Identifying your professional needs

The issues that classroom teachers face in changing their practice apply to teacher educators too. For example, more time will need to be spent on planning for active learning. Collaborating with colleagues – such as through joint planning, observation and reflection – can be very beneficial.

The School Experience Toolkit [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] contains a section about TESSA OER and how to use TESSA with teachers and student teachers. You might find it helpful to download the section and use it for reference when you are planning your teaching.

As part of planning your own professional development, you need to identify your current skills and the ones you need to develop. A skills audit is a useful starting point.

Activity 2.9: A skills audit

Timing: (Allow approximately 30 minutes)

Complete the TESSA teacher educator audit of ‘Skills to support active participation in learning’ which is available as either a Word file or a PDF. Identify three skills that you want to focus on first.

Use the TESSA ‘Personal action plan’ template (available as either a Word file or a PDF) to record your development priorities and what actions you will take to develop them.

For example, you might plan to gain experience of these through practice in your teaching, asking a colleague for feedback or doing some additional reading.

Not only will the audit and action plan help you to reflect on your current practice and goals, but they are also tools that you can use to monitor your development over the next few months.

Making teacher education pedagogy more interactive

An overview of learner-centred education