BTE2601 Exam Notes (Achieved 87%)

BTE-2601
Becoming a Teacher
Based on: Becoming a teacher, UNISA custom Edition, 978-1-485-70973-2

Chapter 1: The Teacher as a Reflective Practitioner

Teaching as a challenging profession:

 Shulman claims that good teaching combines:
- Content, general and curriculum knowledge
- Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)- making content meaningful
- Knowledge about learners and educational contexts.
 LaBoskey: good teachers make thoughtful. Caring decisions to reach beyond the limitations of the limitations of
their own backgrounds.
 Good teachers make decisions, formulate ideas, observe, inquire, assess, diagnose and design.

Reflection and Reflective Practice:

 Reflection: Thinking that is focused, intentional and purposeful. Aims to deepen understanding and inform
further thought and action.
 Reflect: look at our inner thoughts and thought processes & device further though and action.
 Meta-thinking: thinking about thinking.
 Teachers are reflective practitioners – teaching is a practise.
 Practitioners use their own personalities and professional identities in their practice.
 Teaching as a reflective practice: active, persistent, careful examination of teaching actions and beliefs with
the aim of continuously improving as a teacher.

Dimensions of teaching as a reflective practice:
 Reflection on action: Reflection after a teaching experience.
 Reflection in action: Reflection while engaged in practice.
 Reflection for action: Planning thinking ahead about what we will encounter, how to respond.
 Planning a lesson- reflection for action and reflection on action.

Theory and Practice:

 Students worry that the theory about teaching in university will not benefit them when doing their teaching practice.
 No single theory is sufficient to inform teaching decisions.
 Learning from experience and extending our personal theories requires reflection.
 Formal knowledge gives knowledge beyond our immediate environment.




Page 1 of 17 Notes by: Christina Avgoustis

, Professional values and ethics:
 Code of ethics: sets out professional values and responsibilities.
 South African Council for Educators (SACE): teachers register with SACE and commits to SACE Code of
Professional Ethics. Cannot practice as an educator if not registered with this council.


A teaching philosophy:
 Teaching philosophy: Statement that you craft to guide you as a teacher.
 Teachers must construct a teaching philosophy, whether it is put into words or not.
 Revisiting our teaching philosophy helps us to stay focused.
 Brookfield: “a distinctive organising vision- a clear picture of why you are doing what you are doing that you can
call up at points of crisis”
- Aspirations
- How will I teach?
- Why do I teach this way?
- What are my teaching and personal values?
-

Pedagogical content Knowledge:
 Pedagogical Knowledge: Knowledge about teaching and learning.
 Content Knowledge: Subject knowledge
 Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK): Special mixture of content and pedagogical knowledge.


Tools to guide reflection:
 DATA Process:
- Description- describe what happened
- Analysis- Analyse why it happened
- Theorising- Theorise to improve your practice
- Action- Act to test your theory in practice

 Guided Reflection Protocol
- What happened?
- Why did it happen?
- Reflection
- What might it mean?
- What are the implications for my teaching practice?


Reflective Journal:
 Keep a reflective journal as a student-teacher and novice teacher.
 Write a journal for 20 minutes a week




Page 2 of 17 Notes by: Christina Avgoustis

, Chapter 2: The teacher as a caring professional

Critical education theory:

 Critical theory: Set of assumptions and beliefs that informs your actions. Lay the foundations for alternative
pedagogical approaches.
 Allows us to critically analyse the elements of an education system and uncover practices, beliefs and attitudes
that limit the potential and status of marginalised groups
 Marginalised Groups: people who are on the edges of society- less important or less useful. Eg- Homeless.

In South African Context:
 Children are shut out of schools because they cannot afford them
 Children’s teachers speak a different language to them
 Children not being able to afford food or the school uniform.

Advantages of Critical education theory:
 Movement for teachers to become co-creators of knowledge rather than users of knowledge
 Enable participation in education and produce knowledge according to social, historical and cultural context.


The idea of care:
- Caring about something: feeling it is very important or interesting and you are concerned about it
- Doing something with care: do it with great attention because you want to do it properly.
- Care becomes part of who you are and allows you and your students to see things differently.
- Pedagogy of care: being accountable, designing responsible and moral environments as a teacher.


Noddings’ thinking on care in education:
- Care is not a “duty” but is important for connections and relationships
- Relational ethic: natural care where the relationship between the carer and the cared-for is important.
- Elements:
- Engrossment: non-selective attention to the cared for
- Displacement of motivation: Energy and motives flow from the carer to the others
- Start with the sharing of a feeling to analyse the relationship and not the situation


Creating pedagogy of care in the classroom:
- Teachers introduce themselves and them let students introduce themselves (involvement and commitment)
- Learner-centred curriculum:
- Participation: caring relationship, sharing,
- Feelings
- Problem posing


Benefits of a caring pedagogy:
 Change views of interaction, encourage learners, break traditionally routine

Page 3 of 17 Notes by: Christina Avgoustis