Core Teaching Skills - Introduction
As we mentioned on the Part-Three Introduction page this is where you will learn the basic teaching skills needed to deliver effective driving lessons.
As a professional, whether you setting out to teach cookery, golf, gardening, driving or indeed any other practical skill you need to master two key things:
A range of teaching skills
A good knowledge of the subject
Having good teaching skills without expert knowledge of the subject might give you some success if you work from a manual or a book for the lesson content, but you will not have sufficient subject awareness to teach well or to answer the learner's questions effectively.
Having good subject knowledge without effective teaching skills could lead to frustration and a long and drawn out learning process - a major commercial problem for a professional driving instructor!
The good news is that this course has already provided you with a high degree of subject knowledge and an overview of teaching skills. The final step is to consolidate your subject knowledge and learn the best way to 'get the message across' in the in-car environment.
The Instructor's Role and Workplace
An overview of your role as an instructor and specific information about working in the car.
Giving route directions
A method for giving directions in different situations without confusing or misleading the learner.
Introducing lessons
Getting your lessons off to a good start.
Watching the Learner
Perhaps the most important topic of all - without knowing what your learner is doing and thinking you will not know what to teach.
Effective talking skills
Helping learners verbally while the car is moving.
Using teaching aids
Getting your message across with printed and other materials.
Giving feedback
Helping the learner to make sense of their driving strengths and weaknesses.
Using questions
Questions are an essential tool to develop 'thinking drivers' in a client-centred environment.
Recognising errors
Watching the learner is not enough in itself - you need to understand what to look for and how to make sense of what you see.
Taking effective remedial action
A structured method for dealing with learners errors.
The 'Job Sharing' Routine
This is a method to ensure that your learners always know what they should be doing and taking responsibility for.
Lesson Themes
A way to keep your lessons focussed, even if the learner makes mistakes that are seemingly unrelated to the main topic that you are teaching.
Using Demonstration
How to demonstrate driving tasks in different ways in order to fit with a learners preferred style of learning.
Keeping Control
In order to remain safe instructors need to know when and how to exercise control over the lesson.
Dual-Controls
Dual-controls can be used for physical control (safety) or for demonstration. Here you will learn the do's and don'ts
Lesson Structure
Effective lessons need to follow a plan - but regardless of the topic and plan there is a common underlying structure.
Route Planning
Getting your lesson route right is perhaps the best way to accelerate learning success. Getting the routes wrong is often a recipe for disaster.
Use the 'Next' link below to start learning about the instructor's role or the 'Quick Navigation' menu to jump to specific topics.