A triadic teaching pedagogy to develop student confidence in teaching mathematics

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Developing student confidence and professional identity is critical for primary school teachers. In a first year mathematics
education course, a triadic teaching pedagogy was adopted to scaffold students experiences and enhance their confidence.

CHALLENGE

Primary school teachers must have the ability to confidently teach mathematics. However, many students come into this first year
mathematics education course apprehensive about mathematics and fearful of their ability to teach it well to future students. The
central aim of this course is to change students perception of what mathematics is and enhance their confidence in their ability to
teach it.

Further problematising this issue is the varying skill and confidence levels of students. With a cohort of over 400 students, spread
across three campuses and online, a triadic teaching pedagogy was adopted to enhance student confidence in their ability to
teach mathematics.

APPROACH

The overarching goal of this course is to provide opportunities to inspire “the next generation of teachers to teach mathematics in
a way that develops deep conceptual understanding of mathematics in their future students” (Kevin Larkin). To enable this, a
triadic teaching approach was adopted comprising: a one hour lecture delivered online; a one hour face-to-face workshop; and a
one hour face-to-face tutorial.

Online lecture

All lectures are delivered using Echo Personal Capture and provide the theoretical concepts of mathematics education e.g. the five
step learning sequence for the length concept. In these lectures, students are able to see and hear me and also see the lecture
slides and a relaxed approach is taken with the teaching style; similar to a ‘fireside chat.’ For this reason minor “mistakes” are not
edited. Each lecture is comprised of two parts - each approximately 28 minutes in duration. A character with a stop sign is used at
key points during the lecture to provide a visual prompt for the students to pause the lecture and complete a task. The purpose of
this is to maximise student engagement.

Workshop

All workshops are delivered in person, with between 30 to 150 students per workshop. In this component of the course, I model
to students the practical component of teaching mathematics using concrete and digital resources. Additionally, in these
workshops, small groups of students work together to complete set tasks. In these group activities, students teach their peers
mathematical concepts, and provide feedback to each other on how they might alter their teaching approach to better convey
conceptual understanding. This approach reflects the triadic approach in that the convenor teaches students the concepts which
they must then teach to their peers. The premise of these activities is to enhance student confidence in teaching mathematics. It
also provides the convenor with the opportunity to determine if students are understanding the core concepts.

Tutorial

All tutorials are delivered in person, with approximately 20 - 25 students per tutorial. In these tutorials, students are given a range
of questions to complete and each group is given a different component of the question to answer. Students must then teach
their peers the key mathematical concepts in a non-assessed activity. This approach provides a safe space in which students can
make mistakes and learn from their peers. The smaller group allows the tutor to fine tune student understanding and to direct
future course modifications - both for this cohort and also future cohorts.

Students are encouraged to see themselves primarily as classroom teachers, who happen to teach mathematics. To enable this,
students are challenged to reflect upon:

How are they going to interact with their future primary school students?

What type of teaching pedagogy will they adopt?

OUTCOMES
Since implementing the triadic approach, the Student Evaluation of Courses (SEC) and Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) have
consistently ranged from 4.6 to 5. Students have also highlighted an increase in self-confidence through the workshop and tutorial
activities.

Indicative student comments include:

“I enjoyed being able to refer back to the lecture content for both assessments at any time” and “The recorded lectures meant
that I was able to go back and replay the lectures. This was particularly helpful for exam study”

"The way in which the lectures and subsequent workshops were structured made it really easy to engage with the content. It was
great to be able to attend workshops and cement learning from the lecture for a second time”

“I very much liked the format of online lecture + face-to-face workshop + tutorial, as I found this was the perfect mix for my style
of learning”.

“The tutorials felt as if we were already teachers on prac because we had to explain and demonstrate how we would introduce
mathematics concepts”.

Most rewarding for me are emails from beginning teachers as they put into practice what they have learned about mathematics
education.

“In my whirlwind first year of teaching… a few Dr Larkin gems have kept me grounded in efficient practice and effective
application” (Alumni email, 2017).

“Thanks for being such an awesome support person over the past 3.5 years. So many times your voice has popped into my head
while I'm in the middle of a lesson” (Alumni email, 2016).

“Kevin’s approach to mathematics teaching has been highly beneficial to me in my first year of teaching as I am equipped with
strategies for building on school students’ understanding. I also have found that Kevin’s approach to mathematics teaching has
enabled me to very quickly and confidently determine the source of my school students’ errors and also to go about remediating
them” (Alumni email, 2017).

