The Art of Teaching: Best Practices from a Master Educator

by Patrick N. Allitt

Teaching is more than a job. It’s one of the greatest responsibilities in civilized society. But teaching is no easy task. It requires craft, sensitivity, creativity, and intelligence.

Whether your classroom consists of 3 students or 300, it’s important to be as effective a teacher as possible, both for your students and for your own professional and personal growth. The Art of Teaching: Best Practices from a Master Educator is designed to help you achieve new levels of success as a teacher. These 24 lectures will help you develop and enhance your teaching style; provide you with invaluable methods, tools, and advice for handling all manner of teaching scenarios; and open your eyes to how other teachers think about and approach this life-changing profession.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Teaching

Audible Audio

Published March 4, 2019

Reviews

[Alex Shrugged · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great audio course for teachers and students. It mostly talks about what can be expected of students... usually more than you think... and how to get it out of them. It includes interviews with various professors and students on what worked best.

The professor/narrator is British and has a bit of an accent. Not bad. Easy to get used to. He also tends to want to put students on the spot... pushing individuals to do their best and to encourage the others. I think he is tolerated in American colleges because he is obviously a foreigner. Students will tend to tolerate a different teaching style and he knows it, so he occasionally through in some British idioms to emphasize this.

I especially liked the tips on helping students learn to speak publicly, and to write clearly.

I wouldn't mind listening to this audiobook again.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded to 3.

Great Courses on Audible. Recently free on the Plus Catalog, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I've had about a decade of teaching experience (around 10,000 teaching hours), mostly in ESL. I've also conducted teacher training and supervised teaching quality. That said, I'm now entering a business PhD program that requires me to teach in exchange for my funding. Despite my experience, my ESL experience is about as far from the business school classroom as a teaching context can be, and as such, there are limitations in transferability.

I've also recently undertaken 6 years of higher education and I can see there's a clear gap in teaching quality in business schools. I've witnessed just about every mistake possible. In other words, I think it would be generally plausable to state that university teachers are among the worst in the world at teaching their own subjects. Despite their knowledge, their teaching skills are just not up to par. Many are also being asked to teach courses way outside their knowledge specialties, and it's common that the teacher knows less about the subject than their more diligent students. I do not plan to make the same mistakes.

I've recently become quite inspired by Goldratt's explorative narrative approach to instruction and I would like to apply that as the basis for my own style. However, Goldratt also preaches a social constructionist approach, which, although ties in well to my ESL experience of implicit language learning through controlled conversation, is not as generalisable as evangelists of the method claim. There is, therefore, a gap in my teaching toolkit that I need to fill in order to maximise the efficacy of this new explorative narrative method. Although I have a few ideas how to bridge that gap, I took this course to try to better understand what advice would help from a seasoned expert.

The first half of this course was a little too basic. I'm already quite familar with the basics of pedagogy and the use of general teaching tools. What I'm not familiar with are the most appropriate pedagogical methods for interaction in the university context. The later chapters had, admittedly, very little I could use. But there were a few tips in a few of the chapters that inspired further thought and ideas.

I strongly disagreed with most of the points made. I found them dated and saw, at times, similarly poor teaching as I've witnessed in my own education, with the same (false) assumptions on how their actions as teachers cause students to feel engaged. And I really disliked Allitt's teaching style. I don't like the way he manages classrooms (with his rules) either, nor the way he creates "tension" by randomly picking on students, sets logical traps, or punishes students by embarrassing them. But that could be because of my background and age. Also, despite his point on verbal ticks, he demonstrated a fair few of them, and his habitual vocal inflections were grating. In short, his examples were not very inspiring. I definitely would not call him a "master educator" by any standard!

That said, there were also useful tips that I did take away and it did inspire ideas for my own approaches. For that, I am grateful.

What did this book leave me with?

• Avoid introductory first lessons. Start by setting the pace of the course. Expect contribution. Enthusiasm sparks intellectual curiosity and engagement.
• Memorise everyone's names. Every. Single. One. Develop a system for doing so.
• Consider their attendance and attention as a gift that requires reciprocating by offering something immediately stimulating, each lesson.
• Use student polling devices (clickers) to get quick interactive feedback. Use in combination with small group conversational activities.
• Procrastination: consider student syndrome when you assign deadlines. Consider critical chain buffers and intermediate deadlines.
• Small group discussions, POV role plays and presentations are still appropriate interactive tools.
• The case method: students pre-read a business case in preparation for class. Use questions to guide students towards the factors of a key theory. Eg. Disney and RBV factors and services.
• Create a full-immersion environment within the applied context and narrative.
• Learn through teaching: can you assign student group discussion leaders? Hmm...

[Daniel Bensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Often teaching instruction is a case of "do as I say, not as I do," but Allitt admirably demonstrates his best practices. He speaks engagingly and with illustrative examples, with lessons organized by theme so it's easy (but not too easy) for you to remember and apply his lessons. He also rounds out his extensive experience with supplementary interviews with other masters. These lectures are almost exclusively about teaching college students, but most of the skills are transferable, at least in my experience.

[Lexi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starting off teaching this course gave me great insight on where to start and will hopefully help keep me from making too many mistakes at the beginning! I loved tips and tricks to keep people interested and working hard and “slightly uncomfortable”

[Rose Rosetree · Rating 5 out of 5]

No doubt about it, Patrick N. Allitt is a master teacher. Even though I've worked in adult education since 1969, he has taught me so much.

I would recommend this invaluable resource to any teacher who would like to level up your skills.

Knowing the content that you are teaching is very different from appreciating the process of educating students.

I have the highest respect for Dr. Allitt. Very likely, if you take this course you will reach the same conclusion.

[Andrew Mckinley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, practical with great examples and anecdotes.

[Vanessa Ervin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. As a new teacher, I felt like it had many good ideas.

[Brian Hagerty]

Should be titled "The Art of Teaching College."

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather than how to teach more effectively, havingthe greatestimpactonthemoststudents, this is more about how to be successful in the current system. 100% believe that experience of learning is vastly more effective. I was dismayed to see that he was more interested in fitting students into the current system rather than trying to evolve to reach more students. He seemed to have no regard for students with any sort of difficulties that might impair their ability to learn the traditional way, and seem to discourage deeper thought such as: while we may have more trees in this country than ever before, young trees aren't able to sequester more than a quarter of the carbon yearly that mature trees can, they have listened to 50% survival rate, and when we cut down trees that are more than a century old it would take at least 100 saplings to replace them in terms of carbon impact.

[Mat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even by 2010 standards, Allitt's approach is very dated. It's also incredibly concerning that for chapters in which he focused on reading, writing, and speaking, he didn't seem to include experts from those fields. That reduces his own credibility, especially after claiming how important it is to be a constant learner... why not include those voices from disciplines that specialize in those skills!?

[Thomas McKibbin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worthwhile exploration of teaching with sound advice. I was particularly happy with the instructor's emphasis on the importance of language skills, both oral and verbal. The instructor is also quite articulate in his own right, and thus enjoyable to listen to. Thanks for the help. I teach middle school English as a foreign language in the P.R. of China.

[Vagabond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent course, filled with advice that's both practical and realistic. This is the second course with Professor Allitt that I've finished in 3 days - he's an engaging speaker and I find his courses very easy to listen to. Highly recommend!

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

These were motivating and useful lectures that provided some great insights. While I may not use all the techniques - I did benefit from my time listening to this audio course.

[Kiki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great course with a very engaging professor.

[valiantdust · Rating 5 out of 5]

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