Category Archives: 1 Prof. Values & Personal Commitment

What it Means to be an Enquiring Practitioner

Being an enquiring practitioner requires much more than being able to learn the skills and methods of enquiry. As a teacher, to be a enquiring practitioner you need to be able to develop your ideas and knowledge of teaching. Be able to question and challenge new ideas which will allow you to continuously develop and learn. An enquiring practitioner is one who can learn from critical research and is constantly adapting their teaching ways. This way they can put these new skills into practice in the classroom and again learn from experience what works well and not so well. It is also important for an enquiring practitioner to be flexible; they must be adaptive and open to change.

Being an enquiring practitioner has benefits and challenges. Firstly, it gives teachers a useful way to monitor their own practice. By constantly challenging themselves and asking critical questions such as: ” What is the purpose of this?”, ” What impact is it having?”, ” Is it beneficial to my teaching?” They can improve the quality of their teaching and this in turn will impact the children’s learning. It also allows them to continuously develop new strategies and can enhance their self – esteem and professional identity as it enables them to make more professional judgements. Very importantly, it allows them to make crucial changes to the curriculum and provide the best learning environment for the children.

As said, there are still some disadvantages to this practice. A enquiry made at one school may not have the same beneficial effect in a different school. As a result this method is said to be “situationally unique”. Also, enquiries that are made to just prove practices or find methods that “work best” that have not been explored sufficiently can be said to be superficial.

Five Virtues of Teaching

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There are many traits that a teacher must have in order to be successful and professional. Below, I have chosen five that I feel to be important in becoming a successful teacher.

Patience

In my mind, patience is one of the most important skills in being a teacher. In a classroom, not all children learn at the same pace. You need to remain calm and patient with the class in order to provide the best possible learning environment. It is unprofessional and unfair to the children to get angry with them if they are not able to complete a task. You need patience to be able to help them with the task and be willing to help some children more than others get over their difficulties.

Empathy

Empathy is another key feature to making a good teacher. Being able to empathise with your children means you are able to build a trusting relationship with them and as a result it will create a more positive atmosphere in the classroom. By bringing yourself to their level, they will feel confident and comfortable in approaching you for any help that they need. Not being able to empathise with your children could harm your relationship with them which in turn could affect their learning.

Respect

Respect is another very important trait a teacher should have. To create a positive and comfortable learning environment, as a teacher you must gain respect from all of your children. But to keep this respect, it is important that you respect your class of children as well. However, respect should not just be created between teacher and child. It is important to keep a positive atmosphere throughout a school and to do this, teachers must respect each other as well as parents. This way a positive atmosphere can be kept in the school.

Fairness

It is very important to treat each child in your class fairly and equally. It is very unprofessional to show favouritism towards one or two children and let them get away with rules that the rest of the class must follow. You must also avoid stereotyping children that come into your class. It is important not to let matters such as race, gender and class cloud your judgement and treat them any differently to the rest of the children.

Kindness

Showing kindness towards your children can help build a trusting relationship between you and the child. It will make them feel more comfortable coming into school everyday knowing that you are going to be kind and willing to help them. If you shout or get angry with the children on a regular basis, not only will they not feel comfortable in your class, they may begin to fear you and this can have a huge affect on their learning. At the same time, it is important that you develop the right balance between kindness and professionalism. Being too kind could give the children the idea that they can get away with not working as hard as they should.

Professionalism in the Online World

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What challenges/opportunities may you be faced with when marrying your personal and professional presence online?

When mixing your professional and personal life together in one account, you need to be careful what you post. You need to find the right balance of professional and person and make sure that you are not posting anything that you may regret in years to come.
There are advantages and disadvantages to mixing the two together in an account. By connecting the two, you are able to share your personal views in a more professional environment. An example of this is in blog posts or twitter feeds. This could allow you to connect with other people in a similar profession or meet and share ideas with other professionals, while getting to know the person.
However, you could be exposing more private parts of your life that you do not necessarily want colleagues or future employers to see. For example photos could be posted of you of a night out or comments made that children in your classroom could find. This cause serious conflict with parents or other colleagues and jeopardise your job. By posting both your professional and personal life together, you definitely need to take more precautions in what you are posting. You need to think about the implications that the post could cause and whether it will negatively affect you in the future. Everything you post has a chance of being seen by a future employer or colleague and therefore you want to be making a good first impression.

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

Social media has been scolded for being misused in a classroom. However, blog websites or other social media websites can be used very effectively in a classroom as long as they are used carefully. YouTube can be used as an excellent source to show clips and videos as long as the video has been reviewed by the teacher before use in the classroom. Blog websites can be very helpful for the children to share their learning experience with other schools. It will also teach them basic computing skills such as typing.
I feel it is important to use social media in the classroom, not just for teaching purposes, but to teach children how to use social media properly and safely. Teaching them this in class should hopefully protect them in the online world once they return home where there is not a teacher there to help them.