Teaching, Tutoring and Training in the Lifelong Learning Sector

Susan Wallace

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780857250681
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Erwachsenenbildung

This core text provides comprehensive support for pre-service and in-service trainee teachers in the Lifelong Learning Sector covering all they need to know to achieve QTLS status. Supporting trainees through all stages of their professional development, the text takes the reader through the theoretical background underpinning teaching and learning and offers practical guidance on day-to-day challenges. This fourth edition has been fully revised and updated and includes a new chapter on teaching practice with notes on observation and lesson planning. New information on behaviour management has been added to support trainees in an aspect of teaching that many find challenging.

1
The reflective practitioner

The objectives of this chapter

This chapter is designed to address the areas of essential knowledge, skills and values which will help you to reflect upon your professional practice and use what you learn from this to enhance your performance as a teacher. It links closely to the Professional Standards for QTLS, particularly in helping you to:

• evaluate the impact of your own teaching skills on learner performance and identify ways in which you could improve them (AS4; AK4.2; AP4);
• evaluate the impact of your own practice on promoting equality, diversity and inclusive learning (AP3.1; AS3);
• evaluate the effectiveness of your own communication skills (AK5.1; AP5.1);
• reflect upon and evaluate your own contribution to organisational processes such as quality assessment (AK7.2; AP7.2);
• reflect upon and evaluate the effectiveness of your lesson planning (DK3.1; DP3.1; DK3.2; DP3.2);
• reflect upon the uses you make of assessment and feedback in order to improve your own performance (EP4.2; EK4.2).

Introduction

In this first chapter we shall look at ways in which we can reflect upon and learn from our professional practice in order to further develop the skills and knowledge we need to support our learners. We shall look at the advanges of keeping a reflective journal, and how reflection on our practice links to action research and to evaluation.

Why keep a journal?

Socrates claimed that, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’. All very well for Socrates, you might think. Perhaps he had more time on his hands than a teacher. But the principle is an important one, particularly when we are engaged in teaching and learning. If we don’t examine our experiences and reflect on them in a constructive way, how will we learn from our successes and our mistakes? This is why reflective practice is one of the core values informing the QTLS Standards. When our working lives are crowded with incidents and we are constantly hurrying on to the next class, the next meeting, the next project, our focus is usually on planning (or worrying about) what’s happening next. This gives us little opportunity or inclination to examine, in any constructive way, what has just passed. During the morning you may have prepared and taught a lesson which succeeded in every way: you enjoyed it, the students enjoyed it and they achieved the required learning outcomes. Or you may be trying to put behind you one of those lessons which – although it was with a similar group of students – felt like a disaster: mobile phones ringing, students coming in late, the big lad with the nasty sense of humour making sure no one stays on task for long. How do you improve the chances of reproducing more lessons like the first and take measures to avoid more going the way of the second?

This is where keeping a reflective journal can help. You ask yourself: what were the factors that made that first lesson a success? Was it simply that the students were in a positive mood? If so, how could I recreate that? If not, was it something I did that I could do again? And if I had that second lesson to teach again (perish the thought!), is there anything I could do differently – something I did in the first lesson – in order to keep the students more focused on achieving the learning outcomes?

It isn’t for nothing that the QTLS Standards place particular emphasis on reflective practice. As professionals in the field of teaching and learning, we can’t improve our practice as teachers unless we set ourselves constantly to learn from it. The reflective journal will help us to do this.

What’s the difference between a log, a diary and a reflective journal?

A log is usually a factual record of events. A ship’s log, for instance, will give a brief day-by-day account of position, weather, speed and heading, with an occasional mention of significant events: another ship sighted or the ship’s cat dies. If you were to keep this sort of factual account of your activities it wouldn’t qualify as ‘reflection’. It would describe the framework of your day, perhaps, but provide no analysis of your experiences and no reminder to yourself of what you think about them and what you might have learnt from them. Even Captain Kirk, whose starship’s log is less terse and infinitely more eventful than most, gives only an account of events. His moments of introspection are rare. His log would be of little use to him as evidence of meeting the QTLS Standards of professional reflective practice.

A diary, on the other hand, can serve many purposes. At one extreme it may be used as an outlet for creative writing; at another it may simply be used to record appointments. It may be used to capture or express powerful emotions, or – as in the case of my cousin, whose diary entry for one week read: ‘Went to Egypt. Saw pyramids’ – it may not.

