SECTION F REFLECTION

This entry critically evaluates the knowledge I have gained during my Pedagogy as Process journey. It highlights my future aspirations for my teaching practice and the effect that this course has had on my initial teaching philosophy.

 

            The Pedagogy as Process course is designed to develop the teaching practices of educators. It encompasses tutelage on the curriculum, unit and lesson planning and assessment. I have greatly benefitted from this course so much so that I feel as if I was not effective before and I wonder why this course is not offered to teachers upon entry to the service. When I began teaching I was left to my own devices. Saying this is not meant to be a disservice to my department or my school because, from my teaching experiences over the last couple of years, teaching is extremely demanding and teachers are already overworked as it is.

I can fully understand the difficulty of training a member of staff while conducting your duties. Also, in my opinion, an added flaw is being trained by another teacher and absorbing their mannerisms. I consider this a flaw because the teaching profession is highly dependent on personalities coexisting in a classroom and what may work for some teachers may not work for all. This is why this course is necessary for new teachers, to give them insight into what is expected of them and also guidance to honing their teaching capabilities in a way that will benefit them and their students.

This course has developed my perception of the curriculum and unit and lesson planning and assessment. Every year I would refer to the draft and confer with my department about content to be covered for the term. My department is very supportive would supply me with the documents I need to develop my plans but I have come to realize that I was not reading the documents correctly. I was reading them as a member of the public would and not an educator. I never had a full appreciation for the domains of learning of forms of assessment. I was wares ore them, I utilized them but I feel as if I was doing what I was supposed to do a not fully immersed in the process. I never actively did a set induction. I never actively performed a teaching strategy. I would conduct my classes by rote, mirroring what I observed being done by senior teachers.

My newfound knowledge has added deeper meaning to my initial philosophy. In retrospect, my initial philosophy was based on the moral responsibilities of a teacher as a guide. In my initial thought, I supposed I likened the guide to being a role model. Presently I not only view a teacher as a guiding moral compass but an instructional guide. Learning about developing instructional objectives and task analysis, then implementing them in my lessons and seeing the success was the catalyst for the development of my initial philosophy. Throughout this programme, The more that I learned and practised has made me feel more worthy of calling myself a teacher.

In the future, I hope to keep learning. I intend to keep finding ways to keep updating my knowledge of teaching strategies and possibly perform my research with my students, I also intend to share my knowledge with teacher struggled as I have initially. One of the most important takeaways from this course is that teaching does not take place in a bubble an integration of different departments can serve to be a powerful teaching opportunity.