Personal and Professional Preparation
Learning to become a teacher requires awareness of the ways we think, engage with the world, and value diverse opinions so we can recognize the uniqueness of our students, individually and collectively, and respond to their needs and talents. Learning to become a teacher is a lifelong venture into the complexities of learning and engaging with others and requires us to be adaptable and able to adjust to ever-changing conditions and contexts.
Competencies
- develop an awareness of your worldview and how this relates to others’ worldviews
- develop a growth mindset demonstrated in collaboration with others
- cultivate a culture of professionalism by demonstrating professional standards, including the Professional Standards for BC Educators
- demonstrate an understanding of the complexity of teaching and learning
First Peoples Principles connected to Personal and Professional Preparation
- Learning involves recognizing the consequences of one’s actions.
- Learning involves patience and time.
- Learning requires exploration of one’s identity.
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1. Develop an awareness of your worldview and how this relates to others’ worldviews
As you enter your Teacher Education Program, you bring with you knowledge, skills, beliefs, and dispositions. You bring both past experiences and beliefs to your teaching and learning and the beliefs you bring to your work are shaped by, among other things, the kind of teaching you have experienced as students.
Teacher Identity
Your professional, teacher identity will evolve over time with experience, continued learning, and reflection. Use the following prompts to consider your emerging professional identity:
- What does it mean to be ‘effective’?
- What characteristics does an effective teacher have?
- What kind of teacher do I want to become?
- What do I need to learn to become an effective teacher?
- What are my beliefs about teaching (my teaching philosophy)?
Worldview
While considering your emerging professional, teacher identity, you must also explore and reflect upon the worldview that you have, and how this will impact on your teacher identity and how it will influence the way you approach and perceive both your students and your planning for their learning.
Reflection
- What is a worldview?
- How would you describe your worldview?
- While thinking about your own worldview, also consider the impacts of your ethnocultural, socioeconomic, geopolitical and spiritual identities.
- Why, as a teacher, is it important to be aware of your own worldview, as well as those of your students and school community?
- What can you do, as a teacher, to ensure that your worldview does not impede the success of the diversity of learners in your classroom?
- When do you consider it to be necessary to challenge the western worldview as it impacts the K-12 education system?
- What aspects of the BC curriculum reinforce or challenge a western worldview?
2. Develop a growth mindset demonstrated in collaboration with others
“In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment” (Dweck, 2014).
Schools in BC are looking to educators with growth mindsets to shape the future of education. Further, they are looking for educators with growth mindsets who work in collaboration with others, rather than in isolation.
Reflection
- Do you identify with either mindset? Or with both in some ways? What examples do you have of when you’ve demonstrated a growth or fixed mindset?
- How can you foster a growth mindset in yourself as a teacher candidate, both within the teacher education program and in a practicum?
- How can you use feedback to improve your teaching practice? How will you seek it out?
- How will you demonstrate a growth mindset?
- In the teacher role, how can you foster a growth mindset in your students?
- How does the BC Curriculum support a growth mindset?
- What might the BC Curriculum further include to support a growth mindset?
3. Cultivate a culture of professionalism by demonstrating professional standards, including the Professional Standards for BC Educators
During your time in your teacher education program, you are required to adhere to the Teacher Education Code of Conduct for Professional Programs, the Professional Standards for BC Educators and the BCTF Code of Ethics.
Code of Conduct for Professional Programs
Students in teacher education programs are expected to adhere to the Faculty of Education’s Code of Conduct for Professional Programs as the basis of their relationship with peers, faculty members, teachers and the students they serve. In a field setting, students are subject to the provisions of the Code of Conduct for Professional Programs.
The Code of Conduct for Professional Programs requires:
- The exercise of self-discipline, accountability and judgement in academic and professional relationships;
- Acceptance of personal responsibility for continued academic and professional competency and learning;
- Acceptance that one’s professional abilities and personal integrity, and the attitudes one demonstrates in relationships with others, are measures of professional conduct;
- Ability to communicate effectively with members of faculty, peers, practicing professionals, parents and students:
- Ability to write, speak and present well.
Reflection
- How will a consideration of these professional guidelines enable you to offer meaningful learning experiences to your students?
- How will a consideration of the professional guidelines enable you to develop a growth mindset? To critically examine your worldview?
Reflection – Connecting and Comparing
- Looking at the Code of Professional Conduct, Professional Standards for BC Educators and BCTF Code of Ethics, what do you notice? Where are the similarities and differences?
- What is the difference between being a professional, and demonstrating professionalism?
- How do the competencies regarding worldview and growth mindset connect with the professionalism competency?
- What would you argue are “core” to professionalism, based on these documents and your own experience?
- In the practicum reports, teacher candidates are required to demonstrate evidence of the Professional Standards for BC Educators. How are you demonstrating these in your program? What evidence do you have? How will you demonstrate them during practicum?
- How can you address each of the teacher education competencies in your own practice as a teacher candidate?
- How will you know if you have been successful?
