teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...

I love metaphors. I think they’re a great way at getting a handle on new and difficult concepts and useful for gaining a new perspective on familiar ones. That’s why I found the metaphor of the ‘teacher as DJ’ over at the Iterating Toward Openness blog so interesting. (of course it also helps that it makes teaching sound �cool�) Have a look at some of the things the author compares:

Teacher - DJ

Resources - Records & Samples

Syllabus/SoW - Playlist

Leading Discussion - Beatmatching

He talks of both teacher and DJ ‘blending material in interesting ways’ in ‘discrete blocks of time’ making ‘connections between the resources they choose to employ’. The best bit of the metaphor, however, comes when he says:

Clubbers vote with their feet, and generally do so very overtly. Learners vote with their attention, and generally do so very covertly. How do we, as teachers, ‘keep the dance floor full?’ A skilled DJ can feel the energy coming off a crowd and respond very quickly when that group is starting to feel restless (and starting to abandon the dance floor). A skilled teacher can feel the energy coming off a class and respond very quickly when that group is starting to get restless (and starting to doodle, read books, play games on their cell phones, etc.). The DJ responds by playing different music, sticking with genres that the crowd likes. How does the teacher respond? By using different examples, sticking with the kinds of explanations that the learners resonate with? By understanding the rhythm of the class, by knowing when to ‘play a slow song?’

I’m not saying that we should always pander to the wishes of pupils and the latest fads, but he’s certainly onto something when he makes reference to using different ‘records’ (i.e. teaching styles, resources, activities) to keep the dance floor alive (keep pupils interested/stop them from bouncing off the walls). I suppose there’s three main skills to being a DJ which have their teaching-related analogue:

1. Building up a music collection (Teacher: having a ‘toolkit’ of resources and activities)

2. Having the technical skills and knowledge of tracks to beatmatch and link music together (Teacher: using knowledge and understanding of a topic to link concepts and ideas together)

3. Gaining a ‘feel’ for the dancefloor to know which track to play next (Teacher: gauging the mood/attention level of the class and being flexible enough to change it or work with it)

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