2.2 Education Systems & Prof. Responsibilities

I enjoyed maths at school because I like the idea of being clearly ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ as I feel that, for me, it helps me to progress and improve in a more direct way. I also love the feeling of that ‘Eureka!’ moment that you can often feel in maths when you have been confused about a certain aspect, until suddenly you realise what you have been doing incorrectly or incompletely the whole time and what you have to do now to change to the correct answer. As such, I rated myself a seven on the confidence scale of zero to ten, zero being the least confident and ten being the most, at the beginning of the workshop. I hope to pass this enjoyment and enthusiasm of maths onto my future pupils.

One of my favourite things I will take forward from this maths input is the pupil identification technique that Tara used to ask specific students questions. It involved giving each table group a name, in this case names of famous mathematicians, and then having us number ourselves within each named group. This then means that the teacher select pupils at random to answer questions, avoiding anyone being left out, without yet knowing every single child’s name. I think this will be helpful for me in the first few weeks of each new school year because it will give me time to learn all my new pupils’ names.

There was a lot of information and pedagogic knowledge to be gained from Derek’s lecture. I now know that John Dewey was one of the first people to identify reflection as a specialised form of thinking. He believed reflection comes from doubt, hesitation and challenge from an experience or experiences. I have also learned that Donald Schon developed Dewey’s ideas into the concept of reflection in, and/or on, action. Schon felt that reflection is the core of ‘Professional Artistry’.

Reflection is all about attitude. It is essential to have a positive attitude towards professional development and a crucial part of that attitude is to be open and receptive of constructive criticism.

There are seven main ways in which to evaluate your own professional practice that we have learnt about in this input. These include verbal and written feedback from the class teacher or tutor.

I think when reflecting on your work as a teacher personally, it is important to be realistic. There is no point in pretending to yourself that a lesson went well if it simply did not. It is human to make mistakes, it is just important that we learn from them to develop our strategies and ultimately continue to improve. For example, I like questions such as ‘What went well and why?’, ‘What didn’t go well and why?’ and ‘What will I do next time to improve?’.

An example of when I have used reflection to further my professional development is the academic poster for the ID10001 Working Together module assessment. One of the criteria was “Reflect on the learning you have gained through your collaborative practice enquiry with your peer learning group.” and another involving reflection was “Evaluate the collaborative practice of your peer learning group in undertaking your collaborative practice enquiry.”. I achieved a B2 in both of these criteria because I looked critically at my group and I’s collaborative practice, pointed out the positive and negative aspects of our partnership working, and explored what I could take with me from the experience in order to improve in the future.

Mathematics Workshop TDT 22/01/19

Reflections & Evaluations Lecture TDT 18/01/19