The Ingredients for Great Teaching

Author: Pedro De Bruyckere

Publisher: Sage

Details: 176pp, £18.99, paperback

ISBN: 9781526423399

Pedro de Bruyckere likes to see teachers as “translators”. For him, this role - of processing content at the level of the student - is fundamental to learning. And, in this short compendium of the “10 essential ingredients” for effective teaching, he does the same for his readers. This is pedagogy for time-poor teachers; for teachers who tweet; for those who have bought books by Hattie, Dweck, Willingham and Wiliam, only to leave them, mostly unread, on their classroom desks.

A linking metaphor running through this book is cooking (in a hurry). There’s even a picture of a shopping trolley on the cover filled with images of school-related stuff (rulers, pencils) to push the twin points - about speed and convenience - home to the reader.

Teachers are also like chefs, De Bruyckere claims, and clearly relishes the analogy he has drawn: “Too much salt, not enough pepper, too sour, too sweet…too raw…too burnt…it is exactly the same in education.”

Well, up to a point. The problem with metaphor is that exactness is never really why it is employed in the first place; to seek to extend a degree of scientific certainty into so many diverse areas using figurative language and generalisations can result in more questions being raised than answers being given. And, to revert to his main trope, the challenge facing anyone who attempts to compress three-course meals into a series of snacks risks missing out on depth, nuance and the flavour of the sauce (sorry) material.

In an attempt to make a huge range of research accessible, De Bruyckere and his publisher are keen to make him appear as digestible as possible. Personal examples are given (of Wagyu steak being burned, of banter in class), and chapter headings have a variety of tones, ranging from the casual (“Have a vision, and it doesn’t matter which one”), to sage-like (“Use multimedia, but use it wisely”), to the imploring (“Like your pupils”), and the desperate (“Make them think!”) But this uneven register, together with a rather forced jokiness, can be wearing. If we doubt that pedagogy can be a laugh, we are told in the author details that De Bruyckere, a self-described “educational scientist”, “is funny”, although the reader is usually the best judge of that.

All this is an unwanted distraction because the book does provide not just useful summaries of important research, but also valuable insights into teaching and learning. Bold statements, delivered as self-evident truths, such as “the purpose of education is to open up the world to children”, are forgivable because they are clearly sincere and filled with an energy and integrity that characterises much of the author’s writing.

And there are many passages that any teacher still interested in ideas that underpin their work will gobble up and use to inform their lesson planning. The chapters on the link between thinking and learning, on deliberate practice, and on feedback, are filled with good sense, steeped in learning, are highly accessible and - both in what is written and how it is expressed - well balanced. The chapter summaries of the key ideas are also succinct and useful.

Less forgivable in a book that clearly advocates the need for more evidence-informed teaching is the occasional tendency to slip into generalisation that would be difficult to prove. For instance, can it really be categorically true that “one of the good things about discovery learning is its effect on the pupil’s state of mind…their sense of wellbeing increases”? How rigorous is such evidence that supports such claims for all pupils? How wide are the terms of reference? Elsewhere, do we really need an author to remind us that when you try to establish good relationships with your classes, that you should “keep your distance and treat all pupils fairly”?

Such caveats would perhaps be inevitable with any author who attempted to cram amuse-bouches, starters, main courses, desserts, cheese, wine, coffee and mints into one small lunchbox of a text. But such ambition deserves to be rewarded with a wide readership - perhaps few educationalists are capable of covering so much, and with such admirable enthusiasm, as De Bruyckere.

And that he is able to do so without taking himself too seriously, while all the time emphasising the absolute seriousness of the work he explores, leads to a mostly palatable, if sometimes uneven, read.

I, for one, will keep returning to dip into it, while guiltily looking at rather more weighty tomes on my bookshelf.

David James is deputy head (academic) at Bryanston School in Dorset