INTRODUCTION
It is the first day of your school visit for teaching practice. You may have a mixture of anticipation, anxiety, excitement, eagerness, trepidation and more than a few butterflies in your stomach. That is entirely natural and to be expected. Maybe you have made a positive decision to be a teacher and this is the first time you are going into school not as a pupil. All change! You are one of lifeâs successes; you have gained a range of qualifications that have enabled you to reach this point. But here you are, a comparative novice whose only experience of education so far has been on the âreceiving endâ.
You want to teach; your experience of being taught may have been enjoyable (perhaps with a few negative aspects); you like the company of young learners and you have enjoyed the environment of a school; you like learning; you like knowledge; you like people and you like children. Maybe one of your relations has been a teacher and this has inspired you to want to teach; maybe you have been impressed by a particular teacher who taught you and you want to model yourself on him or her. There are many and varied reasons for wanting to teach.
So, here you are at the school gate. What will you want to find out? What will you need to learn? What will you have to teach? What will the class(es) be like? Where will you teach? What resources will you have? What will be appropriate for the pupils to learn? How will you teach? How will you keep order? How will you handle pupils with different abilities, motivations and interests? What will be your timetable? Will you like your class teacher or mentor? Will you meet the head teacher? Will the children like you? How will you gain respect? How will you plan your teaching? The stomach churns a little more!
These are all legitimate questions and concerns, and it is right that student teachers will have an expectation of answers; indeed, we hope that this book will help you to address them all. The point here is that, as a novice teacher, you need to find out a range of matters, and quickly. You need to look at the specific circumstances of the school, teachers, children, resources, curricula, assessment, discipline and so on; in short you need to conduct a rapid situational analysis and learn from this very quickly. You need information, guidance and support, and we hope to indicate how you can gain these.
How can you do this? We intend to set some of the terms of this situational analysis in this book and in this chapter. For example, with regard to the âwhatâ of teaching, we will draw attention to, amongst other matters, the National Curriculum and the detailed and helpful guidance that the government has provided for its implementation with children at all ages so that there is no uncertainty about what should be taught, to whom, when and in what sequence. With regard to the âhowâ of teaching, we will cover a range of issues in, amongst other matters, pedagogy, planning, discipline, motivation, learning and assessment, and the governmentâs requirements for, and guidance in, these matters. With regard to the support for teaching, we will draw attention to the governmentâs guidance documents, to the roles of significant teachers at school (for example mentors, subject leaders and class teachers). With regard to what may be uppermost in student teachersâ minds â how to keep order and maintain discipline in order to promote learning â we will draw attention to the current situation in schools, how discipline ...