The Wisdom of Teaching:
Signposts for the ProfessionGraeme Aitken
Keynote address, International World Teachers' Day
Holiday Inn, Wellington
31 October, 2008
NOTE: This summary does not contain any of the graphic elements which were used to develop discussion points.
Draft Registered Teacher Criteria - Purposes
COMPLIANCE
Requirement for registration. . .
Required professional knowledge, practices and relationships. . .
Criteria against which teachers are endorsed as competent. . .
GUIDANCE
Criteria to guide the professional learning and the assessment of teachers. . .
Framework to guide career long professional learning. . .
ASPIRATION
To promote the status of the teaching profession through raising awareness of the complex nature of teachers' work.
To strengthen public confidence in the profession.
Effective teachersseek to maximise the time that students are engaged and successful with learning related to valued outcomes.
Effective teachersseek to maximise the time that students are engaged and successful with learning related to valued outcomes.
Effective teachersseek to maximise the time that students are engaged and successful with learning related to valued outcomes.
Effective teachersseek to maximise the time that students are engaged and successful with learning related to valued outcomes.
Curriculum Signposts: NZC
Curriculum Signposts: Te Whāriki
Focusing Inquiry (Alignment)
Discussion and debate about planning programmes are a crucial part of the process of improving it, by ensuring that people think about, and are able to justify, their beliefs and practices.
Learning Inquiry (Engagement and Success)
Assessment of children's learning and development involves intelligent observation of the children by experienced and knowledgeable adults for the purpose of improving the programme.
Teaching Inquiry (Engagement and Success)
Continuous observations, over a period of time, provide the basis of information for more in-depth assessment and evaluation that is integral to making decisions on how best to meet children's needs.
Wisdom
- Universal truths, theories and ideas
- Technical craft or skill
- Practical wisdom
- acting with reason in a situation that is variable and particular
- deliberate nobly
- doing well
See: Wiliam, Dylan (2008). What should education research do, and how should it do it? Educational Researcher. Vol 37, 7, pp 432-438
SIGNPOST 1 Wise use of time: why does this learning matter for these students at this time?
SIGNPOST 2 Wise action: to what extent is the teacher seeking out, evaluating, discussing, implementing and testing alternatives?
SIGNPOST 3 Wise use of evidence: what did the students' experience?
Curriculum Signposts: Te Whāriki:
knowledgeable . . . (about children's development and early childhood curriculum)
skilled . . . (at implementing curriculum)
thoughtful . . . (about what they do)
willing to try alternatives (success)
SIGNPOST 4 Wise people
Optimism is a Duty
"The future is open. It is not fixed in advance. So no one can predict it except by chance. The possibilities lying within the future, both good and bad, are boundless. When I say, 'Optimism is a duty', this means that not only is the future open but that we all help to decide it through what we do. We are jointly responsible for what is to come.
So we all have a duty, instead of predicting something bad, to support things that may lead to a better future"
Karl Popper (1992)The Collapse of Communism: Understanding the Past and Influencing the Future Lecture given at Expo'92 in Seville, 6 March 1992 |
