James Cook University Subject Handbook - 2000

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ED4290:06

Constructing Secondary Teaching and Curriculum

Townsville

Prerequisites: ED3211
Inadmissable Subject Combination: Any non-Education subject

30 lectures, 50 workshops. Full year.

Staff: Dr K Martinez.

The subject prepares students for teaching in, and for contributing to the continual reconstruction of curriculum and teaching in secondary schools. Students will engage in activities in this subject, and in their school-based professional experience, which will develop their abilities to work collaboratively as members of teams, and which will assist in the development of their own personal practical theories for enhancing learning and life outcomes for all learners.

Students will consider the diversity of compulsory and post-compulsory secondary school students. Particular attention will be given to varying pedagogic practices, unit planning, effective establishment and management of learning environments and curriculum development, with a commitment to justice, care, and parent and community participation.

Students will critically examine assumptions, key features, and legal and ethical implications of a range of policies and approaches to research and practices in secondary schooling.

Learning Objectives:

  1. ability to work collaboratively as members of a team within contemporary secondary schools and their communities;
  2. a broad repertoire of knowledge, skills, processes and attitudes to contribute to the continual reconstruction of teaching and curriculum in secondary schools, and of themselves as professional teachers;
  3. ability to critically read and analyse a number of approaches to policies, research and practices, and evaluate the legal and ethical implications;
  4. understanding of the implications for curriculum and teaching practices of the diversity of secondary school students at compulsory and post compulsory ages.

Assessment by a critical analysis in terms of the student’s own personal practical theory, of video-recorded selections from their practicum teaching (40%); a group curriculum proposal, incorporating an equity statement (40%); a beginning teaching package developed in groups (20% each).

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