Introduction: Becoming a Friendly & Fair Teacher

On this page

  1. Establishing a positive learning environment within the context of your school
    1.1 Positive Learning environment
    1.2 No positive learning environment
    1.3 Start creating a positive learning environment
  2. Roles of the teacher
  3. FFT’s maxims for teachers
  4. Choose a perspective to start with.
    4.1 Starting with establishing a friendly tone
    4.2 Starting with establishing fairness
    4.3 Starting with planning lessons
    4.4 Starting with observing learning
    4.5 Starting with behaviour management strategies
  5. Body language part of two perspectives
  6. Clearing and transcending obstacles
    6.1 Change
    6.2 Benefit from peer experience
    6.3 How do you deal with students with poor impulse control?
  7. Implementing Friendly & Fair Teaching across the school
  8. Provenance friendly and fair teaching
    8.1 Liemer list
    8.2 Peace can be learned
    8.3 Quotes
  9. Summary
  10. Credits

Friendly and Fair Teaching (FFT) enables teachers in Primary and Secondary schools to integrate the five perspectives of FFT, which are essential requirements for effective education.

Friendly and Fair Teaching offers me a strategy for systematically identifying, reflecting on and solving problems. Together, FFT’s five perspectives form a model of teaching that can be used as a search tool to make sense of classroom events and to identify problems. By applying FFT’s perspectives, my students engage constructively, take responsibility, enjoy going to school and gain self-confidence.

The following from child psychologist Haim Ginott (1922-’73) encapsulates the crucial responsibility and decisive role of the teacher in creating a positive learning evironment.

A Teacher’s Influence
I have come to a frightening conclusion.
I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
As a teacher I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or dehumanized.” Haim Ginott

To develop your professional practice, requires of you as a teacher a commitment to continuous reflection and contemplation. Reflection on what seems to work well and what doesn’t, and contemplation of changes that you might have to make in order to help your students learn more effectively.

As a teacher, you receive feedback in many different forms from various quarters (eg, Heads of Departments, leadership teams, external inspectors, examination bodies, parents, etc). Although this is beginning to change, it is still the case that the most neglected form of feedback is that which comes from pupils themselves. You, the effective teacher, reflect on all sources of feedback (whether informal or formal), including that which comes from pupils.

In trying to make sense of this you start to think about how you can improve aspects of your practice. This can be challenging and requires courage (especially for older teachers who were not trained to do this). The benefits for pupils from this process can be immense, and you will get more satisfaction form your work.

Introduction video

Introduction to Friendly and Fair Teaching

You cannot expect students to know immediately how to behave. Of course students will seek out boundaries. Nor can you expect a novice teacher to immediately know how a good lesson is supposed to go. Both teachers and students benefit from Behaviour management strategies that provide a foundation for more effective learning to take place. When behaviour is managed in a fair, equitable way, with an emphasis on reinforcing positive behaviour, boundaries become clearer and less likely to be tested. Students are then less distracted and more focused on their learning.

With an attractive way of assessing, you motivate your students: you reward their efforts with an increasingly higher grade. By alternating ‘Teacher-centred education‘ with ‘Student-centred education‘, first you take the initiative and then you let your students take the initiative. In doing so you are a model to your students on how to relate to the world. (Goal FFT).

The core of Friendly and Fair Teaching

When it comes to creating a positive learning environment, there are strong connections between raising children in a family and leading a group or class. In both cases, several adults work together. If those adults work together in harmony then the child/student benefits. An example of this on this website: collaboration between teacher and a senior member of staff.

Friendly and Fair rather than lenient or strict

Friendly and Fair Teaching replaces “lenient” or “strict” with “friendly and Fair” and gives five perspectives on how to go about it. Frowning, looking angry, warning, threatening, yelling, taking them to task, lecturing and sending out is no longer necessary.

Figure 1

In the family

Parents face the following responsibilities in raising children:

  • Nutrition, Nurturing and Connection. Attention is focused on physical and emotional well-being here and now and is therefore unconditional. Keywords are caring, empathic, emotion, connected/connecting, kind and affirming.
  • Creating and maintaining facilities and structures: what is needed or desired, what can we bring about, what do we need for this, how do we get and keep it working and what is everyone’s role/task in this. This also includes the preconditions of living together: what are the rules, what should and should not be done and within what limits. Keywords are intellectual, comprehensive, analytical, structuring, clear, limiting and enforcing.

In families with two parents, both parents address both responsibilities. If there is only one parent in a family, both responsibilities fall on the shoulders of this one parent.

