Agnieszka Wosko teaches at the Polish School WA Inc and is a keen supporter of the professional learning workshops. At a recent workshop Agnieszka shared the findings of a 2015 study of how secondary school students learn. The full report can be found, in Polish here but Agnieszka has kindly translated this summary for us to share.
Between March and October 2015 Millward Brown conducted research for major Polish school books publisher Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagodiczne (WSiP) on “How do junior high students learn – and how do senior ones?”. As a part of the research high school students where asked question “What makes a good teacher?”.
The survey reported that Polish students like and admire teachers who:
- understand the needs of students and adjust teaching to suit the class
- teach with passion and are able to gain students attention, possibly making students passionate about the subject too, even if it’s only for a duration of the class
- use advanced technology, various resources and methods of teaching (This point was described as teaching like creating mosaic art – using numbers of various tiles to build one colourful picture.)
- respect students, treat them like adults, don’t humiliate them,
- build relationship with students by sending resources and spending extra time with them before and after school
- let students manage their own process of learning. This includes respecting career choices and not unnecessarily overloading students with work that is not going to be useful in their future.
- have a great knowledge in education system and therefore are real guides during difficult time of preparing for matura (equivalent of ATAR) and other tests.
- don’t fight with technology and don’t take away mobile phones from students; instead they teach how to wisely use IT in the process of learning.
Dziękuję Ci to Agnieszka for finding, translating and sharing this information.
