This month we have been reading Memorable Teaching: Leveraging memory to build deep and durable learning in the classroom by Peps Maccrea. The book has some excellent ideas and we would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to reflect on their practice.
Peps has kindly answered some of our questions.
- How do you see the future of teaching? What will constitute great teaching?
In the future, all being well, teachers will have an understanding of ‘how learning works’, and use this to inform their judgements about how to teach effectively. This body of knowledge will draw on cognitive, behavioural and evolutionary science. They will be supported via coaching, and using impact evaluation tools and techniques to continually refine their practice.
2. Could you give 3 tips that every teacher should follow in their classrooms?
a. Strive to evaluate your impact
b. Use this as a basis to do one thing better every day
c. Learn as much as you can about how learning works!
3. What is the most interesting thing you learnt while writing your book?
That some effective practices are counter-intuitive. For example, using interleaving as a learning strategy slows pupil progress down in the short term, and they generate more errors. However, in the long-term they remember more and develop deeper understanding. Our intuition is helpful in life, but it has limits in the classroom.
4. Do you have any other projects we should know about?
I am currently leading on the Institute for Teaching’s Masters in Expert Teaching. It is a course designed to take proficient teachers and put them on the path towards being expert. It’s pretty exciting – if anyone wants to know more, just get in touch.
