Today has been a bit up and down...
Sunday 16 October 2011
Saturday 15 October 2011
Sunday 9 October 2011
It starts...
Well, it has officially started...
I am finally studying for a Masters in Education with The Open University. It has been an interesting experience waiting for this day to come. It has been made more interesting by the build up and panic created by other people.
When I told people that I was about to start, their reactions were mainly that I was insane or that I was taking on too much. People were incredulous that I could take on this while teaching full-time. For me, I need to be continually assessing and reflecting on my practice and this study will allow me to do that. My source of support will mainly be coming from my partner, who, like me, believes that if I have a thirst for knowledge I should quench it.
Looking to my next point of call for support, I went to the OU forum and was greeted with what felt like hysteria. It felt like a virtual room of anxiety. People worrying about course notes, use of technology and the assignment that is more than a month away!
I questioned why with all that I am currently doing at school:
-I've launched a school newspaper with the year 4, 5 and 6s
-I am conducting a Young Reader's Programme with the Year 4s and The Literacy Trust
-and I have just been made music coordinator
We also have a brand new Head at the school, who I am trying to impress and present professionally too. All this, and we have just bought and moved house!
However, today I sat and spent five hours reading and blogging. I loved it! I felt at peace and I did it all at my pace, though have still manged to be ahead of the study planner. I think I may enjoy isolating myself despite the shift distance learning institutions are making towards interaction and socializing. Maybe I can ease myself into it.
My main action point for myself is to start thinking more critically about what is I am reading.but I am actually enjoying the academia again. Whoop whoop!
I am finally studying for a Masters in Education with The Open University. It has been an interesting experience waiting for this day to come. It has been made more interesting by the build up and panic created by other people.
When I told people that I was about to start, their reactions were mainly that I was insane or that I was taking on too much. People were incredulous that I could take on this while teaching full-time. For me, I need to be continually assessing and reflecting on my practice and this study will allow me to do that. My source of support will mainly be coming from my partner, who, like me, believes that if I have a thirst for knowledge I should quench it.
Looking to my next point of call for support, I went to the OU forum and was greeted with what felt like hysteria. It felt like a virtual room of anxiety. People worrying about course notes, use of technology and the assignment that is more than a month away!
I questioned why with all that I am currently doing at school:
-I've launched a school newspaper with the year 4, 5 and 6s
-I am conducting a Young Reader's Programme with the Year 4s and The Literacy Trust
-and I have just been made music coordinator
We also have a brand new Head at the school, who I am trying to impress and present professionally too. All this, and we have just bought and moved house!
However, today I sat and spent five hours reading and blogging. I loved it! I felt at peace and I did it all at my pace, though have still manged to be ahead of the study planner. I think I may enjoy isolating myself despite the shift distance learning institutions are making towards interaction and socializing. Maybe I can ease myself into it.
My main action point for myself is to start thinking more critically about what is I am reading.but I am actually enjoying the academia again. Whoop whoop!
Educational Research - A Single Concept?
Bassey is hugely critical of Lord Skidelsky's assumption
that educational research is a single concept that can only be studied by a
group of researchers who work externally to the field they are studying. The
study of 'educational research' as plural concept enables a transient phase of
understanding. I, too, am critical of the assertion that Skidelsky has
'stud[ied] professionally much of the research that has taken place' informing
his decisions to move all research to the TDA. This ignores the ability to
cover research questions that may be difficult to bring in to the public light. He believes that educational research should be its on
subset of a larger group of research disciplines; that it should have a close link
to practice and aim to improve educational action via informing educational
judgements and decisions, thereby illustrating the functional purpose of
research. The outcomes should come by way of improvements in learning.
This is contrasted with the other discipline-based research,
which Bassey makes distinct. He states the psychological, sociological, philosophical,
historical and economic research are research on education by stating that
these are focussed on examining specific phenomena involved in educational
processes and their settings. I disagree with this, as I believe that all
these disciplines are education and education is part of them; to make them
completely distinct means we will always be infringing on one discipline or
another. For example, when we study 'peer pressure and it's effects on
learning', we are looking through a social discipline, when we question the
practice of teaching maths in the classroom, we must look at previous history
of mathematics teaching.
When amalgamating all teachers within the box of only being
able to offer 'personal theories' using David Tripp (1993)'s statement 'most
academic educational knowledge is of very little use to teachers and that
teachers' knowledge and understanding of their practice is seriously
under-represented and discounted in the university discipline of education.' to
support this, I feel confusion and anger. What is the point of me undertaking
this Masters study if all I need is teaching practice, practical experience? Is
this all a narcissistic and futile activity?
Even Dylan Wiliam (cited in Lipsett, 2008), deputy director of the Institute of
Education states the Masters study needed to have a practical focus, so teachers
could see how to use what they learn in their classrooms.
"Research shows that current masters degrees do not
appear to make people better teachers and there is no relationship between
those that hold them and children progressing any quicker," he said.
"The masters needs to be practical and focused on
making people the best teachers and not filling their heads full of educational
theory."
