Great thoughtful post collating ideas on what it takes to be an expert teacher, reflecting on what we mean by expert. Lots of these around at the moment, so will try to pull together for our own PA version over the summer!
In his book ‘Outliers‘ Malcolm Gladwell claims it takes 10 000 hours of sustained and deliberate practice to become an expert in a particular ‘skill’ – whether it be chess, playing the violin or basketball. For teachers, this would amount to 10 years of classroom practice. In his recent post on ‘deliberate practice’ Alex Quigley says that Geoff Colvin argues that it is closer to 3000 hours – so 3 years in the classroom. In reality, there are so many factors to take into consideration, that it will differ from teacher to teacher – so somewhere in between these two figures seems likely, with this sort of pattern:
What is pretty clear though, is that teachers get better and better through practicing and refining their repertoire of teaching strategies over the years. And the better teachers, do this with greater focus and determination – it is not left to…
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paddington teaching and learning 