Category Archives: 1 Prof. Values & Personal Commitment

A Victorian for a Day

“Make sure you remember to put that scarf on!” shouted my mum as I left her to start the walk into the school playground, “You won’t look like a Victorian if you don’t put it around you like a shawl!”. Months of hard work and dedication had led to this day, the day where we finally got to showcase all of our work on the Victorians to our parents and carers. My whole family was involved by this stage – my gran had sown an outfit together for me, my mum had taken time off work to come and see our presentation, my dad had raided the garage to find parts for the Victorian house we made as a group – so there was a lot riding on this to go well. I could not wait to showcase all of our hard work we had put into creating our props and speech for the presentation – our Victorian house we made from a show box, our letters written from the perspective of a Victorian man or lady, our poster of all the inventors we had learnt about from the era, and the rest. We had even transformed the classroom into a class from the Victorian times so you were transported into the era as soon as you walked through the door – it was so realistic!

I remember this day in Primary 7 so vividly as the sharing of our learning to parents and carers was made into such a big deal that it was difficult not to get excited about it. I recall being so happy to be able to share my learning with my family that it made me more motivated to learn as much as I could in the lead up to the shared afternoon.

My teacher was super enthusiastic about the topic and really made it come to life through the stories she told us, the case studies she shared and the transforming of the classroom. We even had to sit in rows one day and call our teacher ‘Miss’ – it felt as if I had been transported back in time as everyone played their part in creating the context. I even recall our Head Teacher getting involved and pretending to be really really strict! The context of the learning was so engaging and stimulating that it became something that I looked forward to learning about everyday.

My teacher would also present problems to us from different characters or real life people we had been learning about such as Ebenezer Scrooge. One of the challenges I recall was to create a timeline of events during Queen Victoria’s reign. Before we did this, we decided as a class that it would be best to create timelines of our own lives first so that we understood how to apply it to a context such as the Victorians. Because the teacher let us lead the learning during most of the topic, it felt as if we had responsibility over what we were learning, thus making it more relevant and engaging for us as a class. She was also extremely flexible in letting us direct the learning as she would encourage the class to investigate questions they had and supported them in doing so.

Overall, I feel that this experience was so memorable for me as it gave me the opportunity to share and develop my knowledge and understanding with my family, direct the learning taking place, and be fully emerged in the learning through the engaging context that my teacher created.

Maths IS important!

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“Is maths important?” my lecturer asked during a recent Discovering Mathematics workshop. My exam driven former self would have explicitly answered no to this question, as I had all sorts of weird and wonderful equations and rules drilled into my head at this point – none of which I have actually implemented within my everyday life, but hey! At least I passed my exam…

As I am no longer in this environment, and have begun my journey back into the
Primary School setting, I have began to re-establish the view that maths IS important. But what caused my shift in opinion on the importance of maths when I reached High School?

I believe that in Primary School we are taught in such a way that allows us to have a conceptual understanding (the HOW and WHY) of the area we are learning, formally known as relative understanding (Skemp, 1989). Whereas in High School, my experience was being taught the ‘HOW’ of a branch of mathematics – known as a procedural or instrumental understanding(Skemp, 1989). Upon asking my Higher maths teacher why we needed to know the likes of the quadratic formula, the cosine rules and how to differentiate an equation, he replied “you don’t – you just need to know HOW to do it”. The fact that my own maths teacher was teaching us based on instrumental understanding may suggest that either; he underestimated the power of understanding the WHY, or he was not required to teach it, so he simply didn’t. As long as we managed to get the answers right, even if we did not understand why it was right, he would say we were doing a good job and were heading on route to pass the exam.

Not knowing the WHY behind the mathematics I was being taught made it seem irrelevant and useless to me, hence why I refused to see its importance at the time. Ma (2010) suggests that having a profound (or relative) understanding of mathematics enables learners to see the ‘interconnectedness’ between concepts, thus they are able to apply their knowledge to a wider range of scenarios than having an instrumental understanding alone. His theory dismisses teaching towards an procedural understanding (like my teacher did), as it restricts the wider connections an individual can make between what they are learning and other areas of the curriculum, and also in their everyday life (depending on the nature of the topic being explored).

