Questions

What's Missing From This Picture?

Classroom management:

Because classroom management is fully integrated into the SAIL framework, it is not explicitly mentioned. Elements of classroom management can be found across the entire framework, but mostly in Stagecraft and Attention & Focus. Instruction that is engaging, interesting, relevant, clear, and useful also plays a role in classroom management.

Inspiration and motivation of the student:

Does the student not inspire and motivate himself? What does the teacher really contribute? He leads by example, establishes trust (partly by easing the fear of failure), presents to students interesting or desired topics or skills, and provides instruction and assessment that doesn't punish. All these activities can be located in different parts of the framework.

Curriculum:

In one sense, curriculum doesn't matter - one can teach anything by the same principles.

But under Instruction one might have something to say about a coherent and orderly presentation of material whose themes would be self-reinforcing within a single course, across a disciplinary field, and across the school years. Older students who already have some conceptual ability might understand and benefit from this coherence. A given curriculum can serve an aesthetic or public-relations purpose for a school, or provide interest for the teacher, thus improving Instruction or even Stagecraft.

Because it is easier to design a curriculum than to actually teach it, a lot of attention is paid to curriculum development. Curriculum is the basis for state educational standards that identify the minimum topics, themes, concepts and skills that teachers should teach. Sometimes these standards amount to a shopping list, with little guidance on how, or even in what order, they should be taught. But if a particular instructional approach is adopted as part of a curriculum, it would be located in this framework under Instruction.

Planning, preparation, training, professional development:

Unlike in Davidson's framework, for instance, or other schemes which are specifically about teacher professionalism, these would not go into this particular framework. The assumption here is that all parts of the framework are supported by training, planning, and practice, just as it would be with, say, a professional musician or actor.

Standard educational jargon:

I have tried to steer away from a lot of the jargon. I find that the meaning of some jargon has a tendency to drift, thus deceiving us into thinking that we are talking about the same thing. A lot of jargon has its original theoretical propositions built in, making adaptation difficult. I have tried to keep the language as teacher-centric as I can: what is the teacher actually doing and experiencing?