Building a community of practice among students learning to teach (EDBT5602/5652)
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What's it for?
- Fostering independent inquiry
- Developing the curiosity and passion that drives inquiry
- Finding focus in research & project work
- Developing independent support networks
Overview
The two postgraduate units prepare students for professional life as teachers of Visual Arts in secondary schools. The units form part of the Master of Teaching / Grad. Bachelor of Teaching program and are taken in consecutive order, EDBT5602 in Semester 1 and EDBT5652 in Semester 2.
Student numbers in 2006 = 23
Student background:
Students have undergraduate degrees and in some cases previous careers in visual arts or related fields of practice. Students are fluent in use of online communications and WebCT. Some students are from non-English speaking background and have difficulty with academic writing.
Resources used:
- WebCT
- Yahoo groups
What she does
- Online team building. At start of Semester 1 session, students set up their own online discussion list using Yahoo groups, with lecturer as member but not leader. The focus is initially social, but over time the seeds of more serious discussion appear spontaneously among the general chat.
*
- Intensive reflection on prac. teaching experience in small groups. At start of Semester 2, students form small online discussion groups comprising two students from the University of Sydney and one student from the University of Tasmania. A list of topics for investigation is generated by the two classes and each group takes one of these topics as its focus. When practicum is over, each group compiles a joint paper of critical reflection on their designated topic. The paper is the main assessment task for the unit. Marianne explains the process in more detail on this recording.
- Student essays are marked and commented from an 'editing for publication' perspective. Feedback is intended as guide for students in preparing their essays for publication in a scholarly journal and all groups are encouraged to do so.
The results she gets
- A large number of longer messages tackling real life issues of professional practice in secondary teaching. Discussion is broad-based with each group of 3-4 student posting an average 3 to 6 messages per week during 9 weeks of discussion activity. View an excerpt from the student discussions.
- Real ongoing community of practice among students. Communication network created during Art Curriculum units continues into following year.
- Ongoing value from student essays as drafts for future publication.
Where she would like to go in future
- Opening up channels of visual communication. These are students who work visually and think visually and are preparing to be teachers of Visual Arts, but current online communication is primarily text based. A WebCT image gallery and some video conferencing sessions are planned for next year. These will give students a better opportunity to share their ideas and passion for the visual arts in direct visual terms.
- Getting recognition for time spent online as part of contact hours for this unit. Facilitation workload currently averages 4 hours per week for 5 to 6 weeks of semester.
* Soundfiles taken from an interview with Tim Lever from USyd eLearning in November 2006.
Cite as
Hulsbosch, M. (2006). EDBT5602 - Art Curriculum 1 and EDBT5652 - Art Curriculum 2. Sydney:University of Sydney. http://wiki.arts.usyd.edu.au/elearning/index.php/Building_a_community_of_practice_among_students_learning_to_teach_%28EDBT5602/5652%29
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