My belief that High Schools are teaching towards the objective of passing exams is strengthened by the data released by the Scottish Government (2012), as it shows the percentage of pupils performing very well at the level they are working at in maths decreases by 18% from Primary 6 to S2 (see graph below). This statistic, although not surprising to me, is a shocking reminder that the strategies for teaching maths in High Schools is not as effective as those demonstrated within Primary School.

Overall, I believe that mathematics is an important aspect of every child’s education. Although, I believe that its importance is lost throughout High School due to a lack of relative understanding of the concepts that students are being taught, meaning they are less likely to recognise links between concepts and overcome difficulties they encounter within maths problems (Skemp, 1989). This means that they are more likely to adopt a negative attitude to learning maths in the classroom. By giving our children space to be creative (see previous post titled ‘Maths can be… creative?’) and delve deeper into their understanding of different mathematical concepts, we are more likely to develop their awareness of the transferable nature of the skills that can be applied to different areas of maths and other wider connections. This leads to the development of ‘interconnectedness’ that Ma (2010) suggests is critical to having a profound understanding of mathematics, and thus recognising its importance in everyday life.

References

Ma, L (2010) Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics. Oxon: Routledge.

Scottish Government (2012) Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy 2011 (Numeracy). Available online at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/03/5285/downloads#res390565 [Accessed 3 October 2018].

Skemp, R. R. (1989) Mathematics in the Primary School. London: Routledge.

Critical Reflection on Semester 1

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Semester 1 was a whole new learning curve for me, especially working with other prospective students in the Social Work and Community Learning and Development courses for the ‘Working Together’ module.

Myself and seven others from the 3 professions came together to produce a presentation based on our visit to a Social Work agency and how well we thought we worked together as a group throughout the module. I was a bit timid to begin with in the group. I think this was because I came straight from school to University where I sat exams which assessed me purely on my own capabilities. This put me at a disadvantage when it came to collaborating within my group as it felt unusual to me to be challenged on my views as I had never really experienced this before, whereas others in my group had much more experience of working in a collaborative environment.

After some time in the group, I quickly began to contribute more to discussions as I saw the benefits of bringing everyone’s views together but also challenging them. I learnt to listen and take into consideration the views of others in my group and use it to develop my own views. This allowed us to come to varied and diverse answers and conclusions to different topics.

Moving forward, I will use this experience to engage with professions outside of the teaching community when on my Professional Practice, and to share my professional learning and development with colleagues as directed by section 3.4.2 of the Standards for Provisional Registration (The General Teaching Council for Scotland, 2012).

References:

The General Teaching Council for Scotland (2012). The Standards for Registration: mandatory requirements for Registration with the General Teaching Council for Scotland. Available at: http://www.gtcs.org.uk/web/FILES/the-standards/standards-for-registration-1212.pdf (Accessed: 19 January 2018).

A Poor View on Society

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After a recent lecture on Socio-Political Perspectives on Poverty, I realised how wrong I was about the ‘type’ of people who find themselves in the ‘lower class’ bracket of society.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32812601

Before going to the lecture, I was asked to write down my views on those who experience poverty; their characteristics, lifestyle, attitude to life etc. I found myself writing words such as ‘scrounger’, ‘homeless’, ‘stealing’, ‘unintellectual’ and the list went on. As I sat up from writing these words, I shocked myself about how easily these demeaning and negative attributes had come from the tip of my pen. I began to feel ashamed as I had always considered myself an open-minded person, able to form my own opinions, and thoughts about society after considering the perspectives of those within it. How had I come to such a harsh conclusion? Why did these terms appear on the paper without any second thought? Was this really my view of potentially the most vulnerable members of our society?

