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Effective interpersonal skills in teaching

Effective personal and interpersonal skills underpin professional practice. They have a number of dimensions including empathy, team working, creative thinking, the skill of reflection – and a sense of humour! All are underpinned by effective communication skills in their widest sense.

Resources in this section focus on a range of speaking, listening and questioning skills that can help you to develop essential attributes such as empathy, team working and reflection. These skills do not necessarily come easily, but they can be learned if you are willing to practise, seek feedback and reflect on your progress.

The resources present you with an opportunity to explore and practise a range of techniques separately and systematically, providing ideas and activities to support their development. These include:

  • effective questioning
  • reflective listening
  • non-verbal communication.

These skills should never be used in isolation. They form an essential part of the dialogue that effective teachers develop with their learners to bring about positive changes in behaviour and to deepen understanding. The resource Introducing motivational dialogue and developing skills:

  • explains the power of motivational dialogue and how and why it is so effective in any learning context
  • provides videos of the above skills in action and continuing professional development (CPD) resources to help develop them
  • introduces the concept of the change process.

To explore motivational dialogue in more depth, look at the Motivational dialogue website on the Learning and Skills Improvement Service Excellence Gateway (available from 2009).

The Quick start guide: Learning conversations suggests a range of practical contexts in which you might use your communication and interpersonal skills to motivate and engage learners effectively.

Learners need to develop and use these communication skills too. Consider which resources and activities could also be used with learners to help develop their communication skills as part of Skills for Life or functional skills in English.

To see personal and interpersonal skills used in learning contexts, look at the sections on:

Resources for teacher educators

  - Getting the most out of these resources
  • Introducing motivational dialogue and developing skills - Info 
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      Effective questioning - PDF 
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      Reflective listening - PDF 
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      Non-verbal communication - PDF 
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      Summarising for change - PDF 
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      Eliciting change talk - PDF 
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      Preparation and planning - PDF 

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Effective questioning

Questioning has many dimensions. For example, teachers use it:

  • to check what learners know
  • for assessment for learning
  • to draw on personal experience
  • to promote development of practical skills
  • to encourage reflection on progress and the learning process.

You could use the video resource to consider:

  • the purpose of questions
  • the strategies teachers are using
  • how learners respond
  • how questioning might be handled differently for different purposes.

The Effective questioning toolkit incorporates ideas and activities to use with learners and considers:

  • what to ask questions about
  • when to ask questions
  • how to ask questions.

You could use the downloadable workbook as part of a teacher education or professional development programme to explore and try out new questioning strategies and reflect on their impact. The workbook can form part of a CPD portfolio.

Also consider which activities could be used with learners to help develop their communication skills as part of functional skills in English.

Resources for teacher educators

  - Getting the most out of these resources
  • Questioning whole groups - Info 
  • Questioning small groups - Info 
  • Effective questioning toolkit - Info 
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      Effective questioning toolkit - PDF Word 
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      Effective questioning workbook - PDF Word 
  • Which questioning techniques? - Info 
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      Which questioning techniques? - PDF 
  • Questioning for learning - Info 
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      Questioning for learning - PDF 
  • The benefits of active learning - Info 
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      Bloom’s taxonomy and the Jabberwocky activity - PDF 
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      Questioning strategies - PDF 
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      Different kinds of questions linked to Bloom’s taxonomy - PDF 
  • Open and closed questions - Info 
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      Open and closed questions - PDF 
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    Questioning techniques: Interactive quiz - Info and Web 

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Using discussion

Active learning approaches stimulate discussion and deepen learning; this is particularly effective when learners work in small groups. These subject-focused resources give an overview of classroom practice but draw out some common principles.

To stimulate ideas, view the video clips and consider:

  • What strategies for introducing discussion are evident?
  • What benefits do you think the teacher was looking for?
  • How did the learners respond?
  • What role did the teacher play?
  • What would you describe as good practice?
  • What, if anything, do you think could have been done differently to support learning?

Use the information sheets to help plan activities and sessions as part of supported experiments or action research during teacher education or professional development programmes.

Resources for teacher educators

  - Getting the most out of these resources

Technical information

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Managing groups

Group work is particularly valuable when the aim of learning is to develop conceptual understanding or strategies for solving more challenging problems. In these areas, learners need to share alternative views, interpretations or approaches. In small groups learners are able to check their understanding by explaining, or rehearsing, it in their own words to at least one other person, who could give them instant feedback. It also provides a ‘safe’ arena in which to ask questions.

You might use the resources as part of a teacher education or professional development programme to address some of the challenges of group management:

  • What can a teacher do to facilitate learning in groups?
  • What can be gained from observing and listening to learners at work?
  • What do you notice about planning and group management strategies?
  • How did the learners benefit from working in groups?
  • What, if anything, do you think could have been done differently, to support learning?
  • What can go wrong with group work? How could you prevent these problems happening?
  • If you are feeling unsure about managing groups, what skills do you most need to develop?

For more ideas around group work, look at Collaborative learning.

Resources for teacher educators

  - Getting the most out of these resources
  • Managing groups: Society, health and development - Info 
  • Managing groups: Observations - Info 
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      Managing groups: Observations - MPEG 
  • Managing groups: CPD activity - Info 
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      Managing groups: CPD activity - PDF 
  • Group work - Info 
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      Group work: Overview - PDF 
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      Group work: Thinking about group work - PDF 
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      Group work: Troubleshooting - PDF 
  • Using group work to develop learning - Info 
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      Approaches: Managing group learning - Word 
  • Using group work to develop learning - Info 
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      Group work: Devising activities - PDF 
  • Using group work to develop learning - Info 
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      Group work: Getting started - PDF 

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