Welcome to PC4021
Self and Identity
Julie Barron
& Julie Hughes
What’s this module about?
YOU and your personal and
professional development
as teachers.
This module has two core
strands which will
increasingly overlap during
the year.
Theory
Practice
Key outcomes of the
module:
You as teacher theorising
your practice and
practising your theory.
What will the module include?
Teaching practice – 150 teaching hours in placement. Usually
teaching between 6-8 hours per week. In block placement this
may rise to 12 hours per week;
Lesson observations – 8 over the course of 2 semesters;
• University mentor, placement mentor, joint observation and
peer observation each semester;
Lesson planning, resourcing and evidence of assessment of
learning;
Peer observations – you will observe your peers/colleagues at
least 6 times.
Reflections upon self as learner and teacher
• Learning Autobiography;
• Journal blog;
• Sharing critical incidents and
community blogging;
• Action planning.
Moving to a theoretically engaged exploration of self and
identit/y/ies.
Formal presentation and 2500 word assignment in semester 2.
This is a Master’s level piece of work.
Teaching
practice
evidence
Essay
presentation
e-portfolio
Critical
incident
sharing
Personal and
professional
development
evidence
Some thoughts on reflective practice – what do you
think about this?
Reflective practice involves thinking about and learning from your own
practice and from the practices of others so as to gain new
perspectives on the dilemmas and contradictions inherent in your
educational situation, improve judgment, and increase the
probability of taking informed action when situations are complex,
unique and uncertain. With ongoing reflection, your practice can
develop into a systematic inquiry that begins alone with reflection
on your own teaching and learning experiences but becomes
collective when informed by your interactions with colleagues,
students, and theoretical literature.
(italics mine) adapted from Brookfield(1995)
Some thoughts on reflective practice –
take a few minutes to read and reflect - what are your ‘norms’?
Teaching practices often reflect an unquestioned acceptance of
values, norms, and practices defined by others about what is
"in the best interests" of students and teachers, and a lack of
awareness of alternative practices. Both uncritically
assimilated practices and new alternatives need critical
examination from several perspectives so that the learning
and teaching strategies you use are consistent with your
values, beliefs, and assumptions about learning.
Brookfield (1995)
So, how will we develop this reflexivity?
• With colleagues/peers/buddies;
• From reflective practice to collective practice?
• Making your thinking public and therefore open to dialogue
with others;
• Checking your readings/narratives of problems, responses,
assumptions, and justifications against narratives and
readings offered by other teachers – new and experienced;
• By having colleagues who engage in critical conversations,
and who describe their versions of situations that they face
can help you notice aspects of your practice of which you may
be unaware, and suggest surprising new readings of situations
you all share.
Assumption hunting
•  do I question and examine my own passionately held ideas
and assumptions about teaching? If I don’t – why don’t I?
•  do I examine my own positive and negative learning
experience to help me understand why I gravitate toward
certain ways of doing things and avoid others?
•  am I articulating a set of critically examined core beliefs,
values, and assumptions about why I do what I do in the way
that I do it?
Through the looking glass
Reflection =
unquestioning questioning, certain uncertainty and serious
playfulness.
(Bolton 2000)
How do you feel about certain uncertainty?
The role of theoretical literature
The theoretical literature can illuminate general aspects of what you
may think are idiosyncratic events and processes, provide multiple
interpretations of familiar situations, help you to name and
understand your experience by approaching it from different
perspectives, and provide resources for alternative practices that
may be unfamiliar.
Julie Hughes 2007
Some practicalities
Reflection as dialogic activity insists upon mutual respect and
reciprocity – what does that mean in practice?
Reflect again upon the ground rules for this group.
What should I be doing before next week?
Continue with your journal blog and action planning – what’s
changed and why? how do you feel about the course/yourself
as a teacher this week? what have you identified that you
need to develop? what have you enjoyed? what has been
difficult and why? what are you looking forward to?