The Skillful Teacher: On Technique, Trust, and Responsiveness in the Classroom

Front Cover
John Wiley & Sons, Feb 5, 2015 - Education - 336 pages
Energize your classrooms with these key techniques for college teaching

Students say the best teachers get them excited about learning, stretch their thinking, and keep them actively involved in class. But with increasingly diverse classrooms and constantly changing technology, each semester throws up new challenges for engaging students.

Discover how to keep your teaching, and your students, energized with The Skillful Teacher, a practical guide to effective techniques, approaches, and methods for today's college classrooms. Providing insights, reflections, and advice from his four decades of college teaching, Stephen Brookfield now adapts his successful methods to teaching online, working with diverse student populations, and making classrooms truly inclusive. As well as being completely revised, updated, and rewritten, this edition adds six brand new chapters on:

  • Teaching critical thinking
  • Using play and creativity in the classroom
  • Teaching in teams
  • Helping students take responsibility for learning
  • Teaching about racism
  • Exercising teacher power responsibly

Readers will delve into what learning feels like from a student's perspective, as well as absorb the wisdom of veteran college faculty with whom the author has worked. Themes from the bestselling previous editions remain, but are revisited and expanded with the perspective of an additional decade in the classroom. This authoritative guide is now even more comprehensive to better serve teachers looking to improve. Whether you are new to the classroom or are looking to rise to new challenges, The Skillful Teacher will provide answers, expand your repertoire of techniques, and invigorate your teaching and your classrooms.

 

Contents

Experiencing Teaching
1
The Core Assumptions of Skillful Teaching
15
Understanding Our Classrooms
27
What Students Value in Teachers
41
Understanding and Responding to Classroom Emotions
55
Lecturing Creatively
69
Using Discussion Methods
83
Teaching in Diverse Classrooms
97
Teaching Online
169
Giving Helpful Evaluations
185
Helping Students Take Responsibility
199
Understanding Students Resistance to Learning
213
Responding to Students Resistance to Learning
227
Exercising Teacher Power Responsibly
239
Negotiating the Politics of Teaching
253
16 Maxims of Skillful Teaching
265

Teaching About Racism
111
Using Imagination Play and Creativity
125
Teaching in Teams
141
Teaching Students to Think Critically
155
References
279
Name Index
297
Subject Index
303
Copyright

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About the author (2015)

STEPHEN D. BROOKFIELD is the John Ireland Endowed Chair at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For more than 45 years, he has taught in England, Canada, Australia, and the United States. A six-time winner of the Cyril O. Houle Award for Outstanding Literature in Adult Education, he is the author or coauthor of numerous books on teaching, including Engaging Imagination, Teaching for Critical Thinking, Powerful Techniques for Teaching Adults, and Discussion as a Way of Teaching, all from Jossey-Bass.

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