It’s very important to reflect on one’s work and practice, in order to improve. In 2006 I was invited to teach a course in ICT on a PGCE (post-graduate certificate in education) course. It had been some years since I had taught adults, and there seemed to be a lot of admin to get through in the first session. Therefore, I felt I had to be in lecture mode for much of the time, which I really wasn’t happy with.

I started a blog at the time for my own private reflections — another thing which is good to do. As it happens, I wrote only about two or three blog posts, but this was the first one.

Some questions to consider might be:

In general, is it useful to maintain a practice reflection blog, even if nobody else is going to read it? (I think it is, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. Indeed, not sharing it was one of the attractions.)
Was my proposed solution to “lecture mode” a good one? (I think it was. However, my only hesitation would be that asking trainees so early on in a course to come up with a lesson plan, or part of one, could be counterproductive if not handled properly. You don’t want to destroy someone’s confidence by pointing out to them, for example, that their one hour lesson plan would take a term to get through! So a further question is:
How do you give feedback, or enable students to get feedback from their peers, in a supportive and useful way?

But on with the blog post, which is a lot shorter than this introduction!

Well, the first session of the PGCE course seemed to go OK, I think. I don't like having to be in lecture mode for so much of the time, but there is a lot to get across to the students. Some of the questions were really perceptive. I think next time I'll allow some more time to explore resources and create lesson plans. I think that was a really valuable exercise, but some people didn't contribute much so I think we'll have to resort to the approach in which everyone has to come up with something. So, my next task, before 6th October, is to try and find a way of re-jigging the work schedule so that we can fit it in.

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