---
title: "Becoming a Better Teacher"
artifact: "highlights"
resource_person: "Mariappan Jawaharlal"
resource_person_role: "Mechanical engineering professor and engineering educator"
vertical: "pedagogy"
module: "In and Beyond the Classroom"
lesson: "Becoming a Better Teacher"
lesson_key: "becoming-a-better-teacher"
source: "curated"
source_channel: "TEDx Talks"
---
# Becoming a Better Teacher: Highlights

**Resource person:** Mariappan Jawaharlal - Mechanical engineering professor and engineering educator

**Curated from:** TEDx Talks

1. [02:20] Jawaharlal describes a career initially organised around syllabus coverage, hard exams and evaluations.
2. [05:25] He argues that effective teachers can work in different voices and should avoid imitating a single performance style.
3. [07:54] The talk redirects attention from the act of presenting to the activity occurring in the learner.
4. [10:42] Students need an intelligible reason for learning and an explanation they can enter.
5. [12:56] Low-stakes attempts give errors a chance to produce feedback and revision.
6. [14:15] Important ideas become more usable when students reconstruct and apply them.
7. [16:03] 'What do you think?' elicits a learner's current reasoning before assistance is given.