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| Image courtesy of thegrumpyvoter.ca I had always seen teaching as a profession but it wasn’t until I embark on my study of this subject that I began to recognize the vast amount of ‘professional’ areas that teaching encompasses. Learning Managers (LM) in today’s socio-cultural society need to be educated in an immeasurable cross-section of skill bases to ensure we are able to provide both a professional and socially applicable standard of education. LMs must be compassionate, understanding and committed to their work while remaining professional at all times. The following statement by Ayers (1993.p.5), “teaching is instructing, advising, counselling, organizing, assessing, guiding, goading, showing, man aging, modelling, coaching, disciplining, prodding, preaching, persuading, proselytizing, listening, interacting, nursing, and inspiring. LMs must be experts and generalists, psychologists. and cops, rabbis and priests, judges and gurus,” highlighting the importance of LMs having the skills needed to allow them to evaluate the variety of issues that arise within teaching that involve students, families, other teaching professionals, school communities, cultural communities and governments into a professional perspective through the incorporation of critical reflection and ongoing training (CQUniversity. 2011). The fast paced development of our society also demands LMs must not only be able to acquire new knowledge needed to teach within our socio-cultural society and but also incorporate their imagination and creativity into planning lessons to promote engagement by all students, whether they be auditory, tactile or visual learners, within the learning experiences. These professional skills, along with the Code of Ethics for LMs in Queensland, ensure that children are receiving the specialised education that is required to prepare and propel them toward the future. Today’s LMs must be able to influence student learning by incorporating their experiences and understanding into the classroom whilst engaging with students to construct the curriculum while encouraging students to impart their own experiences and understanding by relating the learning to real life. This, to me, point out just how imperative it is for LMs to receive ethical training to ensure we are given the information and skills needed within our socio-cultural society to guarantee every student receives a socially, culturally, technologically and economically relevant education that is futures orientated while providing the skills needed for lifelong learning. I read an article entitled, ‘Teaching Young children specialist or not?’ by Dr Glenda MacNaughton that explains the importance of what we do as educators. MacNaughton states, “teaching expertise means empowering young children to develop the understandings, skills, strategies, and dispositions that will set them on the path to lifelong learning” (1998. p.5). I feel that LMs today are specialists in education, that is, we must become metacognitive specialists, able to asses our own ZPD as well as that of our students. We need to be able to not only read the teaching environment, the students and other stakeholders but also define and differentiate between the languages of education to provide an emergent curriculum, such as play-based learning. The incorporation of these languages verbal, graphic, tactile, musical, visual and gestural within the planning and instruction of learning experiences are critical in ensuring all students engage in reciprocal interaction, promoting their learning (Educational Performance Systems Inc. 2005). LMs must also understand their level of accountability for the education of students. Woodrow (1999. p.23) defines teaching in today’s society is LMs undertaking the task of assessing the learning each student requires and know the curriculum to allow them to construct an equilibrium that joins the two. This tells us that to be successful in educating today’s students it is imperative that LMs instruct them using a variety of thinking strategies and the skill needed to develop and grow as independent and constructive citizens of tomorrow (Frangenheim. 2010. p.5). The chalk and talk LMs of the past need only be adverse in teaching from script, standardised marking and maintaining control of the class, a far cry from LMs today who I see as themselves being lifelong learners and futures orientated. I simplify it by saying that we are educators in a rapidly developing social-cultural society preparing future world citizens for the unknown, a huge and daunting task but the reward for our success!!!!TEN ACTION POINTS FOR EXE (Experiential Education) TEACHERS 1. Rearrange the classroom in appealing corners or areas 2. Check the content of the corners and replace unattractive materials by more appealing ones 3. Introduce new and unconventional materials and activities 4. Observe children, discover their interests and find activities that meet these orientations 5. Support ongoing activities through stimulating impulses and enriching interventions 6. Widen the possibilities for free initiative and support them with sound rules and agreements 7. Explore the relation with each of the children and between children and try to improve it 8. Introduce activities that help children to explore the world of behaviour, feelings and values 9. Identify children with emotional problems and work out sustaining interventions 10. Identify children with developmental needs and work out interventions that engender involvement within the problem area. (Information courtesy of Directorate for Education, OECD 2004. P. 6) References Ayers, W. (1993). To Teach The Journey of a Teacher. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDEC12027 Challenges of Early Childhood Education, http://library-resources.cqu.edu.au/cro/protected/eded11404/eded11404_cro1844.pdf CQUniversity Australia. (2011). What is it to be a teacher, a professional and what in teaching is socially constructed? EDEC12027 Challenges of Early Childhood Education. Retrieved from http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=245373 Directorate for Education, OECD. (2004).Starting Strong Curricula and Pedagogies in Early Childhood Education and Care. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/23/36/31672150.pdf Educational Performance Systems Inc. (2005). What is Metacognition?Retrieved fromhttp://www.epsi-usa.com/approach/metacognition.htm Frangenheim. E. (2010). Reflections on Classroom Thinking Strategies (9th ed.). Loganholme, QLD: Rodin Educational Publishing.MacNaughton, G. (2000). Teaching Young Children Specialist or Not.Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDEC12027 Challenges of Early Childhood Education, http://library-resources.cqu.edu.au/cro/protected/edec12027/edec12027_cro258.pdf Queensland Collage of Teachers. (2012). Code of Ethics for Teachers in Queensland. Retrieved from http://www.qct.edu.au/PDF/PCU/CodeOfEthicsPoster20081215.pdf Woodrow, C. (1999). Tools test and tables. The Ethics of Assessment. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDEC12027 Challenges of Early Childhood Education, http://library-resources.cqu.edu.au/cro/protected/edec12027/edec12027_cro260.pdf |
Monday, January 2, 2012
What is a teacher?
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Where you talk about how the LM has to make the learning experience real is so true. The students of today are so different to when we repeated everything, though we may not have learned anything from this experience. The students are so hands on, they want to touch, feel and smell the experience. As a future LM I am excited about this concept of learning for all stakeholders. i have to know the future products and how they work, not only will I assist my students but they will also assist me in acquiring the future concepts.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you fully Mandy.
ReplyDeleteSince posting this blog, I have read some information relating to the Australian Code of Ethics which has got me thinking about the relevance of these ethics in relation to our new emergent curriculum. This new play-based curriculum aims to promote individualised learning through the consideration of differences within our social-cultural society them why tie in a Code of Ethics that is set and allows for no consideration of individuality due to cultural beliefs and ways of life? The following quote has caused me to seriously consider our current Australian Code of Ethics in relation to play-based education and how I see myself including them in a classroom of students from a diverse cross-section of backgrounds and beliefs. Arthur, Beecher, Death, Dockett and Farmer (2005. p.18.) statement, “the Code of Ethics assumes that there is one set of core values. This ignores contextual differences and diverse values as well as ‘issues about connection, interdependence and relationships’.” Further on within the reading Arthur et al. (2005) suggest the benefits of focusing more on ensuring educators understand and provide “connections, relationships and conflicting responsibilities,” based learning for students.
Rather than Learning Managers focusing so deeply on a set of pedagogical practices, rigid in the standard and expectation of their approach to the requirements of teaching, we need educators to be using a set of ethics which encourages them to focusing on engaging their students to develop their skills of both self reflection and assessment and critical thinking. This is done using both their own real-life experiences and information gathered from their own beliefs along with those of their students.
This reading also allowed me to see how a curriculum that focuses on teaching individuals based on their social and cultural environment to promote their conceptual understanding and learning would benefit from teachers incorporating connections, relationships and conflicting responsibilities that they will be required to incorporate within their futures to be futures orientated life long learners.
References
Arthur. L., Beecher. B., Death. E., Dockett. S., & Farmer. S. (2005). Programming and Planning In Early Childhood Settings.(3rd ed.). Southbank, VIC: Thompson