What I did /studied in my first Semester.
I attended seven course units Vocational Pedagogy and Didactics; Ethics, Gender
and Internationalisation in Education and Development; Entrepreneurship and
Information Communications Technology; Educational Foundations; Educational
Psychology; Technological Studies in Education and Development I; Vocational
Pedagogy and Didactics in Technological Studies I.
The activities included group and class discussions, working with assignments
individually and in groups, studies of literature and other sources, project work,
research and research writing, lecture sessions, presentations, micro-teaching,
facilitating learning among special needs students, and observation of
teaching/learning sessions.
What I learned, my growth and personal development.
What did not work for me and what worked for me?
On a few occasions the sessions were more or less lectures and during the sessions
because of inactiveness it got boring. Also when we were taking notes in class it
became tiring especially since the lessons were in the evenings after a whole day of
work. Sitting exams seemed to pressure me into doing a lot of reading without
necessarily learning but cramming.
However, the exams were set in a way that required for one to have attended the
learning sessions to be able to pass. Logical answers, reasoning and write-ups of
what I knew and had learnt were enough for me to comfortably sit the exams
without fear of failure. I think project based tasks and problem solving tasks or
assignments would have made the learning more fruitful as they would have
resulted into experiential learning situations. The duration of the first semester was
mostly interesting with a lot of active learning through project work and research
writing, observation practice, micro-teaching, facilitating the learning of special
needs students, reading assignments, class discussions and brainstorming sessions,
group work, tasks to prepare schemes of work and lesson plans and the major tasks
that were very involving and participatory in nature.
In my own experience I realized that the evening sessions were for more or less
receiving direction, guidance and counsel from the facilitators, on how to learn
better, organize, plan and implement learning sessions; they were ‘panel beating’
sessions. After every session, I felt compelled to do more reading and research on
my own.
My growth and personal development
When I taught, before starting pedagogic training, I did my teaching work
haphazardly, had little confidence in myself, and had no understanding as to why
certain things or issues would have to be dealt with let alone in specific ways to
achieve results. As an example, I never had consciously set objectives or even
made a thorough teaching plan before teaching, it never occurred to me that
teaching could be learner-centred, the little planning I did only considered content
to be taught. I was so surprised when I realized that objectives precede the content
taught and not vice versa; the method of delivering a lesson is also a vital
consideration in achieving the set objectives.
The first task of observation practice brought me to the realization the observation
is in fact a research method. I learnt that there are many methods of delivering a
lesson and planning is a very essential element of teaching without which there is
little learning. The best methods of teaching are the participatory methods as they
lead to increased retention of knowledge, and increased learning and understanding
of what learners do or get involved in actively.
The first entrepreneurship task was really hands on. I acquired a skill of being able
to identify a business opportunity, to develop a business proposal and/or plan, and
also got knowledge and understanding of how to assess the impacts of any business
proposal on the environment. The ICT sessions encouraged and inculcated creativity
in me.
Through my interactions with the mentors, critical and reflective thinking as a way
of life was inculcated in me. I began to exercise it and constantly evaluating my
actions, decisions and choices, I feel, has propelled my vocational and personal
growth. On the whole my knowledge has increased and my awareness of how
influential I may be in the shaping of the lives of my students has increased as I
have learned more about ethics and integrity. After having been tasked with
preparing a scheme of work and a lesson plan, I believe, I have acquired sufficient
knowledge to accomplish the same tasks in my teaching.
I also learnt an important lesson that learning is a lifelong experience; it does not
end in the class room.
Conclusion
I have noticed it is hard work to teach consistently in a learning session using
didactic methods especially after having taught for some time using teacher-
centred methods. All the times I have employed student-centred methods of
teaching, I have realized that it is a more relaxed way of teaching; not as tiring as
the teacher centred methods. And when the students (higher learning where I
mostly teach), get to understand the benefits of student-centred learning, seeing
that it is involving, they have appreciated the learning and education even better.
Through the month of July I taught Mathematics to Primary Seven students. During
the course of the First Semester we were told not to ASSUME that, for example, the
learners had no knowledge at all about the subject they were learning. It came to
my attention, as I adopted vocational pedagogy and the didactic model of learning
(engaging the learners at the onset of a learning session), that even they had some
knowledge about what we were going to be dealing with.
Not that I was putting it to the test what I had learnt, but I was merely putting in
practice what I had learnt; this was a justification that what we were learning is
really practical and is applicable. And besides I had read some literature concerning
education systems in the more developed economies that indicated the system has
been used for centuries and there have been positive results.
In my opinion, on a scale of 1 – 100, I have personally achieved 90% of the specific
course objectives of the entire program. Even as learning is a lifelong experience,
the rest will be covered as I continue to practice as a pedagogue. I feel, there is still
a lot of practice and application, and much reading that needs to be done on my
part to consolidate what I have learned.