The following article is taken from the following link for study purpose only http://www.emu.edu/education/model.html
The Reflective Teaching Model undergirds the professional knowledge bases. These knowledge bases are centered on knowledge of self, knowledge of content, knowledge of teaching and learning, knowledge of pupils, and knowledge of context within schools and society. Preparation for working with diverse populations in an ever-changing cultural and global context requires teachers who are knowledgeable, caring, and responsive.
A visual model for teacher reflection has been adapted from the works of Sparks-Langer (1992). The framework is presented below.
The reflective teaching model should not be viewed as a simplistic fix-it model whereby a solution is developed to correct a problem without addressing the underlying causes of the problem. Rather, it examines underlying assumptions and becomes a useful model to understand the interaction of dispositions (being), practice (doing), and professional knowledge (knowing). At the heart of the model is a cyclical process leading to the construction of meaning. Meaning is constructed when awareness is created by observing and gathering information (1); by analyzing the information to identify any implications (2); by hypothesizing to explain the events and guide further action (3); and by implementing an action plan (4).
The model of reflection incorporates five categories of knowledge. The professional knowledge bases are identified on the far right of the diagram. They include knowledge of self as teacher, knowledge of content, knowledge of teaching and learning, knowledge of students, and knowledge of school and societal contexts. These knowledge bases are viewed as essential for what prospective teachers should know and be able to do.
On the far left of the diagram is the "doing" dimension of teacher behavior. It identifies performance indicators and involves the tasks of planning, implementing, and evaluating.
Incorporated in the conceptual framework are attributes or dispositions deemed critical to professional development. They must be nurtured. These are identified on the outside of the circle and incorporate the affective dimensions of the six principles identified in the EMU Teacher Education Mission Statement.
What is the Reflective Teaching Model?
Reflective Teaching is an inquiry approach that emphasizes an ethic of caring, a constructivist approach to teaching, and creative problem solving (Henderson, 1996).
An ethic of caring respects the wonderful range of multiple talents and capacities of all individuals regardless of cultural, intellectual, or gender differences. A premium is placed on the dignity of all persons. Teachers using a constructivist approach place emphasis on big concepts, student questions, active learning, and cooperative learning, and they interweave assessment with teaching.
A constructivist approach seeks to connect theory to practice and views the student as "thinker, creator, and constructor." Integral to a constructivist theory of learning is creative problem solving. Teachers take responsibility for assessing and solving problems not with mechanistic "cook book" recipes, but by asking "What decisions should I be making?", "On what basis do I make these decisions?", and "What can I do to enhance learning?"
How does the Reflective Teaching Model Integrate Theory with Practice?
Teacher Education at EMU strives to help you make meaningful connections between theory and practice. You are taught to ask significant questions in the context of classroom and field experiences.
The Education Department incorporates reflective thinking and teaching into a sequential curriculum pattern with initiatory, developmental, and culminating phases. Courses are arranged within the professional education sequence around five questions:
1. Exploring Teaching-- "Shall I Teach?"
2. Academic Preparation-- "What Shall I Teach?"
3. Understanding Learners-- "How Do Students Learn?"
4. Organizing for Teaching --"How Shall I Teach?"
5. Schooling and Cultural Context--"Why Do We Teach?"
Classes participate in carefully arranged and fully integrated field based experiences beginning in the first year and culminating in the senior year with Student Teaching. The professional education curriculum emphasizes caring relationships, assertive but cooperative classroom management practices, peace and justice issues, and the integration of ethics with professional competency.
The ultimate goal of teacher education at EMU is to empower you to develop a spirit of inquiry leading to informed decision making while applying values to action.
