Each year pre-service teachers are thrust in the world of education. Most were taught by ‘old’ teachers. They will likely as not have a prac session with an old’ hand. ‘They are rarely prepared to face the Millennial world of students, they have barely enough skills to use a word processor for assignments or their iPods to drown out a droning lecture on Piagetian stages. This is not a good thing.
Syllabus documents demand masses of content and ‘traditional’ assessment techniques. Hooray that pre-service teachers are able to cope with exactly these requirements. Hmmm, sensing a link here?
Back to those Millennial students… Old tired syllabus documents, old tired teaching methods, crammed courses, crammed teacher days, understaffed ICT support departments (if any at all) — all sounds too familiar.
Do the ‘eggs’ – our potentially education changing new-teachers bring the IT revolution that’s waaaay to long overdue? Or, are they only going to be able to make change when the syllabus documents allow such change? Will the writers of the syllabus documents make the changes or are they ‘chicken’?
I enjoy watching the ‘revolutionary fight’ that is conducted, mostly by the participants of the blogosphere and twitter-sphere and the like, I think it’s a necessary step to making any significant change, particularly against so large and well established an entity as education.
Educational change and classroom practice change isn’t determined by money or equipment (or lack of it) it only happens through the power of assumption. Assume the students have the ability and capacity to embrace and support and gain from change, assume that the changes you make no matter how small are effective and cumulative, assume that the results however few and far between are being noticed and appreciated. Everything we need is in place now. Assume it will all come good in the end.
It will.