A reflective journal may be used for all these purposes – to log events, to describe circumstances, to vent feelings – but it will also, and primarily, be used to record and reflect upon incidents and experiences from which something useful can be learnt that will help us to develop and enhance our professional practice.

So what does being ‘reflective’ really mean?

The best way to explore this question is to look at some extracts from journals of teachers in the Lifelong Learning sector.

TASK

• Read the three following extracts taken from teachers’ journals.
• Identify those passages you would describe as reflective and those you judge to be simply descriptive.
• Decide which of these teachers is providing evidence he or she is learning from his or her professional practice.
• Further, specific questions and tasks follow each extract. All the answers will be discussed after the final journal entry.

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Extract one

This is from the journal of a full-time learner on a PGCE FE course.

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Monday 11 November

My mentor said this morning’s lesson was okay. The content was good and that all I need to do is to slow down a bit when I’m talking – and I agree with that.

I’m not sure how nervous I looked, but I felt like the students would be taking more notice of my signs of nervousness than of anything I was saying. I felt I’d planned the content okay, but I’m not sure I made myself understood very well. I did talk too fast, and I didn’t put things in a very good order. I need to be surer about what I want to say. And I need to relax a bit instead of trying to drag the lesson along.

I found myself talking to the whiteboard a lot, but then maybe I wouldn’t do this if the overheads worked better. I ought to write them in permanent marker next time – or get them typed and photocopied on to the transparency. But I did feel that I got as much response to my questions as [my mentor] usually does. Very difficult to tell whether they’re listening, though, or whether they couldn’t care less. I suppose at the end of the day there’s nothing I can do to make them pay attention or write things down. Next time I might allow more time for them to ask questions.

Tuesday 12 November

I spent hours and hours getting my head round some of the theory last night ready for today’s lesson. And I kept thinking, how am I going to be a teacher if I’ve got to teach the students to get their head round this and I can’t even do that myself? But it’s strange really because [my mentor] told me that today’s lesson is the best one I’ve done so far. And then I made the connection. Because by having to spend so much time struggling to learn something, I ended up in a better position to teach it because I knew the bits that caused difficulty, and I wouldn’t assume any prior knowledge, so I wouldn’t leave anything out. Actually, in terms of planning, I’d thought it would take a lot longer to teach this than it did, and I had time at the end of the lesson to go over it and ask questions.

All in all I think it was a success, and I feel really good about it. This is what I’ve heard some of the others describing – that you leave the lesson feeling a real buzz.

Wednesday 13 November

This is really strange. Taught the same thing to the other parallel group and it felt totally different. Yesterday’s group are much more up for discussion, and were happy to take notes from the overheads, even though it took a long time. Today’s group don’t show the slightest interest in involving themselves in the lesson and are really slow and reluctant about taking notes from the OHP. Moaned every time a new one went up. The girl who usually gives me grief was worse than usual – never stopped – sighing and putting her head in her hands and all that sort of thing. But I’ve found that the best way to deal with this is to ignore her. She wants attention, I think, and maybe she’ll just get bored and give up trying if I don’t give her any. She’s not malicious, really, so I don’t think ignoring her would make it escalate.

But it’s really weird how yesterday’s group can focus and today’s can’t, even though it’s the same lesson done in the same way.

Thursday 14 November

I’m going to have to be a bit more assertive. I’m going to have to tell [the reluctant group] to do things, rather than ask nicely, otherwise they’re going to keep taking advantage. I think they need to know where the boundaries are and I ought to tell them outright, rather than leaving it to them to test them all the time. They’re too used to being given leeway. I’m not sure I’m skilled or confident enough yet, though, to take a differe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The reflective practitioner
• 2 Communication, tutoring and teamwork
• 3 Recognising diversity and supporting equality
• 4 Lifelong Learning: the organisational, local and national context
• 5 Professionalism and scholarship 1: values and ethics
• 6 Professionalism and scholarship 2: being a subject specialist
• 7 Theories of learning
• 8 Planning for learning 1: planning your lessons
• 9 Planning for learning 2: evaluation and resources
• 10 Learning and teaching 1: methods and styles of teaching
• 11 Learning and teaching 2: extending your range
• 12 Assessment for learning 1: assessing needs; supporting access and progression
• 13 Assessment for learning 2: assessing learner achievement
• 14 Managing behaviour and motivating learners
• 15 Learning and teaching 14–16
• 16 Professionalism and scholarship 3: reading critically and reflectively
• 17 Achieving your teaching qualification in the Lifelong Learning sector
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Index