MANAGING PROFESSIONAL CHANGE

Managing Professional Change



Managing Professional Change

PART: A

Introduction

This essay will explain how my understanding of the process of professional change and development has deepened from School Based Placement (SBT) 1 to SBT2. I will analyze my reflective journal entries and explain how I have managed professional change and development through reflective writing. I demonstrate this with three ref1ective journal extracts showing how my approach on my practice has shifted during my course in relation to teaching and learning.

Discussion

Reflective Journal Entry (RJ E1); “ ...I taught Math today and the learning objective (L.O) was I can tell the time using everyday language, This lesson was rushed. The children were not sure on what I said when I talked about 'lls'ingl a sand timer" Looking back I should have compared a digital clock to a sand timer and asked the children what differences they could notice between a sand timer and an analogue clock. I overloaded the children with too much information and they would not internalize it in such a short space of 20 minutes. In the lesson, I talked about a countdown timer, a digital timer, and very little recap on an analogue clock.” (u1206008 UEL Reflective Journal 23 November 2012).

My analysis of this reflection was that children's learning had not progressed and I had to question what I had done or not done to create such an unsatisfactory lesson based on my mentor's feedback. I was very upset, but I had to push past that emotion and say to myself that I must make sure children progress in their learning and my professionalism of making children learn things must not be compromised. I took on board all of the suggestions my mentor gave me which was a turning point for me during my placement. My Mentor: “if children are not getting what you are teaching, have the confidence to scrap my lesson plan and start from where the children are…”

I took this advice to SBT2, where my approach was to have a list of questions that I have to ask from children along with a key vocabulary list which is easily understood by children and which even make children able to identify and apply in learning and day to day activities where applicable.

My teaching style in SBT1 was not as structured as I wanted it to be. My style of delivery was limited in the sense that most of the children were not as engaged as I wanted. In effect, I used more of my time managing the behaviours of some of the children and making the rest of the class lose out on teaching time. Another issue I noticed ill SBT1 was I did more of the talking and the children hardily contributed to the Lesson. This removed the interaction and fun aspect of the lesson. I took on board these notes I had made in my reflection that I must ensure that children did more of the talking and allow talking ...