Tag Archives: Reflections

UKIP Education Policies

Before I start, I would like to make a few points. First, I am not attempting to write a scathing report on the UK Independence Party, nor am I even planning to demonstrate my opinion on any matter than education. Also, this is not an attempt to convince anyone to vote in a certain way, simply, it is my own reflections on the policies of the party, both positive and negative, and anyone is completely welcome to disagree with anything I say! I know that education is devolved to Scotland, so is unlikely to affect my education or my future career, but I do believe that my reflections are worth making.

I have copied some of the main points from UKIP’s manifesto from their website:

Ease teachers’ workloads by cutting down on assessments, data collection and appraisals
Scrap teachers’ performance-related pay
End sex education for primary school children
Bring back grammar schools and support a range of secondary schools including vocational, technical and specialist schools
Waive tuition fees for science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) subjects at university
Make First Aid training part of the national curriculum

“Ease teachers’ workloads by cutting down on assessments, data collection and appraisals”

I can see the point that they are trying to make, which is to reduce the bureaucracy and allow teachers to spend their time planning and teaching. However, I believe that assessments, data collection and appraisals can all be of value. For teachers, these things can be used to set targets and improve practice. I think that they key is in how individual schools and individual teachers use these things so that they are not aimless uses of time, but rather it is extremely meaningful. Assessments are not the be all and end all within education, but I can see that they can be beneficial if used correctly, so they should not be cut down. Ultimately, I can understand what this policy was attempting to do, but I cannot agree with it.

“Scrap teachers’ performance-related pay”

I am aware that we do not have performnce-related pay, but I think this point is worth consideration. Basically, it is saying teachers should not be paid based on their performance as teachers. A survey on the opinions of teachers in Wales about performance-related pay, it was found that “it would be problematic to isolate the performance of individual teachers and deleterious to collegiality and teamwork in schools” I agree with these points, I wonder how teacher would be assessed. Would it be based on attainment within their class? The problem with this is that children develop at different rates, so children who take longer to develop would bring a class average down. This could potentially result in a teachers trying to avoid having certain children in their class. I also wonder if teachers who are low on the pay scale would perhaps give up, and not put in as much effort. Of course, the counter-argument is that performance-related pay could be highly motivating to some teachers who would strive to be the best, but that begs the question: would they simply do it for the increased money, or would they do it because they loved it and they enhanced pay be a bonus? While I can understand this argument, I do not agree. I can see that performance-related pay could become a negative tool and therefore this policy is a sensible one.

“End sex education for primary school children”

This one speaks for itself, it means that many children will reach 12 years old with no understanding of sex education. I believe that it is essential that children know about sex and relationships, but also about their bodies. For me, the aim of sex education is to promote healthy habits in the future, not teaching children to do things that they are too young for.

“Bring back grammar schools and support a range of secondary schools including vocational, technical and specialist schools”

This is an interesting concept to consider. They are advocating the use of grammar schools, which are “the only state schools… that are allowed by law to select all their pupils on the grounds of high academic ability”. This means that children can be put on a completely different track based on whether they do well in the admissions test. To me, this is wrong as it limits the opportunities offered to children, and I think it could be detrimental to their confidence if they fail to gain entry. “The specialist schools programme is a UK government initiative that encourages secondary schools in England to specialise in certain areas of the curriculum in order to boost achievement.” I also have a problem with this, it is all very well to join a specialist school but I do not feel that it gives children enough opportunity to change their minds. They may want to be a dancer or performer when they are aged 11 or 12, and then decided they want something entirely different from their lives by the time they’re 16 By then it would be too late to change their minds.

“Waive tuition fees for science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) subjects at university”

This could seem like a positive move, but to me, I see strong bias in favour of people who are more academic who would be most likely to study a STEMM subject. This would mean any creative subject would require the payment of tuition fees, such as: Art, Music, English Literature or Performing Arts. These people on lower incomes may feel pushed to apply for STEMM subjects just because they would not have to pay for them and go on to struggle with the course content. This means that creative or arts subjects would only be accessible to those who could afford tuition fees, limiting the choices for those from lower income families

“Make First Aid training part of the national curriculum”

I do not see any problems with this policy. The number of people I know my own age who have no first aid skills is very high. St John’s Ambulance’s research says that two-thirds (59%) wouldn’t feel confident trying to save a life. This is a huge number of people with no skills in this area, and that does not account for the number of people with out-of-date skills. If every child had this as a mandatory part of their education it would allow them to build up a highly useful skill set which they will be able to use throughout their lives. Also, I believe that it may be something that children who struggle with academics may find they are good at and could be a means of building up confidence in some children. It goes without saying that any training would have to be age appropriate.

