Chapter 6 - Knowledge of Educational Context PDF

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Knowledge of Educational Context by Rosie Turner-Bisset

In this topic, Bisset introduce us to the knowledge of educational context and how it can influence the teachers’ pedagogical techniques. There are three contexts the author emphasis for a teacher to acknowledge which are classroom context, school context and community context. On the classroom context, teachers have to acknowledge that the environments of the classroom itself play important roles in increase the students interest to learn. The layout of furniture, work area, the colour of furniture and classroom, and what the teacher places at every corner in the classroom enhanced the student’s engagement in classroom. External classroom context can have considerable impact on the kinds of activities and on learning. The classroom context communicates and are informed by models of teaching and learning. In this book, the author differentiates classroom educational context on 19th century and modern century. During 19th century, the classroom concept is mass elementary education and the syllabus taught were based on religious and culture education. The working classes were not required to think, reason and articulate but only to focus on reading, writing, and know basic numeracy skills. The class scales is up to 50 to 60 children per class and rote learning technique and basic skills were introduced in the class. The table arrangement is arranged in platforms and row. In contrast to modern education, the priority was given to greater groups and children sit in groups or pairs but the work is individualized. However, children do not work as groups thus poor involvement and lack of cooperative activity. In this topic also, Bisset mentioned about difficulty for teacher to manage the group work. The teacher has to acknowledge of the nature of the task set and it always be largely individual than collaborative. The group need to set cooperative task which acknowledge the

social nature of children’s learning and encourage talk and collaborative learning. However, sitting in groups not only encourage conversation but also encourage distraction, thus, teacher has to discourage off task even the physical arrangement promotes it and carry out reading or writing task which require sustained concentration to discourage distraction. An expert teacher has to know wide experience of different classroom contexts, advantages and disadvantage of different forms of organization, values of different classroom contexts in creating the suitable condition of learning and acknowledge how particular context may be adapted to promote authentic learning environment. The second point suggested by Bisset is school context. Different schools have different way of pedagogical technique but only one goals which is to finished the syllabus and make sure the students achieved high academic achievement. Based on the case study 11, Sarah is a teacher and she feel lose part of ‘teacher selves’ in the effort of fitting in with the school context. Some teachers have their own meaning and approaches towards learning, however some school administrator makes the teacher lose their ‘teacher selves’ in order to satisfy the administrators expectations. Therefore, it takes and exceptionally strong personality to withstand such erosion of beliefs. Lastly, educational context mentioned in this chapter is community and society. The schools are part of the broader community. Teachers not only has to know immediate vicinity of the school and the attachment area but also understanding the social context of the school “What kind of a community exists outside the school gates?”, therefore, this information is important for understanding children, their everyday lives and futures. Therefore, teachers have always tried to do best with inadequate funding and resources and often feel quality if they did not achieve the goals they set for themselves so teacher must understand this aspect of social context and not fail to resist the pressure to it. The teacher also has to focus on the central tension in education between the needs of society and the needs of the individual.

In outline, expert teachers need to be aware of such problems and need to be aware of the processes of change within themselves, and know how to influence on the school contexts and norms without offending others. Therefore, teacher has to reflect and take immediate action on how to react from the three contexts....