Inside Teaching by Tim Bowen and Jonathan Marks

Inside Teaching intends to raise your self-awareness: How do you teach and what do you believe constitutes good teaching practice? As such this is a book for those of us with a few years under our belts. It is especially good if you feel set in your ways and need refreshing a little. This book challenges you to try out new things, and while not an ideas book, does indeed contain a lot of ideas to try.

Divided into chapters dealing with different aspects of teaching, this slim book is far from comprehensive. It is thought-provoking however, frequently prompting insightful and interesting questions of oneself. Lots of quotations from various teachers around world enable this questioning process. Their contributions, while sometimes feeling a little superfluous, give the reader a sounding board, and as such simulate the debate one might have with a colleague. It is clear that the authors have gone to a lot of trouble to find out what teachers actually think about teaching.

This investigation into your own teaching is further promoted by encouraging you to adopt some more formal methods of self-analysis, such as making notes to review your classes and also recording yourself from time to time. Bowen and Marks are very honest about the difficulty that many teachers may have in listening to themselves, but advise you to try and get over this as the benefits can be enormous. Urging the negotiation of goals, strategies and activities with students, this book is a spur to becoming a more transparent professional in general. Although the authors do advocate self analysis, they are realistic about the time available for it. Above all, the advice here is helpful and practicable.

While for the most part the book intends not to be prescriptive, there are times when it seems to definitely weigh in on one side or another of an issue. However, even when the book strongly advocates a particular point of view, I found this to be sensible advice indeed. A prime example of this wisdom is the section dealing with attitudes towards being observed, in which it is advised that a teacher be grateful to an observer for giving up his or her time to watch the lesson. This is certainly something I have tried to bear in mind recently and has helped to put a positive spin on observation. There is also a gentle challenge to become more familiar with areas that you know little about, or have ignored for a while.

The only chapter I didn’t enjoy was that dealing with Suggestopedia, Community Language Learning and the Silent Way, which was far too brief for me. This section, dealing with techniques many teachers find to be difficult or controversial, deserved a more thorough treatment. Having said this it did send me off on a YouTube search for clips of the three techniques. Given that the book as a whole is an encouragement for the teacher to examine his or her practice for themselves, then I guess it served its purpose very well.

On the whole, this is a book well worth reading. I found it really helped raise my consciousness of what I do and to become more considered in my approach, not only to teaching, but also to my continued development as a teacher.