Week+5

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 * Lecture Summary: Models of teaching and learning**

I feel that again this week's lecture was asking us to question our pedagogy as future teachers. Will we teach or educate? What is the difference? Teach 'to impart knowledge of or skill in; give instruction in:' (The Macquarie Concise Dictionary, 1982) Educate 'to develop the faculties and powers of by teaching, instruction, or schooling; qualify by instruction or training for a particular calling, practice, etc;' (The Macquarie Concise Dictionary, 1982) I personally like educate, I like the word 'develop' to me it makes me think that I am assisting someone else to develop what it already within them.

What model of teaching will we use top down (teacher delivered), bottom up (student focused), social (negotiated)? I believe that this course is emphasising a social approach, is this approach the only way? When will the other models of teaching be appropriate? From the workshop I liked how everybody seemed to recognise that flexible approach was important.

The idea of multiple intelligences was not new to me nor to many others. I certainly say it was well positioned in the lecture because raising it made me rethink future lesson plans and making sure I have a variety of teaching methods to emphasis different intelligences over the course of a day, week, month, etc. This was not all, the lecture also raised bloom's taxonomy, the 5 Es, Steiner school's, school's will mediation (Sunday Life, The Age 29/3/09). Today our world is so diverse and there are so many believes and ideas and so much research we have so much information to form our own pedagogy. We will set our pedagogy in stone at the end of the year or will it like a good wine mature with age?

I will finish the summary with a quote from Socrates I really liked that was shown in the lecture 'I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others'.

Enjoy your mid-semester breaks......Cheers Matt

 Matt - I really enjoyed reading your reflections. It is a really interesting discovery, to find out what type of teachers we will become. I'm not sure it is possible to know yet. I have an idea on the type of teacher I want to be.... but is that the type of teacher I will become?

Teacher? Educator? Mentor is a word that jumps out at me. I feel as a teacher, I want to guide my students, not necessarily instruct and direct. By guiding them and encouraging them to make discoveries, I feel the content of lessons will bring more meaning and relevance to the students. By making discoveries and finding out answers themselves, I think students will take a greater pride in their work, than if it is just dictated to them. This discovery approach also allows for students to develop their creativity and initiative.

I found the articles on Gardner's MI interesting, but not althogether enlightening. From my understanding, Gardner is basically highlighting the fact that people are a combination of different personalities, or skills, or abilities, or traits, or whatever word could describe them. I felt the underlying message was that everyone has different strengths and weakness, and to effectively engage all students in a curriculum, each of these MI need to be taken into account.

I remember having a brief conversation at some point about DeBono's six hats and the ways in which this has been implemented in own childhood classrooms. When a questions is asked, children are directed to give for example, a yellow hat response. I think this approach could be slightly limiting for children's answers, and we should be encouraging all thought processes. Perhaps being aware of the 6 hats, and the types of answers that could be generated is as far as we need to take this as teachers?

Emma I think the key thing that came out of this weeks issues lecture and tute is the statement that appears on the first slide of Greg’s lecture: “effective teachers use an array of teaching strategies because there is no single, universal approach that suits all situations”. I guess we all now have an understanding of why this is important, but it will be putting it into practice that will be the difficult bit. Already with the lesson planning I am beginning to complete I have to stop and reflect on the activities I am choosing.

Something that wasn’t directly commented on was Honey and Mumford’s learning styles. I might just briefly mention it because we learnt about it in my previous degree – from the point of getting the most out of our professional placements/practicums. That is, would our supervisor have a way of teaching that suited our learning style. Honey and Mumford suggest that there are four different learning styles – the activist (who thrives on the here and now, wants to jump in and give things a go right away), the reflector (who needs time to think about things and consider different perspectives), the theorist (who thinks logically and objectively, orders facts into theories) and the pragmatist (who puts theories into practice, acts quickly and confidently). Obviously everyone is a bit of a mixture but it is interesting to consider.

I agree with Matt and Emma’s comments about education versus teaching. Obviously at times we will know things our students don’t know and we will impart knowledge. That is part of teaching. However the notion of guiding and empowering students to discover things for themselves is so important and such a vital ingredient in a good education.

Cat

The word I kept hearing over and over in the lecture this week was 'encouragement'. I love this word and I think it has an extremely important place in whatever learning approach you choose to take. Encouragement from a teacher/mentor can be one of the most uplifting experiences for a child (or adult for that matter!) because it shows that the teacher/mentor has an interest in what you are doing and that they can also see how much further you could go. Sorry if I'm getting a bit offtrack...but another important form of encouragement (aside from a teacher/mentors) is that between students. Peer to peer encouragement and motivation would be an important part of the general feeling or environment within a classroom of students, I would think. If students feel they have the support and encouragement, not only of their teacher but of their peers as well, I believe this would make for a much more successful and happier classroom environment where students weren't afraid of expressing ideas and developing their potential or learning in certain areas. This is just a quick one for me today! :-) 
 * Laura*