My final point comes as a result of a group activity. We had to get into groups and research a political party and I was in the UKIP group. Something that I became aware of was that some people did not even try to be impartial and talk about their party without also giving their opinion. While this was in a peer setting, as opposed to a teaching one, I have become aware that there will almost definitely come a point in our careers where we have to teach about the political parties. It will be essential at that time to be completely impartial. On 1PP1 last year, I taught a bit about politics around the time of the 2015 General Election. I had to be very careful, even not to agree with anything children said. This is something that I think will be very important to remember throughout our teaching careers.

http://www.ukip.org/ukip_manifesto_summary

http://www.tlrp.org/themes/seminar/gewirtz/papers/bibliography.pdf

http://www.ngsa.org.uk/faqs.php

http://www.serviceschools.co.uk/cms/specialist_schools_arts_drama_music_new/

http://www.sja.org.uk/sja/what-we-do/latest-news/news-archive/news-stories-from-2010/april/2-in-3-couldnt-save-a-life.aspx

To Comma Or Not to Comma? Or is it: To Comma, or Not to Comma? Let’s find out…

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Ordinarily, I would say that I am quite good in my grasp of English language, but I have an Achilles heel, in that I am rubbish with commas! I don’t know what it is, but for some reason I cannot get them right. I have identified it previously in my OLA as a weakness, but I have never made much of an effort to tackle the problem, until now that is!

I took to the internet and found a video on Youtube:

The video goes through the 3 main types of comma: listing commas, joining commas and bracketing commas. It explained what each is and how and when to use them.

Around 4 1/2 minutes in, you are asked to look at 4 sentences and pick the ones with incorrect use of commas. I originally thought there was a trick, as all looked correct to me. I think my problem is with the joining comma. I find that I use commas too often, and in place of other punctuation, such as full stops and semi-colons which would be more grammatically correct.

I also looked up a video about the Oxford comma. Which is a comma which comes after the word ‘and’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLMawsZ4vdo

The Oxford comma was something I had heard of, but not ever learned to use. The video explains that it is neither correct or incorrect and can avoid ambiguity. The problem is that a text will be consistent, either using it or not using it. I wonder if I have been using it when the OLA will not recognise it and mark it as wrong.

I looked through one of my essays to find an example of my own use of commas:

‘On placement I observed a classroom which utilised space effectively in this way, all small resources – pens, crayons and show-me boards – were kept in labelled trays at the front, meaning pupils knew exactly where to find them and where to return them, so the gathering of resources was kept to a minimum and did not affect learning and teaching time.’

This is all one sentence, and it is clear that it could be broken down and does not need anywhere near as many commas as I have used. This is a good example of what I do regularly and therefore what I need to teach myself out of. I am going to resit the OLA and try to improve the points I get specifically around the comma questions. I’ll update when I have done so…

The Fearful French Workshop

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Before I start, I feel I should point out that this post is about me, not the tutor leading the workshop or the other students that are part of it.

I went up to the room feeling normal, walked into the room and the tutor greeted us by saying “bonjour!” and I could feel myself begin to panic. I am not ‘bad’ at French, I got an A at Int 2, and I still remember quite a lot of what I was taught. The second that the tutor started speaking French, however, I was transported back to sitting in French class in high school feeling awkward, uncomfortable, and wanting to hide under a desk the whole time. It may sound dramatic but that’s how I’ve always felt about French. I hated speaking it in front of anyone or doing anything in a french class to draw attention to myself!

This workshop was particularly stressful. The tutor had us doing actions to go with some of the vocab, I avoided joining in as long as possible, then when I had to I put in as little energy as possible. When she was asking unto say things out loud I found myself pretending not to know things, or pretending to write just to avoid making eye contact and being asked to participate by speaking out loud.

Looking at the workshop objectively, I thought what we were learning was very good, I thought that all the games and speaking out loud would be fun to most people. I think it is probably a very effective way to learn a language. I wonder if my reaction to French could be similar to ‘Maths Anxiety’ (explored in another post), do I have some kind of a phobia of French? If so, then it will need to be sorted. As a teacher I cannot pass my own feelings about the subject on to the children that I work with. If I do not come across confident in teaching a language, then the children will not be confident in my ability to teach them, which would significantly impact on their education.