ENABLING TECHNOLOGY

The use of Echo Personal Capture was essential for the delivery of the lectures. Included in the online lecture is a video of the
lecturer using materials to demonstrate concepts. Students indicated that this was very beneficial for their learning. Indicative
feedback includes:

“Your ability to show the practicality of the content you teach is unlike any of my other lecturers. So to be able to see how you use
the manipulatives a) makes it more personal and less robot-y and b) engaging”.

“I feel the video still creates a sense of face-to-face lecture, where it is still a video element, but i have time to pause and jot down
something”.

“The online lecture feels more personable/friendly, rather than clinical facts about mathematics”.

“It positively affects my connection with the course as you manipulate materials which makes it easier for me to understand and
visualise the concepts being covered”.

The use of visualiser in the workshops was important for students to be able to share their solutions. In addition, where available,
interactive whiteboards (IWBs) are used by tutors and students in the tutorials. This allows the tutor to model good digital
pedagogy and also provided an opportunity for students to use a technology available in many schools.

IMPLEMENT

If you are thinking of implementing this approach, consider the following:

Ensure that you check in with students and groups who seem uncertain.

Use the small group teaching as an opportunity to determine if students are understanding the course content.

Provide students with extra support resources if they need them.

Determine which aspects of the course are suitable for online delivery and which are best addressed in face-to-face mode.

GRIFFITH GRADUATE ATTRIBUTES

This teaching approach clearly aligns with the following Griffith Graduate Attributes: Knowledgeable and skilled with critical
judgement Effective communicators and collaborators This course developed students confidence and ability to effectively teach
mathematics through collaborating with their peers in small group activities. This required the ability to work effectively within a
team; communicate and articulate key mathematical concepts; and provide feedback on teaching practice to their peers.

triadic alignment is a pedagogical technique that instructors can use to improve their teaching and students' learning. It
involves offering the course learning objectives, teaching and learning activities, and assessments at the same cognitive process
level.Oct 31, 2018

Triadic Model of Teaching Analytics (TMTA) At its core, our model sees collaborative knowledge
building between teachers, analysts and researchers. Each has a complementary role in the
teaching analytics setting. Eliciting criteria for Teaching Analytics involves a collocated collaborative
triad of a Teaching Expert (TE), a Visual Analytics Expert (VAE), and a Design-Based Research Expert
(DBRE) analyzing, interpreting and acting upon real-time data being generated by students’
learning activities by using a range of visual analytics tools. We think of the relationships between
the TE, VAE and DBRE as a dynamic socio-technical system. The design considerations are about
creating feedback loops between the three individuals, such that each one drives the other two to
higher levels of performance on the positive side (with the cost of anxiety in the negative case). That
is, feedback from the teacher inspires the VAE to create new, better visualizations and for the
researcher to better understand the ongoing teaching and learning processes while feedback from
the VAE – perhaps in the form of visualization artifacts – allows the teachers to better understand
what is going on in the classroom from a learning activity design perspective and the research to
hypothesize, test and predict student learning trajectories and performance outcomes. All in all,
these feedback loops should culminate in the teacher providing timely, meaningful actionable,
customized and personalized feedback to students. The key point here is that each member of the
triumvirate of TE, VAE, and DBRE can gain from the other two, not that each partner's role is to
highlight deficiencies of the other two. Therefore, TMTA involves a close collaboration between the
TE, VAE, and the DBRE. It includes teaching practitioners in the design process and invites them to
contribute significantly to the innovation of the visual analytics tools. This allows these learning
analytics tools to address pedagogical issues as they arise and evolve in real classrooms. In the next
section, we outline an approach to TMTA based on open learner models (OLM).

WTHAT DOES TEACHING MEANS?

Teaching for me means making a difference for kids.

It means allowing them to pursue their passions, and supporting them along the way. It means giving
students ownership over their learning. It means helping students wants to learn.

he Heart of Teaching: What It Means to Be a Great Teacher

Kindness, empathy, and a focus on building community are among the qualities of a great teacher.

By Rusul Alrubail

January 14, 2015

Heart made with hands

What does it mean to be a great teacher? Of course credentials, knowledge, critical thinking, and
all other faculties of intelligence are important. However, a great teacher should be much more than
credentials, experience, and intelligence.

What lies in the heart of a great teacher?

You are kind: A great teacher shows kindness to students, colleagues, parents, and those around
her or him. My favorite saying is “kindness makes the world go around.” It truly changes the
environment in the classroom and school. Being a kind teacher helps students feel welcomed,
cared for, and loved.