In a non-violent approach, parents and children look for what they have in common and for reasons to help and support each other. The parents accept that the children’s shortcomings probably stem from the shortcomings of the parents themselves.” Arun Ghandi (2017)

In education

It is not only in families with one parent that this phenomenon of bearing all responsibility exists. In education, if you are in front of a group, you are solely responsible for your students. You then fulfil the role of educator and are also responsible for both of the tasks listed in the left column. This is a big responsibility and not every role naturally suits you.

  • You can take on the caring, empathic, friendly role. If this lacks clarity (perhaps for fear of confrontation), you are too indulgent and the students lack boundaries. This leads to disruptions of the lesson. Students cross boundaries at the expense of you and the group.
  • You can unilaterally choose the intellectual, structuring and limiting role. If this lacks caring (perhaps for fear of appearing vulnerable), you are too strict and the relationship between you and the students is cool. You do not invite students to connect with you, so they do not conform to your needs and those of the group. As a result disruption of your lessons arise and students cross boundaries at your and the group’s expense.

Preventive – curative

Figure 11: preventive and curative

In creating a positive learning environment, FFT distinguishes between preventive and curative. The preventive part is in italics below, the curative part is in bold. The preventive part is larger than the curative part. With creating a positive learning environment you make sure that you:

  1. do not cause noise yourself.
  2. change strict into clear.
  3. see kindness as a strength.
  4. combine kindness and fairness.
  5. alternate teacher-centred education and student-centred education. With the latter students take ownership of their own learning process.
  6. students can concentrate.
  7. manage positive behaviour in a relaxed way.

In all this you avoid being both too friendly and too strict.

Creating a positive learning environment

You determine (partly) the content of your lessons. The school (your department) and the government also partly determine what your lessons look like.

Before you can start teaching, you must submit a DBS. The government requires schools to have their students sign a bullying protocol. None of this guarantees an attractive learning environment where your students work well together and form a cohesive group.

When you create a positive learning environment, three elements are important: structure, freedom and responsibility:

1 Structure

The structure you provide consists of:

2 Freedom

When your students are working independently, both you and your students have the freedom to determine and prioritize activities. When working independently your students:

  • discover themselves.
  • make choices and set goals.
  • work at their own pace.

3 Responsibility

  • You set a good example because you are aware of your influence.
  • Everyone is aware of the framework and can be held accountable for it.
  • When your students are working independently your ask them to handle the freedom offered in a responsible way AND you trust them to work seriously with the different topics (starting with the framework).
  • If a student cannot handle the freedom offered, you coach this student.

If any one of positive learning environment points are negative, the house of cards collapses:

  1. Without structure there is no education,
  2. without freedom there is no autonomy,
  3. without responsibility there is no incentive to set a course.

The more positive your learning environment, the less need there is to reinforce positive behaviour. In a positive learning environment, the relationship with your students improves. Then students are less inclined to disrupt lessons. Every student gets the opportunity to develop (gradually) into:

A social, intrinsically motivated student who makes choices, takes responsibility and manages himself and others. This student is the master of himself.

Applying the five perspectives

With a framework visible on the wall you ask your students to concentrate. The framework refers to the perspectives: ‘Establishing a friendly tone’ and ‘Establishing fairness’.

You observe your students and yourself (perspective four).

  1. You compliment students who go to work.
  2. When a student who does not adhere to the framework you reinforce positive behaviour (Behaviour management strategies).

By observing an by reacting on what you see, you avoid teaching too non-committal or Laissez faire. The more experienced you are as a teacher, the more you can make your students responsible for their own learning and thereby avoiding being authoritarian (Establishing educational goals).

When avoiding both authoritarian and laissez faire you balance between order and chaos:

Too much disorder is downright dangerous. Too much order makes one vulnerable in the long run by reducing adaptability and creativity.” (Mark Mieras).

Intended effect of FFT

A friendly and fair teacher avoids:
 A friendly and fair teacher
Inefficient reinforcing of positive behaviour: many warnings, sending students out. reinforces positive behaviour with body language, Tips and ‘Future behaviour letter’.
Too little effective class time involves educational goals such as: Qualification, Socialization and Subjectivation.

makes students responsible for their own learning.

Five link chain

The five perspectives of Friendly and Fair Teaching can be seen on the right as a chain with five links in which each link is indispensable. If links are missing, then your teaching is less effective. You notice this when you negate the positive impact of the five perspectives.