I decided to look up my feelings and came back with ‘Foreign Language Anxiety’. It is described as “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviours related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the (foreign) language learning process” which makes a lot of sense to me. I also found the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLACAS). It is a questionnaire which asks participants to read statements and rate how much they agree. Questions include “I start to panic when I have to speak without preparation in language class.” and “It embarrasses me to volunteer answers in my language class.” Looking at the questions, almost all of them apply to me!

So what should I do now? Realistically I think that languages are always going to be the cause of some anxiety for me. Now that I am aware of it, I have to deal with it. I think that I should start participating more often in class, there are only 20 people, and realistically they are not there to pounce on me if I speak and make mistakes! For all I know, many of them may be feeling the same way that I do. I think knowing this will make it easier for me to teach languages to children who feel nervous or anxious too. I will be able to differentiate better as I will be able to recognise children who feel this way and perhaps allow them to do slightly different tasks, for example working with a partner as opposed to a large group.

I feel that this small amount of research and reflection has been very useful to me. I now know that I am not alone in panicking over learning a language and I am confident that I can overcome the worst of such feelings to be an effective teacher in the future.

Out of 5, I would give my anxiety levels a 1.

Al-Saraj, Taghreed M. (No Date) FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY: WHAT IS THIS? Available at: https://www.soas.ac.uk/lmei/events/ssemme/file67903.pdf (Accessed: 16 October 2015)

Horwitz, Elaine K., Horwitz, Michael B., and Cope, J (1986) Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale. Available at: http://www.studyabroad.purdue.edu/Resource/InterculturalLearning/ForeignLanguageAnxietyScale.pdf (Accessed: 16 October 2015)

All About Me

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I am Katie Doyle, in the University of Dundee studying for an MA (Hons) in Education.

I have always wanted to go into teaching, as far back as I remember. Back then it was because I saw teachers everyday and admired them as role models and wanted to be a role model for children myself when I grew up. In recent years, however, I have worked with children and been able to reflect on the experiences which shaped my plans up until I began the course.

In my journey to teaching, I spent two years as a peer mentor for the Ripple Project, a community hub in Edinburgh. I found the whole experience very challenging, while I was there and dealing with the kids, but it was also difficult to deal with on a personal level. I found it hard interacting with the children, knowing their backgrounds and details of their personal lives. One child in particular who was ‘my’ child, was dealing with problems which I genuinely thought only happened in ‘Tracy Beaker’. It made me reflect upon my own experience growing up and how different my childhood was to hers. I had never experienced any real difficulties at all: my parents are still happily together; I’ve never wanted for anything, money, clothes, food etc; and I have never experienced violence or conflict in my home. Her life is so different to mine, and that makes me sad, but it also makes me determined. Determined to take full advantage of every opportunity offered to me, to study for the career I really want, and determined to use that career to make a real difference to the children that I work with.

Throughout my primary years, I found school very difficult. Often, I simply could not keep up with the rest of the class academically. I was always in the ‘Extra Spelling’ or ‘Extra Maths’ class, and was always in the bottom set of these classes. For me, this used to be very demoralising. I have considered my experiences more recently, and my goal in teaching is to look into helping struggling individuals similar to myself, as I know what a horrible feeling it is to struggle in school like that, something I would very much like to prevent future generations of children from experiencing in school.

I went through the private school system and I had both access to and the benefit of academic tutoring throughout my school career. While I am very grateful for these opportunities, I do not think that my parents’ financial situation should have dictated whether or not I had access to academic resources and private tutoring. I believe that all children should be able to access a high quality education, and my ultimate goal is to leave this course qualified to provide just that.

Having completed 1PP1, I have seen education from a different side, that of a teacher as opposed to that of a pupil, and it has given me an appreciation for the amount of effort that goes into being a teacher. I spend the whole time exhausted, eating at odd times and getting an average of 5 hours sleep, and all that was on my mind was the class I was working with. I was obviously doing significantly less work than that of a full teacher, which shows me just how much they do! The amount of work that they do is incredible! I also had the benefit of working with a very good teacher, who was very willing to put in a lot of time with me and also allowed me a lot of freedom within the class which made me very motivated and gave me the chance to really use my own skills, and I am very grateful to her for such an experience.

My Educational Philosophy

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Children should know that their thoughts and feelings are valued by adults, and that they can think and speak for themselves without worrying about being wrong or of anyone making fun of them. Education should be for developing self confidence and self worth in order that children feel comfortable with themselves whilst in the school environment.

