PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCY 1
Competency 1: To act as a professional inheritor, critic and interpreter of knowledge or culture when teaching students.
FEATURES
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Situates the discipline's basic benchmarks and points of understanding (concepts, postulates and methods) in order to facilitate significant, in‐ depth learning by students.
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Adopts a critical approach to the subject matter.
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Establishes links between the secondary culture set out in the program and the secondary culture of the students.
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Transforms the classroom into a cultural base open to a range of different viewpoints within a common space.
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Casts a critical look at his or her own origins, cultural practices and social role.
LEVEL OF MASTERY
By the end of his or her initial training, the student teacher should be able to:
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Understand the subject‐ specific and program specific knowledge to be taught, so as to be able to promote the creation of meaningful links by the students;
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Exhibit a critical understanding of his or her cultural development and be aware of its potential and limitations;
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Exhibit a critical understanding of the knowledge to be taught, so as to promote the creation of meaningful links by the
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students;
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Establish links with the students' culture in the proposed learning activities.
I have developed this competency primarily by ensuring to invite student perspectives into the classroom, and by relating lessons to the student culture. For example, by teaching a lesson on music in order to get students to use adjectives, I was able to get many students to write far more than the requested 5 sentences— below are two examples.
I also explain grammar in a way that is easy for students to grasp— for example, I taught yes/no question formation to a group of Secondary 1 science program students through a "formulaic" review of sentence and question formation that can be seen here.
Finally, I encourage students to engage in sharing their opinions and ideas, and let them know that there can be multiple different perspectives— they do not need to choose responses to open-ended questions that I would necessarily see as correct, though they do need to provide justification. This is to improve critical thinking in students and to let them explore their own beliefs without me acting as the "sage on the stage."
I believe I have achieved advanced mastery of this competency.
To see my Competency 1 development in my previous placements, click here.