10 Evidence Based Principles of Effective Teaching

Teachers that have the largest impact on their students’ results

follow these ten principles of effective teaching.

Principle 1: Care about helping your kids to do the best that

they can
Effective teachers are passionate about helping their students to
learn. They form warm and caring relationships with their students.
However, they also set high expectations, and they demand that
their students meet them. This leads to a situation where the
teacher and the students are working together towards a common
goal – helping every child to learn as much as they can.
Principle 2: Understand but don’t excuse your students
Effective teachers seek to understand their students, but so do
most teachers. The difference is that effective teachers still expect
each of their students to behave and to achieve well. Effective
teachers use their understanding to adjust their approach to
teaching, but they did not use it to excuse misbehaviour, poor effort
or a lack of real academic progress.
Principle 3: Be clear about what you want your students to
learn
Effective teachers are clear about what they want their students to
learn and they share this with their students. Everyone understands
what success entails. Effective teachers also know where students
are currently at in this area. They then work towards developing the
understanding and skills their students need to demonstrate that
they have mastered the material.
Principle 4: Disseminate surface knowledge and promote deep
learning
Effective teachers want their students to be able to think critically
and to develop a deep understanding of the material being taught in
class. However, they recognise developing this deep understanding
requires sharing a foundational set of knowledge and skills. Armed
with this foundation, teachers can help students to develop a deep
understanding of the topic at hand.
Principle 5: Gradually release responsibility for learning
Effective teachers do not ask their students to perform tasks that
they have not shown their students how to do. Rather, they start by
modelling what students need to do. They then ask their students to
have a go themselves, while being available to help as needed.
Only when students are ready, do they ask their students to perform
the tasks on their own. Finally, they offer ongoing cumulative
practice, spaced out over time, to help students retain what they
have learned.
Principle 6: Give your students feedback
Effective teachers give students dollops of feedback. This feedback
tells students how they are going and gives them information about
how they could improve. Without feedback, students are likely to
continue holding misconceptions and making errors. Feedback
allows students to adjust their understanding and efforts before it is
too late.
Principle 7: Involve students in learning from each other
Effective teachers supplement teacher-led, individual learning, with
activities that involve students in learning from each other. When
done well, strategies such as cooperative learning, competition and
peer tutoring can be quite powerful. Yet, these activities must be
carefully structured and used in conjunction with more traditional
teaching.
Principle 8: Manage your students’ behaviour
Effective teachers know that students’ behaviour can help or hinder
how much students learn in the classroom. They implement
strategies that nurture positive behaviour and minimise
misbehaviour. They are consciously aware of what is going in the
classroom, and they nip problems in the bud before quickly
returning the focus to the lesson at hand. Finally, they follow up on
more serious misbehaviour and help students to change any
entrenched bad habits.
Principle 9: Evaluate the impact you are having on your
students
Effective teachers regularly assess student progress, and they then
use this insight to evaluate the impact they are having on their
students. If what they are doing is working, they continue to use or
even make more use of a particular approach. If what they are
doing is not having the desired impact (even for just one student),
 they reflect on and refine what they are doing until they are getting
the results they want.
Principle 10: Continue learning ways that you can be of even
more help to more students
Effective teachers love learning and are always seeking to improve
their own practices. They seek out evidence-based insights, and
they are happy to challenge their existing beliefs about teaching.
However, they are also critical of mindless innovation, innovation for
the sake of it, and innovation that adopts practices that are not
supported by research.

You can use these principles of effective teaching to reflect on your

own practice, to discuss effective teaching with colleagues or
evaluate particular programs/approaches you are considering.

5 Steps to Good Research

1. Define and articulate a research question (formulate a research hypothesis).
How to Write a Thesis Statement (Indiana University)
2. Identify possible sources of information in many types and formats.
Georgetown University Library's Research & Course Guides
3. Judge the scope of the project.
4. Reevaluate the research question based on the nature and extent of information available
and the parameters of the research project.
5. Select the most appropriate investigative methods (surveys, interviews, experiments) and
research tools (periodical indexes, databases, websites).
6. Plan the research project.
Overcoming Procrastination & Writer's Block (University of Chicago) Writing
Anxiety (UNC-Chapel Hill) Strategies for Academic Writing (SUNY Empire State
College)
7. Retrieve information using a variety of methods (draw on a repertoire of skills).
8. Refine the search strategy as necessary.
9. Write and organize useful notes and keep track of sources.
Taking Notes from Research Reading (University of Toronto)
RefWorks
10. Evaluate sources using appropriate criteria.
Evaluating Internet Sources
11. Synthesize, analyze and integrate information sources and prior knowledge.
Georgetown University Writing Center
12. Revise hypothesis as necessary.
13. Use information effectively for a specific purpose.
14. Understand such issues as plagiarism, ownership of information (implications of copyright
to some extent), and costs of information.
 Georgetown University Honor Council
Copyright Basics (Purdue University)
Plagiarism: What It Is and How to Recognize and Avoid It from Indiana University
15. Cite properly and give credit for sources of ideas.
MLA Bibliographic Form
Turabian Bibliographic Form: Footnote/Endnote
Turabian Bibliographic Form: Parenthetical Reference
RefWorks

http://www.library.georgetown.edu/tutorials/research-guides/15-steps

1. Schedule! I tell my students that the first step in writing a

research paper is to admit you have a research paper. Write up
a schedule with a series of milestones to accomplish by
a specific date (e.g. find 10 sources by September 20, finish
preliminary research by October 15), and keep to it. You will
need time to get an overview of what material is out there, find
out what’s in your library, select relevant material, read it, take
notes, and start putting it together — and to do a second wave of
research to clear up points raised in the writing of your first
draft.