The aim of school should be to produce well rounded individuals who have a creative and critical way of thinking. I believe that high quality teaching is the most effective way to achieve this. From the 1PP1 placement, I found that as long as children are interested in the lesson, then they are learning, so we should all be making sure that what we teach is interesting to the children we work with.

Education should always be inclusive of all learners. If somebody is making an effort to turn up to school, then they deserve to be included fully in the education system. Saying this, if children are not, or do not want to make the effort to come to school, then we should look to the education system and see what may have disillusioned the learner and look to make changes as opposed to blaming the learner. I believe that school should promote a disciplined approach to education. I do not think it is a massively important point to make, of course teachers should be aware of behaviour management techniques, but they should not be a main focus.

Schooling should offer as many subjects and experiences as possible. The aim of education, in my opinion, is to produce well rounded individuals. I think that the best way to do this is to give them knowledge and experiences. They should study the basics in order to understand the more exciting specific subjects, ie. should be able to read so that they are not focusing on the reading but engage with what they are actually reading. In my opinion, the Curriculum for Excellence does this really well, the idea of one topic spanning several curriculum areas is a really positive one. I think that all children can benefit from such a system.

Teachers were some of the best role models for me throughout school, I always admired them for the way they seemed to know everything. Despite this, I remember one occasion while I was in high school when somebody asked the biology teacher a question and he answered it, but the next lesson he told us that he had given us an incorrect answer and that he had asked another teacher and found out the correct answer. I remember this as, I can imagine, being a teacher it must be difficult to admit to not knowing an answer, and certainly to come back having made an effort to find out the correct answer was admirable to me. This particular teacher, to me, was an example of a teacher who is willing to go the extra mile and therefore was a role model to me.

School should offer the opportunity to achieve academically, but for me there should be more to it than just passing through a system and come out the other end with a certificate of exam results. Of course children should learn some academic skills, they should have developed language and mathematics skills, and plenty experience of RME, Social Subjects, Technologies, Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing and Science. They should be able to experience so much more from their time in school: experience success, critical thinking skills, creativity and social skills. They should be directed, but be given enough space to develop in their own way and at their own pace.

Could They ‘Hunt’ Me?

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After learning that the new Chanel 4 television show ‘Hunted’ [See here…] included mathematics on 17/9/15, I decided that I would investigate this further. To paraphrase, the show simulates what would happen if an individual had to go on the run from the authorities. The aim was for the 14 volunteers to go on the run and remain undetected for 28 days. While they were doing this, 30 experts would be trying to track them down as they would with a real criminal.

One pair, Sandra and Elizabeth were hunted down very quickly despite thinking they were doing well. They were hiding by constantly getting on and off busses around the South East of England, but were spotted through their use of an ATM. CCTV was able to show which busses they had been on, and from this it was shown that they were following a pattern in their travel plans. The hunters used this pattern to forecast the possible routes they would take and then found them. One of the hunters explained: “We all establish patterns just to get through the day, that’s how we work, and so it’s really hard for people to be random”. By this example we can see that she is right, we seem to have an almost innate affiliation to patterns built into us.

This got me thinking about if anyone wanted to hunt me. What would they be able to tell about me from my own routines? I think if someone observed me for just a few weeks they could learn a lot about my routines and would be able to pinpoint an exact time to catch me. Some examples include: I always leave to attend university exactly 30 minutes before the input is due to begin; I always take the same route there and my route back is always the same; I do not miss university regularly; I speak to my mum at the same time every morning; my boyfriend stays over the same nights every week; and I go back home to Edinburgh every 3 weeks. That list could easily be even longer, but it definitely shows that my daily life has fallen into a pattern, it means that I would be very easy to find if anyone wanted to – all they would really need to do so is a copy of my university timetable.

If I am honest, I was not very sure that this show included mathematics, and it did take me a long time to see any mathematics at all, but now I can see it, it is very interesting to think about. I think that it is very easy to follow patterns, it is human instinct, but I can see that the role of these experts to find the real criminals and it clearly requires a specific type of thinking. I think that this type of thinking is where mathematics comes into it, to find the criminals we would have to be able to look at the normal behaviours and routines of the individual and be able to use them to think as the criminal is and attempt to predict the moves that they will make, and their reasoning behind making them.

From a teacher’s point of view this is interesting to know as it can allow us to try to foresee events and either change or encourage them. We can try to predict what pupils will and will not understand, or perhaps we can predict an issue between pupils in the future and attempt to ease any tensions before that happens. It is also a possibility that we can identify this type of mathematical thinking and encourage children to use it to their advantage.

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-09-10/what-is-hunted