Teaching in a Nutshell

Navigating Your Teacher Education Program as a Student Teacher

Clare Kosnik, Clive Beck

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780415888066
• eBook ISBN: 9781136838118
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Designed to help student teachers develop an approach to teaching that is both theoretical and practical, this text focuses on key aspects of teaching rather than trying to "cover the waterfront." Based on extensive research on teachers' views, their own long experience as teacher educators, and other sources, the authors recommend 7 priorities for teaching and teacher education:

• program planning
• pupil assessment
• classroom organization and community
• inclusive education
• subject content and pedagogy
• professional identity
• a vision for teaching

Each chapter deals in turn with one of these priorities, using a common format. Activities throughout help readers understand what the priority means in both theory and practice.

This text is a companion to the authors' 2009 book for teacher educators, Priorities in Teacher Education: The 7 Key Elements of Pre-Service Preparation. By making these 7 priorities and related knowledge explicit, it helps student teachers to acquire essential knowledge and skills, to understand the teaching/learning process more fully, and above all to be as prepared as possible for the demanding work of teaching.

Chapter 1

Program Planning

During your teacher education program, you most likely have learned how to write a lesson plan and develop a unit plan (for a particular curriculum topic). Both of these are essential skills for teaching but they only are part of the work you will do in planning the curriculum. The aspect of teaching emphasized most by the new teachers in our study was program planning – that is, creating an integrated, feasible set of educational experiences for a class across the whole year. Program planning is much more than just planning a lesson or unit. It involves deciding what to emphasize, figuring out how to link topics, and adapting lessons to the needs and abilities of the class. The scope of program planning took many of our teachers by surprise.

Personal Activity

When you think about being a teacher, how do you conceptualize the role? To what extent do you see yourself as a decision-maker? Or did you think you would implement the formal curriculum in a fairly straightforward way?

Why is Program Planning Important?

Beginning teachers are often shocked at how little time they have for actual instruction. In practice teaching during the pre-service program they were given the time they needed to teach lessons; and they thought that, as full-time teachers, it would be like this throughout the year. But, in reality, the time you actually have is greatly reduced because classes are cancelled due to school events or classes are interrupted by taking attendance, managing behavior, building community, administering formal assessments, gathering information for the principal, and so on. Program planning is necessary, then, for the following reasons:

1. Given the shortage of time, we cannot possibly cover all curriculum topics in significant depth. We have to decide which topics to address and how much time to give to them. Recognizing the need for decision-making of this kind is a key insight into teaching.
2. Some topics are more important than others for given individuals and groups. No matter how much time we had, we would still have to tailor the program to the distinctive needs and abilities of our class.
3. Learning is unpredictable. It develops in unforeseen ways, again depending on the individual or group. Planning, then, is an ongoing process throughout the school year. Serena, in her first year of teaching, noted that she creates a lot of her own teaching materials because her students’ learning “is so unpredictable. … A lot of stuff I make is very tailored to them … knowing what they need.” John said that sometimes he sets aside a planned lesson to address “real questions that real children are asking.” “Teachable moments” have to be grasped as they arise.
4. Student engagement is crucial to learning. We must plan a program that is of interest and relevance to our students so that they will be more involved, be less disruptive in class, and learn in greater depth (Allington, 2006; Atwell, 1998).

The importance of program planning (and teacher decision-making) is emphasized in the educational literature. For example, according to Dewey (1938):

[Teaching] requires thought and planning ahead. The educator is responsible for a knowledge of individuals and for a knowledge of subject-matter that will enable activities to be selected which lend themselves to social organization … in which all individuals have an opportunity to contribute something.

(p. 56)

Hagger and McIntyre (2006) state that “teaching expertise” lies in “very subtle judgments about what standards to set, what actions to take, and what combinations of goals can realistically be sought” (p. 33). And Darling-Hammond (2006) refers to teachers as “adaptive experts,” commenting:

Teaching … requires sophisticated judgment about how and what students are learning, what gaps in their understanding need to be addressed, what experiences will allow them to connect to what they need to know, and what instructional adaptations can ensure that they reach common goals.

(p. 10)

What is Program Planning?