2. Start, don’t end, with Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a great place

to start your research — spend some time searching for
keywords related to your topic, browsing the links you find on
each page, and following their suggested resources. Take notes,
especially of any good sources they recommend. The goal here is
to get a good overview of the subject you’re writing
about, and Wikipedia is far better for that than most print
sources, because of its hyperlink ed nature. By the time you get
ready to write, though, you should have much better sources at
your command than Wikipedia, so avoid citing it in your paper.
3. Mine bibliographies. Once you’ve found a good, solid
academic book or essay on your topic, you’re golden — at the end
there will be a list of dozens or hundreds of sources for you to
look up. You can usually skim through the bibliography
and note down anything whose title sounds relevant to
your research. Academic authors aren’t very creative with their
titles, so it is usually pretty easy to tell what their work is about
from just the title or subtitle. Go back through and see if you
recognize any of the authors’ names — these too might be worth
following up. once you start finding the work the first book
referenced, do the same thing with their bibliographies — soon
you’ll have a list of far more sources than you need (but you need
them, because your library may not have all the books and
journals referred to, and inter-library loan is so slow as to be
useless for students who need to finish by the end of the
semester).

4. Have a research question in mind. Technically, your thesis

should emerge from your research, when you have data in front
of you. But you need a kind of “working thesis” while doing your
research — a question you want to answer. As you come across
new material, ask yourself if it looks like it will help you answer
your question. Anything that looks relevant but doesn’t help
answer your question you can put back. It’s tempting to gather a
lot of background material, and some is necessary, but too much
will waste your time without contributing to your research. Get
one or two good sources for background (your initial Wikipedia
searching should be adequate in most cases) and then keep
 focused by working towards an answer to your
research question.

5. Deal with one piece at a time. Don’t try to tackle your

subject all at once. Get enough of a sense of the topic that you
can create an outline of the things you need to understand, and
then deal with each piece on its own. You’ll find the connections
between the pieces when you write your first draft.

6. Use a system. Start your research with an idea of how you plan
to collect and organize your notes and data. Although I’ve
written papers using index cards before, my favorite system is to
use a one-subject notebook. At the top of a fresh page, I write the
full bibliographic reference for a book or paper, then copy quotes
and write notes — both tagged with the page numbers they came
from — interspersed with thoughts and ideas that occur to me as
I’m reading. I’d love to use a computer more efficiently when
doing research, and have built databases and tried wikis and
outliners and other kinds of software, but I’ve never found a
system that worked well — I spent more time fiddling with the
software than getting work done. Whatever system you decide
on, make sure that every quote, fact, and thought is tied
in some way to its source so that you can easily insert
references while you’re writing.

7. Know your resources. Spend some time getting to know

what resources, both online and offline, your library to offer.
Most libraries offer tours to students, or talk to a research
librarian — or at the least, walk through the library to get a feel
for what is where, paying special attention to the microfilm
repository and periodicals, which you’ll use a lot in the course of
 most research projects. Most university libraries also subscribe
to a number of academic databases, and most are now accessible
online — get to know the research material you can
access from home. J-Stor, for instance, holds full-text
photographic copies of hundreds of journals, all easily
searchable. There’s nothing quite like thinking of something in
the middle of the night, logging on, and printing out two or three
relevant journal articles to review in the morning.

8. Ask for help. Use the human resources available to you as well
as the material resources. Most professors spend their office
hours waiting in disappointment for a student to drop in and
give them something to justify the time they’re required to keep
an open hour — be that student! Ask for help in finding and
evaluating sources, or for help in figuring out what to do with the
material you’ve collected so far. Another often-overlooked
resource is your friendly neighborhood librarian. Librarians are,
in my estimation, the best people on Earth — they know the
material in their charge forwards and backwards, they are deeply
concerned with seeing it used, and they have committed their
lives to making information more available. Most librarians
will be happy to help you find relevant material for your
project, and some will even locate specific pieces of hard-to-find
information for you. Don’t forget to ask your fellow student for
help, too — some of the might have come across work directly
relevant to your topic.

9. Carry an idea book. As you start really getting into your

project, your mind will start churning through what you’re
reading, even when you’re not consciously working on it. If
 you’re like me, you’ll be struck by sudden revelations at the least
convenient times — in the bathroom, in the shower, at the
supermarket. or while getting ready for bed. Keep a small
notebook and a pen with youeverywhere (well, maybe not
in the shower — although I do keep dry erase markers by the
sink so I can write down quick thoughts on the bathroom mirror
when I get out of the shower); jot down notes whenever an idea
crosses your mind, and transfer these notes into your research
log (or software, or whatever) as soon as you can.

10. Bring it up to date. Pay attention to the publication date

of your material — while it’s ok to use older material, ideally
you’d like the bulk of your references to come from the last 10
years or so. If research in your topic seems to dry up a decade or
so back, it might be because the field moved on, but it also might
be because funding opportunities disappeared, a major
researcher died, or any number of accidental reasons. One trick
is to Google the major researchers whose work you’ve
found and see if you can find their homepages — most
will list recent publications and their current research activities
— it could be that someone has a book about to come out, or
reports published in obscure or foreign journals. If so, you might
try inter-library loan, or in some cases, try contacting the
researcher herself and ask if they can send you a draft or reprint.
Be courteous, explain what you’re working on and what you’re
trying to find out, where your research has taken you so far, and
what light you hope their work can shed on your topic. Do not
ask for a list of references or what your thesis should be —
nobody wants to do a student’s work for them.