  1. If you are not friendly, students don’t want to work voluntarily for you.
  2. If you are not fair, your students don’t feel treated as equals.
  3. If you always take the initiative, there is little room for an individual student to set a course
  4. If you don’t observe, you react too late.
  5. If you don’t enforce positive behaviour, the number of disruptions increases.

Figure 2: Chain

FFT considers these five perspectives as the essential requirements of education.

Impact on society

If students look back on a school period in which they were approached friendly and fair by their teachers and peers, if they were able to take initiatives at school, were seen by their teachers, and if their behaviour was effectively reinforced in a positive way, it is to be expected that as citizens they will feel like mature and valuable contributors to society. With these five perspectives, you create the society of the future.

The better qualified a student is, the more chance of individual success in society. That is why qualification is central to education. It should be noted that the success of one may come at the expense of the success of another. To avoid the latter, FFT advocates paying attention in education, in addition to qualification, to:

  • Socialisation
  • Subjectivation

When you incorporate these three educational goals into your teaching, you allow everyone to develop to their fullest potential. Students who experience inclusiveness at school will continue to do so in society.

Bildung und Wissenschaft

In this quote Sue Prideaux discusses Humbold’s ideas on Bildung and Wissenschaft. This ties in with the use of students’ potential just mentioned:

The ultimate goal of schooling was ‘a complete education for the human personality[…] the highest and most appropriate development of the individual’s faculties into a complete and coherent whole.’ This complete and coherent whole was a combination of two typically German ideals: ‘Wissenschaft’ and ‘Bildung’. ‘Wissenschaft’ was the idea of studying as a dynamic process constantly renewed and enriched by scientific research and independent thinking, so that each student contributed to the endlessly advancing sum of knowledge. It was the exact opposite of memorizing things.
Knowledge was considered evolutionary in nature, and with it went ‘Bildung’, the evolution of the order seeker himself: a process of spiritual growth through the acquisition of knowledge that Humboldt described as a harmonious interaction between the student’s own personality and nature that culminated in a state of inner freedom and wholeness within a larger context.” Prideaux (2018), Sue

To learn anything, it is necessary to dare to accept that what we think we know – including our most deeply held beliefs – may be wrong, or at least naive: shadows on the walls of Plato’s cave.” Rovelli, Carlo (2014)

Friendly and Fair Teaching-  in the spirit of Humbold –  is constantly gaining new experiences with courses and contacts, schools and literature. Previous assumptions are abandoned and new assumptions embraced. This process is visible in our annually updated course book. This course book is now only available in Dutch. We expect that in 2024 an English version will be available.

1. Creating a positive learning environment within the context of your school

1.1 Positive learning environment

Above we described how to create a positive learning environment. What if there is no positive learning environment?

1.2 No positive learning environment

Bullying, abuse of power or harsh language put pressure on the relationship between students and the relationship between you and your students. The resulting anger, conflict and disruption of class complicates your teaching. You find it difficult to concentrate and your lesson is less effective. Every teacher has to deal with this to a greater or lesser extent.

Figure 4: Scared and angry

1.3 Start creating a positive learning environment

How do you prepare a student to be a qualified, creative, social and caring citizen? What is the secret of turning a group of students into a cohesive and social group? Friendly and Fair Teaching guides you through a personal course, provides a course book. Via our ‘Tutorial‘ you have the opportunity to work with these five perspectives through self-study,

  1. Creating a positive learning environment starts with reflecting on your teaching. See motivational coach with its questionnaire.
  2. FFT recommends to first establishing a friendly tone by omitting anger.
  3. Incorporate general goal of FFT in your approach to teaching.
  4. Use neutral actions to reinforce positive behaviour: Ladder of action. Choose one of these four options to start working with this ladder. Taking the steps of the ladder enables you to teach in a relaxed way. Warning students or sending students out of class will no longer be necessary.

To create a positive learning environment requires time, patience and practice before the effect of the change is felt. The more perspectives you combine over time, the stronger the effect. Assume that within your teaching practice you can always give attention to new aspects. By doing so, you break existing patterns and teaching remains an adventure.

2. Roles of the teacher

You can play several roles as a teacher:

  • Host
  • Presenter
  • Didactician
  • Educator
  • Coach
  • Terminator

In addition ‘Friendly and Fair Teaching’ distinguishes these roles:

  1. Designer of lessons
  2. Designer of a method
  3. Tour guide of an organized trip (Teacher-centred education)
  4. Roadside assistance (Student-centred education).
  5. Gardener. During the time you make available for students to work independently, you act as a gardener.
  6. Motivational coach

Following role 1 and 2: As a teacher you can use existing lessons and methods. In addition, you are free to add your own devised elements.

