ED1120 Exam

List and evaluate in order of importance, the qualities you would like to have as a teacher. In your answer, make specific reference to: Personal characteristics; Use of teaching and learning theory; Relationships with students and colleagues; A critical reflective orientation

In order of preference: Passion, Integrated Knowledge, Emotional/Interpersonal understanding and Creativity.

Number one quality: Passion

Fire in the belly is good. It keeps the lessons on edge. I do not wish to settle for less. I love science, engineering, electronics, politics, the environment, mathematics. I would be very happy if this could rub off onto my students. For me these subjects are alive and relevant, and according to the constructivists learning occurs when students also find them meaningful. I love talking with people who are also passionate about things - it is a tonic for the mind! Seeing the progression of students as their own interests and passions develop over the years is a great buzz!

Passion for me is about enthusiasm, caring, attention to detail, striving to improve, searching for more, putting things together. Passion is exciting! Passion is about not giving up.

Brunner says that knowledge and memory is constructed because it is significant or meaningful, not for its own sake - this ties passion in nicely with constructivism and cognitive learning theory. The efficient transferal of information from the working memory to long term memory is enhanced by making larger links to prior learning which increases encoding and retrieval. Passion for a subject seems to me to increase the chance of gaining the attention of students, and it should increase the likelihood of critical reflection too. A passionate student will easily move beyond surface retrieval to deep learning.

One of Hattie's five major dimensions of the expert teacher is they can 'attend to the affective attributes' of students. They make the effort to be involved with and care for their students. In particular passion within the expert is expressed as a greater sense of feeling about success and failures. I take this to mean that they are more excited when things work and more concerned when things don't.

Passion should also rub off on the team. When a colleague is excited about their work and their students this encourages me. The possibilities for dialogue between teachers is increased. Vygotsky says that cognition is hugely dependant on social interaction. With passion as a social touchstone both our own learning and that of students will be enhanced.

Number two quality: Integrated Knowledge.

Turning knowing into wisdom. Having the ability to link together lots of dimensions of many disciplines so as to match the needs of students. Being confident with theories of teaching so as to bring a healthy variety and freshness to teaching delivery. Bringing it all together and relating knowledge to deeper principles. Being able to predict the outcomes of different teaching strategies and activities.

Hattie's first dimension of the expert teacher claims that experts do not necessarily know more about their subjects, but they do have many more connections from within and beyond the subject material. The net result of this is that students experience richer and more meaningful teaching, and learning is grounded in the reality of society and culture.

Gardner reminds us with the multiple inteligences that it is not enough to be wise only with words or numbers. We need to have deeper representations of knowledge that include the other inteligences. This will make the tasks that we set students more challenging and real for more of them.

Number three quality: Emotional/Interpersonal understanding

Glasser's choice theory states up front that we can only change our thinking and actions - our feelings remain out of reach. Managing a classroom full of students - each bringing their own emotional baggage to the classroom - is a huge challenge.

Steiner encourages teachers to identify personality types and to work creatively with them. These are the four temperaments (after the Greeks and Galen) Phlegmatic, Sanguine, Choleric and Melancholic. The period of life from 14 to 21 is identified by Steiner to be the time when the 'astral' or emotional part of the person is most strongly developing. Teaching this age requires awaremeness of complex interactions, and the careful direction of activities to facilitate the future developement of the child's ego.

Hattie mentions this awareness of emotion under several of the dimensions of the expert teacher. The expert teacher is able to scan classroom behaviour and recoginse patterns emerging. The expert teacher is able to anticipate classroom disturbances and give appropriate feedback. The expert teacher attends to 'Affective Attributes'.

The Multiple Inteligence model includes the interpersonal and emotional as a seperate and unique inteligences in their own right. So the teacher should not only be able to challenge and relate to students with these intelligences, but also develop these inteligences within themselves.


Number four quality: Creativity

Getting attention, Being inspiring, Stimulating thought and reflection, Modelling best practice (practicing what we preach). Like passion, observing creativity in colleagues and students is uplifting. Creativity or 'Synthesis' is the pinacle of the cognitive part of Bloom's taxonomy and the 'gold standard' for quality of knowledge. According to Bloom the ultimate cognitive aim of good teaching is for students to move way beyond the basic levels of remembering, understanding and applying concepts into analysing, evaluating and creating.

In terms of cognitive learning theory teaching creatively should help at several levels. Firstly the creative activities should get the students attention better, thus getting ideas into short term memory faster. Secondly thinking and working creatively should assist with stronger encoding as links will be made to a wider range of previous memories and more will be retrieved. Because challenging and creative tasks are more interesting the learner will concentrate on them more and 'turn them over in their minds' more - curiosity is a powerful driver!

Why have I put creativity fourth? Not because it is less important, but rathar that I feel that the qualities of passion, knowledge and emotional awareness need to be in place before creativity can flourish.

Number five: Assorted miscelaneous qualities...

Organised, efficient, Networker, Entrepenuer, problem solver, cook, bottle washer, coach, mechanic, slave driver, arbitrer, interpreter, counsellor, listener

Now if only there was a pill that could turn me into a combination of Jesus, Einstein, Carl Rogers and Edward De Bono...