following list, which I have adapted from Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998) articulates five ways of piquing students’ intellectual interest:

1. Instant immersion in questions, problems, challenges, situations, or stories that require students’ wits, not just knowledge.
2. Thought provocations. Anomalies, weird facts, counter-intuitive events or ideas, and mysteries that appeal to the gut, making the strange familiar and the familiar strange.
3. Experiential shocks. This type of activity can be characterised as an intellectual outward-bound experience in which students have to confront feelings, obstacles, and problems personally and as a group to accomplish a task.
4. Personal connection – students often become more engaged when given opportunities to make a personal connection to the topic or to pursue a matter of interest.
5. Differing points of view or multiple perspectives on an issue. A deliberate shift of perspective can nudge students out of their comfort zone to stimulate wonderment and deeper thinking.

• Stimulate students with novelty, uncertainty, and surprise.
• Pose thought-provoking questions to students.
• Have students pose questions to be answered by other students.
• Lead an ice-breaker activity.

2, Objectives or learning intentions

Once we have gained students’ attentions, Gagné advises us to inform them of the objectives or outcomes of the unit or lesson to help them understand what they are expected to learn and do, and why this matters. Gagné said we should share objectives before instruction begins.

The notion here is simple: if students do not know what they are supposed to be learning and how their work will eventually be judged, then their ability to learn and make progress will be stymied. Obviously, we want students to know what we want them to learn, and to understand what successful outcomes will look like.

This talks to the three processes that are central to formative assessment:

1. Establishing where pupils are in their learning.
2. Establishing where they are going.
3. Establishing how to get there.

But here's an important caveat with which to start: sharing learning intentions and success criteria does not mean that every lesson must start with a set of objectives scribed on the board which students have to copy down.

A second caveat: learning intentions are not the same as activities. Setting out what students will do is therefore not particularly helpful; rather, we should focus on what students are expected to think about and learn.

As Wiggins and McTighe said, we should start from what we want students to know and plan backwards.

They also advocate a two-stage process: first, we clarify the learning intentions, followed by the success criteria; second, we explore the activities that will lead to the required learning.

• Describe required performance.
• Describe criteria for standard performance.
• Have learners establish criteria for standard performance.
• Include course objectives on assessment prompts.

3, Recall of prior learning

The third layer in Gagné’s sequence is helping students to make sense of new information by relating it to something they already know or something they have already experienced.

Connecting the learning is about explicitly sharing learning goals with students – making clear what success looks like and how students are going to achieve it.

It is also about sharing the purpose of learning – making clear why students need to achieve the learning goals and of what use their learning will be to them in the future.

And, finally, it is about sharing students’ starting points – understanding, through diagnostic tests perhaps, what prior knowledge and skills (as well as misunderstandings) students bring with them to the classroom, and what their interests and talents are and how these might influence the way in which they learn.

Students need to know that the work they are being asked to do is purposeful. In other words, in order for them to invest time and energy into producing high-quality work, students need to know why they are being asked to do what they are being asked to do: what is the rationale, what is the benefit? Where work is abstract, it is important to transform the learning goals into intelligible, practical tasks and criteria that students can understand.

• Ask questions about previous experiences.
• Ask students about their understanding of previous concepts.
• Relate previous course information to the current topic.
• Have students incorporate prior learning into current activities.

4, Present the content

The fourth “event” is to use strategies to present and cue lesson content to provide more effective instruction. Gagné advises we organise and group content in meaningful ways and provide explanations after demonstrations.

I think the best way to present and cue content is through explanations that involve metaphors and analogies because this enables the teacher to contextualise new information so that abstract ideas or hitherto alien concepts are made concrete, tangible, and real, and so that they are related to pupils’ own lives and experiences.

Good explanations also, I think, make effective use of dual coding. In other words, teachers’ verbal instructions, as well as any text-based explanations displayed on the board or in hand-outs are paired with and complemented by visuals such as diagrams, charts, graphics and moving images.

• Present multiple versions of the same content.
• Use a variety of media to engage students in learning.
• Incorporate active learning strategies to keep students involved.
• Provide access to content online so students can access it outside of class.