4. Demonstrate an understanding of the complexity of teaching and learning
Demonstrate an understanding of the complexity of teaching and learning
Rethinking Education as a Network of Complex Learning Relationships
Complexity theory describes systems and how systems change, develop, learn, and evolve. Rather than parts, complexity theory emphasizes wholes, relationships, open systems, and environments. Schools are complex systems and there are multidimensional relationships and dynamic interactions at play all the time (students, teachers, community, economics and politics, to name a few). Schools and classrooms are not predictable and learning is not linear. As described in the Lil’wat principle Cwelelep, disequilibrium is regarded as a valuable part of complex learning systems, where students self-organize, learning emerges, and bottom-up change processes are critical (Sanford, Williams, Hopper & McGregor, 2012).
To help describe the learning in our teacher education programs as distributed, relational, adaptive and emerging we have drawn on complexity theory. Complexity theory focuses on describing change. Complexity theory is a theory of change and emergence; it is about the dynamics of change within a system. Complexity theory focuses on the interaction of the parts of a living or social system to evolve and adapt, through a combination of co-operation and competition.
Reflection
- What experiences have you had dealing with professional or personal tensions? What understandings and tools have enabled you to navigate these tensions?
- Consider how a consideration of complexity theory can support multiple pathways to learning?
- How might considerations of complexity theory support inclusion of multiple voices/perspectives and student choice within formal learning?
- How has a consideration of complexity helped you to deepen your understanding of ‘learning’ and your role as a teacher?
- How might considerations of complexity theory support unpacking white fragility and implicit bias?
Informing Your Practice: Developing Personal and Professional Preparation Competencies
Now that you have examined the four competencies related to Personal and Professional Preparation, how will these inform your practice?
Active and Focused Observation: How to Inform Your Teaching Practice
Active observation is, at best, an active, purposeful task that stimulates deep learning and the development of professional “know how”. At worst it is a passive process that leads to either heightened anxiety or total ‘shut down’ in the learner (Morris, 2003).
“I think it’s absolutely of minimal value to sit somebody down in a room and say watch me, because they don’t know what they are looking for, there is a huge range of things that I would want them at different times to be observing, but with structure – different expectations at different points.” Quote from a mentor teacher
During your observation opportunities in the program, consider the following:
- Observation involves active engagement in watching, listening, and in some cases, interacting, using a critical lens
- You need to set a purpose for observation (consider the list below for ideas)
- Collaborating with a partner allows for debriefing to share insights and perspectives
- Seek out appropriate opportunities to challenge yourself, and encourage your peers to do the same. Identify and support high school students who would benefit from your support.
- Identify the kinds of teaching experiences you can have. (e.g. reading 1:1, working with small groups, providing additional support to learners)
- Identify artifacts that you can include from your school-based field experiences in your dPortfolio.
Reflection
- As you were observing in the school/classroom, consider what puzzled or challenged you? What are you seeing? What are you wondering? What additional context might be helpful for you to make sense of your observations?
- How did you demonstrate the “Personal and Professional Preparation” competencies during your observation?
- How did you know if learning was happening? What opportunities do students have to demonstrate growth mindset?
Considerations for active observation
It is impossible (and often counterproductive) to try to observe everything that is going on in a classroom. Consider the following as lenses with which to organize your observation. Choose one or two only, depending on what you need to know—and really engage in gathering evidence through your observation and interaction.
- School context: neighbourhood setting, facilities, student demographics and diversities, school culture, school philosophy, extracurricular programs, academic programs, displays in common areas, staff members. How does the school context provide a sense of the school community?
- Physical environment of the classroom: desk/table arrangement, available technology, visual aids, displays, etc. How do these things affect classroom management, types of instruction, student interaction? How does the environment reflect the teacher’s beliefs and values about teaching and learning? What constraints are there on the learning environment?
- Student/teacher interactions: What is the tone of the class? Are all students given the same amount of attention? What kind of attention? Also note teacher movement in the classroom as it relates to interactions, instruction and classroom management.
- Classroom routines: How does the teacher organize class start-up, dismissal, late students, transitions between activities. How do routines contribute to or detract from classroom atmosphere and class management?
- Teaching activities: How does the teacher introduce the lesson and relate it to previous learning What various instructional strategies are used? What resources are used? How does the teacher keep students involved and engaged? How does the teacher check for understanding? Give directions? How is the lesson paced? What types of questions does the teacher ask? What types of assessments are evident? How does the teacher give feedback to the students about their learning?
- Diversity of learners: In what way are these learners diverse? How does the teacher embrace and manage this diversity? How does the teacher differentiate instruction? What UDL principles are being employed? How are assignments adapted? Is there student choice? How does the teacher work collaboratively with EAs?
- Language of teaching and learning: What types of phrasing does the teacher use? What language is used in instruction? How do you know that learning is happening? What does student engagement look like?
- Group dynamics: What do you notice about the whole group? During group work, notice similarities and differences between groups. Why are some working better than others? What is the teacher doing?
- Creating classroom community: All of the above categories have significant impact on classroom community and tone. How does the teacher build community?
