Day two of my PGCE course (day one of actual coursework) and already I feel assured I'm in the right place. My training provider seems to be focused on the very same things that are important to me.
For my interview, I had to speak about a current issue facing primary education in the UK. Most of the news stories at the time were about secondary level education so I took the approach of talking about a problem I'd observed in schools: the dissonance between what a lot of teachers would like to be doing/what current educational research suggests (child-centred, interactive, and creative/play-based learning) and the results and procedures expected of them by various authorities (national exams, Ofsted, LEAs, school policies, etc). I said it would help if training providers offered guidance on how to reconcile the two. Thinking this was perhaps a rather unorthodox suggestion, I was amazed when this came up in class today. Already. It's practically a Cinderella story.
Today was all about identity in various forms and in different contexts; personal identity, student identity, student teacher identity, and transitional identity (the identity we're aiming for as future teachers). We talked about how they all interact, where the tensions and similarities lie, and about how it's important to be reflective because who we are will affect how we perceive and react to different situations. We also talked about how student teachers tend to think of their personal skills and attributes as being the most important characteristics for becoming a good teacher, when actually we need to be thinking about job-based skills as well.
I like that this course is already challenging us to think, reflect, share, and engage with one another. A couple of people commented that they're not used to reflecting about themselves because their degrees were very academic and focused on analysing other people's work. I'm sure there will be elements of that too, but they seem very keen that we all create our own learning journeys (I hope you like cheese), and that we take the research on board in a very personal way. Which is good. Because that's exactly how I like to roll.
For my interview, I had to speak about a current issue facing primary education in the UK. Most of the news stories at the time were about secondary level education so I took the approach of talking about a problem I'd observed in schools: the dissonance between what a lot of teachers would like to be doing/what current educational research suggests (child-centred, interactive, and creative/play-based learning) and the results and procedures expected of them by various authorities (national exams, Ofsted, LEAs, school policies, etc). I said it would help if training providers offered guidance on how to reconcile the two. Thinking this was perhaps a rather unorthodox suggestion, I was amazed when this came up in class today. Already. It's practically a Cinderella story.
Today was all about identity in various forms and in different contexts; personal identity, student identity, student teacher identity, and transitional identity (the identity we're aiming for as future teachers). We talked about how they all interact, where the tensions and similarities lie, and about how it's important to be reflective because who we are will affect how we perceive and react to different situations. We also talked about how student teachers tend to think of their personal skills and attributes as being the most important characteristics for becoming a good teacher, when actually we need to be thinking about job-based skills as well.
I like that this course is already challenging us to think, reflect, share, and engage with one another. A couple of people commented that they're not used to reflecting about themselves because their degrees were very academic and focused on analysing other people's work. I'm sure there will be elements of that too, but they seem very keen that we all create our own learning journeys (I hope you like cheese), and that we take the research on board in a very personal way. Which is good. Because that's exactly how I like to roll.
