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

Brookfield, Stephen D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1118450299 ISBN 13: 9781118450291

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2015

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Praise for THE SKILLFUL TEACHER, THIRD EDITION

"Think of this book as the teaching mentor you'd most like to have―a colleague who's skillful, wise, understanding, knowledgeable, and one whose passion for teaching and learning warms every page with memorable insights."
―Maryellen Weimer, professor emeritus of teaching and learning, Penn State University, and author of Learner-Centered Teaching

"This new edition of The Skillful Teacher is an accessible, practical guide for student-centered pedagogy. Each chapter provides creative activities and methods for engaging students that are respectful of myriad learning styles and supportive of the student's developing voice within a more democratized learning environment."
―Dana Grossman Leeman, director, SocialWork@Simmons, and associate professor of practice, Simmons College School of Social Work

"Stephen Brookfield offers a banquet of insight and practical ideas for college and university teachers to be the best they can be! If you buy only one book on teaching, make it this one; then revisit it throughout your teaching career."
―Dan Pratt, professor emeritus and senior scholar, Centre for Health Education Scholarship, University of British Columbia

"Brookfield provides innovative ideas that are simple to implement. This might revolutionize the way we teach professionals at every level. You are never too junior or too senior to apply these techniques."
―Ruth Gotian, administrative director, Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan-Kettering, Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program

"Stephen Brookfield has rewritten The Skillful Teacher. Authentic to the core, he has followed his own maxim to take a risk in teaching. In doing so, he has written a deeply insightful book about instruction that helps diverse students learn. This is a wise and useful guide for today's teachers new and old, and an invaluable resource of relevant ideas for adult educators to contemplate, to argue, and to inspire one another within the congenial tension he so eloquently advocates."
―Raymond J. Wlodkowski, professor emeritus, College for Professional Studies, Regis University, and author of Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn

From the Inside Flap

It is not easy to teach well. Stephen Brookfield describes teaching as resembling a kind of "muddling through" that involves us negotiating moments of surprise as we learn our own truth about the realities of the classroom or online experience. But that doesn't mean that great teaching can't be achieved. Four core assumptions inform this book: that skillful teaching boils down to whatever helps students learn, that the best teachers adopt a critically reflective stance towards their practice, that the most important knowledge we need to do good work is an awareness of how students are experiencing their own learning and our teaching, and that we should always aim to treat students as adults. To that it could be added: You can become a great teacher.

In this completely rewritten edition of the bestselling classic, Brookfield restates some of the chief insights of previous editions but interprets them for new contexts, such as online learning environments and increasingly diverse classrooms. He uncovers what students most value in their teachers--that they are authoritative allies--and explains how one can develop and demonstrate the credibility and authenticity required to fill that role. Six brand new chapters cover the important topics of teaching critical thinking, using play and creativity in the classroom, teaching in teams, helping students take responsibility for learning, teaching about racism, and exercising teacher power responsibly.

Brookfield offers inspiration and down'to'earth advice to new and seasoned teachers alike. By putting the philosophy and strategies presented here into action, educators can transform the unpredictable chaos of the college classroom into an environment of engaged, authentic, and successful learning.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1118450299
• ISBN 13: 9781118450291
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 336