Following roles 3 and 4: Tour guide and Roadside assistance are an elaboration of an interview with Dick Bruinzeel. In it Dick uses this metaphor: “From organized trip to personal trek. Hidden in that metaphor is a gradual shift in emphasis: Less and less a joint organized trip to more and more a personal trek for each student.

3. FFT’s maxims for teachers

‘Friendly and Fair Teaching’ distinguishes these maxims (useful pointers for all teachers).

  1. Teaching is a game with rules. Everyone is accountable to these rules. That makes them fair.
  2. You have high expectations of your students.
  3. Your end goal is a group of motivated students, where everyone trusts each other and everyone can work well together and everyone is proud of their work.
  4. You observe your students as well as yourself. This is at the basis of all your actions. You respond to what is happening now. This makes your teaching fair.
  5. You create opportunities for students to self-direct according to their ability.
  6. Student-centred education can only be successful if there is a good relationship between you and your students. Therefore, you are always friendly and fair and avoid coming across as angry, strict or domineering.
  7. You alternate teacher-centred education and student-centred education
  8. No matter how you teach, disruption can always occur. Then it is good to know how to solve it: The first steps of ‘behaviour management strategies, have a preventive effect. The next steps have a  curative effect (preventive-curative)

Also use these maxims of Murray Schafer:

1. The first practical step in any educational reform is to take it.
2. In education, failures are more important than successes. There is nothing so dismal as a success story.
3. Teach on the verge of peril.
4. There are no more teachers. There is just a community of learners.
5. Do not design a philosophy of education for others. Design one for yourself. A few others may wish to share it with you.
6. For the 5-year-old, art is life and life is art. For the 6-year-old, life is life and art is art. This first school-year is a watershed in the child’s history: a trauma.
7. The old approach: Teacher has information: student has empty head. Teacher’s objective: to push information into student’s empty head. Observations: at outset teacher is a fathead: at conclusion student is a fathead.
8. On the contrary a class should be an hour of a thousand discoveries. For this to happen, the teacher and the student should first discover one another.
9. Why is it that the only people who never matriculate from their own courses are teachers?
10. Always teach provisionally: only God knows for sure.” Schafer (1975), R. Murray

4. Choose a perspective to start with.

Friendly and Fair Teaching provides you with a strategy for improving your education systematically using five perspectives. Together, these five perspectives form a model of teaching that you use as a search tool to make sense of things and to identify problems and see how something works (Heuristics).

Reflecting on your teaching starts with our studying our overview and using our questionnaire. This questionnaire helps you finding a starting point.

Once you have chosen a starting point and your teaching improves, you spend the time freed up on one of the other perspectives.

A short introduction to the five perspectives

4.1 Starting with establishing a friendly tone

The perspective ‘Establishing a friendly tone‘ consists of four modules. The first three of them deal with being a role model.

  1. You show the desired behaviour, most of your students take your example (Setting the standard of behaviour).
  2. By using body language to give directions, you need fewer words. Also, to fully understand what you mean, your students are forced to both watch and listen to your explanations and pay closer attention (Communicating through gestures).
  3. In this third module, you show just the amount of energy that makes the class function better. In a busy group you are calm, in a group that is too quiet you are energetic (Managing emotions).
  4. With a fourth module you give students the opportunity to get to know each other. A good relationship is a prerequisite for good performance (Building relationships) .

4.2 Starting with establishing fairness

The perspective ‘Establishing fairness‘ consists of three modules.

  1. You show a framework on the wall (e.g. friendly and fair) before the start of the first lesson. By doing so, you indicate that it is your intention to be friendly and fair. In the first lesson, during the first moment when the whole group is paying attention, you discuss this framework with the group and then act accordingly. If a student disrupts the lessen, you reinforce positive behaviour (Creating a framework for positive behaviour).
  2. You create fairness with educational goals well in mind. Involving Biesta’s three domains helps you preparing your lessons (Establishing educational goals)
  3. Before starting with whole class teaching or before letting your students work independently, you show to your students what you expect from them (Managing expectations).

4.3 Starting with planning lessons

The perspective ‘Planning lessons‘ consists of four modules. The first three of them deal with different approaches to teaching.

