PG's Ponderings

Graham Aitken on Developing an Inquiry Approach: "Teaching effectiveness is determined by the quality of inquiry into the relationship between teacher actions and student learning." Effective teachers inquire into the relationship between what they do (style) and what happens for students (outcomes). But effective teachers do more than simply inquire (or reflect) – they take action (in relation to what they are doing in the classroom) to improve the outcomes for students and continue to inquire into the value of these interventions. Thus effective teaching is more than style and it is more than outcomes – it is the continual interrogation of the relationship between these two dimensions with the aim of enhancing student achievement. Such a model implies particular attitudes or dispositions (open-mindedness, fallibility) and particular actions (questioning students about what they are understanding) but it does not prescribe or checklist such qualities. It simply prescribes...

Good assessment and feedback practice should: Help clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, standards). To what extent do students in your course have opportunities to engage actively with goals, criteria and standards, before, during and after an assessment task? Encourage ‘time and effort’ on challenging learning tasks. To what extent do your assessment tasks encourage regular study in and out of class and deep rather than surface learning? Deliver high quality feedback information that helps learners self-correct. What kind of teacher feedback do you provide—in what ways does it help students self-assess and self-correct? Provide opportunities to act on feedback (to close any gap between current and desired performance). To what extent is feedback attended to and acted upon by students in your course, and if so, in what ways? Ensure that summative assessment has a positive impact on learning. To what extent are your summative and formative assessments aligned to and suppor...

This week – a Humanities response Where do you stand? Engage in the discussion. Humanities perspective is needed in all global challenges The key conviction around which the debate swirls is that the world desperately needs the insights of the humanities. Socio-economic progress, developmental challenges and the intelligent addressing of complex world issues require a combination of skills drawn from the humanities, social sciences and Stem subjects to design and deliver holistic and fully informed solutions. Increasingly, development agencies assert that technologically sound, engineering-based projects are failing because they don't take sufficient account of the cultural context. These projects, in concept, design and implementation, lack the human perspective that recognises that no global issue, developmental problem or socio-economic challenge can be fully understood, let alone resolved, without real evidence of how the local community and the rest of humanity are experiencin...

This information is gleaned from various sources that support the move towards a STEM focussed learning environment with an interesting website listed in the end. Where do you stand? Engage in the discussion. STEM Education The changing world economic conditions have placed pressure on all economies to re-examine their commitment to public science investment. The emphasis on supporting business expenditure on R&D has grown and there is increasing expectation that science will support economic recovery through addressing immediate industry and firm needs. A quality science education will be an absolutely critical part of this equation. What's at Stake? New Zealand will succeed in the global marketplace by doing what we do best, which is harnessing the talents and ingenuity of our people. This kind of innovation however isn't born in the boardroom or on the factory floor. It doesn’t begin in a basement workshop or a research laboratory. That’s where the payoff happens. It sta...

As teachers we recognize that each person prefers different learning styles and techniques. Learning styles group common ways that people learn. Everyone has a mix of learning styles. Some people may find that they have a dominant style of learning, with far less use of the other styles. Others may find that they use different styles in different circumstances. There is no right mix. Nor are learning styles fixed. Students can develop ability in less dominant styles, as well as further develop styles that they already use well. Traditional schooling tends to use mainly linguistic and logical teaching methods. It also uses a relatively limited range of learning and teaching techniques, although this paradigm is changing as we move forward. Many schools still rely on classroom and book/document/website sourced teaching, much repetition, and pressured exams for reinforcement and review. A result is that we often label those who use these learning styles and techniques as "bright....

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Reflective teaching means looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you do it, and thinking about it is a process of self-observation and self-evaluation. We identify and explore our own practices and underlying beliefs. This may then lead to changes and improvements in our teaching. Why it is important? Many teachers already think about their teaching and talk to colleagues about it too. You might think or tell someone that "My lesson went well" or "My students didn't seem to understand" or "My students were so badly behaved today. "However, without more time spent focussing on or discussing what has happened, we may tend to jump to conclusions about why things are happening. We may only notice reactions of the louder students. Reflective teaching therefore implies a more systematic process of collecting, recording and analysing our thoughts and observations, as well as those of our students, and then going on to making changes. If a...