Beyond the Pier

My Postgraduate Certificate in Education with the London Institute of Education (IOE) finally kicked off this week with a series of induction lectures and tutorial groups.  Lots of information, lots of housekeeping and lots of educational acronyms (FSM, QCA, DCFS, SEN etc. to name but a few) to get your head around, but more excitingly, lots of knowledgeable and inspiring professors, tutors and fellow students.

The Institute seems by all accounts a rich and diverse forum for learning, discussion and leading research.  The old saying “those who can do, those who can’t teach”, seems to be put firmly to rest given the qualifications and backgrounds of the other training teachers I have met.  With the credit crunch driving people to look for better job security in the public sector, PGCE courses are heavily over subscribed.  This has led to increased competition for places and consequently bumped up the qualification and quality of the intake.

Situated in Bloomsbury, the IOE finds itself  surrounded by iconic places like The British Museum, The British Library and The Wellcome Trust.  In all, a very inspiring place to be – steeped in history and tradition, yet looking to the future through learning, research, events, talks and discussions.  Indeed, this evening, with every intention of going to the library, I found myself in the audience of a conversation between the famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and The Times editor James Harding about Dawkin’s new book The Greatest Show on Earth.  I never imagined that ticket touts would loiter around outside such events, but I’m glad one did this evening.

Being part of the Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) cohort means we have been looking a lot at the decline in uptake of foreign languages at GCSE level, the introduction of compulsory MFL primary learning and reasons for learning languages more generally.  We also had a brief new language learning experience, for me it was a crash course in Russian (да, Зто дом!).  In time, I hope to write a more detailed post on the merits and reasons for learning a language(s).  These past days lectures and discussions have  given me a lot of food for thought on the issue so it may take time to digest.  However, I already find glib, commonly chorused statements such as “It is useful for future employment” being challenged and light being shed on language learning issues that I had never considered before.  As said though, another time, another post…

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One generic PGCE task we were set to work on was “What constitutes a good teacher?”.  Despite having taught for 2 years and having worked as a Classroom Assistant for another year, I realise I have never deliberately reflected upon this question.  The importance and benefits gained from conscious reflection are becoming more apparent and I look forward to linking some theory with things I might do automatically as a way of analysing and improving my teaching.

You can find some of my thoughts on what constitutes a good teacher as a PDF here: Public_Good_Teacher_09_IOE