Briefly put, the program planning role of teachers involves deciding:

• which topics to include and how much emphasis to place on each;
• how to teach the topics: what materials, strategies, activities, and approaches to use;
• at what point in the year to address the topics;
• to what extent and in what ways to integrate the various subjects, topics, and activities;
• to what extent and in what ways to pursue broader and deeper learning goals – e.g., love of learning, research skills, collaborative skills – that cut across topics, activities, and subjects.

In some countries, all the teachers of a particular grade on a given day are literally “on the same page” of the official curriculum, teaching the same content and using almost the same activities. Most of the planning is done for them, centrally. In the school contexts we have researched, however, the responsibility for planning the school day, week, and year lies largely with the teacher (Clayton, 2007; Darling-Hammond, 2006; Hagger & McIntyre, 2006; Kennedy, 2005; Sleeter, 2005). Although the official curriculum lists topics and expectations for each grade, teachers – in varying degrees – tailor these guidelines to their class. As you can see, program planning is much more than planning a curriculum unit.

Toward the end of their first year, the new teachers in our study were beginning to understand their planning and decision-making role. For example, in April of his first year, David said:

I think I relied too heavily [earlier in the year] on the school district program. It was a security thing for me, to make sure I did what the district asked me to do. … [I would advise a beginning teacher to think] what do you want to achieve in language arts, what is your language program? If you have a good idea then integrate that with the district program. … Do yours first and then match it up with the other and don’t be afraid to take a little leniency with it.

Similarly, Nina saw that she had to adapt her program to her students: “I tried to use [an] approach to reading instruction … we learned in pre-service, and I think the theory behind it is fantastic, but in a class like mine I simply can’t do it.”

ACTIVITY: During the Academic Program

If you are preparing to be an elementary school teacher, select one subject that you most likely will teach. If you are preparing to be a secondary school teacher, for this activity focus on your main teaching subject. Working in groups, review the official curriculum guideline for your chosen subject.

• How would you describe it: very detailed; just a guideline; fairly vague?
• Discuss whether it is feasible for a teacher to teach all of the topics outlined in the document with the same degree of emphasis.
• Identify the topics you think are the most important and the ones that are less important.
• Which topics need to be taught earliest (e.g., at the beginning of the year)?
• If possible, look at a copy of a practicing teacher’s long-range plan. (A long-range plan is usually a detailed description of the units/topics to be taught for the entire year with accompanying descriptions of teaching strategies, student assignments, and assessment methods.) What do you notice about it? Consider the level of detail, sequence of topics, areas of emphasis, structure of the plan, and references to a textbook(s). Are all topics explored in the same level of detail?

ACTIVITY: For Your Resource Kit

During your practice teaching placements ask your cooperating teachers about the long-range plan requirement in their schools. Copy their long-range plans and file them in your Resource Kit. Try to collect several long-range plans.

Tanya’s Approach to Program Planning: A Case Study

As a third-year teacher, life is getting a lot easier. Life is getting a lot like life; I’m getting a life. I’m staying up until 9:00 o’clock at night, which is a huge feat for me because in my first year it was 7:30 and I was falling asleep at the table.

Tanya, a new teacher in her mid-twenties, graduated in 2004 from a two-year master’s credential program, specializing in kindergarten through grade 6. Her first three years of teaching, although they went relatively smoothly, were in three different grades – 1, 4, and 3 – in two different schools. The schools, both in the same district, were suburban and fairly affluent. They had a high proportion of minority students from South-East Asia and the Middle East, and several English Language Learners. During the master’s program, Tanya had done three of her four practice teaching placements in the school where she was first hired to teach. She felt the extended time in the school was an apprenticeship of sorts. Her cooperating teachers had been outstanding practitioners and mentors for her.

Tanya’s previous undergraduate degree was a Bachelor of Science in child studies. While not giving her a teaching credential, this small, prestigious program had a teacher preparation component, thus allowing her to begin learning the skills of program planning early in her studies. In the third year of this degree, Tanya had two practicum placements, one in a daycare center and one in senior kindergarten. In the fourth year, she did a semester-long placement (five days a week) in a grade 2 class, where she could observe and participate in the development and implementation of curriculum units. She thoroughly enjoyed the child studies degree because she acquired a deep understanding of child development, had extended experience working with children, learned skills of curriculum development, and honed her reflective practice skills. During the program, Tanya worked for three summers in a highly progressive daycare center emphasizing inquiry-based learning for both children and staff: the influence of this experience is evident in her current approach to program planning.

