MTeach+ideas

=From Simon=

"Hi Team,

The ACDE has agreed to the move to a 2-year minimum program for pre-service teacher education. This seems to the last hurdle before the Ministers of Education meet on this mid-year. The timeline is still unknown to me, but the transition seems ever more inevitable.

With this in mind, the Faculty has mad the development of the M. Teach our 'Flagship' graduate program.

What I have in mind is that we maintain the Dip Ed. in more or less it's current form and add 24 credit points of additional units that are genuinely masters level - if we are honest the Dip Ed is not at this level. I would hope that some of this credit is at ANU - we might even talk tot hem about a joint testamur!

The Flagship bit is a whole of university program to market high quality, new, different grad programs next year. So we will be working to a fairly tight timeline with this.

So thinking caps on team, what would a great Master of Teaching look like? The options are wide open in terms of delivery, most of the content (will need to conform to AITSL but the Dip Ed does which is why I am suggesting we do not change it too much), and anything else"

"

>
 * Given Phil took a course to stage 1 approval last year, I propose to essentially follow that one through so we have something in place. We can then revise the course as we wish into the future. But minimal work for now
 * The new course will require 60 days of professional experience – this does not need to be done in blocks, it could be far more flexible. We currently do 45 days in the Dip Ed but could reduce that to 40. How best to structure this is really the most urgent discussion. Misty A will be included, but she has no knowledge of this course. The Dean also has some ideas to add to this discussion, but they will just be ideas, not directions.
 *  We are looking to deliver essentially the same course as this year in 2012, perhaps with some changes around professional experience – and of course the normal revision and evaluation of units."

=Use of current GDSE model=
 * Need to learn from and build on current GDSE model

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Online component=
 * How much?

=Ideas Dump= Phil. 1. assessment in education.Practices, principles and possibilities. We. Need a unit on assessment, methods and approached, biases in them, and a mathematical understanding of statistics so they can respond to stats they are given in national testing. They need to know about ways to asses learning and ways to respond to improve learning. A critical awareness 2. Break up ed foundations add another unit on educational psychology. 3. Teacher identity / self eficacy - i think this s missing and needed in the modern profession. I'm thinking the new psychology work on identity as well as efficacy work. 4. Electives to choose from! I'd suggest a couple of working in rural schools and history of education.

more from Phil split ed foundations into 2 units, one on educational philosophy, history and psychology, the other on learning theory (i.e split it down the middle of the present course) this would allow greater depth and a more more reasonable pace than is the case at the moment. We could also look at how the research in these areas is done to ensure that teachers understand research and the use of research in education. In learning theory we could look at more classroom applications of the theory and research. Somewhere here we should also add teacher identity-self efficacy or the like, it's a natural development out of student identity, self efficacy and motivation. We should also bring in the freud & jung work of recent years as it adds to developmental theories and learning theories as we are using old traditional ones at the moment.

Or, a seperate unit on teacher identity & motivation - could be good for them to deal with the challenges they will face.

Kerrie 1. first year with the same two pracs then a longer placement (like an internship) BEFORE commencing the second year??? - i think they need experience to support the higher level thinking (just my thinking - MEd needs deeper understanding of the education environment???) 2. Q: will MEd be in secondary teaching or just in EDUCATION? If the latter then what does this mean for content of course? eg will we be including primary teachers? what about adult education? 3. Q: will there be an option for one year course based and one year research based to make up the MEd? 4. Q: will there be electives for part of the overall course? eg leadership/curriculum/special needs/etc? 5. This team approach seems to work well for the Grad Dip... my experience with convening other units is that working in a 'team' like this is far better than in the 'out on your own' method where the connections are not made. If the uni wants a 'cracker' of an MEd then a dedicated MEd team would be a great approach in my opinion i mean MTeach rather than MEd I guess. Will those with a 'five year' degree then enter schools at a higher pay level? would we be trying to do 'two years' in one plus one semester? ie s1, winter term, s2, s1? will we have part timers over four years? will there be negotiations with schools for 'permission to teach' after the first year of full time study (eg so students can do relief work after the first year?) will the entry requirements be more stringent?

Steve So we're talking 2012 for this to start? I know I've been given this answer before, but maybe I've just wanted to forget the answer.