The Foundations of Teaching for Learning programme is for anyone who is teaching, or who would like to teach, in any subject and any context - be it at school, at home or in the workplace. With dynamic lessons taught by established and respected professionals from across the Commonwealth, this eight course programme will see you develop and strengthen your skills in teaching, professionalism, assessment, and more. As you carry on through the programme, you will find yourself strengthening not only your skills, but your connection with colleagues across the globe. A professional development opportunity not to be missed. How we teach has its foundation in how we were taught and how we learned. This course provides an opportunity for you to reflect on your personal and professional development as a teacher. Through reflection and portfolio development you will enhance your knowledge and understanding of how to promote learning. Enhance your course by joining the Commonwealth teaching community on our website, Facebook and Twitter.
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Foundations of Teaching for Learning: Being a Teacher
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Myself and My Learning
The second week of this course looks at teachers’ sense of identity, and the differing reasons and motivations people have for becoming a teacher. We ask you to consider the influences on you and particularly the people who may have played a part in your decision to join the profession. You will reflect on the nature of transactions in the classroom and the differing ways in which students respond to how teachers address them. The fourth lecture draws on educational theorist Jacob Kounin’s key strategies that expert teachers to manage classrooms effectively.
Rencontrer les enseignants
Professor Dennis FrancisDean of Education
University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
Professor John MacBeathProfessor Emeritus
University of Cambridge, UK
[MUSIC]
Hello, my name is Tony Townsend
And I'm helping professor Dennis Francis,
and professor John MacBeath
with course two of the Cousera program.
We decided that every couple of weeks it might be useful for you if we had
a conversation with the professors, and asked them
the same sets of questions that we're asking you.
So, today at the end of the first two weeks of the course, we're going to ask the
professors a couple of questions. The first question is, what are the things
that make a teacher effective?
>>Yeah, that's interesting, Dennis, when we think about the different
countries that we come from and the dialogue we've had about teaching
across the boundaries from south to north and east to west, and so on.
And the big question is, do we think, do
you think that we can have a set of criteria
that will travel, no matter what the context is?
Whether it is in parts of Soweto, whether it's in
the highlands of Scotland or whether it's in China or Nauru,
or anywhere else.
And I think there's been a big, big search over the years
by researchers to try and see can
we establish a set of key common characteristics
that make teachers effective, and of course, there
is now a mass of literature on that.
And then, in this course that's one of the things that we've looked
at and I think I would always want to have those
there for people to look at and for people to be able to think:
Does that apply to me in my context?
Will that make me a better teacher? Will that make me more effective?
And, if so, who do I need to speak to?
Who do I need to look at or talk to or talk with,
so that I can become more effective,
and understand the criteria by which other people
may judge my effectiveness? And that may be my students.
>> I think in the course
we've listed characteristics of what an effective teacher would be.
We've also looked at research in different contexts,
for example,
respondants talking about what are good teachers and
what are bad teachers. And I think the question that
needs to drive all of this is, what learner is it that we want
that will drive an effective teacher? So, is the learner that we
want a learner that is able to problem solve and has a
knowledge that pays attention to not only the
intellectual part of it, but about the social
part of it? About what it means to be, a decent human.
What does it mean to be building a society that's inclusive for everyone?
Or perhaps it could also mean about certain skills that
contribute to a country's vision for what they would like to have,
so, if a country would like to have more people that are engineers,
or doctors, or social scientists.
So, effectivity will be determined by a number of variables,
about what kind of learner
that you want to have at the end.
>> Well, I think that's at the core of this, at the end
of the day, what kind of learner and learning are you trying to promote?
And as you've said, in that range of different contexts, what
kind of learning do you want to promote in your classroom?
But you've broadened that out to say in the community.
the country, and thinking about the future.
So an effective teacher would be defined by that
whole range of things which are, if you like, outcomes.
>> Our second question for the first 2 weeks is,
what have you learned about yourself by becoming a teacher?
>> Teaching is a process of learning about yourself.
That terrible self-discovery - am I really a bit of a charlatan?
That self-reflection about sometimes I have really been quite pompous here,
and I'm being the main man in the classroom,
and I'm discovering the need for more modesty or being bit more
self-effacing, or instead of putting the teacher at the center all the time,
me, as a teacher, putting
the learner at the center.
I think that's one of the things we've discussed a lot
Dennis, isn't it?
And certainly, I know that's your experience too.
