TEACHER'S FORMATION

The settled belief that teacher’s formation ends once we have finished the University or once we have got a permanent job in an school is something we need to change. A continuing education must be fostered in order to have the best professionals and to improve the Educational System as much as possible.

The huge variety of courses to attend is endless, but there are some that I consider very interesting taking into account the current situation and some knowledge that teachers must be aware and they lack.

The first course I think crucial is on such an important issue as ICT. Nowadays the technology allows us to do things that some years ago were unbelievable and for this reason is very important that every teacher have the knowledge needed to take profit of it.

The second one is related with first aid. Every single person who has to take care of a large group of people must have at least some basic knowledge and basic procedures to act quickly in case of any emergency happens.

The last one is about motivation. Is very difficult to get the attention of every pupil in our classroom and that’s why we need to learn techniques to arouse their interest and to make the lessons as funny as possible.

Unfortunately there is very little communication between the University and the teachers in the school. This makes difficult for the students to get a general picture of the actual problems that the schools face. In my opinion the best way to share good practice amongst teaching professionals would be in a collaborative work between the University, both professors and students, and the schoolteachers. This will enrich everyone and also will help to erase boundaries between these collectives, which, in my opinion, should be considered the same one.       

If you were not limited by the demands of the national/ regional curriculum, what would you say is the most important thing you would teach your students about your subject( in a clil context) ? How would you assess  their learning? 

From the point of view of sciences or maths, some subjects I am very keen on teaching, it is true that the curriculum, both regional and national, is too much concerned about results. Thus, many times it is just focused on testing and teaching is relegated to the background.

The main reason of this happening is because the governments behind the curriculums are worried of the marks they get in the international rating report best known as PISA. This report is very controversial among the teachers and professors since many of them consider that it is very biased and a lot of economic interests are involved in it. PISA report is carried out by OECD, which is an economic organisation which keenness is on economic profits and their aims are written thinking in learning as a process and not as an end itself.

The way to teach sciences and maths is just seen in terms of learning concepts and mathematical formulas and the reason of why doing so as well as the causes and consequences are forgotten.

I would prefer to take another approach in which students were conscious of why they are learning to do math operations and the many uses that it could have in the science world. Doing practical lessons in which the students were able to make experiments and experience the causes and consequences of science by themselves would be something very positive for them. This way they would be linking the theoretical concepts with real life experiences and the subject will be really meaningful for them.

The assessment of this would be different as well, since it would be based on the processes more than in the product. That is to say, a portfolio with their individual and group work and their reflections about the matters dealt with in the subject would take a great part of the final mark. It doesn’t mean that teachers must erase exams but their importance would be lower and the students were feeling less pressured.

ELP: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

In my years of experience as a kindergarten teacher there is something very important to point out regarding the language learning and this is that, the younger the students are introduced to a new language the easier it will be for them to acquire it. In the last decades we have witnessed a change of paradigm in the Teaching-Learning processes from grammatical methods and drilling exercises, which are not suitable at all to work with young students, to communicative methods, that tend to reproduce the natural way in which people learn languages.

The European Language Portfolio, which takes into account crucial aspects such as the motivation, the active role of the students, critical reflections and self-assessment, is a fantastic tool to be used in a communicative approach but there are advantages and disadvantages to bear in mind if we want to introduce it in an early stage of language learning as kindergarten.

The advantages are very clear.  In every single education system around the world the early stages are the base. Implementing this system in Kindergarten with approaches like CLIL and the communicative one is going to offer to our pupils plenty of opportunities to, in Krashen’s terms, acquire the language and get a basic picture of how it is structured. As they grow up they will be able to learn the grammar needed to monitor and improve their command of the language. A resource as ELP is very useful to develop our pupil’s self-autonomy.

As for the disadvantages, it is very important to be conscious that pupils at that age are not as honest as they should be when doing a self-evaluation exercise. Probably at this early stage of language learning introducing “My First Portfolio” could be a very difficult task for the teachers since it demands the students to evaluate themselves by choosing different levels of learning. Very often the students pick up the higher level of learning although this is not always true. Moreover I think that we should simplify the current model because in my opinion it is not possible that pupils using it without aid.