How do you create effective lessons? How do you develop and implement what solid empirical research tells us about what works in the classroom? How do we help learners to learn more effectively, efficiently, and enjoyably? These are the core questions of Lessons for Learning: 12 Building Blocks for Effective Teaching. This book is positioned at the crossroads between scientific research on learning, teaching and teacher effectiveness on the one hand and good teaching and classroom practice on the other. The authors present twelve evidence-informed didactical building blocks for good teaching and learning. They explain why those building blocks work and give concrete examples of how to apply them in the classroom. For each building block, the authors provide additional theoretical and practical resources. The authors combined have more than 20,000 hours of practical teaching experience at different levels and represent broad expertise in carrying out high-quality empirical research on teaching and learning. They also solicited and received help in writing the book from scores of teachers who provided practical examples to illustrate how they got started with and use the building blocks in their daily practice.
About the Author: Tim Surma MSc has been in secondary (secondary) education and teacher training for nearly 20 years, conducts PhD research at the Open University (NL) and coordinates practice-oriented research at Thomas More Hogeschool (BE). Kristel Vanhoyweghen MSc has been a secondary (secondary) education teacher for two decades, is a Master in Educational Sciences and teaches education and didactics at the teacher-training course of Karel de Grote Hogeschool (BE). Dr. Dominique Sluijsmans is a lecturer in Professional Assessment at Zuyd Hogeschool. Before that, she also worked as a researcher at the Open University and Maastricht University and as a Sustainable Assessment lecturer at the Education Faculty of the Hogeschool van Arnhem and Nijmegen. Dr. Gino Camp is an associate professor of educational psychology at the Open University (NL) and a researcher in the field of effective learning strategies and their application in practice. Prof. Dr. Daniel Muijs is a university professor of educational science at the University of Southampton, scientific director of Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) in the United Kingdom, and conducts research into the effectiveness of teachers and schools. Prof. Paul A. Kirschner, dr.h.c. is emeritus professor of educational psychology at the Open University (NL). He is a research fellow of the American Educational Research Association, the International Society of Learning Sciences and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences and Humanities and a former member of the Education Council.