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You are compassionate: Teaching is a very humanistic profession, and compassion is the utmost
feeling of understanding and showing others you are concerned about them. A compassionate
teacher models that characteristic to the students with her or his actions, and as a result students will
be more open to understanding the world around them.

You are empathetic: Empathy is an important trait to have and to try to develop in ourselves and our
students. Being able to put yourself in someone’s shoes and see things from their perspective can
have a powerful impact on our decisions and actions.

You are positive: Being a positive person is not an easy task. Being a positive teacher is even harder
when we’re always met with problems with very limited solutions. However, staying positive when it’s
tough can have a tremendous positive impact on the students and everyone around us. Looking on
the bright side always seems to help make things better.

You are a builder: A great teacher bridges gaps and builds relationships, friendships, and a
community. Teachers always look to make things better and improve things in and outside of the
classroom. Building a community is something a great teacher seeks to do in the classroom and
extends that to the entire school and its community.

You inspire: Everyone looks at a great teacher and wants to be a better teacher, a better student,
and even a better person. A great teacher uncovers hidden treasures, possibilities, and magic right
before everyone’s eyes.

This piece was originally submitted to our community forums by a reader. Due to audience interest,
we've preserved it. The opinions expressed here are the writer's own.

Teaching is an important part of the process of education.Special function is impart

knowledge,develop understanding and skill.Teaching is communication between two or more
persons.Teaching is a process in which learner,teacher curriculum and other variable are organized
in a systematic ways to attain some determined a goals.Teachers giving some knowledge to the
student.Teachers passing some information to student.Making a students acquire some skill and
Changing the attitude of learners.Modifying the behavior of students and Giving some experiences
of life.

One on one teaching is the most effective form of teaching in many cases. Teaching to a classroom
of students with slow, in between, and fast learners is very inefficient where you bore the fast
students and lose the slow students trying to teach to the majority in between students.

In poor neighborhoods absence of discipline, unmotivating dysfunctional families, downward peer

pressure, and disrespect of the teachers are all further reasons why traditional classroom teaching
fails.

A teacher can try to teach many things to a student but unfortunately experience is sometimes the
best teacher when it comes to human relationships and life experiences on the job and elsewhere.

Teachers in poor neighborhoods are plagued with discipline problems and students not willing to
learn primarily because of a dysfunctional family life and poor role models who don’t encourage
moral, industrious, and achievement oriented behavior.

Most teachers are not paid well and the reason is not obvious to most. Most of them are doing a
mediocre job of teaching with mediocre results and deserve mediocre pay.

Quality teachers are rare because poor salaries discourage competence and even good
competent teachers feel the frustration of teaching 30 students at a time with a wide range of
learning speeds and frequently leave the profession for better more rewarding opportunities
elsewhere.

There is some hope that individualized interactive audio visual computer education which is
adjusted to your pace of learning may save students from mediocre teaching but only time will tell
how speedily it will replace the armies of mediocre human teachers worldwide.

WHAT IS MY PURPOSE AS ATEACHER?

A teacher's role is to make informed and intelligent decisions about practice to achieve various
outcomes with and for students in their classes. A teacher's role is to make judgments about how
best to help their students learn in the environments in which they teach.

TEACHING AS A PROCESS

Teaching as a Process

Teaching is fundamentally a process, including planning, implementation, evaluation and revision.

Planning and teaching a class are familiar ideas to most instructors. More overlooked are the steps
of evaluation and revision. Without classroom assessments or some other means of receiving
feedback on a regular basis, it is surprisingly easy to misunderstand whether a particular teaching
method or strategy has been effective. A teacher can create an environment of mutual trust and
respect by relying on students for feedback -- students can be a valuable resource for verifying
whether the class pedagogy is (or isn't) working. Self-examination with feedback from your students
and the instructor are key to improving your teaching.

PLANNING

There are many different levels of setting goals for teaching, from the scale of an entire semester
(syllabus) to a single class (lesson plan). You have the overall task of helping your students learn how
to think critically and to understand the basic concepts and tools of your discipline. You should also
have more specific day-to-day goals, such as examining the social context of Victorian women
writers or demonstrating how to integrate partial differential equations. As a graduate TA you
probably will not be responsible for designing an entire course, but you should think about how your
day-to-day teaching fits into the larger goals of the course.

REVISION

Revising your pedagogy will help your students learn... and keep you interested. If you keep your
focus on student learning, you will find a richer meaning to the typical lecture/discussion/test/grade
process. Instead of an adversarial relationship, the teaching process encourages a relationship of
cooperation and mutual discovery. Ernest Boyer helped redefine the notion of scholarship, in fact,
by including the scholarship of teaching as a culminating activity of the research process of
discovery, integration, and application of knowledge (Boyer 1990).

