I am currently working as lecturer at Icon College of Technology and Management. I am teaching Pearson (Edexcel) HND in Business modules and providing tutorial support. The college follows the syllabus and grading strategy of Pearson where Pearson assesses assignments only and we do not have any control over it (FT2: Critical Incident Analysis). However, lecture topics and schedules are set by the college. As a tutor my responsibility is to deliver lectures only where I try to connect my teaching strategies with learning theories suitably.
In writing this reflection I want to focus on three aspects- learning, teaching and assessment.
Learning
I focus on students’ needs and strongly believe in maintaining educational transparency (FT1: Statement of teaching philosophy). So, I try to know who my students are and what are their needs and motives. Learning motives of adults and children are different. For instance, children are considered as dependent learners, whereas adults are relatively independent. I teach mature students between the age of 20 and 60 (TPA2) who want to become either business entrepreneurs or business executives. Having considered their age range and objectives I decided to emphasise on andragogy, rather than pedagogy. Andragogy is meant for helping adults learning where a tutor designing a course should consider students’ self-directedness in learning and their previous experience, whereas pedagogy is meant for dependent students where a little validity is
Andragogy recognises that adults demand to learn things that are relevant to them, and relevant to their life experiences rather than assuming they know nothing (Atherton, 2005). Hence as time progressed ‘A’ became less dependant on me and was able to self direct his learning , in turn increasing his confidence and enhancing his community experience by spending time with other disciplines to enable him to achieve the university set competences.
Reflection means if when you are teaching and you notice something wrong you change it straight away, or for the next time. Practitioners should always be self critical of past lessons and picking out on not only the good parts, but also parts of a lesson that didn’t go so well. For example in order for the practitioners to improve in their practice they could prepare a reflective journal, this would help them by reflecting back on what they did in the perivious lesson and if an activity didn’t go so well the practitioner could think of different strategies of improving the activity or planning a different activity, but on the similar topic and also providing different recourses in order to improve the activity. Also practitioners and staff members should not assume that their work place will automatically inform them about new developments, changes and updates which affect their work, practitioners must be prepared to be active in maintaining their own knowledge base and to ensure that their practice is in line with current thinking and new theories. Practitioners could this by incorporating an awareness of the needs to update their knowledge constantly into all of their work and activities by using resources such as the internet, journals, and libraries or other professional development, e.g. training, and to check their awareness of new developments in their work and to work with other professionals e.g. there
I will structure this essay using Gibbs Model of Reflection (Gibbs 1988). Reflective learning helps practitioners analyse their experiences and how they think and feel about them before
(10 points) Summary Reflection: Putting all your results and findings together, write a detailed paragraph about what all of this means about you. Include thoughts on how your learning style, your personality, your study habits, and your communication skills relate to achieving your personal, academic, and career goals.
Reflection is described as a way of reviewing experiences from practice so that it can be described and analysed and used to change future practice (Bulman and Schutz, 2004).
Effective reflection helps the practitioner to see the situation from an outsider's perspective, so that they can develop a better way to respond to a similar scenario in the future. Reflection is meant to achieve a change in practice, rather than simply repeating the same mistakes (Schon, 1983). Many different models exist for structuring the reflective process. Regardless of the framework used, the reflection models are meant to accomplish three things. They are supposed to promote reflecting on events, self-evaluation and analysis, and a plan to change actions in the future. This Reflective essay will utilize Driscoll's 'The What?' model as its structure (Driscoll, 1994). This model has three components"
Reflection is a process of reviewing and thinking critically about activities and how this affects learning of student’s. It is not just descriptions of what happened during the lesson; it’s to
We can see from Knowles (1983) identified six assumptions about adult learning, our students in a military environment and in the “third age” meet most if not all of these criteria. If this is true of our military learners then as delivers we need to be aware of the “Charter for Andragogy “ Mezirow (1981) which set out what we teachers of adults need to be aware of to teach our learners.
Use this proforma to organise your response to the reflective assessment task. Use the steps as headings and write in paragraphs below the headings. This is not an essay task. All your sources should be referenced using APA style.
The adult learning theory Also known as andragogy is the concept of Adult learning as a science in the field of education. Created by Malcolm Knowles , the theory is comprised of four different concepts. A fifth concept was later added by Knowles. within these different concepts, Knowles set forth compilation of expectations for educators within the Adult Education community. Firstly, he suggests setting a corporative climate in the classroom for learning. (Knowles, 1984, p.76) An assessment of the learners needs and a compilation of objectives and educational activities to help learner reach needs
| Adults come into an educational activity with both greater volume and a different quality of experience from that of youths (Knowles, Holton, Swanson, 2012). Adults have lived longer than the youth and therefore their experiences are different. There are some potential effects that are negative in nature with having greater experience. Mental habits, biases, and presuppositions tend to develop as experience is accumulated. This may cause one to close their minds to new ideas, fresh perceptions, and alternative ways of thinking (Knowles, Holton, Swanson, 2012).
The six principles of andragogy should be applied to how the curriculum for adult learning is created. Providing lessons that adults enjoy and can relate to is what will draw in students to the class. Also, it will be very beneficial to not only the adults, but the school as well. A study by a private liberal arts college was held and using a pre test-post test-control-group design, andragogy was tested against traditional instruction type teaching. After conducting the research it was concluded that there was no significant differences between the two different types of teaching.
Use this proforma to organise your response to the reflective assessment task. Use the steps as headings and write in paragraphs below the headings; this is not an essay task. All your sources should be referenced using APA style.
Reflective practice might be understood differently by individual practitioners. There are many different perspectives on ‘Reflection’, what reflective practice involves and how the quality of teaching and learning is impacted by reflective practice (Bengtsson, 1995).
Reflective practice, in this context, is not about just looking at myself in a mirror and accepting what I see blindly, without any question or evaluation. Rather, it is about looking at what I have learned and how I can utilise that learning in my teaching practice.