Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Learning Curve Podcast, a feature of the School of Education at University of Aberdeen.
Welcome to The Learning Curve, the official podcast of the University of Aberdeen’s School of Education. Join us as we go beyond the syllabus to explore the bold ideas, high-impact research, and personal ambitions of our staff, students, and leaders.
Every episode features candid conversations with experts in areas ranging from Early Years Education and Outdoor Learning to Inclusive Practice and Leadership Development. Whether you’re a prospective student seeking career paths, a teacher looking for CPD, or an academic tracking the latest insights in STEM and Digital Pedagogy, The Learning Curve is essential listening.
Subscribe now to connect with a world-class educational community and discover what makes the future of learning happen in Aberdeen.
TLC S1E6 Teacher Education01_mixdown
Shannon: Welcome back to the learning curve, friends. I'm Doctor Shannon Barbie. This is a University of Aberdeen podcast. Last time we delved into the critical importance of mental health and wellbeing with Steph O'Reilly. Today we're focusing on another foundational aspect of our work preparing the next generation of educators. We're going to discuss teacher education specifically. Joining me are three key members of faculty who lead on this vital work Beth McClure, Gordon Stewart, and Alan Grieve. Thank you all for being here.
Beth: Thank you for having me.
Alan: Great to be back, Shannon. Thanks for having me.
Gordon: Afternoon, Shannon. Nice to be here.
Shannon: Please explain to our listeners who you are and what you do here at Aberdeen. Beth, could I ask you to go first?
Beth: So my name is Dr Beth McClure and I am a lecturer here in the School of Education for early years and primary education.
Shannon: And Alan.
Alan: Yes. So I am a lecturer in initial teacher education here at the School of Education. And for this particular episode on teacher education, I suppose I'm here with my hat for PGCE secondary, for which I am the programme director.
Shannon: Gordon, remind us what you do, please.
Gordon: Hi there. Well, it's nice to be back. As you know, my name is Gordon Stewart and I'm the programme director for my primary education here at the University of Aberdeen.
Shannon: Thank you friends. So what exciting projects are you all focusing on right now? So we've been focusing on playfulness, creativity in classrooms and how the students understand play and incorporating it into their primary classrooms.
Beth: Yeah, so lots of different things at programme level for the PGDE secondary programme. There's lots of things that we are doing currently to try and keep our program relevant and, you know, suitable for our student teachers. We were recently re-accredited by the GTCS, which is really great news for all the hard work that we're doing.
Alan: A couple of examples of things. At the moment, some of our student teachers have undergone keeping the Promise training in collaboration with Aberdeen City Council, which has been a really good opportunity for them to learn more about care, experienced young children and their families. And also we have introduced this year a student led professional learning conference, which is an opportunity for our secondary students to work collaboratively across curricular areas. And both of these examples, I think, highlight how we are trying to prepare our student teachers for not just probation, but to improve their employability prospects beyond that as well. And then also on a personal level, I'm currently working on my Ed.D. thesis, which is focusing on the recruitment of career changers into secondary education. So I'm really interested in trying to understand how these individuals made the decision to leave a career and move into education, and the experiences and contextual factors around that time of the decision, and hoping to understand a little bit about a key group of student teachers that we have, particularly in the PGDE model, and hopefully how we can better attract them and find them and support them going forward in the future.
Gordon: Well, I suppose there's quite a lot of things I'm working on just now. This job is quite a busy job that contains a lot of teaching and research. But I suppose an interesting project I'm working on just now is my own PhD study, where I'm looking at how we, as schools of education in Scotland, prepare our student teachers for using interdisciplinary learning within their teaching to support the development of children's learning and understanding. So, it's quite an interesting project for me. I've just gone through my first progress review, and I'm a way to start looking at my ethics application to then start to collect some data. And so yeah, it's kind of a crucial, interesting stage. Really?
Shannon: That's all incredibly interesting. Thank you. Let's switch gears. The curriculum for teacher education is constantly evolving. What are the core components of the curriculum here at the School of Education, and what are the latest approaches you're taking to prepare future educators?
Beth: So I'm using a cross curricular planning and long term planning with my student teachers.
