Introduction
The Qualifying to Teach Standards (2007) cover 33 different
areas of teaching competency and demand an evidence base accumulated
through combined taught experiences and practical experiences.
The standards cover:
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- Professional attributes (PA)
- Professional Knowledge and Understanding (KU)
- Professional Skills (PS) |
This section will draw out any complexities about qualifying
to teach media in the QTT Standards and detail approaches to
training activities both within university convened sessions
or as individual training activities in school. It is aimed
at tutors in ITT looking for ideas for training activities with
their groups or to trainee teachers themselves wanting to think
about the direction of their training and how to develop their
knowledge further. There are not really any specific differences
in the expectations to prepare for PA – ‘having
high expectations of children..’ (Q1) for example, crosses
subject boundaries and refers to one’s role in the classroom
and school irrespective of subject.
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Sample evidence base for Q1,
Q2
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- inclusive lesson plans – in content
and teaching approaches
- lessons provide access to learning, as well as challenge
- appropriate lesson objectives
- expectations within lessons
- identifying pupil needs and awareness of their backgrounds
- conversations about attainment with pupils, parents
and colleagues
- target setting for pupils
- following school policies on conduct
- treating pupils politely
- being enthusiastic
- being engaged in wider life of the school |
Some of these samples of evidence cross with other wider professional
duties – Q4, Q5, Q6 about working with others like
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how well lesson objectives are explained |
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how well pupils development is communicated to
parents and carers |
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how well trainees participate in school life –
departmental meetings, joint planning, planning
schemes of work |
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planning for use of additional adults
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The Question of Subject Knowledge (KU)
This area of the standards is specific to subject background
and subject development at the level of content and the understanding
of frameworks and examination critieria. It refers to the following
areas:
Teaching and Learning (Q10)
Assessment and Monitoring (Q11, Q12, Q13)
Subjects and Curriculum (Q14, Q15)
Literacy, Numeracy and ICT (Q16, 17)
Achievement and Diversity (Q18, 19, 20)
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Media Pedagogy (Q10)
David Buckingham asks pertinently ‘What
kind of theory of learning do we need in media education?’
(2003:139)
On teacher education courses trainees are inducted
into a variety of different theories of learning, and here
media trainees would benefit from the same induction. Certainly
the work of Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences is valuable
in thinking about the variety of ways in which pupils will
demonstrate their learning in media education settings through
production as well as in more familiar models of assessment.
Equally, the notion that children will gain a stronger or
deeper understanding of concepts as forwarded in a developmental
model like Piaget’s or through the spiralling of learning
as detailed by Vygotsky or Bruner is all important in encouraging
beginner teachers to engage with how children learn not just
with what they will learn.
One area of learning that seems vital and specific to media
training, however, is the almost unique phenomena that many
children will already be very knowledgeable about the subject
matter in media and in many cases exceed the knowledge of
their teachers. By being very experienced media users, children
have a great deal of what Vygotsky (in Daniels, 2001) has
termed ‘spontaneous’ knowledge. Being media users
from a young age has enabled children to be very conversant
in media conventions, forms of representation, means of production
and varieties of reception. They already possess a strong
and wide reaching understanding of the media before they take
to studying it. They may not talk in the language of how media
is theorised but there is evidence, Buckingham argues, that
their implicit knowledge can be made explicit through certain
social processes.
Buckingham puts forth a dynamic model of media learning drawn
out of discussions of the work of Vygotsky and Bahktin. Buckingham’s
model builds on the social constructivist approach. He argues
that media learning is not simply a stepped progression between
spontaneous knowledge and ‘scientific’ knowledge
– the scientific knowledge put in by a teacher. Rather
he claims it is a more varied and socially situated set of
negotiations between knowledge and identity that may be taking
place. Consequently the model suggested here is staged and
Buckingham privileges the first stage of this model as focused
on the students’ own media experiences:-
| Stage 1: |
students need opportunities to show what
they know already. |
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In showing that knowledge first they have an opportunity
to render that knowledge as systematic and to generalise
from it; |
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They can then question that knowledge and extend and
move beyond it with input from teachers, research, reading
and practice. |
Buckingham’s stage 1 is an advance on Vygotsky’s
presumption that spontaneous knowledge is less secure or vital
knowledge than scientific knowledge. Buckingham contends that
the spontaneous knowledge in media learning may indeed be
crucial to extending any further knowledge. It is not a lesser
form of knowledge but a building block on the way to greater
understanding. The staged model emphasises that the learning
is a social process involving reflection and discussion opportunities
and negotiation of ideas with peers and teachers. In classroom
terms this means that learning activities are predominantly
socially organised and a media classroom would be expected
to be organised around reflective tasks; socially produced
steps for development; further reflection and evaluation
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Activities with Trainees
Activity 1
Imagine you are about to undertake the teaching
of advertising to AS pupils.
Identify the first set of activities you might want
to prepare for using Buckingham’s dynamic model
of media learning.
What systematic knowledge are you expecting to emerge
from these activities and generalisable outcomes?
How will you use this process to begin to plan to extend
their knowledge and move beyond it?
Write a sequence of learning activities related to this
task.
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Activity 2
Taking a class list of pupils you are already teaching.
Design a seating plan for the class that you think best
suits achieving learning through the dynamic model of
media learning:
- where and how are pupils sitting?
- where is the teacher in the room?
- what resources you will provide to assist in stage 1
of the learning?
- how you will support any pupils with specific needs? |
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