What it takes to make good teachers….

1. What it takes to make good teachers…. Peggy McCardle, Child Development & Behavior Branch

2. good Teachers must know their subject thoroughly, including… • Knowing and being able to implement what the research evidence says about reading (NRP big 5 plus writing and spelling/morphology) • Knowing the structure of the English language and how children learn it • Knowing that explicit, systematic instruction is important but need not be boring or unmotivating – and how to make it motivating and fun • Monitoring student progress, in an RTI framework of not, to gauge student progress and target areas for greater focus for individuals, small groups or even the whole class • Keeping up with emerging (and converging) research findings and how (and when) they can best be incorporated in what happens in the classroom

3. Good Teachers are Learners… • Teaching and learning are both lifelong – learning is a lifecourse activity. The passions for learning drives the passion for teaching. • Being cognitively flexible enables teachers to recognize and seek out opportunities to learn and enables them to take what they have learned back to their own classrooms. • Learning involves both content and technique – Good teachers can implement programs they have learned but with sufficient flexibility that when problems arise for some students, teachers can adapt or differentiate instruction as needed

4. Good Research helps make good teachers • Behavioral observations, intervention trials, experimental research, neuroimaging and genetics all help us guide optimization of every person’s literacy and learning (both students and teachers!) • Examining the converging evidence and sharing it broadly with teachers is an essential responsibility of the research agencies and teacher organizations • Funding ongoing studies to better understand how children learn, why some struggle with learning, and what we can about it, is crucial

5. What is NICHD doing about all this? • Supporting a broad cadre of research teams across the US, and around the world via foreign subcomponents and even some foreign grants • Funding a new consortium of Learning Disabilities Research Centers (2012-2016) • Supporting work on reading, writing, and reading disabilities, as well other areas of cognition, learning and LD (math and science) and language development, bilingualism and second language learning • Supporting intervention work that helps to answer the question of what works for which individuals, under what circumstances • Publishing books and journal issues/articles in the scientific literature to encourage cutting edge research, and translating those findings for teachers and the public to help ensure that convergent findings make their way into the lives of children and adults

6. Literacy is a global issue • Literacy includes both reading and writing • It has never been more important for every person’s adult success – health, workforce options, and daily function in today’s (and tomorrow’s) world • and… • NICHD continues to support research on all aspects of learning and learning difficulties, from birth into adulthood, that can help to make such success possible for everyone!