  1. You design lessons and your students follow your instructions (Teacher-centred education).
  2. When working independently your students make decisions (Student-centred education)
  3. You stimulate your students to collaborate (Collaboration)
  4. In the fourth module you find several options for mutual assessment (Assessment)

4.4 Starting with observing learning

While Observing learning, you focus on individual students as well as the whole group. By paying attention to students’ body language and to spoken language, you can see their intentions quickly. This makes it possible to respond quickly and appropriately.

Observing learning can be done any time. Observing is a pivotal function that precedes directing the educational process. If students react well to your teaching, you give a compliment (Communicating through gestures). If a student disturbs the lesson, you reinforce positive behaviour first by using body language.

Figure 5: Observing learning – pivotal function

4.5 Starting with behaviour management strategies

The perspective ‘Behaviour management strategies‘ consists of two modules:

All steps are part of the ‘Ladder of action.’

5. Body language part of two perspectives

A seperate chapter has been added: ‘Using body language: Advice for teachers’. This chapter refers to two different perspectives:

  1. When students are cooperative you are ‘Communicating through gestures‘ (Perspective: Establishing a friendly tone).
  2. When a student disrupts the lesson the first step you take is ‘Using body language‘ (Perspective: Behaviour management strategies).

Combining non-verbal directions with verbal explanation about a subject, you speak two languages at the same time. As a result, students pay better attention: if they want to understand what you mean, they have to both look and listen to you.

6. Clearing and overcoming obstacles

There are undoubtedly mindsets that hold you back from being friendly as well as fair. Get rid of them. Ask yourself: What stops me from being friendly? And what stops me from being fair? There are also obstacles for students. How do you clear them and transcend them?

Check for yourself:

To what extent does friendly for me equate to (/is it for me connected to/confused with): indulgent, accommodating, cautious, conflict-avoiding, fearful, passive, tolerant, submissive, favouring, satisfying, keeping happy, keeping friendly, not antagonizing, not antagonizing, avoiding confrontation, letting it go over your head, pleasing?

Can I be fair and at the same time stay away from: strict, harsh, frowning, threatening, angry, aggressive, overly assertive, rigid, gruff, unapproachable, pedantic, coercive, belittling, condescending, lecturing, demanding obedience, exercising power or my will is law?

6.1 Change

If you do what you did, you get what you got. If you want to get something different, you will have to do something different: you have to change.

Persistence is necessary for change. During a change, you will face obstacles such as your attachment to a familiar role or behavioural pattern or mechanically adopting a role without wanting to. We experience it in all kinds of situations: we can think and see how rewarding it would be to behave differently and colour our role differently, but our current behaviour and our current colouring simply feel like an old coat that fits like a glove.

Change, no matter how rewarding, always brings discomfort and also goodbyes, loose ends, mishaps, ambiguity, acceptance perils, not-knowing, misunderstanding, one’s own resistance, setbacks, alignment problems and so on. These side effects make it attractive to refrain from change and continue with existing patterns or make it attractive to quickly return to old patterns when things get tough. Then it is important to persevere and keep paying attention to possible resolutions.

6.2 Benefit from peer experience

Friendly and Fair Teaching offers a range of behavioural and role options that are rewarding. But these, of course, come with all the disadvantages that come with change. How do you resolve this dilemma? In two ways:

First, you can draw guidance from the experiences of those who have gone before you in this change and who have worked with and tested the five perspectives of Friendly and Fair Teaching (See testimonials). Important new insights for Friendly and Fair Teaching often come from trainees and experts. We list new insights at the bottom of each perspective under ‘Credits’. There you can see which student or expert contributed a new aspect to FFT.

If colleagues give you this tip: “Start strict and then slowly let go of the reins”, FFT recommends to disregard this advice. Being strict while encouraging intrinsic motivation in your students is a difficult combination. It can work, but it can also fail.

6.3 How do you deal with students with poor impulse control?

Students with poor impulse control are willing to conform to your framework and expectation management, but fail to do so because of their own impulses. First direct these students with gestures and body language. In doing so, you avoid calling their names. By remaining friendly, you reassure, give confidence and support students in their efforts to do better.

If gestures don’t work, you can ask (outside the group), “Where would you focus best in this class?” Arrange the spot the student indicates, evaluate and arrange another spot if necessary. You can ask at each beginning of the lesson, “What goal do you set this lesson? Are you going to meet it?”

  • What succeeded? What was the reason for that?
  • What did not succeed? What was the reason for that?

You can also agree on a personal gesture with the student in case the student is too busy.

