Effective Teaching: Independent Perspective: Why the need for change in schools working in greater isolation?

If businesses are to survive, and independent schools are businesses, they need to change as technological innovation, increasing global competition and the global economic, social and psychological trends demand constant evolution and flexibility to remain efficient (ibid.).  This is why certain practices, in what is perceived as ‘a successful school’, need to progress in line with the demands of the changing world as, clearly, education cannot stand in isolation from external socio-economic factors.  One practice in need of change could be the school’s old-fashioned and increasingly discredited didactic teaching methodology, which fails to provide open-ended challenges and fully involve the learner, often resulting in assessing lower-level thinking skills based on recall.  Mercer’s research (2003, pp.73-76) concluded that active engagement of pupils in classroom discussions and group-work, ‘dialogic teaching’, improved performance in comparison to pupils working within a classroom climate of talk-lecture-type teaching where children were expected to listen and learn.

Effective teaching is presently defined through learning outcomes as teachers now and “in the future will need to deal with a climate of continual change” within the area of media delivery (Hay McBer, 2000 online) and in the climate of “holding people accountable” (ibid.), which means that setting clear expectations and parameters for holding others accountable for their performance will become part of their everyday practice.  Therefore teachers will have to adjust their teaching skills to include providing increasing opportunities for pupils to take responsibility for their own learning, Hay McBer concludes.  This is why, I would argue, a results-driven culture within the independent school ethos needs to change in order to take into account these external changes for pupils to be adequately prepared for the demands of the modern world and challenges ahead.