20/02/2023 Tim Stephens & Chris Rowell (Linda absent)
Overall the day was probably the best I’ve experienced so far, although some of the tasks were confusing (personally I thought it was my knowledge, but others had similar difficulties). I did participate in both small group and large room activities and actively correspond to the tasks at hand. Policies and principles are always a tough subject as it never comes naturally, they are procedural and can succumb to vocational learners. I think the teaching staff used the time and breaks well, which balanced the lengthy reading and reflection on more dialogue and debate around personal and professional requirements when it comes to principles and policies.
Knowledge and Values
3 strands in knowledge and values in education are to be known or reflected on to become a better educator. The first strand is teaching about the LIVED experiences of the educator and how they use the second strand which is ACQUIRED knowledge to teach new participants in the subject matter. The third strand is more environmental within an educator’s requirements on the professional/policy requirements needed to be known before/during and after. The third strand can be dependent on the workplace, personal professionalism, and or how country policies and education policies can determine how you teach or guide you in safeguarding the students and educators.
Within a group, we were asked a series of questions that related to knowledge and values;
1. What do we need to KNOW to teach well?
Subject matter – course structure – goals/outcomes – passive knowledge – current affairs – Sustainability/circular systems – boundaries (personal/professional) – ethics – learning technologies – team rapport – studentship – student services – teaching services.
2. What VALUES inform the way we teach?
– Empathy/compassion – inclusive values – decolonization – decarbonization – equality/equity – unbiased judgment – behaviourism (body language) – accessibility awareness
Tim described values in two areas
Articulate values – Google searching this, I got a few mixed things, but I am slightly confused on this, as I did type it with education to see if anything was prompted, I was expecting something more purposeful around ‘articulated values’ rather than the results. There was an article about helping teachers identify their values and beliefs from 2009, more for young children teaching, but all teaching has to be respected and valued in the aspect of understanding.
“A value is a deeply held view of what we believe to be important and worthwhile. A belief is slightly different from a value. It is our personal conviction that certain things are true and that certain statements are facts. Our personal values shape our beliefs about what is important to pursue, how we treat others, and how we choose to spend our time. Our core values and beliefs cut across all aspects of our lives. They serve as a point of reference, a kind of moral compass for making daily decisions. They give rise to our fundamental commitments, the things in life that we consider worthy for their own sake. While our values and beliefs certainly reflect our family upbringing and cultural backgrounds, they are also shaped by personal experiences, education, and societal influences. ” – LINK
Although this other article arose, which does seem interesting from 2004! That I would need to read up on! ” The Articulated Learning: An Approach to Guided Reflection and Assessment Sarah L. Ash and Patti H. Clayton”
The abstract, basically recalls how valuable reflection is, and that it can be used as a tool to enhance teaching practice as well as student learning. With guided tools and written formats, it’s something that I know I don’t fully understand, and need to brush up on my knowledge.
The other side of pre-reading and making a theoretical assumption is, how I use reflection as a value in my practice and on the technical teaching side of education. Where is a reflection given an opportunity, is it something that a student asks themselves or is it a prompt from the technician to contribute or create a dialogue around reflection?
Is this me, building or adding a VALUE to my personal beliefs in my practice? As I use this blog as a reflective tool, it has shown me the usage and valuation of how reflection can help me digest my reading or activities. It reminds me of my days as a student and making a contextual file/journal of my processes, something I wish I still possessed.
The other Value Tim mentioned was TACIT Values;
These values are from lived experiences, something we have built over time, or from habits, routine, actions, and behaviours. It is an individualistic-based value and differs from person to person. It is important while writing out values to understand that personal and professional values play hand in hand, and either we compromise or tweak to be able to value our roles as educators.
This website recites an interesting idea around tacit and explicit knowledge (LINK), not in the sense of values (Or it could be) but I really liked the quote below;
“So how do we turn our schools into places where tacit expertise is valued above explicit knowledge?
Start by changing YOUR vocabulary:
Have you ever thought about the words that we use to describe education? The kids in our classrooms are “students” instead of “learners.” They come to school “to receive” an education – and the teacher’s role is to “deliver” lessons. Our goal is to ensure that every child “masters the required curriculum.” Those words and phrases inadvertently reinforce traditional notions of teaching and learning. Students are great at mastering explicit knowledge delivered by teachers. Learners, on the other hand, actively create and imagine and participate in their own education. So eliminate passive language from your vocabulary. Doing so will send the message to everyone that you value something other than explicit knowledge.”
Even though this website is more focused on the younger learner systems, this question and answer are worth reflecting on. How are language and vocabulary used to ‘deliver’ required outcomes/goals and does this make/guide a student in a direction that is not their own?
Even in today’s session, words such as reflect, inclusive, theorise, and analysis are descriptors of how we are perceived to ‘pass’ this unit. Without our bodies of work showing this, are we doomed to fail? can we consider alternative means of interpreting student behaviours around institute requirements? (who knows – maybe one day as an academic, I can challenge this).
The above tasks, were to ‘ice-breakers’ into understanding and knowing about the PSF.
” Professional standards framework (PSFUK) – Globally recognised advanced HE body on teaching excellence”.
Below is the 2011 edition of the frame, which currently in 2023 is now officially outdated, but we are asked to use this and study this framework for this session.
The 3 main dimensions of this framework are;
Professional values
Core Knowledge
Areas of Activity
It is within these areas that we will study and reflect on, and use our previous task to build and align our values and knowledge with the PSF, luckily as a group we felt that many of our descriptors fell in line with the framework. We digested as a group core knowledge K1-K5 although we didn’t communicate any topics on quality assurance maybe that would be around PTES and NSS and how that is a valuable tool for the course and staff development. Also with Professional Values, we might not have used the same verbiage but we acknowledged that our single descriptions do align especially with understanding accessible learning needs, equality in learning environments and also with a discussion on how KE or research funding can be used to build more evidence around V3.
This is a framework that I really need to digest especially the descriptors and how those are broken down in the teaching fellowship and how it contributes to your professional career. It looks like PSF will be our future, and we need to acknowledge where in our practice these descriptors fit in place and if can we realign these in our practice.
I will upload the 2023 edition, the major change is that the dimensions all now have 5 statements each with a total of 15, and the graphics and layout are friendly and visually engaging and easier to read. The context of the statements has been updated to be more relevant in today’s teaching practice, and this brought me to the question about the evaluation of time as an educator.
I questioned why we weren’t using the 2023 edition as a reflective framework in class, as my practice isn’t in 2011 and ALOT has changed in these 12 changes majorly COVID and that a 2011 edition is basically outdated, what would be the point of using this framework and our time to investigate, digest and put into practice?
My main question;
In the substance of the value of learning, do educators have an expiry date on their tacit and explicit knowledge?
Tim enjoyed my question, I think it made him question his teaching career, which I then blurted out that It wasn’t an ageist question, but more along the lines of full-time staff members teaching without industry practice over a span of time, does there teaching stay contemporary?
Others agreed and one cohort member, fully involved herself with the expression of how stagnant education can be when someone has been teaching the same thing for 20-30 years. This then led to the evaluation hierarchy and teaching roles;
Do seniors also need to teach juniors to help build and sustain education, while juniors disrupt seniors’ notions around teaching practices through contemporary shifts in trends, technology or policies?
I seem to spin around in circles, like a lost dog asking myself these types of questions in a ‘what if’ scenario, who has the answers or how do I get the answers myself, what would be the outcome of these answers and how would they affect my practice?
Evaluative task;
1. How might we critique the reach and scope (include terms like impact/effectiveness) of these values and knowledge in ‘your’ education context?
– Firstly, I like to work methodologically in the sense of understanding the full picture before I realign my values and knowledge in the key aspects of the framework from the PSFUK. I do feel that the impact of core knowledge and professional values are somewhat in tune with my practice and that I can without the same vocabulary clearly states those. The area of activities and certain statements around quality and assurance I will need to brush up on, but in hopes of the descriptors and fully engaging in this framework, I am hopefully adding a more effective approach to my teaching and building upon my practice with a leading framework to reflect on.
2. How do you meet/match these professional expectations or exceed them?
– Well atm in my practice my only guideline is my PRAS, but that is more geared towards my work commitments and not actually my teaching practice. It does although align with working towards, climate, social and racial justice and what I am doing as an individual to improve in these areas. The other aspect, is to carry on the blog and continue my reflective process in generating my research into academic practice, creative education and rhizomatic pedagogy, could I lead small think tanks into research proposals, do I have the time?
The other question in the back of my head, is do our academics respect me? do they actually value my input how do I match their expectations with my own?
Plenary observation:
1. How do professional guidelines inform our practice? Can this change, and to what extent in what new ways?
They are routine, evolving manuscripts that we use to keep us aligned with the institute’s professionalism standards. Basically, I would acknowledge these as codes of conduct in practice and how and what a ‘school’s’ guidelines would be. They are forever changing and updating, from current affairs to accessibility these are policies and guidelines that grow with humankind and teaching practices, they can’t be stagnant.
2. How does our disciplinary knowledge interact with the policy, or relate to other non-educational policies and practices?
This one slightly confuses me, by disciplinary, I believe they mean specialism or practice hopefully. The value of one’s discipline is characterised by the means of teaching and that can be relatable to all policies but in the context of environments, students and health and safety we have to consider our whole surroundings and individuals participating to fully engage with both policies and personal disciplinary knowledge.
3. How does your experiential and embodied or identity-based knowledge relate to the ways in which we (could or shouldn’t) work?
As a technician, my values are completely different to some of the academics I engage with, my practice is industry based and industry-led, I teach skills forecasted for job requirements and needs and work around refining and repurposing this knowledge with having a contemporary practice and research enquiries.
I do feel that we should have clear outcomes of directions in which a course can lead, and how a student can navigate and taste parts of the industry to see if their personal values align with real-life job scenarios. Unless your practice is art-based then, a reflective and critical awareness of the business can also be attuned to this question.
Reflection :
Overall, a very strong day, with LOTS AND LOTS of new words and context to digest and swallow, and some more reading to continue and explore in my adventure of this PGCERT, it definitely has been an up and down, roller coaster. I do wish, that each week there was a directional reading that would give us substance to question and acknowledge in class and allow room for debate and dialogue around policies/pedagogy etc. A lot of the sessions seem to consistently reflect on experiential knowledge and how and where they see themselves in these scenarios. But it neglects the small portion of us that don’t live these jobs on a daily bases, which personally feels like I need to do more reading and more research and reflect more.
How can I value my own personal disciplinary knowledge when I can realign or bring common interests to the table in these discussions. As a tech today, I felt empowered that I was teaching a cohort how to navigate the filtering system on canvas search and that the body of work on canvas is cloud-based and pin-and-point accessible to all those with credentials to access it.
A wonderous tool at our disposal, but generally searching for a word, will be as chaotic as the gates of hell.
As I like to express my feelings with imagery, my research tools for this, are simply using the most newest context or word in these sessions, that I can search with. I share Tracey’s work below as it’s my field but her title was perfect to describe both my craft, today’s session and my ‘broken’ knowledge around the subject.
“Tacit knowledge in a piece of broken knitting” – by Tracey Doxey
