Literature for Thought

With my inquiry plan coming together I have invested in useful literatures which will be of high importance in my research.  I have started to look further into the VARK learning styles and have come across this article,



'Marcy. V.(2001), “Adult Learning Styles: How the VARK©learning style inventory can be used to improve student learning.”Perspective on Physician Assistant Education, Journal of the Association of Physician Assistant Programs Vol 12, No 2, Spring 2001.' 


This particular article talks about inventories being done to investigate learning methods of students using VARK. I was interest in the results they got from students as I would like to compare these when I come to questioning student, so I am able to create more evidence to back u my inquiry.
The results were as follows, 



'Fifty students were invited to participate in the intervention and eighteen of these students actually took and submitted their VARK© inventory results. Of these eighteen students, thirteen of the students fell into the multimodal category, four fell into the read/write category and one person fell into the kinesthetic category (figure 2). None of the students fell into the visual or aural learning preferences; however, all of the categories were represented in various combinations in the multimodal category.'


With this topic being of high relevance in my inquiry I was interested to see what Vanessa Marcy had found out about VARK and put the information to good use.

http://www.vark-learn.com/documents/VanessaMarcy.pdf

I am interested in literatures that discuss good teaching practice and I have located an article on line from the United States which has sparked my passion for investigating 'What Makes a Good Teacher'.  The article is headed with this quote, 


"Study after study shows the most single most important factor determining the quality of the education a child receives is the quality of his teacher."


Written in short paragraphs all with headings related to teaching practice, made this piece interesting and easy to read.

 'Great teachers have clear, written-out objectives. Effective teachers have lesson plans that give students a clear idea of what they will be learning, what the assignments are and what the grading policy is.'


Each of the comments in this article backed up my beliefs on quality teaching and act as evidence for my inquiry on which methods will benefit student learning.  This article also opened my eyes to other laws that have been put in place in the United States, such as the 'No Child Left Behind' law, this has given me the impetus to look further into laws in place in the UK and look at which ones are of high importance for children's learning.  
The public were able to comment on this article and one comment stood out to me as a parent was 'questioning high qualified teachers' and whether qualifications mean 'good teacher'.  This intrigues me and I would like to research more in my inquiry to what qualifications teachers have to have to teach dance in schools and how important qualifications are?

http://www.greatschools.org/improvement/quality-teaching/79-what-makes-a-great-teacher.gs

I also came across an article in The Telegraph which was of interest.  Katharine Birbalsingh investigates the teaching system and discusses ofsted which is of such high importance now as schools aim for 'outstanding' status.  


'Training institutions are charged with the task of shaping teachers who will be "outstanding" or "good", according to Ofsted criteria.'


I intend to look further into this article and look at ofsted expectations to back up my thoughts for my inquiry.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/8294154/What-makes-a-good-teacher.html