Topic 1 Demonstrating Impact: making a positive impact on student learning

Key Terms:

• Impact - a marked effect or influence
• Visible Learning - occurs when teachers see learning through the eyes of students and help them become their own teachers and is about learners taking ownership for their learning. "The biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and when students become their own teachers" (Hattie, 2012). Visible refers to making student learning visible to teachers, ensuring attributes that make a 'visible' difference to student learning. The "learning" aspect refers to how we go about knowing and understanding then doing something about student learning" (Hattie, 2012)

There is no set text book for this unit. Weekly readings are listed in the learning materials and in the eReading List.

Topic 2 Make a difference: Pedagogy in practice

Key Terms:

• Reflective practitioner - A reflective practitioner is one who is constantly thinking about and evaluating their own practice with a view to improvement.
• Reflection on action - Tends to happen after the action, when the practitioner considers what occurred and what the impact of those actions were.
• Reflection in action - This occurs while the practitioner is in action, when they can reflect on and evaluate what is happening and then actually adapt what they are doing in response to their reflection.

Topic 3 Make a difference: The learner context

Key Terms:

• Learner profiling - This is a process of collecting data about each learner to identify their strengths and weaknesses and determine implications for learning design. Some individuals and groups of learners may need specialised learning programs, scaffolding or alternative assessment tasks to be able to achieve selected learning outcomes.
• Multiple Intelligences - The theory of multiple intelligences was originated by Howard Gardner, who suggested that the traditional notion of intelligence, was far too limited. 

Topic 4 Infusing higher order thinking: Cognitive Verbs in action

Key Terms:

• Explicit pedagogy - is concerned with thinking clearly about what we say to our students, the particular learning task we are focusing on, and the actual structure of the learning experience. It includes explicitly demonstrating and modelling specific structures, skills, knowledges and, importantly, attitudes to learning
• Higher Order Thinking - involves the transformation of information and ideas. This transformation occurs when students combine facts and ideas and synthesise, generalise, explain, hypothesise or arrive at some conclusion or interpretation. Manipulating information and ideas through these processes allows students to solve problems, gain understanding and discover new meaning.

• Cognitive Verbs - are the key skills that students will be expected to use across a range of senior subjects in Queensland Senior Syllabus documents and provide the foundation for the entire Queensland Senior School Curriculum. Also known as key task words, task words and verbs, the cognitive verbs are common curriculum elements in disguise and teachers should be very familiar with these skills.

Topic 5 Promoting higher order thinking: Questioning skills

Key Terms:

• Questioning - is the basis of effective inquiry and encourages higher order thinking. Good questioning promotes understanding by providing opportunities to explain, clarify, probe, make connections and identify problems and issues. Questioning contributes to dialogue between teachers and learners and has an impact on their use of questioning to promote their own learning.

• Lower/higher questions - Questions can be classified as lower or higher:

Topic 6 Effective teaching: Teaching methods continuum, scaffolding, graphic organisers

Key Terms:

• Instructional methods - The purpose of selecting an instructional method is to identify and employ teaching strategies and techniques that most effectively achieve the performance outcomes. Current educational theory and research support the use of instructional methods that make learners active learners (e.g., lecture, lab, small group discussion, case-based study, simulations, independent study, etc.).

• Teaching methods continuum - A teaching strategy can be actioned using any of a number of different teaching methods along a teaching methods continuum, with the degree of teacher control (high teacher responsibility—low learner responsibility) to learner driven (low teacher responsibility—high learner responsibility) being the focus.

Topic 7 Teachers as professionals

Key Terms:

• Profession - a disciplined group of individuals who adhere to ethical standards. This group positions itself as possessing special knowledge and skills in a widely recognised body of learning derived from research, education and training at a high level, and is recognised by the public as such. A professional is prepared to apply this knowledge and exercise these skills in the interest of others
• Professionalism - the competence or skill expected of a professional. Professionalism comprises the personally held beliefs about one's own conduct as a professional. It's often linked to the upholding of the principles, laws, ethics and conventions of a profession as a way of practice.
• Professional Standards - The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers make explicit what effective teachers should know and be able to do. The Standards describe what is expected of teachers across three domains: Professional Knowledge, Professional Practice and Professional Engagement; and at four career stages: Graduate, Proficient, Highly Accomplished and Lead.

Topic 8 The Professional Standards and personal reflection

Key Terms:

• Code of Ethics for Teachers
• Teacher Beliefs 
• Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST). The Standards are grouped into three domains:

• Professional Knowledge

• Professional Practice 

• Professional Engagement

Topic 9 Reflection and goal setting

Key Terms:

• Personal Reflection - is an opportunity to reconsider events, thoughts and feelings from a fresh perspective. It is a way of assessing yourself, your ways of working and how you teach. To put it simply ‘reflection’ means to think about something. Reflecting and composing a piece of self reflective writing is an increasingly important component to improving teaching practice to set goals and plan your professional development pathway.
• Reflect Critically - Often reflection and critical reflection are used inter-changeably in the literature. However, critical reflection denotes another level of reflection beyond what you might or might not cover in other forms of reflection (eg. diary, journal). Critical reflection is an extension of critical thinking. It asks us to think about our practice and ideas and then it challenges us to step-back and examine our thinking by asking probing questions. It asks us to not only delve into the past and look at the present but importantly it asks us to speculate about the future and act.

Topic 10 Professional learning: Way forward planning

Key Term:

• On-going Professional Learning - teaching is a dynamic profession and, as new knowledge about teaching and learning emerges, new types of expertise are required by educators. Teachers must keep abreast of this knowledge base and use it to continually refine their conceptual and pedagogical skills.