Q and A (Week 2)

 

Pedagogical Principles

What are the Pedagogical Principles (defined in the Learning Materials)?
1) Facilitating deep knowledge through higher-order thinking.

2)Facilitating collaborative learning in which conversations are important.

3) Supporting students in knowing how they learn best.

4) Planning learning that is problem-based, and situated in real-life contexts.

5) Is relevant to students, and connects to their background knowledge.

6) Supports learning that is owned, controlled and managed by students themselves.

7) Is socially supportive, engaging, and values cultural knowledge

8) Is supportive of the development of active citizenship, and strong group identity.

What do the Pedagogocial Principles mean to you in common language?
I believe that Pedagogical Principles are an effective scaffold and guide for teachers to subscribe to. This scaffold creates an efficient and suitable learning environment allowing students to absorb the content taught within lessons. I also believe that it acts as a guided checklist for teachers to structure and design their lessons around. As a result, educators creatively deliver communicational and foundational knowledge which ultimately results in higher order thinking among students.

Consider whether the Pedagogical Principles make sense to you in terms of your own experience in learning that has a) been pedagogically sound, and b) been pedagogically woeful?
From my experience as a student, the Pedagogical Principles are sound and effective. While they are theoretically sound, there are a number of external factors that can alter the experience of the principles. For example; the school, the students, the teachers and classroom dynamics.

Can you recognise these pedagogies in the experiences you have identified in the sound category? Elaborate.
Planning learning that is problem based is something that I consider sound for students. As both during and after school, life is filled with problems that at times do not have easy answers or solutions. I believe that the problem solving skills developed through this learning directly translates into life outside of school.

Beyond this, can you identify the links between Judy Willis' knowledge of the brain and learning, Sir Ken Robinson's perspective on creativity, the needs of your contemporary learners and these pedagogical principles?
A clear link between is the level of engagement within the classroom. Judy Willis presents the idea that students that are stimulated will disrupt the classroom less as they are learning. In contrast, if students are stagnant and bored they will tend to disrupt. Sir Ken Robinson believes that the best way to engage students is through creativity. Therefore the beliefs of Sir Ken and Judy Willis go hand and hand as it is a great way to stimulate students through creativity. It is essential that students are engaged, so that are able to absorb and learn.

Why is it important to engage social interaction and prior knowledge, and plan for individualised and socially supportive, valued learning?
It is vital that learners are interconnected with both the learning material and others around them. This stimulates engagement as learners are interested in the topic which further translates to thinking in real life contexts. Individualised thinking allows students to identify a correlation from whats on their screen or paper in front of them and link that to real life scenarios allowing them to develop higher order thinking.

Reflect on your experiences of pedagogy as a learner. How many of these pedagogies are you familiar with?
I have experienced close to all pedagogies as a learner. However, as a practice teacher I am yet to utilise and put in practice all of the pedagogies myself. I aim to become even further familiar with these pedagogies as the course continues.