Courses / Module

The rationale that underpins ED620 (and the PME programme as a whole) is that good teachers, as well as being committed and capable in promoting fruitful learning among their pupils, also need to be proficient, constructive critics of their own work. This means developing among student teachers the attitudes and practices of proactive, collaborative, reflective practitioners.

The structure and delivery of the ED620 module consists of weekly two-hour professional seminars that run in parallel sessions, plenary lectures and tutorials throughout the year.

In semester 1 seminar groups allow early on in the year for students to gain solid grounding in innovative, inclusive and student-centred approaches to teaching, learning and assessment that are supported by appropriate and creative uses of electronic resources.

The distinct focus in each seminar is designed to enable students to engage with and reflect on the knowledge, skills and values that characterize good teaching and promote critically reflective practice. Students are also invited to reflect on the relationships across the main themes as they move through the seminars, lectures and tutorials. The order in which the themes are encountered is not important but reflecting on the links between them is and there will be ample opportunity for students to explore cross-cutting ideas and how these shape their emergent practice.

In semester 1 each seminar cycle culminates with a short reflective task/entry in an online portfolio. As these accumulate students will be gathering material to use to inform a longer reflective assignment to be completed by the end of the year. The portfolio is a means to gather and store accounts of and reflections on teaching and learning experiences. Moreover, it is a model for the use of ePortfolio at second level: a key aim of the national digital strategy for education.

In semester 2 seminars consist of two parallel four-week seminar cycles, one of which focuses on educational policy while the other provides an introduction to practitioner research that enable students to prepare for group-based research work undertaken in the second year of the programme.