Tanya was very pleased with the master’s credential program that followed because it provided further opportunities to learn planning and teaching skills while also addressing many theoretical concepts. The literacy courses in particular “gave us the philosophy we needed to make our way through our first year.” She elaborated:

If you come into teaching with the philosophy you want, then the other stuff will follow and you’ll figure out how to fit your school’s resources into your philosophy. If you have a strong philosophy – like fostering love of reading – that you’re just not willing to let go, then you’ll figure out the rest.

She recalled that the program also exposed her to a variety of resource materials that helped her in her planning as a beginning teacher.

Description of Practice

We consider Tanya’s program planning in literacy to be exceptionally strong, especially for a new teacher. Now teaching grade 3, she uses a variety of excellent books of various genres; the reading materials are developmentally appropriate; she links reading and writing; spends time getting to know her students and carefully tracking their progress; she is highly focused on pupil learning, while recognizing however that children have to be motivated to read and write; she uses oral language as a bridge to print; she integrates literacy skills into the content areas; students read and write for extended periods each day; decoding and comprehension skills are taught both separately and in content-area lessons; and she uses many different teaching techniques (e.g., Readers Theatre, mini-chalk boards, literacy centers, and individual word processing).

Tanya’s skills in program planning evolved over her first three years of teaching, but she was already quite able in her first year. She began in the same school and at the same grade level (grade 1) as in her final master’s practicum, with a mentor teacher whose style and philosophy closely matched hers; accordingly, she was able to base her program on the one she had experienced. The mentor teacher did not rely heavily on a formal reading program; rather, she carefully selected texts and lessons from a range of sources. Tanya continued this thoughtful approach to planning, shunning the basal readers in favor of high quality children’s literature and drawing on research to select specific decoding and comprehension skills to teach. By the end of her third year, she was able to report that “my kids are happy. And I feel pretty confident that they feel okay in here. They’re willing to take risks, they’re learning, they’re progressing, and I’m confident they’ll do okay next year.”

No doubt Tanya’s outstanding practicums helped prepare her for the difficult task of program planning; however, this only tells part of the story. As a beginning teacher, Tanya had a clear vision for her literacy program. Toward the end of her first year, she said:

I want the children to become motivated to read and write. I want them to work in a group so they can talk about reading and writing and actually do it, responding to books through writing or more reading, or manipulating something or listening to something rather than answering a question on a worksheet.

Her vision helped guide her selection of topics and tasks; however, she faced programming challenges in her first year, including “knowing how much work to put in front of the students to keep their attention … knowing what to teach them and when to teach them and how to teach them.” As time passed and she got to know her students better, these challenges decreased significantly.

In each of her first three years, Tanya was keen to co-plan with her grade partners, but she had limited success due to timetabling logistics, conflicting philosophies, and other factors. When teaching grade 4 (in her second year), she and another new teacher co-planned many of their lessons and units, and she found this very rewarding and useful:

We bounce ideas off each other, we have the same books for our literature circles or sometimes we’ll split them up and say, You use these ones this round and we’ll switch next round. So all that is co-planned and the work is split up, which is very helpful.

However, the mentor formally assigned to her for this second year was teaching a special needs class and had never taught grade 4, thus limiting how much she could assist Tanya with program planning.

Tanya found planning for the older students challenging because “the program in grade 4 is much more driven by [government] curriculum expectations than it was in grade 1.” But in general over the three years she became less confined by the formal curriculum because she

learned how to read between the lines of the curriculum expectations. I’ve become better at saying, Okay, I know how that would look. When I first started, I’d read the expectation and only think of the expectati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Program Planning
• 2. Pupil Assessment
• 3. Classroom Organization and Community
• 4. Inclusive Education
• 5. Subject Content and Pedagogy
• 6. Professional Identity
• 7. A Vision for Teaching
• References
• Index