Professional Studies: Primary and Early Years

Kate Jacques, Rob Hyland, Kate Jacques, Rob Hyland

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781844454280
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

This key resource for trainee primary teachers helps them to understand and fulfil the new professional requirements for QTS. It focuses on a range of professional issues – including management of pupils? work, individual needs and equal opportunities, behaviour for learning and professional responsibilities outside teaching. Each chapter includes tasks, examples and further reading to highlight important concepts and key issues. New and revised chapters mean this third edition is up to date with the QTS Standards, latest documents and initiatives. Further, new reflective tasks and "Moving On" sections help trainees to build on the information in each chapter.

1
The complete teacher

Rob Hyland and Kate Jacques

This introductory chapter sets out the context for those which follow and explains how to use the book. It also seeks to place the objective of meeting national requirements for attaining the award of Qualified Teacher Status (QTS)in a broader framework.

By the end of the chapter you should:

• understand the overall objectives of the book;

• have considered some of the general requirements of becoming a teacher;

• understand the significance of the Professional Standards for the award of Qualified Teacher Status;

• be aware how the chapter relates to meeting the Standards for QTS.

Becoming a primary school teacher and making a difference

If it is your intention to become a primary school teacher then you should need no convincing that this is an important, challenging and rewarding undertaking. Primary teachers have a vital position in the education system: they play a key role in the learning of nearly all children between the ages of five and eleven. Collectively and cumulatively teachers in primary schools have a significant influence over a long and important period in their pupils’ development. Though they are by no means the only influence, primary schools and those who work in them can make a difference in the lives of their pupils; they lay the foundations for so much which follows. To embark upon the process of becoming a primary teacher is to undertake a serious preparation for a valuable social role.

For children, however, the felt experience of primary teachers is not one of valuable social roles or collective or cumulative influences; it is so much more immediate. For children at any given moment that experience is very much of Miss Oliver, Mr Abbas, Ms Jones, Mrs Rodrigues, Mr Hamilton . . . And when you are that person, then the quality of their experience – at least for the time they are with you – is very much in your hands. The majority of primary teachers have extensive responsibility for a class of children for an academic year and therefore your knowledge, skills and commitment can have a considerable effect. Individual teachers do make a difference. That is a large part of what makes teaching challenging and worthwhile.

The aims of this book

The purposes of this book are both general and specific. The overall aim is to encourage and assist you to consider a range of professional issues related to qualifying as a primary school teacher. The more specific objectives of this book are to assist you in understanding and meeting the broad professional requirements of the Professional Standards for Qualified Teacher Status for Primary and Early Years.

Meeting the Professional Standards for QTS

The current formal requirements for you to achieve QTS are set out on the Training Development Agency for Schools website at www.tda.gov.uk. The Standards have been revised to take account of the stages available to all teachers. These are:

• those recommended for the award of QTS (Q);

• induction/main scale teachers (I);

• post-threshold teachers (P);

• excellent teachers (E);

• advanced skills teachers (a).

The Standards relating to the award of QTS are set out in the Appendix at the back of the book. Only those trainee teachers who meet all of the Standards will be awarded QTS. The meaning is unambiguous. The Standards are requirements and not simply desirable attributes or ideal goals. Curiously these Standards do not apply to the whole of the United Kingdom; different regulations apply in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

At this stage it is important to recognise that qualifying as a primary school teacher is a demanding process, but you should not get the formal requirements out of perspective. One of the key purposes of this book, along with its companion volumes in the series, is to show you how these requirements can be met. It aims to demystify and make plain some of these demands in such a way that you recognise how they relate to effective teaching, how you might meet them and in due course demonstrate that you can do so.

The knowledge and understanding and Teaching Standards for specific subjects are covered by other books in this series. For a full list of those publications, visit the Learning Matters website at www.learningmatters.co.uk. It should also not be forgotten that primary teachers may teach the whole range of subjects in the primary curriculum and need to be well informed in all areas they teach. The importance of the primary teacher’s subject knowledge, and the need for the would-be teacher to develop a sound grasp of how to teach children the particular skills and concepts of the various curriculum areas, are taken as fundamental by the authors of this book. This volume, however, is concerned with professional issues which run across all subjects and indeed beyond the formal subject curriculum.

QTS and the complete teacher

At the outset it was important to make clear that meeting the government’s Standards is central to qualification as a teacher: these Standards are not optional – at least not if you wish to qualify! But it is also important to recognise the limitations of these formal statements of the knowledge and skills required for QTS. Underpinned as they are by statutory powers and backed by all the apparatus of official authority, they tend to give an appearance of universal agreement on what is required of teachers.

You will soon learn that there is always some disagreement among teachers and those who train them over just what knowledge, skills and attitudes are essential for the Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT), or indeed the experienced teacher. The requirements of the TDA Standards are by no means the only ‘standards’ which we might wish to consider, nor the only version of what it might mean to be an effective beginning teacher. There has been considerable argument about the requirements for QTS; the debate is ongoing. Nevertheless, despite all the debate about the details and how they are expressed and assessed, there is broad consensus about the general requirements for beginning teachers. It is not merely to meet the Standards that teachers need to be able to plan appropriate work for children, to take account of aptitudes and needs, to assess children’s work, to report progress, to manage the classroom, to build positive relationships with children and so forth: these are the core aspects of teaching. It is difficult to think of an effective teacher unable to do these things. These days head teachers claim that NQTs are better prepared than ever before because they do demonstrate competence and an ability to meet the Standards.

