Category: Teacher Education
-
The Only Fresh Air is Outside in the Yard
This film made is about the ways that children can sometimes slide through school without getting a great deal of benefit from being there. It looks particularly at the impact a teacher can have by noticing the thing that makes a child tick and thinking about how that child can be included in the school community.…
-
“Dans ma trousse, j’ai…”SIoE conference offers inspiring models for learning in a foreign language
The inaugural Association for Language Learning /SIOE cross-curricular language learning conference took place this summer at the SIOE. For the first time academics and practitioners from Anglophone countries and similar contexts across all phases converged to explore how content and language integrated learning pedagogy could be applied to different contexts and subjects. The range of…
-
A tale of two teachers: the importance of keeping a supply of great teachers for our region
It’s already March, and headteachers’, and trainee teachers’, thoughts are rapidly turning to next September. Before long, the adverts will be out, the shortlisting will be done and heads and trainees will be looking warily across a desk at each other, both thinking the same thing: do I want to work with you? Lots has…
-
Access to A level Further Mathematics: it matters and it’s at risk for many
Recently, A level league tables were published alongside secondary league tables. No surprise that independent schools continue to be at the top or that there are big differences in performance in different areas of the country. But it is not just performance that varies considerably – so does access to doing A levels and that…
-
Terraced House or Terrorist House? What effect will the Prevent Duty have on trainee teachers and teacher educators in higher education?
The first phrase highlighted above is not a SPAG (spelling, punctuation and grammar) test question, but rather a phrase overheard in a primary school classroom that led to a ten year old boy and his family being questioned by the police earlier this year. This is not an isolated occurrence, with similar stories in the…
-
Knowledge organisers, cognitive science, tiger teachers and Michaela. Beyond the pale, or part of our ITE future?
Last week I taught geography for the first time since the current National Curriculum was implemented (note to self – do fewer meetings but do more teaching and research as Head of Department). The topic was rivers; the student group BA primary; the module assignment was to create a primary classroom learning environment to facilitate…
-
Responding to complexity: a new third tier for school based education
Change has become a constant in the English school education system. A major driver has, and for the moment continues to be, the Government’s on-going strategy for a school-led self-improving system which incorporates a number of new, and relatively new, organisational structures and influential roles. In no particular order these include the office of Regional…
-
To praise or not to praise: is that the question?
Two years ago a casual conversation with a colleague about my experience of what I call the ‘deficit model of praise’, that is “what is the point of telling someone they have done well? If they are not told that they are wrong then it is obvious that they have done OK” provoked an unexpectedly…
-
Gazing into the teacher supply crystal ball: a response to Educational Excellence Everywhere
Last month’s White Paper provides much for teacher educators to think about. Chapter Two lays out how the class of 2020 might train to teach. The pen portrait of Chris on page 34 has been painted to show a perhaps predictable picture involving school based training at a SCITT as part of a multi-academy trust. The…
-
Teaching observations
“Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.” (Keats) Teaching, by definition, is an activity that is observed, (McMahon, Barrett and O’Neill,2007), and during my career as an initial teacher educator and CELTA trainer I have probably observed literally thousands of hours of teaching practice. Teaching is inherently a very personal activity, since classroom decisions…