Secondary Professional Practice 2: 102094 Blake Chandler: 17534550

Secondary Professional Practice 2: Assessment 1- Reflection

1. What was significant? What were three key learning moments, which transformed your thinking about
teaching and learning practice? Describe the teaching moment and its significance to you.

Throughout my 30-day practical experience there have been many moments and instances that have

highlighted my experience and shaped how I think and reflect on my current practice. The first happened on

my first day of teaching, the practical lesson I was observing involved various touch football activities and

skill based games to develop student progression. During the class a small group of students decided to

disengage and as a result became unresponsive in the lesson. The teacher quickly noticed this misbehaviour

and directly called the students by their names and stated for the small group of students to get involved.

What I discovered is calling students by their names can be very personal for students and is a great way to

deal with unwanted behaviour especially in a practical environment.

The second moment that directed my understanding in teaching is student respect and relationships, having a

mutual respect is important and in my opinion is required to develop professional student development. In

one of my classes at the beginning of my prac I noticed the same students to disengage and as a result

display unwanted behaviour. I decided to pull these particular students aside after class and ask them why

they seemed to be having problems in my classes. Even though the students did not really have any valid

responses I found that I made myself approachable to these students and my authority seemed to blossom.

These students did at times still have troubles with behaviour however, they did seem to ease up and try to

participate after the student teacher relationship was built.

Lastly, another key moment that I witnessed in a PDHPE theory based class was the use of practical

teaching applications. In this lesson the teacher used chair exercises and yoga video instructions to teach the

students about exercise and well being. Personally I found this to be a very critical approach to teaching as

the lesson involved writing and theory based learning, however the use of this practical element seemed to

fully engage the entire classroom. I personally have utilised this method since this lesson and have had great

success, with most students responding well to the change of teaching approach, which moves away from

conventional and traditional methods.

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2. What you learnt. How have these three key leaning moments changed the way you think and practice
teaching?

Through witnessing these key moments and experiences I have really started to gain an understanding of the

different components that are required to develop quality learning and student knowledge. Even though my

time at Nepean high was for a short duration it was great to be able to compare my learning with that of my

previous practical experiences and further reflect on my teaching abilities. In my first practical experience I

felt as if I gained many great ideas and methods of teaching, however through my time at Nepean I have had

the opportunity to develop and incorporate a range of these methods such as; professional relationship

building, time management and student centred learning. I feel my way of thinking towards teaching has

shifted to a more professional and structured pedagogical approaches when developing my teaching

practices. As opposed to before where I thought more about the content and not about the best way to

implement learning for students.

I have come to understand the importance of student engagement and respect, I have found that students

who are not engaged in the class tend to become unresponsive, which can lead to classroom misbehaviour.

Through the use of quality material, and unique strategies I found it to have vast improvement in behaviour.

Also through building students respect with the use name referral allows for a teacher to gain control of the

class, while using this method I have found great success with it especially within practical lesson that are

outside. This can be used along side teaching voice techniques, which can be a very vital tool when dealing

with misbehaviour. Through raising or lowing the tone of my voice I found it to shift the class, and also

keep students on track. This method I have since developed, however it’s important to have quality learning

strategies in place that minimise the use of teacher directed practices when changing student disengagement.

3. Why did it work/didn’t work? What strategies worked well in your teaching? What strategies did not work
and why? Support this section with reference to pedagogical theory.

I quickly discovered many different areas and practices of teaching that were highly effective when teaching

PDHPE, one is called the student centred approach to learning, which requires the teacher to facilitate

learning as opposed to direct teaching. Wright (2011) states that a student centred approach to learning is a

way to shift student responsibility and inturn can have positive effects of student engagement. Personally I

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found that this method does in fact engage and motivate students (Struyven, Dochy and Janssens, 2010). I

feel the reason that this works is because students are encouraged to think for themselves, making learning

more challenging but not impossible. Another great method I found to work in classrooms is the use of

cross-curricular learning and student self-regulation that can be used along side student centred based

lessons. This allows students to use a larger range of abilities that may not necessary be established in

PDHPE, such as; numeracy and literacy development (Savage, 2010). Personally I found by using a large

range of methods in both theory and practical lessons enabled me to develop student skills more effectively,

in turn I also noticed students to engage and respond well in these instances.

Zumbrunn, Tadlock and Roberts (2011) state that self-regulation is of strong importance to develop students

as it provides a responsibility element with learning. I have taken this into considerations when creating my

lessons and using methods such as problem based tasks to allow students to think for themselves. This again

links to the student centred approach to leaning that I found worked very well in most instances. Another

important aspect that I have found useful is the use on professional relationship building, when dealing with

students. Having a strong sense of who the students are and their abilities has been one of the key aspects

and goals and running my classes. Overall this method of learning students names and using students

profiles to create lessons has been vital, and I feel has improved my teaching practices as mentioned above

(Baker, Grant & Morlock, 2008).

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References:

Baker, J. A., Grant, S., & Morlock, L. (2008). The teacher-student relationship as a developmental context

for children with internalizing or externalizing behavior problems. School Psychology

Quarterly, 23(1), 3.

Wright, G. B. (2011). Student-centered learning in higher education. International Journal of Teaching and

Learning in Higher Education, 23(1), 92-97

Struyven, K., Dochy, F., & Janssens, S. (2010). ‘Teach as you preach’: the effects of student‐centred

versus lecture‐based teaching on student teachers’ approaches to teaching. European Journal

of Teacher Education, 33(1), 43-64.

Savage, J. (2010). Cross-curricular teaching and learning in secondary education. Routledge.

Stigler, J. W., & Hiebert, J. (2009). The teaching gap: Best ideas from the world's teachers for improving

education in the classroom. Simon and Schuster.

Zumbrunn, S., Tadlock, J., & Roberts, E. D. (2011). Encouraging self-regulated learning in the

classroom: A review of the literature. FMetropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC).