It is sadly not often enough that we get to stop and think about what, as educators and practitioners, we do on a daily basis – it is so easy to get caught up in the daily operations and delivery, but the Reflective Conservatoire Conference held at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama earlier
Read on »Teaching
Are teachers still needed in our digital age classrooms?
How does learning happen? Are teachers still necessary in today’s learning environments? Two questions crucial to learning and teaching are addressed in an article by Kirschner and van Merriënboer. The authors engage with current but established thinking about the learning journey, and implicitly, about the role of teachers on that journey. [Urban Legends in Education
Read on »Rules of collaboration – a few ‘big ideas’
While browsing through a book called ‘Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom’ (Sylvia Libow Martinez & Gary Stager), I came across a passage dealing with lessons learnt from a research project from 1999 led by Seymour Papert. He laid out his ideas in a document designed for a visitor to the
Read on »Innovative Conservatoire Seminar 10: Student as Teacher, Dartington 2014
The innovative conservatoire seminar is always such an inspiring space to inhabit. Over three days key members from various European institutions gather at Dartington Hall to share practice and ideas creating a vibrant and supportive community of practice. In this positive place, fear is cast aside and experimentation is encouraged. I find that this kind of
Read on »Curiosity (my first teaching principle)
As teachers we are often in a position of needing to teach a subject that students do not consider as being immediately valid to their current practices or necessary for their experience. Yet, (and they may not know this or be able to visualise this yet) it may be an area that they will come
Read on »Creativity in teaching
How important is creativity in today’s teaching spaces? It’s a question that is gradually coming more into focus and one which is certainly worthy of our attention. As 1-1 teachers, or eve small group facilitators is this something we need to be thinking about? Perhaps because I work in an arts environment, it has always
Read on »Research supervision…a few personal thoughts
Research supervision is pretty much always exciting for me. Not without its challenges, but exciting nonetheless. I’m a relative newcomer to supervising graduate research projects – I’ve only been doing it for four years – but it’s a part of my teaching commitment that I greatly relish. The term ‘supervision’ continues to strike me as
Read on »Critical Reflection and Teaching
Some of my reading for this week included extracts from Stephen D. Brookfield (1995) Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass) One passage quite early on in the book drew my attention: ‘What critical reflection means for our teaching’ (38-48) Here Brookfield discusses the ‘emotive’ aspect not just of teaching, but also of being reflective
Read on »Three rules of teaching – a personal perspective
With me, teaching is personal. It’s a process that enriches my practice(s), enlivens my thinking and pushes me toward excellence. Yes, there’s a lot of theoretical writing out there about teaching theories, practices and the nature of the educational experience; over the next few posts however, I want to reflect on the underlying principles of
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