Tips when teaching students with poor impulse control

  • Give these students a personal assignment that they can work on independently. Match this assignment to their talents and make the assignment achievable for them. In this way, you steer them toward an experience of success.
  • Let these students occasionally work outside the classroom, preferably under supervision. This also gives the class a break.
  • Give these students a place at the back of the class. They then have an overview and do not have to turn around to see everyone. When they see that everyone is working with concentration, perhaps they will copy the good example set by fellow students.
  • If possible, give them the opportunity to work in the media library.
  • Let them take a walk around if they have too much energy.

7. Implementing Friendly & Fair Teaching across the school

The chapter ‘Implementing Friendly & Fair Teaching across the school‘ describes different form of collaboration:

  1. Friendly and Fair teaching, with the help a senior member of staff, enables you reinforce positive behaviour with students. Before starting with FFT, you make agreements about this with your the staff. If teacher, senior member of staff and parents work together, students  benefit.
  2. Consider starting with FFT with several colleagues simultaneously (School-wide implementation).
  3. The initiative for the implementation of FFT can come from teachers, school leadership, students, teacher education, from parents or from the Educational Support Staff.

FFT is collaborating with different teacher training programmes.

8. Provenance friendly and fair teaching

The knowledge gathered for Friendly and Fair Teaching came from teachers who first shared their expertise with each other and then decided to pass this knowledge on to future generations. Not only teachers’ experiences but also experts’ experiences underlie Friendly and Fair Teaching. For example, Gert Biesta has given us important pointers that can be found throughout the site. Read more about us and about the team behind FFT.

The content of this site is based on personal experience, user experience, available literature, material found on the Internet, and expert opinions. All relevant information is related to one of five perspectives and arranged for teachers in a user-friendly way.

Friendly and Fair Teaching feels closely related to:

8.1 Liemer List

The Liemer List came about through hundreds of conversations with students in Primary education about how they learn best (Netherlands, Arnhem area). Viewed more broadly, with the ‘Seven Promises’ we (student, teacher, supervisor and educational support staff) give each other trust and express our expectations among ourselves and give each other the opportunity to realize those expectations. Friendly and Fair Teaching advises you to teach from these intentions:

  1. We see who you are and you notice that we believe in you.
  2. We have high expectations of each other.
  3. Learning is fun and can happen anywhere.
  4. Your learning environment is engaging, inspiring and challenging.
  5. You always have a choice.
  6. If we can do it together, we don’t do it alone.
  7. You know what you need to learn and what you can do with it.

8.2 Peace can be learned

Friendly and Fair Teaching recognizes itself in the booklet ‘Peace can be learned’. Hence, we gift this booklet during the course and quote from it during the course (Reybrouck (2017).

8.3 Quotes

Literature has been consulted for this site. Quotations that add to our method or that shed new light on it are listed with reference.

9. Summary

Friendly and Fair Teaching helps you to lead by example: friendly, fair, helpful, social and creative. Your students come into contact with society during their time at school and become accustomed to taking on responsibility. If they maintain this attitude as citizens then society as a whole benefits.

When you get started with FFT

  • Trust and partnership develops between you and your students.
  • Students are less likely to disrupt class.
  • students accept that you reinforce positive behaviour.

10. Credits

Nick Sorensen,
Emeritus Professor of Education Bath Spa University		 The name of this site ‘Friendly and Fair Teaching’ was conceived by Sorensen. Before the translation of the content in English, Sorensen helped translating the terms we use in our overview.
Gert Biesta For the current design of our Friendly and Fair Teaching, we are indebted to Gert Biesta. Gert Biesta is a professor and educational pedagogue. He gave us the tip to put the emphasis on establishing order. Gert Biesta: “Who is actually responsible for order in the classroom? And isn’t it more about making and giving order than it is about keeping order?”. We now call ‘establishing order’: Reflecting on your teaching. Teachers reflect on their teaching in order to create a positive learning environment.
Rense Houwing
 Earlier, Rense fully edited twice the Friendly and Fair Teaching site. He pointed out to us that ‘pay attention to body language’ and ‘pay attention to spoken language’ are outside the other action-oriented perspectives. We now call both observations ‘Observing learning’. He also made the distinction between Reinforcing positive behaviour: first steps (this does not costs a student time) and Reinforcing positive behaviour: next steps (This costs a student time).
Jan Wolters – Teacher trainer at the conservatory of music.
 “When it comes to keeping order, you’re already too late.”