After considering my approach to the task for a while, I soon realised that actually, these were NOT my own views; these were my learned views. But what do I mean by ‘learned views’? I believe that another source has had such prominent views about poorer members of the community that I have unconsciously accepted or abided by these generalisations and stereotypes that they outwardly portray on a daily basis. But what is this incredibly influential source that has dominated my own personal thoughts and beliefs I hear you ask. It is something that is present even when I do not want to look at it, something that is alert even when I am not, something that preys on the weakest and most vulnerable members of society, and that something is… the media.

The media is notorious for producing ridiculous, one-sided headlines which primarily focus on people who ‘steal’ benefits which they are not entitled to, or are too lazy to go out and find ‘real jobs’. Headlines such as ‘Is Britain a nation of lazy scroungers?’ (2013)and ‘Mother-of-five who pockets £18,000 a year in benefits says she needs MORE handouts because she can’t afford to buy school uniforms for her children (but still manages to spend £20 a week on cigarettes)’ (2016) further the stereotypical view which I adopted in the task around people in poverty, devaluing those who are actually in need and are trying their best to provide for their family.

One particular video which I came across during my research into poverty was ‘I live in real poverty, and it’s not what you think’ in which Kathleen Kerridge illustrates the real life difficulties faced by her and her family in our modern day society.

Kathleen demonstrates how easily it is to fall into poverty without any warning. She challenges people like me who have followed the media’s views and have been coerced into believing that it is their own fault that they are in this situation, that she was to blame. She goes on to explain how none of the events which led to her poverty-stricken status were caused by her actions; her heart attack, losing her job, mastectomy and a bankrupt landlord. I think that this shows that this could happen to any of us, at any time, as she was once in a financially stable position.

Another video which I found which shocked me was that focussing on Shelby’s Story, titled ‘Teenage poverty in the UK’.

I was totally shocked when Shelby revealed she was 17 due to her living AND providing for herself. Being 17 myself, I could NEVER imagine coming home from my work (which I get paid over the minimum wage for) to my home with 2 rooms, no cooker and no bed. It made me realise that anyone can be a victim of poverty – poverty does not discriminate against age, gender or race.

I sat down again after researching Poverty in the UK and wrote down my revised perspective on poverty after seeing and hearing what poverty means to those who experience it daily. ‘Misunderstood’, ‘ordinary’ ‘unfortunate’ and ‘hard working’ were a few that I came up with, what I should of come up with to begin with.

As I sit typing on my laptop that I got for my 14th birthday, in my University flat, with my family and my dog in my 4 bedroom home 40 minutes away, I start to wonder what I will have for my tea. This is not because my cupboards are bare, or because I cannot afford to buy another meal like Kathleen or Shelby, but because I bought too much food when moving into my flat… and this is when I realised what real poverty is.

Poverty isn’t being ‘too lazy’ to go out and get a job. Poverty isn’t people who have spent their live scrounging off of the benefit system. Poverty is ordinary people. Ordinary people who have to count their pennies to see whether they can afford their next meal. Ordinary people who have to sleep on a broken bed because they cannot afford to replace it. Poverty is REAL and it is EVERYWHERE, and it most certainly should not be defined by what we see in the media.

Racism and Discrimination: My View Before and After

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After receiving an input on race, ethnicity, patriarchy, discrimination and prejudice as part of the Values module, my understanding of the topic has significantly changed.

Before, I believed that was racism was becoming a ‘thing of the past’, which we had acknowledged as a society in order to see past the views of those less kind and stereotypical. However, I have come to realise (after interacting with the slides on the PowerPoint titled ‘Things have moved on haven’t they?’) how incredibly static racism still is in our modern day world. I was terribly shocked by the sheer quantity of case studies, events and news stories (included in the materials shared for student use) which all covered issues based on people committing acts of racism in the 21st century. This included the riots and protests witnessed in Charlottesville USA, where people were, and still are, openly allowed to demonstrate their racial views towards Jews and other ethnic minorities.