ASSESSMENT

Regular assessment of your students and yourself is critical to your success as a teacher. To really
understand whether you are teaching effectively and your students are learning effectively, it is
crucial that you actively and regularly assess what your students have learned. If you are able to
solicit meaningful feedback from your students and the professor on a regular basis (not just at the
end of the semester), you can modify and improve your teaching strategies. Assessments do not
need to be overly complex or involved. In fact, the more focused you are in the assessment, the
more impact your changes will have.

IMPLEMENTATION

The best plans are meaningless if you don't try them. Although most of the work in teaching comes
in planning and preparation, many great ideas are never implemented because it was easier to just
keep doing the same thing. Don't be afraid if you have and idea you want to try. If something hasn't
been working right, why not change what you are doing and try something new? Unless you are
willing to change and experiment, you will find it difficult to improve your teaching skills.

5 METHODS OF TEACHING

Commonly used teaching methods may include class participation, demonstration, recitation,
memorization, or combinations of these.

Great teachers form strong relationships with their students and show that they care about them as
people. Great teachers are warm, accessible, enthusiastic and caring. Teachers with these qualities
are known to stay after school and make themselves available to students and parents who need
them.

What are the Seven Principles?

Encourage contact between students and faculty.

Develop reciprocity and cooperation among students.

Encourage active learning.

Give prompt feedback.

Emphasize time on task.

Communicate high expectations.

Respect diverse talents and ways of learning.

The best teaching method is the one that your students respond to. A master teacher adjusts his or
her methods and strategies in response to his or her students' ability to learn the material being
presented. I can propose that direct instruction is best used when working with students below
grade level.

7 Effective Teaching Strategies For The Classroom

Visualization. Bring d ull academic concepts to life with visual and practical learning experiences,
helping your students to understand how their schooling applies in the real-world. ...

Cooperative learning. ...

Inquiry-based instruction. ...

Differentiation. ...

Technology in the classroom. ...

Behaviour management. ...

Professional development.

There are different types of teaching methods which can be categorised into three broad types.
These are teacher-centred methods, learner-centred methods, content-focused methods and
interactive/participative methods. Here the teacher casts himself/herself in the role of being a
master of the subject matter.
y Ikram Benzouine

Rabat – As I begin these pages, my mind takes me back to a quote I once read by William Arthur
Ward: “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires.” For me, teaching is inspiration; the teacher’s job transcends the mere
act of imparting bookish information to students. I think that the fundamental goal and pleasure of
teaching can neither be achieved nor sensed through lecturing and rote memorization of
knowledge. I strongly maintain that traditional schooling has never been the finest model of
educating individuals with “undefined identities” (i.e. teenage students).

As a teacher, my duty is to inspire my students to discover themselves freely instead of making them
abide by the strict national standards of the coursebook. Inspiration cannot be engraved in
textbooks nor on class boards; instead it is modelled by and through the teacher. Simply put, my
role will never be limited to the one-dimensional sphere of schooling but will be all about educating
and instilling good manners and paving the way for my learners’ self-discovery. I expect my
students to be unique individuals with exceptional aspirations and talents albeit undefined and
undiscovered.

Since my very childhood, my parents have always been encouraging me to discover who I am, and
find out what I really want from life. They have never forced me to read a book all day long and
make me memorize as many words as I can to find or “correct” myself. Yet, my parents did shape
my personality through their guidance and love. What I am alluding to is that parenting is not that
different from teaching. They both require a model, a guide on the side, and a source of inspiration; I
aspire to embody all of these traits in my teacher-to-be self.

Like a parent, my goal is to provide a secure, caring and stimulating learning atmosphere in which
my students can grow and mature emotionally, intellectually, and socially by using such a strategy
as positive discipline.

My overwhelming desire is to arouse in them an eager want to be themselves in class and to help
them develop their potentials by believing in them as gifted and capable beings. I personally
believe that encouragement and appreciation are more effective teaching devices than
punishment or scolding. Hence, when dealing with my students, not only should I attend to them as
beings of logic, but as emotional humans as well. Teenage students’ desperate craving is to be
appreciated. By giving them that sense of importance, I will be able to leave a long-standing mark
in their hearts and minds, filling them up with exalting self-confidence. Thus, the longer I teach, the
more important it is for me to see that my students are curious, contented, and at ease in my
classroom. The nifty trick is to bring students’ interests to the surface, for many of them are unaware
of what they want to learn.
In order to guarantee the practicability and utility of my teaching philosophy, I intend to incorporate
three main instructional strategies which I believe will best portray and consolidate my delivery
tactics. To begin with, I think that implementing individual instruction is crucial to fostering students’
self-confidence and pride. I am determined to remember my students’ first names, thereby treating
them on first-name terms. This will not only help me keep a better rapport with them, but will also
improve their self-esteem and instil positive feelings about the course and the task under study.

