Approaches to Learning and Teaching: Finding that “Really?” Moment

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Andrew Gillespie is the author of ‘Approaches to Learning and Teaching: Business & Economics’.

In this guest post Andrew examines the impact of the ‘really?’ moment…

One the features of good teaching that I focus on in my book is the “wow” factor. Find a piece of data, a fact, an image, a number that when you show it to the class they go “wow”.

Messi has just signed a contract with Barcelona worth £500,000 a week for the next four years.




“Wow!”

What does this tell us about the labour market?

Does he deserve this?

Is it fair?

We have a great lesson on markets lined up full of debate and investigation sparked by a wow factor.

But perhaps there is also a “Really?” moment we can use as well. This may not take your breath away but make students lean forward, curious to investigate further. The average age of gamers is over 30: 26% of gamers are aged 50 or older.

Just look at this chart from statista.com – a great source of data of ever you need it.

“Really?”

Is this what your students would have expected?

Probably higher than they would have guessed I suspect.

In fact,you could start by getting them to guess what percentage of gamers fit in different age categories.

Why does it matter that 26% of gamers are over 50?  What does it tell us about the value of data? How would it affect businesses in this industry? What would we want to know before we would base any major decisions on this data? What other questions might we want to ask to understand the gaming market more fully?



The key to effective teaching is to generate curiosity among students so that they want to lead the debate and discussion. They want to know more and your role is to guide the discussion. Introduce a topic with a thought provoking stimulus.

Don’t tell.

Get students to want to ask.

Source: Cambridge International Examinations