It is also important to recognise that the Standards are those for the award of QTS. They are not the last word on what a skilled teacher can achieve. The new Professional Standards are designed to bring coherence and occupational standards for the whole school workforce including teaching/classroom assistants (TAs) and higher level teaching assistants (HLTAs) as well as the range of teachers from NQTs to Advanced Skills Teachers (ASTs). While you will bring your own distinctive style to your teaching, the Standards provide a valuable framework for you to track your own progress and regularly self-assess your own performance.

The range of professional issues covered by this book

There is no limit to the range of professional issues which might be relevant to the teacher in training. This book concentrates on the key areas which the beginning teacher needs to understand. For convenience it is divided into sections of related chapters but it is important to recognise the links between different aspects of professional knowledge and skill. The first section, Planning and Assessment, focuses on the planning, assessment and reporting of children’s work; the second section, Management, Organisation and Delivery, looks at managing for learning; the third section, Children and Individual Needs, includes chapters on SEN, individual differences and equal opportunities; and the final section, Becoming a Professional, gives an overview of professional responsibilities outside of teaching.

Section 1 looks at the related requirements for effective planning, assessment and reporting of children’s work. Chapter 2 explains the fundamental skills of planning lessons; this is not simply a matter of formulaic presentation but of grasping the underlying principles of organising for teaching. Chapter 3 discusses ‘differentiation’ in some detail because it is fundamental to effective planning for learning when children are so different in their prior knowledge, experience and capabilities. Chapter 4 discusses ‘assessment for learning’ and how important it is to chart children’s progress to encourage them, to inform their parents, and to guide your subsequent teaching.

Section 2 focuses on learning. Chapter 5 establishes the importance of the foundation stage. Chapter 6 outlines some of the major theories of learning. Chapter 7 examines many of the practical issues of organising the classroom for learning. Chapter 8 considers the climate of the classroom and the importance of promoting self-esteem in children to create a positive climate for learning in which all children are valued and are encouraged to value others. Chapter 9 raises issues of self-presentation and engagement with other adults in the classroom. Chapter 10 examines some possible responses to children’s more challenging behaviour.

Section 3 looks at some broad issues which are important in all schools. Chapter 11 examines some ways in which teachers may encourage the development of spiritual, moral, social and cultural values within the classroom. Chapter 12 discusses issues of inclusion and the legislative position with regard to equal opportunities. Children with special educational needs (SEN) are such a central concern to all primary schools today that two chapters are devoted to this topic. Chapter 13 outlines some of the requirements relating to the implementation of national policy while Chapter 14 considers some of the more general principles of personalising learning to respond to the range of individual differences which may be encountered in a modern primary classroom.

The final section examines some of the implications of becoming a teacher. The broader professional issues here are crucial. There is a legal aspect to joining a profession and Chapter 15 sets out some of the statutory and contractual obligations you take on as a teacher. There are broader issues involved in becoming a member of the teaching profession and Chapter 16 examines the level of commitment to professionalism which teachers should demonstrate in their work.

The chapters can be read sequentially, but individual chapters can be referred to as necessary. In any case it is important to return to some of the guidance of earlier chapters in the light of issues discussed in subsequent ones. Many issues run throughout the book and there are repeated references to Every Child Matters (ECM) and its core principles.

Though the knowledge and skills of the competent teacher may be identified and classified as in the Standards, effective performance requires a constant synthesising of insights into different aspects of the teaching experience. Lesson planning, for example, is not just the mastery of formal organisational and presentational skills; to maximise the positive effects upon children’s learning a lesson plan may have to take into account so many factors from SEN to health and safety. You may quickly grasp the formal essentials of planning, how to set your desired learning outcomes for children, your content and resources, but the insight you bring to the task will develop with experience. Learning to teach is itself a good illustration of the ‘spiral curriculum’. You will find yourself revisiting the issues discussed in this book with progressively more understanding as you spend time in classrooms and reflect on all you see and do. We include Early Years and those of you who wish to focus on this age range will need to look at the Foundation Stage. We have a new Chapter 5 which takes you through foundations for learning.

Survival, qualification and beyond

Almost inevitably, as you train to be a teacher the immediacy of so many of the demands upon you can induce an understandable preoccupation with survival! This book will help you towards meeting the Standards for attaining QTS. The team of authors intends that it should illuminate many of the requirements for doing so and give you some practical guidance upon which you can act. But the book is more than a survival aid: the authors also hope that you will see these national requirements in a broader perspective, that you will be enquiring, reflective and critical. Becoming a teacher is partly about acquiring fundamen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 The complete teacher
• Section 1: Planning and assessment
• Section 2: Management, organisation and delivery
• Section 3: Children and individual needs
• Section 4: Becoming a professional
• Appendix: Professional Standards for Teachers in England
• References
• Index