Addressing my students as individuals also means that I should be knowledgeable about their skills,
their expectations about the class as well as about me, and their goals. To be exact, I cannot inspire
individuals whose backgrounds are not yet made known to me. A key principle to inspiration, I
believe, is to be prepared for each class. I am now reminded of a few of the high-school classes I
attended where the teacher’s materials were irrelevant to me and my classmates. I also remember
the tediousness and disappointment I felt in such courses and was determined since then to avoid
that in my classes. For that reason, I deem knowing my students’ qualifications and backgrounds
crucial to helping me prepare pertinent activities, with visuals if needed, so as to inspire my students
to know more about the language I am teaching them.

The above-stated argument smoothes the path for my second teaching strategy: preparing relevant
materials. As a student, I could (rather, still can) detect whether my teacher has devoted time to
making the instructional material related to her students’ expectations. I must say that I have always
admired my teachers’ efforts to prepare the right activities. In fact, the best teachers I have had
know how to teach me a specific material in such a way that makes it more feasible and relevant to
my own needs.

To assure the same upshot, I will provide real-world examples that demonstrate the concepts under
instruction. For instance, I can make use of current events to illustrate concepts and ideas that my
students may not be that familiar with. By discussing and reporting what the media writes or says in
class, my students can be more knowledgeable about another dimension of English. That is, I want
them to view English not only as a mere linguistic structure (i.e. accuracy) but also as a means of
functional communication (i.e. fluency). In view of this objective, I plan to adopt class participation
and discussion as my third instructional strategy.

For me, the finest way to consolidate and assess the feasibility of the materials I prepare is to invite
and welcome students’ talk about the content of presented lessons. Giving them this opportunity will
help me set future goals that are to generate much richer activities than I could have thought about.
This way, students also get the impression that their voices about the curriculum are of great
magnitude, which gives them a sense of pride and inspires them more to learn. I believe that
expressing individual opinions in class is an important part of students’ learning process because
they do not only share but also receive constructive feedback about these opinions.

In point of fact, teaching students about the importance of participation and communication (inside
or outside the classroom) helps them become successful, active, and autonomous members in
society. So, if I call on students to respond to my inquiries either individually or in groups, I will be
able to activate and measure their critical and creative thinking skills using the right teaching
approach. For example, I might require students to be involved in project works so as to leave room
for them to challenge and put to actual test their communication and negotiation skills outside the
classroom. After all, my ultimate goal is to make them in charge of their own learning, relying on
their own assets so that they can shape what, how and who they want to be.

As I conclude these reflections, I am reminded of one of Horace Mann’s sayings: “A teacher who is
attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.” I
believe he was talking about inspiration (or motivation) as key ingredient in effective teaching and
learning. Horace’s statement brings to light the common claim made by most teachers which
testifies that students’ motivation is one of the toughest challenges they face. Teachers usually
describe their students as being disinterested, lethargic and impassive. Obviously, lack of positive
motivation or failure to inspire is responsible for problems of students’ behavior as well as difficulties
in learning. This means that when we teachers speak of student motivation, we are actually talking
about influencing our students’ motives so that they learn what we want them to learn, think in the
way we want them to think without changing their essence, and embrace the values we want them
to embrace so as to meet the expectations set by their surroundings.

It is true that inspiring students, especially teenagers, must be the toughest job. However, as
teachers we should overcome the already-held impressions and attitudes about our students before
we can expect learning or teaching to take place. From my personal experience, I could see that
those who gain both personal and academic success are those whose self-confidence is promoted
thanks to their teacher’s encouragements and motivation.

What I also could draw from my humble experience is that through honesty we can best inspire
students to be the individuals we aspire them to be. That is, when being and displaying my true self,
my students will respond likewise, and it will help me be clear about their goals and objectives. My
aim is to create a harmonious community in my classroom; a way for my students to feel involved
and valued, and a way for them to help each other learn how to use each other’s ideas to create
bigger things, regardless of how different these ideas may be. In the end, the material I teach is not
as important as the behaviors I model and instil because I view these values as crucial to inspiring
my students in all parts of their lives not only in learning.