So now we have William stating that teachers need not to be
filled with 'educational theory' and Bassey claiming that by being led by
professional discourse and everyday experiences, teachers can only offer
'personal theory'. Surely having both personal and
educational theory makes can aid in strengthening the competency of teachers. I agree with Bassey in the sense
that purely 'personal theory' cannot fully inform educational action yet, like William I believe that those whose heads are filled with 'educational
theory' do not a better teacher make.
My experiences and professional discourse with colleagues
form the predominant understanding of my teaching practice, however, the
training and reading I have obtained and will obtain from this study allow me
to be reflective about what it is actually easy I am understanding. It allows
me to place my understanding within the stratosphere of other teachers and
staff within the educational field.
This is why I am undertaking the MEd. It will allow me to input all my sources of knowledge into my practice.
References
Bassey, M. (2007) ‘On the kinds of research in educational settings’ in Hammersley, M. (ed) (2007) Educational Research and Evidence-Based Practice, Milton Keynes, The Open University pp. 141–50
Hammersley, M. (ed) (2007) Educational Research and Evidence-Based Practice, Milton Keynes, The Open University
Lipsett, A. (2008) 'New teachers to follow masters programme', The Guardian [Online], Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/mar/07/highereducation.teachertraining Accessed on: 7th Oct 2011
References
Bassey, M. (2007) ‘On the kinds of research in educational settings’ in Hammersley, M. (ed) (2007) Educational Research and Evidence-Based Practice, Milton Keynes, The Open University pp. 141–50
Hammersley, M. (ed) (2007) Educational Research and Evidence-Based Practice, Milton Keynes, The Open University
Lipsett, A. (2008) 'New teachers to follow masters programme', The Guardian [Online], Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/mar/07/highereducation.teachertraining Accessed on: 7th Oct 2011
Thursday 6 October 2011
Monday 3 October 2011
Sunday 2 October 2011
A response to Gao and Shum: Investigating the role of bilingual teaching assistants in Hong Kong
This study was a qualitative account of the roles of two bilingual teaching assistants in a school in Hong Kong. Despite the niche subject matter, I was interested in reading this article, mainly because I teach in a school where 85% of the children do have English as their first language. Within my class, I have children who are Polish, Turkish, Urdu, Punjabi, Spanish, Portuguese and Somali. The majority of these children are not competent in their own language which produces a significant issue when teaching literacy in my classroom. It would require at least seven different teaching assistants or a teaching assistant who was multi-lingual to support all of these languages. I, myself do not speak any languages apart from English, something I am not proud of and have spent years promising that I will remedy.
A prominent discovery came from the discussion about cultural tourism and the importance of the relationships between the teaching assistants and the learners. Within the environment of my class, I attempt to incorporate all the languages in to my everyday teaching practice. This may be by asking the children to answer the register in their own language and trying to repeat their greetings or by asking the children to lead explanations about cultural or religious events that are taking place to the class. The suggestions that this could be seen as a superficial act leading to cultural tourism brings up the question of how to immerse my class in the seven cultures whilst still teaching the institution's culture. I feel I being less discriminatory by treating all the cultures and minorities as equally important. How do you make the coverage of different cultures more than a tourist activity if it is not based on natural experiences? I have a duty to socialise children in to the cultural, social, and linguistic norms of the British culture and feel I can do this without speaking the learner's language.The article speaks of the bilingual TA and the learners relationship being necessary for the child to maintain high self-esteem, which I, as teacher, feel ostracised by. One of the aspects of developing relations with my learners is aiding the social development and I would rather do this alongside the teaching assistant rather than via a teaching assistant. For me, the article evoked an image of conflict between teachers and the learners.
During whole-class discussions, I encourage my learners to buddy up with same language speakers; I believe this has a huge effect in social development. It enables them to maintain the cultural identity that this article talks about learners needing while at the same time providing a partner to share the experiences of learning a new language and culture with. The study uses an example of children not understanding idioms as an example of the challenges faced by South Asian children in a Hong Kong school, however, I often have to explain British idioms to English-speaking pupils who have not been to exposed to them before. Idioms are often more philosophical and moralistic so I find that this explanation makes space for cultural discussion . They can be explained in a simplistic manner linguistically and taught as set phrases, without necessarily going into the grammatical structures or historical derivation of the phrase in question.
I found it interesting that a study that was exploring the effectiveness of the role of teaching assistants would not use the data collected from the learners. All data collected was done so via the teaching assistants and the teachers, resulting in only presenting their perceptions. I feel that this restricts the scope of this study, as they could never fully explore their research questions without it. How do we truly know that the teaching assistants are developing the learners' self-esteem without talking with the learners?
A question that is raised from my reading of this article is whether schools should look into creating a separate learning identity that all learners (and teachers) all must adapt to fit into. I also wonder whether I am doing this already.
References
Gao, F. and Shum, M. (2010) ‘Investigating the role of bilingual teaching assistants in Hong Kong: an exploratory study’, Educational Research, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 445–56
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)