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Blended not Scrambled – How Learning Happens by Design
We are living through a new iteration of the Digital World. The COVID-19 Pandemic has triggered unprecedented challenges for education. Students cannot get to class in the numbers, configurations and durations that were previously available. The role of the teacher has changed – changed utterly. To quote Yeats, “a terrible beauty is born”. Blended learning is here to stay. There are few positives to be gleaned from the awful circumstances in which we find ourselves. The trauma caused by the forced imposition of deep structural changes to education delivery should not be underestimated. Many students and teachers have struggled with the transition and many are left behind. However, we also…
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Reflection, Teaching Practice and Learning from Experience
Teaching practice or placement is one of the hallmarks of initial teacher education. As with many professions, the novice teacher is expected to learn through experience in an authentic setting. Student teachers are often required to write reflections on they have learned in placement. Many struggle with the task – wondering what actually constitutes reflective writing and why there is so much emphasis on the process of reflection. Many look to scholarship to provide answers and works by Dewey (1933, How We Think), Schön (1992, The Reflective Practitioner), Boud et al (1985, Reflection: Turning Experience Into Learning), Mezirow, (1990, Fostering Critical Reflection in Adulthood), Brookfield (2005, The Power of Critical…
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College Teaching: How to let go of PowerPoint
It started as a means to an end. You wanted to do well in class but felt you couldn’t cope without additional support. “Don’t worry” you told yourself, “I can manage. I’ll just use a few. I’m not really dependent on them.” So you start with five, and then it becomes ten and before you know it your on 30 or more slides per class. Deep down you know you’re addicted. You may have full-blown PTS! Powerpoint Teaching Syndrome. Here are five indications to help your self-diagnosis of PTS: Preparation for each class is devoted exclusively to preparing powerpoint slides. You even say things like “that’s the first five…
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New to college teaching – here are some tips to get you going.
Well done! You’ve been appointed to teach a college module and you’re really looking forward to the experience. You know your topic and whilst you’re very confident about your expertise in your subject or discipline, you’re a little more apprehensive about your ability to teach. Like many other competences, effective college teaching involves a mix of knowledge, skills and disposition. There is certainly a continuum between the novice teacher (albeit subject expert) and the more experienced and accomplished teacher. The good news is that you have a lot going for you from the start. Subject expertise is a necessary but not a sufficient qualification for good teaching. Your in-depth understanding…
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What makes a good teacher?
One of a series of questions to be explored at Essential Questions for Educators Everywhere open summer course National College of Ireland 26-30th of June 2017 eqfee.org ‘What makes a good teacher’ seems a simple question and you might expect a straight forward answer. However, the more you think about it the more you will realise that it is not so simple after all. For many years now, I have worked with students and teachers in different sectors and contexts. Over time we have developed an exercise to interrogate this question. The exercise is worthwhile for learning professionals everywhere. You can try this yourself. Start by thinking about your own…
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Reflection and Practice
What is reflection? Adult educators like to use the term “reflection”. In class you are likely to be invited to “reflect on your own experiences” or, when tasked with an assignment, you are just as likely to be invited to reflect as discuss, debate, argue or critique. I admit that I also like the term and find myself encouraging others and often myself, to reflect on a particular issue or problem. What does it mean to reflect? And how does reflection differ from “thinking about”, “recalling” or just simply “lulling over” a situation? Useful insight comes from the work of Donald Schön (best known for his book The Reflective Practitioner)…
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TPACK: Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge
What makes a great teacher? This is a difficult but important question for education at all levels. One way to get to the answer is to think about individual teachers that you have encountered in your life. Somehow we all know great teachers when we meet them and of course, we certainly know poor teaching when we come across it. I am not one of those who believes that teaching is a natural gift and some people are born to be teachers and others not. Most great teachers that I know work constantly on their own development as educators. A capacity for great teaching can be gained through experience…
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SITE Conference
I recently attended the SITE Conference in San Diego, California. SITE stands for the Society for the Information Technology and Teacher Education and it is one of the biggest conferences in this field. Chip Bruce and I had submitted a paper based on the Digital Literacy in Primary Schools (DLIPS) project.I attended many other sessions and it was very useful to catch up with developments across the field. One thing that struck me is the use (perhaps overuse) of short abbreviations to describe areas of interest. Thus a session might be described as dealing with TPAC for SET in K-12 – decoded this means Mhisra and Koehler’s (2006) Technological, Pedagogical…
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“Grade Inflation” Getting Everything Wrong
This is a really important issue for Ireland and for everyone in the education sector. It is vital that get a clear understanding of what the problem is and what we need to do to rectify it. First of all, the problem we need to solve is not “Grade Inflation” and it would be a huge mistake if we were all to get in a muddle comparing the numbers of first class honours’ degrees or 600 point Leaving Certs in the past few years. Just like all measures based on our social circumstances, such as the spending power of the average weekly wage or the average life-expectancy, over time we…