>> Yes. For me, I suppose what I've learnt about myself,
probably personally and professionally is letting go. Is letting
go, leaving teacher education, leaving University and coming into a classroom,
I think 20 years ago, 25 years ago when I started
to teach and I think this whole notion
of control and be in charge were so important,
and as I grew as teacher, professionally and personally,
the realization that I needed to let things go
and let my teaching become more learner centered.
And that's been for me the biggest learning for
myself is how to let go and let the teaching be about my learners.
Let the focus be on my learners.
So, how do I make
them the centre? Shift the control from myself,
that is, the staging of the stage
to my learners, or what Boal speaks
about - how do you make your spectators your spec-actors?
How do you make them the protagonists or the agents of knowledge construction?
My learning has been how to let that go and let my learners feel that they
are the agents in the knowledge construction.
>> It's a scary thing, when I think if I was to advise teachers to just let go.
That's something you have to learn and you
have to have a huge amount self-confidence,
and I would never say to a beginning teacher, "Let go"
because thereby lies disaster, doesn't it?
I'm trying to remember the name of the theorist who wrote a
lot about this great thread of anxiety that runs through teacher's lives,
of discipline, keeping in control,
because the minute you let go - and it was the first
advice to me from my head of department, "Never, never let it go Mr. MacBeath".
>> But that's taken me 25 years to find it, and that's been my learning process.
>> Our third question is, why do we need to have a philosophy of teaching?
>> A philosophy of teaching, that sounds so grand doesn't it?
Do you have a philosophy of teaching? Well, of course you do.
We all have a philosophy of teaching, and
we often don't express it that way and some people
are a little frightened if you said to a teacher,
"What's your philosophy?"
You know, they might shrink back a bit and
say, "Oh, I've never done philosophy. I don't know anything about philosophy."
But of course you do, of course you think about your
teaching, of course you reflect, of course you draw on theories,
sometimes we call it implicit theories, and sometimes they're quite
explicit that you read more and you think more, that you talk to your colleagues
more, and you develop your own way of being, your own way of thinking,
your own way of acting, and that is your philosophy.
>> It is complex, but we all do have a philosophy of teaching.
We may not be able to name it explicitly, but we all carry one.
And I suppose having a philosophy of
teaching for myself has been quite organic because it has changed as well.
What my philosophy
of teaching was many years ago to what it is
now is very different and that's gone through a process
of change as well. But even though in the course we used words like epistemology
and axiology, I guess we do need to ask, what is the knowledges that we
want our learners to know?
What are the values that we want our learners to have? And so, I think those
are useful questions to ask, the deeper questions - about what is education?
Why do you teach?
What do we want our learners to know?
>> You might ask your students, "What is your philosophy?
What's your philosophy of learning and teaching?"
An interesting item in the UK,
there are courses for five years olds on philosophy,
and of course, five year olds are fantastic philosophers.
My grandchild at the age of four,
he philosophises all the time about reality and life and why
we are and why we ask questions and the why why why why why questions?
So, philosophy for five years olds just draws on those why questions -
why, why, why?
- and it builds on that innate curiosity and questioning that
children have until we knock it out of them, of course.
>> I suppose, importantly as well, by asking those deeper questions it gets us
to reflect on what we do and to think more deeply on what we do.
>> Our final question this week for Dennis and John is, what
sort of advice do you have for students when they're developing a portfolio?
>> I suppose when constructing the portfolio,
I would think about what is my philosophy of teaching,
And it might just be a one line or a two liner.
Perhaps you may want to write about how do I teach,
and the philosophy of teaching could be very much about
creating a justification for how you teach. To asking a couple of questions,
why do I teach in that way? And using that as maybe
a start to asking more questions.
And what those could be are, what is my conception of teaching.
How do I teach them?
And why do I teach them that way?
You could maybe find that there are other questions that may come to you.
What are the values that I would like my learners to learn?
Why do I teach in this particular way?
And what is the knowledges that I'd like my learners to learn?
And I suppose by starting off with just
three questions, I generate more questions.
But these questions don't have to be answered today.
They're a life-long process, as I said your philosophy of
teaching would change.
And perhaps maybe every semester, one could ask these questions
about my teaching.
>> Now, the purpose of the portfolio really isn't for anyone else
to judge you, but it's for yourself as a form of
reflection on what you're doing
and the questions that you're asking about your teaching,
and about yourself, and about the learners in your classroom,
and about the whole range of different ways in which the course
that you're doing, the Coursera course, is actually helping you
to be able to confront some of the things that you've thought.
You know, one of the things we've said repeatedly in this course was,
"I used to think, but now I think..."
and that is kind of at the heart of the whole portfolio.
[MUSIC]
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