This week was about Teaching Practice which gave everyone of us an opportunity to demonstrate his style, learning/teaching methods, tools, techniques and skills. Whether that from his teaching experience or pedagogical aspects that we have learned in this Program, which focus in many elements such as Introduction, planning, preparing, learning approach, style, content, learning resources, how the main theme visualize, students participation, assessment and the main point summary at the end of the session.
Therefore, I think the pedagogical roles are the base to keep in mind when it comes to learning/teaching outcome profession, rather than just to emphasize in one method or style and generalize it as the most effective way of learning/teaching. As we know, that's not fair since we are different as a human being, not only that, there are other factors that we have to take in consideration, as a subject, the education level of the students, content, education system as a whole, culture, education background of the students, presentation and communication skills.
Nevertheless, we can not adopt one or two style method and say these are the most useful and successful. In other word, I think the teaching practice is very important session of our training period. Unfortunately, it was just one week of the whole three months program, if I may suggest, it should be at least three weeks, one week at the end of each month so we can have a chance and enough time to practice every month and get constructive feedback to upgrade our learning/teaching style, techniques and improve presentation, communication skills rather than just once in the whole program. As a result of not having enough time to deliver our presentation, we were rushing and wrapping up so fast, then the outcome was not what we aimed for. Especially in our group, we had three topics not like the others they just had one, in fact we didn't have time to show the whole presentation or to express our thoughts and ideas.
In addition to that, counseling was very helpful in many ways especially in learning/teaching program but there wasn't enough sessions, as we know it helps the trainee to acknowledge his strength and weaknesses, through a progress plan to follow and upgrade each individual's improvement, rather than just once a week during the whole seminar. I think, that wasn't good enough especially when it comes to learning/teaching practice. Anyway, I just want to express my ideas, personal experience, thoughts, opinion, and knowledge to share with you.
Hello,
ReplyDeletewhat you write in the second chapter is so true: there is no one approach that would always be the ultimate one and suit all subjects, all teachers, all contexts and all students.
Teaching practice in this extent (2,5 h/group) is quite time consuming. That's we we cannot have it every month, if we want to be able to cover other areas in the program. We have tried to add some mini practices along the way, e.g. in David's collaborative methods workshop the teams were in charge of collaborative sessions, and Katri and Merja in their workshop also made you do some presentations. But we probably should try and fit in some more presentations.
This "big teaching practice" is, however, supposed to be much more than a presentation exercise. The planning and self assessment stages are as important as the implementation itself. The focus should be in learning more than in teaching.
It is true that we didn't have enough guidance and counseling sessions, where we could have discussed the plan! In our original program plan we should have had a very open workshop each Friday. In it participants could have worked individually or in teams on their assignments (either reflective journals or teaching practice plans), and the guidance counselor would have been available for consultation. But when Fridays were such a big issue to many participants, we decided to honor their wish and make them free. As a result the teams no longer had a set day in their calendar for team work! Instead of working together four h/week, some teams decided that everybody should work alone. There were only a couple of teams, like Ocean, who kept meeting and working together even after the Fridays were cleared. When the decision about Fridays was made so late, we no longer could squeeze in enough guidance and counseling. That is a pity!
I'm sorry, if you feel disappointed with teaching practice (or do I misinterpret your tone? ). It is true that your team didn't get the synergy of team work, you remained four different actors, not a true team. But that is also a learning experience! You now know that putting four people together and calling it a team doesn't solve anything. The members really need to work towards common goals, the team isn't born without commitment and effort.
"in fact we didn't have time to show the whole presentation or to express our thoughts and ideas"
It's true that three 0,5 h sessions easily give a more "unfinished" impression than 1,5 h around one theme. If there is only one theme, there is only one beginning and end, and in between it's possible to have different approaches, both teacher centered and student centered ones. With 3 separate themes there are three beginnings and endings and there is hardly any room for growth between each beginning and end.
However, I remind you that the choice was the team's. Also, remember that even experiences that might seem a bit disappointing at the time, can turn into valuable ones later. Let me explain: if you later had an opportunity to do co-teaching with a colleague, you'd already know that it can't be taken lightly, and would expect the same seriousness and commitment from you co-teacher.
Uups, I still have some preparations to make for tomorrow, and must quit now. Did you notice that I also wrote some reflections on the teaching practice in the tvtcs2012-blog
Good night!
Irmeli