Category Archives: 2.2 Education Systems & Prof. Responsibilities

Not just a warm up…

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I was really excited for our P.E. input as anyone who knows me knows I enjoy exercising and playing sports. I think we were all a bit nervous as we weren’t sure what was going to be involved in terms of efforts of exertion however I think wilovepee knew Will wouldn’t have us running laps for the whole hour. I was surprised the find out the aims of a warm up that I had not considered before in a P.E class. For our warm up Will gave us a series of simple instructions to follow. He asked us what the intention of this and most of our answers were as you would expect such as increase heart rate and preparing the body. Will then explained his intentions were not only of that mentioned but to also identify areas such as:

  • Physical ability
  • Ability following instructions
  • Potential bullying
  • Competitiveness
  • Motivation

The simple instruction that were given for us to follow were also allowing Will to assess who is or isn’t physically able to do some movement. If a child cannot bend touch toesdown to touch their toes or they aren’t co-ordinated they may need further help in certain areas. Another of the instructions was to stop jogging and sprint in the opposite direction – this was so assess spacial awareness.

 

The next part of our warm up was to jog round the hall and when will shouted “freeze”, he would show the number of fingers of how many people to get in to groups. What he was doing here was to see if we could follow non-verbal instruction but also identifying possibilities of bullying e.g. do the same people always go in a group and are some people always left out. By doing this when it comes to grouping for further drills or activities the teacher can work out ways to put people in different groups. I am guilty of saying in school we did try to outsmart our teachers by not all lining up in a row to try to be grouped together.

Next in partners we took turns to dribble a ball, however there were only one or two full sized basketballs. What Will was showing us here is that the resources available to us may not match up with our lesson plans so we should checking to see what is available before planning.

I did come across some interesting information while researching for this blog post and came across this report. sportscotland and Education Scotland invested £5.8m to support local authorities in providing two hours for primary and two period for secondary school of quality physical education per week. This report details how some local authorities spent this money including buying resources, sports equipment and inclusion training for teachers to fully include children with additional support needs. From this hopefully the schools we work in will have benefited from this investment and resources won’t be an issue.

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Most importantly from this input I learned that P.E isn’t about doing a gym class for two hours per week and that’s it. It provides learners with the opportunity to build and improve physical fitness but also build upon interpersonal skills from working in groups. It allows for children to take on leadership roles and demonstrate fair play.

What, why, how – the power of enquiry

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An enquiring practitioner is responsible for maintaining and enhancing professional competency for pedagogical development. It means going beyond the role of reflecting and conducting practice based research for a deeper insight to improve practice.

Professor John Hattie said “The biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching”.

Teaching in Scotland has been reconceptualised vastly within policy, legislation and what it means to be a teacher; the benefits of which are tangible in practitioner enquiry.  This quote places huge emphasis on the fact that practitioner enquiry should always be carried out in mind of improving practice for the benefit of the children being taught.  An enquiring practitioner creates space to review and engage in reflective practice to help gain an enhanced understanding of not only their own teaching but when working collaboratively.  Now, there is more emphasis about understanding incentives to drive teachers, colleagues and children forward to make a difference.

It’s easy to be critical of others however to challenge yourself takes confidence.  You wouldn’t do the things the way you do if you didn’t feel it was suitable.  What we, as students, need to understand that the fundamental principles of practitioner enquiry is not to root out weaknesses but to refine existing ideas on what it means to be a good teacher.

As first year students there is already huge importance on the Standard for Provisional and Full Registration in preparation for autonomous life-long learning.  Practitioner enquiry impacts on us all as students as we need to always have higher expectations of ourselves, become critically adaptive in how to improve our own learning and utilise this is practice.  Ultimately, the result of practitioner enquiry is to better meet the needs of children and improve achievement.

Behaviour – Operant Conditioning

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Discipline is important for effective learning to place and after today’s lecture I felt I’d like to know more of what it can mean to me as a practitioner. Operant conditioning is a learning process in which behavioural responses are based on consequences.  There are two types of operant conditioning that can be used to modify behaviour: reinforcements are used positively and negatively to increase behaviour and punishments are used positively and negatively to decrease behaviour.

From early in a child’s life they recognise their behaviour is instrumental to an outcome. Positive reinforcement comes in many forms and I believe is the most effective is verbal praise: “Well done Hannah, you are sitting beautifully”.  Undoubtedly children strive to please and will take great pleasure in being positively rewarded, which is likely to continue and other children are likely to emulate this exemplary behaviour.

In today’s lecture, I was slightly confused with the terms negative reinforcement and punishment. I understood that negative reinforcement was to increase desired behaviour however explaining this with terms such as aversive stimulus was confusing. After doing some reading, my understanding of negative reinforcement is that in order to increase desired behaviour aversive (unpleasant event) stimulus must be discouraged or eliminated e.g. removing a negative distraction to improve concentration. Positive punishment is when you present an aversive stimulus to decrease behaviour e.g. a child is reprimanded for behaving in an adverse way. Negative punishment is taking away a desired item after behaviour occurs in order to decrease future responses. As a result, in theory, children will omit behaviour that has an effect on the environment around them.  Carrie mentioned punishment for undesirable behaviour can lead to other aversive behaviours so I feel consistently using, but not overusing positive reinforcements, should reduce the need to use punishments.

It is evident this theory is built on limited range of phenomena as it doesn’t take account of complexities such as meaning, understanding or memory. It doesn’t explain why behaviour doesn’t decrease and that some children are wise to operant conditioning, in the sense that they will behave in a certain way to get what they want then revert back to their original behaviour.

Balancing personal and professional presence on social media

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What challenges/opportunities may you be faced with when marrying the personal vs professional presence on social media?

The main challenge is finding a balance on social media presence between my personal and professional life. I have been debating whether I should use separate accounts for social media. The platforms that I use frequently, I rarely post comments or information and use it more as a photo sharing tool. I confess that I am more of a social media ‘ghost’ who floats around observing what people are doing but not acknowledging what they are doing! I actually think that is called Facebook stalking! All of my settings are private so that only my friends can see what I post and I will not be tagged in something until I accept it. This allows me to monitor what I do and don’t want the outside world to see. The more you share the more vulnerable you are. Someone, no matter what you say, what you do, what picture you post, will scrutinise you. We need to be careful how we present ourselves to the outside world. So based on this I don’t see fit to separate my personal and professional social media accounts.

The GTCS has specific guidelines regarding appropriate use of social media. Social media is a valuable tool but as perspective teachers, we should never use it to put ourselves at a disadvantage. Timing on social media is everything. Posting something without considerable thought can lead to massive implications that are very easily preventable. As prospective teachers, not only are we representing ourselves but all teachers. How many times have you stereotyped a profession based on one person? Once a teacher has compromised their professional integrity, their reputation, as well as the school they work in, may forever be remembered.

How are the challenges/opportunities afforded by social media framed? How will you frame things – positive of deficit viewpoint?

I will frame social media in a positive way in my classroom. The story Derek shared with us about his daughter was a real eye opener. The innocence of children unfortunately is getting shorter and shorter and I am troubled that children are exposed to things at such a young age. However, the sites and resources that are available for teachers are brilliant and I think we need to utilise and embrace them. The GTCS website encourages social media as a way to deliver the curriculum in innovative and exciting ways. In order to do with we first need to use websites such as NCPCC and Share Aware to demonstrate safety in the online world; proactively teaching children how to use it positively and safely.