GTS 6.4.1
Demonstrate an understanding of the rationale for continued professional learning and the implications for improved student learning.
As mentioned in my teaching philosophy, I am a strong believer in being open-minded to learning and using new technological resources and modern strategies and teaching methods, as they offer new and improved ways to maximise engagement and improve student learning. However, to achieve this, it is imperative that continued professional learning is undertaken by teachers, so they can absorb different methods and teaching practices, as well as tap into the evolving and developing technological tools and resources available to them.
My artefact is an assessment task I completed for “Teaching and learning with Digital Technologies” (see figure 6.4a), centred upon the issue of cyberbullying and its impact on education. It demonstrates my understanding of the rationale for continued professional learning through activities such as seminars and workshops led by technology organisations and their implications for improved student learning.
Figure 6.4a - Artefact: Assessment Task on cyberbullying that outlines the significance of technology and that teachers must be aware of these issues to ensure student learning is maximised - done through professional learning
Professional learning activities such as these seminars and workshops are a very valuable tool because they allow for highly regarded knowledge and state-of-the-art processes and information to be communicated to teachers. In addition, my experience with the Professional Learning course at UTS allowed me to partake in a question-and-answer session with highly-regarded teachers from Killara High School. During this session, I was able to communicate with teachers from my own and other disciplines, who offered very unique and different methods and advice for a range of areas, including classroom and behaviour management, student-teacher relationships and engagement. This method of professional learning was also greatly beneficial and personalised as my own questions and queries were directly addressed, so I could immediately apply their expertise and advice to my teaching practice and pedagogy. An excerpt of these questions and answers is seen below in figure 6.4b.
Figure 6.4b - Question-and-answer Session with Panel of Teachers from Killara High School
What are some engaging ways to teach a mathematics lesson? I have only been in a traditional lesson where the teacher uses the textbook to teach the content, does some examples and then sets the questions for the students to complete during the rest of the lesson and for homework. I would love to see some more engaging, modern and unique lessons.
showing students how to make a spreadsheet and plan and budget for Justin Bieber’s birthday
Create a key note/presentation to project
Go through an explanation of what the concept is and why we are doing it
Comedic headings to keep them engaged
Junior lessons is primarily explicit teaching and then an activity
Senior is mainly going through examples on the board and only using textbook for homework
Engagement comes down to your ability to be enthused about what you are doing - all about personality
You need to act like it is really cool and leverage the relationships and trust you have built with the class by then, they will trust that they can do it and be successful and be engaged in it
Doing things that they feel like they are capable of doing
Never use the textbook to teach - only for homework
How do teachers balance being a disciplinarian and being a friend to the students?
difficult at the beginning
Will always have students that respond better to male than female
Usually the school will account for this and can overcome it
Young people - slightly overdressing for the role
You are at no point their friend, which does not stop you from being caring, compassionate, considerate and helpful, but you are more like their coach
Your rule is final - you can be nice about it but cannot bend the rules
Friends do favours, but you do not do favours as a teacher - everyone gets treated equally and ensure you are consistent with these rules but be nice and fair about it
If you bend the rules and are nice about it, they will like you but no respect you
However, if you are a nice person and genuinely care, but still be consistent with the rules and they will like you AND respect you (hopefully)
Private everything online - students will hunt you down online
How to communicate or work with parents/ how may their expectations not align with yours?
Depends on the grade
year 7: explain that you are not their full time teacher and do not email parents individually for homework - that is the responsibility of the student to know and complete
Discussing the real ability of the student for the senior years and knowing where the child is and how to get them where they want to go
You may have the same discussion multiple times because the parent may have predetermined assumptions of what the child will be studying and pursuing e.g. a standard maths level student that wants to do extension in years 11-12
Stage 6 students: parental conversations are more formal and usually to tell them if they should drop or are not submitting tasks etc.
Best to have a second teacher to officially record the meeting and to offer support
How do you fill spare time in a lesson?
typically you will not have spare time but if there is, throw in an extra question (mainly for senior years), or a game (for the junior years), or technology-based activities
The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) has developed a very useful resource (see figure 6.4c) that outlines the importance of professional learning, which has helped my understanding of this standard. In line with my teaching philosophy of innovation and open-mindedness, the AITSL highlights the importance of “effective” professional learning, which involves relevance, collaboration and being focused on the future (AITSL, n.d., p. 3). It then encourages teachers to be very selective in choosing the type of professional learning activities they engage with, as well as evaluating the activities afterwards and reinforcing the new knowledge, skills and resources that they have learnt.
Whitton et al. (2015) similarly stress that professional learning is a skill in itself, which is a never-ending process occurring formally and informally (pp. 68). They also encourage self-reflection and evaluation to maximise professional learning and therefore, obtain the necessary skills, expertise and knowledge to enhance student learning and the educative process (Whitton et al., 2015).
Figure 6.4c - This screenshot of the AITSL resource (AITSL, n.d., slide 5) demonstrates some of the strategies for professional learning and their significance in terms of teachers and student development
IMPACT STATEMENT
These activities catalyse teachers in developing their repertoire of core competencies and invaluable skills in areas of great growth, such as technology and differentiation practices. This leads to improved student learning as teachers are given access to a plethora of greatly beneficial learning resources and tools, where they may use technology to both engage students, assist and enrich their learning of a range of disciplines.
Professional learning opportunities have been made available to me during my practicum experience. At the beginning of the term, there was a staff development day which consisted of a whole day workshop on Max Woods’ ALARM Matrix (see below). During this workshop, the staff and myself were introduced to the ALARM matrix, which is a tool used to improve the literacy and cognitive skills, focusing on writing, learning, deconstructing questions, providing feedback and reflecting.
I was also able to attend a HSIE meeting, during which I observed a discussion on how students across the school struggled to meet the needs of higher-order NESA directive terms, such as ‘assess’, as well as not being able to properly analyse and apply a source to their response.
Thus, I found ALARM to be a brilliant tool which I chose to apply to my Year 10 ‘Newman’ (top level) History class. In the lessons leading up to their summative, extended response-style assessment, I placed a great emphasis on literacy skills.
I designed lessons and learning activities in which the students were able to practise answering questions ranging from lower, to middle and then higher-order requirements. Through this, students were able to learn and appreciate that in order to ‘assess’, for example, they needed to first ‘explain’ and ‘discuss’ (see document below).
These efforts proved to be very impactful, seen where the class average in this assessment was 85%, indicating a successful incorporation of professional learning tools.