Alan: Yeah. So for our PGCE secondary programme, our vision is that we're seeking to develop reflexive, inclusive, collaborative and inquiring practitioners who very much are ready to to move into the teaching profession and thrive right from day one. That's our real goal. And to do that, our programme is structured around five overarching principles, which are exploring key issues in education, enabling learning in the classroom, supporting the needs of individuals, developing wider perspectives, and supporting inquiry for learning. And within these overarching principles, we strive to keep our learning relevant. So, for example, this last couple of years we've have been introducing inputs on project based learning. PBL and approaches to support neurodivergent learners and understanding about flexible curriculum pathways in secondary education and also exploring the ever changing world of digital pedagogies as well.
Gordon: Well, Shannon, that's quite a big question, but quite an interesting question as well. And obviously you're aware that our curriculum in Scotland is going under a curriculum improvement cycle with Education Scotland. And I think Curriculum Scotland is under quite an exciting opportunity just now where we're actually looking at what is beneficial for our children and young people, but also what are the bits that are maybe not being understood or the bits that are being overlooked to create this really cohesive, progressive curriculum? And I suppose for me, one of the really interesting parts of curriculum is actually how children and young people understand what they're learning and can actually apply it into a context.
And so obviously, my PhD study is going to be an interdisciplinary learning. And what a mouthful to say that is. Um, but really, as one of the core quadrants of Curriculum for Excellence. That is also something I'm quite interested in, is actually how our practitioners and teachers across Scotland actually understand what IDL or Interdisciplinary Learning actually is, and how they're putting it into practice within their own settings. So that's quite an interesting bit really for me with regards to curriculum.
And I think some of the other bits that are quite fundamental is obviously the shift in technologies and the shift in expressive arts, where we're seeing things like film and media come in. We're looking at different aspects of political literacy and these other components, which in previous curriculums would have been regarded as cross-cutting themes. And actually looking at the placement of these within the curriculum. So it's quite an interesting part really, for me just now,
Shannon: Hands on experience is so vital for future teachers. How does the programme here at UA ensure students get meaningful, practical experience in the classroom?
Beth: So when our student teachers go out on school placement, we have school based inquiry tasks that they engage in, that relate to their coursework and the curriculum so that they can bridge that gap. Yeah.
Alan: So the practical experience is such a fundamental part of initial teacher education in the PGDE model. This would be eighteen weeks of school based placement and eighteen weeks of university learning. And the two very much complement one another. Our students are placed into two different schools on their programme, which helps them to gain a wider understanding of different contexts and different learning communities. But importantly, our placement blocks are interwoven throughout the programme, allowing students to learn and build knowledge on campus first, then put it into practice on a placement block, followed by returning to campus to share critically, reflect, build learning further, and then returning to placement again. And I think that one of the strengths that we have in our programme around placement is the relationships that we have with our school partners, with whom we work very closely. Many of our schools are hugely experienced at supporting our student teachers, and some have in fact been on our program here at the University of Aberdeen as well in the past.
Gordon: Well, for Aberdeen and more importantly, the employment Education programme, we provide our students with five school experience placements across their four year ITE experience. And those five placements are really about developing a progressive set of incremental experiences so that they can become and develop into critically reflective, responsive practitioners who are ready for that first phase of their professional lives as teachers. And I think part of that is that we scaffold and model how our students not only engage in the planning cycle, but engage in that reflection and action and reflection on action to support the development of their own skills, as well as supporting the development of children's learning. So across our five placements, that understanding of planning is progressive. The understanding of curriculum is progressive, and their understanding of professional learning and self-evaluation is also progressive. And those three threads really intertwine together so as they progress. The expectation on placement does increase because they've got more understanding and more knowledge of the professional skills to work with. So that by the end of their four years, they can successfully attain the standard for provisional registration.
Shannon: Our listeners may include prospective students. What makes the School of Education here at Aberdeen a top choice for someone who wants to become a teacher?
Beth: I believe it's the personal attention and the one -on-one experience that students get with lecturers, and that that vast knowledge that our lecturers all have.
Alan: Okay, so I think our key selling point for our programme is the relationships that we have with our students, and we get to know them really well and really quickly as well, allowing us to provide that tailored, individualised support that students need. And it means, for example, that when a visiting tutor comes out from the university to a placement school to assess a student, they will know that student and the student will know them and they'll have a strong relationship with them. And I think that really does help to create the foundations for the kind of deep, constructive conversations that we need to have with students about their practice here at Aberdeen.