Members of the education faculty are committed to demonstrating the reflective model in their own teaching. Education classes utilize instructional activities such as cooperative learning strategies, class interaction and role playing, microteaching lessons, and case studies. Instructors give special attention to the application of theory and practice by helping you make connections between relevant concepts through higher order questioning strategies. Reflective thinking skills -- the ability to evaluate and interpret evidence, modify views, and make objective judgments--are stressed in all courses.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Constructivism and Science Education
This article is taken from the following link only for learning purpose of student teachers.
http://srri.umass.edu/topics/constructivism
Constructivism and Science Education
In what way is a constructivist view of science education different from other views? The answer lies in the tenets of constructivist philosophy, which assert that all knowledge is constructed as a result of cognitive processes within the human mind. While this may appear to be a harmless enough statement, many find (so-called) radical constructivism somewhat unpalatable. Radical constructivism challenges the possibility of knowing an external reality: No amount of stimuli, experience, or thinking is sufficient to prove the existence of an external agent. Science (of course) presumes such an external reality and seeks to describe its nature and behavior. (Science also presumes that the external reality is well behaved and capable of being explained.)
Despite the previous statements, there is no essential conflict between science and constructivism at the operational level. In fact, scientists readily admit that all we can ever do is construct a model of external reality, assuming it exists. Thus, all that we know is actually a set of stimuli and experiences. This is totally in accord with the scientific view. So, at the level of epistemology (how we know or learn anything), science and constructivism are in complete harmony.
The premises of constructivism as an epistemology are:
1. Knowledge is constructed, not transmitted.
2. Prior knowledge impacts the learning process.
3. Initial understanding is local, not global.
4. Building useful knowledge structures requires effortful and purposeful activity.
The constructivist perspective is clearly divergent from earlier views of education that presumed we could put or pour information directly into a student's head. Starting from constructivism, real learning can occur only when the learner is actively engaged in operating on, or mentally processing, incoming stimuli. Furthermore, the interpretation of stimuli depends upon previously constructed learning. Nothing here should be taken to imply that the mental processing involved in learning is necessarily conscious. In fact, much, perhaps even most, of the learning we do is subconscious. Thinking or learning about the process of learning, rather than the material being learned, is often called a meta-cognitive process.
Cognitive science has undertaken the study of the mental processes used to acquire, store, process, and use knowledge. Essential to any such study is a theory of learning and cognition. As a theory of epistemology, constructivism plays a central role in cognitive science, a role akin to that of causality for the physical sciences. Like causality, constructivism provides no specific answers, but rather, frames the questions and the acceptable forms of answers.
In addition to being used as a philosophy and an epistemology, constructivism also can be used to indicate a theory of communication. When you send a message by saying something or providing information, if you have no knowledge of the receiver, then you have no idea as to what message was received, and you can not unambiguously interpret the response. Viewed in this way, instruction becomes the establishment and maintenance of a language and a means of communication between the teacher and students, as well as between students. Simply presenting material, giving students problems, and accepting answers back is not a refined enough process of communication for efficient learning.
For pedagogic purposes, the tenets of constructivism can be rephrased as follows:
1. Students come into our classrooms with an established world-view, formed by years of prior experience and learning.
2. Even as it evolves, a student's world-view filters all experiences and affects their interpretation of observations.
3. Students are emotionally attached to their world-views and will not give up their world-views easily.
4. Challenging, revising, and restructuring one's world-view requires much effort.
If we base instruction on the principles of constructivism, the role of the teacher is raised from someone who simply dispenses information to someone who structures activities that improve communication, that challenge students' pre-conceived notions, and that help students revise their world-views. In spite of the difficulties, cognitive research has been able to identify important patterns in the ways students and experts think about their subjects, suggesting pedagogic practices that enhance learning.
http://srri.umass.edu/topics/constructivism
Constructivism and Science Education
In what way is a constructivist view of science education different from other views? The answer lies in the tenets of constructivist philosophy, which assert that all knowledge is constructed as a result of cognitive processes within the human mind. While this may appear to be a harmless enough statement, many find (so-called) radical constructivism somewhat unpalatable. Radical constructivism challenges the possibility of knowing an external reality: No amount of stimuli, experience, or thinking is sufficient to prove the existence of an external agent. Science (of course) presumes such an external reality and seeks to describe its nature and behavior. (Science also presumes that the external reality is well behaved and capable of being explained.)