Also, I had always seen ethnic groups as being based upon your race, culture, religion or where you were born, for example, British, White, or Christian. I now understand that ethnicity is actually a ‘social phenomenon’ (Giddens, 2013) which is not based upon ascriptive characteristics, but evolutionary devices such as the prohibiting or intermarriage. This shows how easily people can misinterpret words or phrases which we use on a daily basis due to our lack of understanding on the topic.

One of the many statistics which showed how black people are still treated as lesser individuals is that black people are 3 TIMES more likely to be killed by Police than those who are white. I was absolutely appalled by this fact as it highlights how persistent racism is even today. It also shows that our legal systems and governments have failed to provide a duty of care to their black citizens.

Overall, I was seriously taken aback by how common these horrendous acts of racialization still are within our modern day society. I previously thought the government were doing enough to tackle these events, however, I now believe that they (especially America!) need to revise their strategies on tackling racism in order to make the world a safer place for everyone.

Social Hierarchy – Resource Allocation Task

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As part of the first Values Workshop, we were split into 5 groups, each of which received an envelope containing stationary items. The aim of the task was to produce a pack, using the resources in your envelope, for new MA1 students. This would be given to them at the start of their University journey.

My group, Group 1, opened our envelope to see that we had a huge amount of stationary and craft items to use in order to make our pack. We decided to make a ‘Student Starter Guide’. This included the following:

a name badge;
a personalised timetable;
a map of the main University buildings;
tips aimed at the education course;
a leaflet of all the different social events/aspects of University;
and a guide to finding your way about the Dalhousie Building.

Derek was extremely enthusiastic towards our group, encouraging us every step of the way – he even offered us biscuits! We thrived off his energy and support for what we were making and felt proud of ur creative abilities. He kept us motivated and engaged in the task by continually checking in on our progress and praising our designs.

When it came to presenting our pack, it came as a great shock to me and the rest of my group to find out that Derek’s praise and the resources given to each group were not shared out equally. It turned out that, actually, this was planned! Some groups had as little as a few post-it notes, a pen and a paper clip in their envelope, whilst my group sat there with piles upon piles of unused paper and other resources. The encouragement each group received from Derek also varied depending on how many resources you had; the more resources you were given, the more praise you received. This was demonstrated right through to the very end of presenting the finished packs, as Derek paid very little attention to Groups 4 and 5 even when they were giving their talks – he even went on his phone during Group 5’s presentation!

We then went on to discuss what this task was really about in relation to the Teaching Profession. The fact that my group did not notice that other groups received less than us illustrates that pupils who come from a wealthy/higher class background and have access to a huge number of resources to aid their learning tend to show a degree of ignorance towards those who are from a lesser background. Also, those who were in the groups which received less equipment did not go to other groups to ask for more. This suggests that those who are from a lower class family and do not have many resources/services available to them feel that they cannot go out and ask for them. It was as if those in Groups 4 and 5 thought that they were not as deserving of the resources as those in Groups 1 and 2, hence why we need to make our pupils aware that no matter what background they come from, they are all equal in the classroom.

As teachers, we need to recognise that not everyone will come to school well-equipped with the skills, tools and support system needed to do well in their educational journey. It is our job to discourage these inequalities amongst children by pushing them to do their best despite the fact that their personal circumstances or social background might be seen as an obstacle which could potentially hold them back.

Another interesting point which was made was the fact that favouring those in your classroom from a higher class background can lead to them excelling and achieving far more than those from a lower class family. This can lead to pupils from deprived areas seeing themselves as ‘less’ than everyone else, therefore, they become unmotivated as they aren’t receiving the encouragement they need to aid success. A member of Group 5 even commented that she “did not see the point” in presenting their finished work as Derek seemed so disengaged in what they had to show, thus highlighting that unevenly distributing praise can have a huge impact on pupils’ motivation.

Overall, I learnt a huge amount during this task and it has opened my mind about the daily struggles we face in erasing the social hierarchy which has been embedded into our system. I thoroughly enjoyed the task and look forward to our next workshop!