5, Provide learning guidance

The fifth event is to advise students of strategies to aid them in learning content and tell them about the available resources. In other words, help students learn how to learn.

This is, in part, about modelling – about sharing exemplars of both good and bad work, as well as exemplars from a range of different contexts, which show students what a final product should look like and what makes such products work.

Models or exemplars should be dissected “live” in front of students, with the teacher demonstrating the dissection process. For example, if a model of a persuasive speech is shown on the board, the teacher should analyse it using text marking, pointing out and then annotating how it works, what makes it effective, breaking it apart to identify and discuss each of its component parts.

Then the teacher should reconstruct the speech, explaining how the component parts hang together to create an effective argument, how the whole becomes something much greater than the sum of its parts.

• Provide instructional support as needed.
• Model varied learning strategies.
• Use examples and non-examples.
• Provide case studies, visual images, analogies, and metaphors.

6, Elicit performance (practice)

Gagné said that students should apply what they have learned to reinforce new skills and knowledge and to confirm correct understanding of course concepts. This may take two forms – joint practice, then independent practice.

Joint practice engages students’ thought processes. The teacher’s role is to ask targeted questions to encourage students to complete a model together, as well as to provide corrections and feedback along the way and drip-feed key vocabulary into the mix.

Independent practice, meanwhile, enables students to demonstrate their own understanding and allows the teacher to assess the extent to which they have “got it”. Until a student completes a task by themselves, we cannot be certain that they can do it or that information has been encoded in long-term memory.

• Facilitate student activities.
• Provide formative assessment opportunities.
• Design effective quizzes and tests.

7, Provide feedback

Gagné argued we should provide timely feedback of students’ performance to assess and facilitate learning and to allow students to identify gaps in understanding before it is too late. Here are some types of feedback you may use:

• Confirmatory feedback informs the student that they did what they were supposed to do.
• Evaluative feedback apprises the student of the accuracy of their performance or response but does not provide guidance on how to progress.
• Remedial feedback directs students to find the correct answer but does not provide the correct answer.
• Descriptive or analytic feedback provides the student with suggestions, directives, and information to help them improve their performance.
• Peer-evaluation and self-evaluation help students to identify knowledge and skills gaps in their own and peers’ work.

8, Assess performance

Gagné argues that following feedback we need to test whether the expected learning outcomes have been achieved on previously stated course objectives. Here, adapted from Gagné, are some methods for testing learning:

• Administer pre and post-learning tests to check for progression of competency in content or skills.
• Embed formative assessment opportunities throughout instruction using oral questioning, short active learning activities or quizzes.
• Implement a variety of assessment methods to provide students with multiple opportunities to demonstrate proficiency.
• Craft objective, effective rubrics to assess written assignments, projects, or presentations.

9, Enhance retention and transfer

To end our sequence, Gagné argued that we need to help our students to retain more information by providing them with opportunities to connect classroom concepts to potential real-world applications. The following, adapted from Gagné, are methods to help students internalise new knowledge:

• Avoid isolating lesson content. Associate lesson concepts with prior (and future) concepts and build upon prior (and preview future) learning to reinforce connections.
• Continually incorporate questions from previous tests in subsequent examinations to reinforce lesson information.
• Have students convert information learned in one format into another format (e.g. verbal or visuospatial). For instance, require students to create a concept map to represent connections between ideas.
• To promote deep learning, clearly articulate lesson goals, use specific goals to guide instructional design, and align learning activities to lesson goals.

• Matt Bromley is an education writer and advisor with more than 20 years’ experience in teaching and leadership including as a secondary school headteacher, principal, FE college vice-principal, and MAT director. Currently, he is a public speaker, trainer, school improvement advisor, and primary school governor. He remains a practising teacher and is the lead lecturer on a national ITT programme. Matt is author of numerous books on education and co-hosts the award-winning SecEd Podcast. Visit www.bromleyeducation.co.uk

Further information & resources

• Gagné, Briggs & Wager: Principles of Instructional Design (fourth edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1992.
• Wiggins & McTighe: Understanding by Design, Prentice Hall, 1998.