Gordon: We have our top ten reasons for why somebody should come to the University of Aberdeen and in particular, come and study on the MA Primary Education degree programme, and I could go on for our whole top ten reasons. But a few just to share with you is that our top reason is that we are ranked first in Scotland by the National Student Survey for Primary Education. And that ranking isn't a self-reflection audit that we complete, but actually it's praise and recognition from our students who are now in the profession, who have regarded our practice as being of sector leading practice, of being held in high regard. And over the years, Aberdeen has had a rising and continual increase against the National Student Survey. Several years ago, we were ranked second in Scotland and seventh in the UK. And for the past two years we've been ranked first in Scotland and seventh in the UK for education. And that's a really high part of our program and that our students are satisfied with their degree. But our students also feel that they are learning key elements, which is supporting, which is supporting them for being able to go into their profession and become a provisionally registered teacher in Scotland.
This was another reason our second of the top ten would be that, as well as being regarded as first in Scotland by the National Student Survey for education, we'd also regarded as being second in Scotland for overall student satisfaction and student support. And that's because really at Aberdeen we regard our students not just as a metric number, but as actually holistic people who have come with life experience, who come with real strengths and real challenges. And at Aberdeen we are approachable and we are a team that work together to ensure that we can support all our students within their studies and a unique part of our programme, unlike other universities, is that on the degree programme we have, our me year leads and an MA Year Lead is a bit similar to that of a guidance teacher, and there a lecturer who travels with the students throughout their four years and has an overarching picture of the professional studies element of that year and the school experience placement. And by having a year lead, it's somebody that can be another layer of communication and support to really provide students with that reassurance they need and to also stretch them as well.
And in addition to these top two things, I think another key feature of, of being a student here at Aberdeen is our excellent state of the art facilities. And, you know, we are housed in the MacRobert building, which has a variety of teaching spaces that give authentic learning and teaching for our students. So we have an art room, we have a drama studio, we have science labs, we have really spacious lecture theatres and tutorial rooms that allow us to really replicate learning and teaching in the primary school.
On top of that, we also have our dedicated teaching resource centre space in the Sir Duncan Rice Library. And that's a space which houses the learning and teaching resources which students can utilise when they go on Placement, and that's a really good source of support and a really good source of resources that students can engage with and, and use to create ideas and create lesson plans and really support that aspect of curriculum design, Looking ahead to future placements. So that would be three or four that I would recommend.
But on top of that, what I would really say is that here at Aberdeen, we have a really approachable and a really friendly team that want to work with students because we want to get the best out of our student population so that we can support the next generation going into this profession and inspiring the next generation of students as well.
Shannon: Is there anything you wish I had asked you about, and if so, what is it and how would you answer?
Beth: I think why I become a teacher, and that's something that I think all our student teachers need to really think about and have that drive and passion that makes them want to become a teacher, because that's what you need to hold on to, to be a successful student.
Alan: Well, I'm always on the recruitment hunt in some way, so perhaps you might have asked if someone is interested in the PGDE secondary program, how might they apply?
Gordon: So I think I thought you were maybe going to ask a question about what makes the University of Aberdeen unique to other institutes in Scotland, or why is the AIM a primary education programme different to other institutes? For us at Aberdeen, the overarching aims of our program is to develop our student teachers to develop into critically reflective, responsive practitioners who are ready to enter the first phase of their lives as professional teachers. For us at Aberdeen, we take a relational approach to learning and teaching, where we not only develop effective working relationships with our students, but we want to support them in the understanding not only about learning, teaching and assessment, but to really see where that's applied and how that can develop their practice here at Aberdeen. The MA Primary Education Programme is a progressive programme which supports students professional knowledge, understanding and skills across a range of academic courses and professional placements so that on completion they can enter the teaching profession as a provisionally registered teacher. And I think that's what makes Aberdeen very unique as a selling point.
Shannon: My friends, thank you. This has been a truly insightful conversation.
Beth: Thank you for having me.
Alan: As always, an absolute pleasure, Shannon. Thank you for having me.
Gordon: Not a problem. Shannon. Great to be here. And I look forward to the next chapter. Coffee.
Shannon: Well, thank you all for sharing your expertise. Well, friends, you've heard it here first. You've learned about the latest approaches to teacher education and how they prepare future educators directly from the program directors themselves.
Thank you very much for listening. Join us next week as Gordon actually interviews me and talks to us about inclusive educational practice. You won't want to miss it. Until next time, keep listening.