1 Considering your own professional development
In Week 2 you considered the need for teacher educators to model the pedagogy that teachers are expected to use in their classrooms. Teacher educators cannot rely on lecturing and are faced with changing their views and ways of working with teachers and pre-service teachers. Therefore, as a teacher educator, you need to pay attention to your own needs and professional development so that you are better placed to support the needs of others.
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. In Activity 2.2 you analysed the knowledge and skills needed to use active, participatory teaching approaches successfully. As part of planning your own professional development, you need to identify your current skills and the ones for development. A skills audit is a useful starting point.
Activity 4.2: Identifying your professional needs
- Complete the teacher educator audit of ‘Skills to support active participation in learning [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] ’. Identify three skills that you want to focus on first.
- Use the ‘Personal action plan’ template to record these development priorities and what actions you will take to develop these. 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 as you go forward.
Reflection point
Which active learning approaches would you feel confident to try? Which ones are difficult? Where could you get help? How will your colleagues respond to these ideas? It is always helpful to share your ideas with other colleagues to find out their experiences of trying new ideas and ask for feedback on your idea and actions. By working collaboratively, you can learn from each other and draw on each other’s areas of expertise to the benefit of all.
Introduction