Certificate in Teaching

Gain Insight and Understanding to Teach

• Learn to teach people - in a school, as a teachers aid or instructor, as a private tutor, a coach, in a workplace, or anywhere!
• Understand how people learn: discover the psychology of learning
• Explore opportunities to put teaching skills into practice, for a sustained career in an industry that is rapidly changing.

"Lifelong Learning" is a key Catchphrase of Government and Industry Today.

Modules

Note that each module in the Certificate in Teaching is a short course in its own right, and may be studied separately.

 Teaching is Changing - What Teachers Need to Learn is Changing Too

Traditional, mainstream education involves putting a teacher in the front of a classroom, with at least 20, (sometimes many more) people listening to lectures and making notes.

As we have learnt more about "how people learn" and as the tools of teaching have become increasingly sophisticated (eg. electronic communications, internet, digital imaging), the better educators have begun to develop new, cutting edge approaches to education.

Many teaching courses are still producing graduates for the "old system" of teaching. On that count, this course is different. 

We believe that teachers who have a sustained career in education, need to learn to be more innovative and creative in their approach to teaching; and develop a capacity to stay up to date with and apply cutting edge techniques and technologies over the coming decades, as the face of teaching changes dramatically.

 ______________________________________________________

Recommended Reading

Extract from the book:

EDUCATION

Don’t think that all you need to do is get a qualification to get a job. A qualification only gets noticed when you apply for a job. After that, it is what you know and how you perform at work that allows you to keep and advance in a job. Learning about an industry helps build awareness, knowledge, and skills that are valuable to an employer.

There are many options for people looking to accumulate new skills. Here we will look at different education options: 

Different Schools for Different Purposes

Parents, employers and potential students (even adults) will often assume a school, college or university is going to do one thing for them while the institution itself is aiming to do something different.

Choose a learning style that suits
Everyone learns differently. Some people will learn better when information is presented visually, others orally, and others learn from doing things themselves (kinaesthetically).
All too often, people choose what and where to study based upon the “topic” they want to study, and the “visibility” of the course on offer. Most courses however are geared to deliver a learning experience in a style that better suits some class members than others.

Courses will use different methods of teaching, and some may suit you better than others. Teaching practice is generally defined into 5 main models. There are no definite boundaries between each of the models. No one model is regarded as superior to another.

Behavioural Model
This model is based on well-structured steps of learning and the use of reinforcement.  This has been used in formal full-class teaching or face-to-face instruction. This approach is still teacher-directed. With modern technology and on line training techniques (like video conferencing), it is now possible to apply this model to distance education.
 

Cognitive Development Model
Here, the teacher creates a supportive atmosphere, selects tasks according to the student’s developmental level, and elicits the student's reasoning in relation to the tasks. This approach requires planning of steps, but emphasis is on student's reasoning. A number of cognitive approaches are examined within the context of this model. The pupil learns in a resource-rich situation by using reasoning to solve problems. Distance education allows each student to be treated as an individual, giving each student a selection of optional assignments from which to select, according to the level at which the student is capable.
 

Interaction Model
This model emphasises learning based on the student's interaction with other people and with society, i.e. personal interaction. This model works mostly in group situations. The focus is on social interaction. Content focuses on social-moral-cultural problems which produces self-aware people. There are many ways a student can interact with their teacher and other students, including in person, over the phone, by email, skype, and video conferencing.
 

Transaction Model
This is a pupil-centred model involving a range of teacher structuring with which the self-directed student interacts. It is assumed that change (learning) results from those interactions.  The teacher functions more as a guide. Focus is the action (transaction) of the learner. This model is derived from progressive education and open learning. Distance education can work extremely well for this system.

Different schools suit different people. Some people learn fast, and others slow. Some can read something and remember it, while others need repetition to remember. Some will not remember what they read, no matter how many times they read it; but if they apply that information in a real life situation, they may remember it for life. Everyone learns differently. This is a fact that is understood and appreciated by educational psychologists. 

If you want to learn it is important that the school and style of learning is matched to the student. A distance education course may suit one person best for learning about horticulture, another may be better attending lectures at a university, and another may learn more by working alongside a gardener as a ‘hands on’ apprentice.
Not all university, vocational, or distance learning courses are the same either.

_______________________________________________________

MEMORY TIPS  - hints for learning easier.

Memory tricks and tips can be very useful in helping us to remember.

• Visualise to make remembering easier –If you can associate a thought with a visual image, the thought is always easier to remember.  E.g. If you are trying to remember how to propagate a plant from a cutting; try visualising what the cutting looks like. If you want to perform the perfect dive, visualise how you will hold your body, stand, and dive. Draw or find an illustration of the point then try to remember this picture as your summary.

• Association makes remembering easier – Trying to associate something with something else can help our learning.  For example, if you are good at understanding engines, you may find it useful to try and understand the human body in terms of engines, such as the heart is an engine, the mouth and digestive system, the fuel system and so on. Also adding an acronym or story or something or someone from your life you can attach mentally to the idea or concept can work or picture the person that said it or where you were when you heard the facts. How were they acting How would you act… if you are a kinaesthetic learner?

Going over and over facts can be one method of learning. This is often the method that people use in exams. For example, if you were learning how to spell hard words in school for a spelling test, the best way is repetition. 

Learning to put our learning into new situations and contexts can ensure that our learning is improved.  For example, learning to use those words in different sentences and in different ways can improve our understanding of the word and actually improve our spelling of the word. That was a simple example, but if we learn something in one environment, we can also learn to use it in other situations. For example, if we learn how to embroider in school, we may find that eventually we learn how to use those sewing and embroidery skills in other areas, until eventually we can be a designer or tailor or dress maker and so on.

Essays and pieces of writing

• If you have essays to write here is a tip to structure them easily. Break it into five simple steps; make up your own rhyme if you like to remember these. Make sure you essay or piece of writing has an introduction—they why you are writing and what you are writing about, then three paragraphs that build on this with the facts or arguments (or as many paragraph ass it takes to reach the required number of words) then add the final paragraph, which should be a conclusion and almost brief summary of what the whole piece of writing has been about. Check the house style that is the format the essay must be in and also the style of referencing so that you have referred to all the references you have used, online and in texts, correctly. Your teacher can give you advice on this if it is not provided with your assignments and workbooks.

• For any notes, essays or terms check and recheck that you have the grammar and the spelling right, don’t just rely on a computer spell check.

Less is sometimes more
When you are given all the facts, there is nothing left to be filled in…. filling in the blanks stretches the brain; allows you to consider a greater range of options to fill the blanks.  So if you are told certain facts that give us the basis of information, then we can use experience, knowledge and research to find out more and enhance our learning.  Sometimes there is no one true answer, but rather several shades of grey. We mentioned the nature and nurture debate earlier. There is no right answer here.