Despite the previous statements, there is no essential conflict between science and constructivism at the operational level. In fact, scientists readily admit that all we can ever do is construct a model of external reality, assuming it exists. Thus, all that we know is actually a set of stimuli and experiences. This is totally in accord with the scientific view. So, at the level of epistemology (how we know or learn anything), science and constructivism are in complete harmony.
The premises of constructivism as an epistemology are:
1. Knowledge is constructed, not transmitted.
2. Prior knowledge impacts the learning process.
3. Initial understanding is local, not global.
4. Building useful knowledge structures requires effortful and purposeful activity.
The constructivist perspective is clearly divergent from earlier views of education that presumed we could put or pour information directly into a student's head. Starting from constructivism, real learning can occur only when the learner is actively engaged in operating on, or mentally processing, incoming stimuli. Furthermore, the interpretation of stimuli depends upon previously constructed learning. Nothing here should be taken to imply that the mental processing involved in learning is necessarily conscious. In fact, much, perhaps even most, of the learning we do is subconscious. Thinking or learning about the process of learning, rather than the material being learned, is often called a meta-cognitive process.
Cognitive science has undertaken the study of the mental processes used to acquire, store, process, and use knowledge. Essential to any such study is a theory of learning and cognition. As a theory of epistemology, constructivism plays a central role in cognitive science, a role akin to that of causality for the physical sciences. Like causality, constructivism provides no specific answers, but rather, frames the questions and the acceptable forms of answers.
In addition to being used as a philosophy and an epistemology, constructivism also can be used to indicate a theory of communication. When you send a message by saying something or providing information, if you have no knowledge of the receiver, then you have no idea as to what message was received, and you can not unambiguously interpret the response. Viewed in this way, instruction becomes the establishment and maintenance of a language and a means of communication between the teacher and students, as well as between students. Simply presenting material, giving students problems, and accepting answers back is not a refined enough process of communication for efficient learning.
For pedagogic purposes, the tenets of constructivism can be rephrased as follows:
1. Students come into our classrooms with an established world-view, formed by years of prior experience and learning.
2. Even as it evolves, a student's world-view filters all experiences and affects their interpretation of observations.
3. Students are emotionally attached to their world-views and will not give up their world-views easily.
4. Challenging, revising, and restructuring one's world-view requires much effort.
If we base instruction on the principles of constructivism, the role of the teacher is raised from someone who simply dispenses information to someone who structures activities that improve communication, that challenge students' pre-conceived notions, and that help students revise their world-views. In spite of the difficulties, cognitive research has been able to identify important patterns in the ways students and experts think about their subjects, suggesting pedagogic practices that enhance learning.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
HOW DO ISSUES-BASED LESSONS LOOK LIKE?
HOW DO ISSUES-BASED LESSONS LOOK LIKE?
Issues-Based Approach (IBA) to curriculum transaction is a novel and unique one in the history of school curriculum development in Kerala. This approach is a clear departure from the traditional ‘knowledge transmission’ models of curriculum transaction and focuses on ‘knowledge generation’ by the learners. The IBA aims to sensitize the learners about the numerous issues faced by our society through the learning material itself. These issues are developed and sensitized using various discourses which provide a linguistically rich environment in the classroom.
Being a novel one, the IBA poses a number of challenges to facilitators with respect to the preparation of teaching manual, lesson transaction, learner assessment etc. in the classroom. It is really a hard task to the facilitator to bring in various social issues in an appropriate form into the framework of formal education. The challenge of the facilitator is to generate contextualized knowledge in developing and transacting IBA lessons. Let us address this challenge by exploring the problem in detail with the following question.
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