We believe that the novice teacher should have in-depth knowledge of pedagogy. This characteristic’s “big idea” to me is that we, as preservice teachers should know, study, practice, and continually strive for new information on the ways we teach. The “way we teach” is very broad, and can be a whole and general understanding for human development and the learning process and theories behind them, the development of skills for effective management and instruction, and creating and improving on your personal educational philosophies as well as being aware of others professional educational philosophies. If we did not have in-depth knowledge of how to teach what we need to teach, the content, then all the knowledge in the world will not be able to be transferred or facilitated to our students.
We believe that the novice teacher should be a reflective practitioner. This characteristic’s “big idea” to me is that we, as preservice teachers, are questioning what we witness in the classroom as well as what we critique and contribute to what we read. It also means that we should collaborate with our colleagues in professional learning communities to discuss our observations and get a “fresh” pair of eyes to help us delve into and inspire action research. This characteristic means for us to develop our skills in order to critically examine to aid our practice with the dilemmas and situations that we are faced with in the educational environment.
An artifact that represents “in-depth knowledge of pedagogy” would be videotaped lessons showing how we teach students in our classroom. By allowing people to see how we use the information we have read about and discussed in class, we are giving them a firsthand experience as to how we incorporate that information and understanding into how we reach our students. This can be very insightful for us to see ourselves so we can see what works and what doesn’t in order to begin our search for new strategies and implementations in the classroom.
An artifact that represents “a reflective practitioner” would be some of our admission tickets that get us to answer questions that dig into and encourage the development of action research. Also, I feel that our researcher notebook’s would be great examples of a “reflective practitioner” because we are constantly not only noting observations, but also wonderings that we have. By seeing the issues that we face and develop our reflection process, we are promoting the process of teaching and improving our students’, as well as our own, learning.
