Professional Practice Statement
Introduction
Looking back on my career in education, I find it surprising and enlightening that it feels a lot like raising children. I knew going into teaching that I enjoyed my trade and wanted to pass this passion on to the next generation. What I didn’t expect was the joy I experience watching people grow, find a passion, develop skills, and mature as individuals. It is remarkable watching students come back over their 4 years of apprenticeship and see them develop into professionals.
Professional Practice
In my professional practice I have several core values. I believe in continuous education for myself and in being a lifelong learner. I value professionalism and feel as instructors, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard of ethics and behaviour. I feel professional collaboration is important in all of teaching and plays a role in not only making us better teachers, but also in keeping our course content entertaining and relevant. In my classroom I value mutual respect between the instructor and students. I feel Piaget’s Cognitive Learning Theory is the one that best matches my style of educational practice as it applies to a Trades classroom. In cognitive theory, the educator focuses on the process of thinking. The learner “plays an active role in seeking ways to understand and process information that he or she receives and relate it to what is already known and stored within memory” (Kelly, 2012). I apply this model to my classroom by thinking out loud and modelling my thinking process while working through example problems. The examples are best drawn from student experience to maximize relevance to their practice. The ultimate goal is to develop higher order thinking skills in the students where they move beyond just remembering facts, to a place where they apply logic and troubleshooting skills to solve problems (Kerka, 1992).
I feel my role as a teacher is to act primarily as a subject matter expert and secondarily as a facilitator for a few select educational activities. I believe that success is directly proportional to effort and time and thus, feel my role is to encourage student motivation to put in this effort and time. In my experience, due to time constraints in the apprenticeship stream, the students look to the instructor as a mentor to guide them to the most efficient path of understanding the material. The instructor should endeavor to present all material in a motivating and engaging way. A final critical role of the teacher is that of classroom management. This can take a variety of forms but my philosophy is that, in adult education, students should be treated as adults and expected to act as such. A good classroom culture will facilitate management and can be created by setting expectations early in the class of what behaviour is and isn’t acceptable regarding attendance, language, and respecting other students. The instructor should model good behavior by being punctual and showing enthusiasm for the course material.
The role of a student in my classroom is largely centered on the concept of Self-Regulation. I work in an adult educational environment and tend to expect my students to act as responsible adults. To this end, I set the expectation that students must show up, do required assignments, and actively engage with class activities and discussion. If the student does these things and strives for understanding, passing the course is an almost inevitable side effect.
My approach to motivation in the classroom uses anecdotes and storytelling as a bridge or hook to emphasize the relevance of course material prior to delivering lesson content. Exams and grades are effective extrinsic motivators, however I tend to focus my instruction on speaking to student’s intrinsic motivation to understand and excel in their trade. I have a firm belief that meaningful learning does not take place unless students can see where material can be applied. A strategy for classroom engagement I use is to treat lectures as a class wide conversation. I guide the conversation with a scenario addressing the topic of the day, mirror thought processes, troubleshooting steps, and math solutions. The students are continually engaged because I do not simply show them the steps and solutions; I look to the class for the solutions. I encourage active conversation and celebrate wrong answers as much as the right answers. These lessons and the tangents associated with wrong answers lead to some of the most valuable teachable moments.
Electrical Trades instruction is a mix bag of teaching understanding, troubleshooting, safety, electrical code, and theory. The program follows the Competency Based Education model which I am most comfortable teaching. When assessing these competencies, I believe instructors must pay particular attention to the alignment of assessment with course objectives. Further, instructors must be diligent to ensure that assessment instruments are valid and reliable. From a teaching philosophy standpoint, I believe in both formative and summative assessment. I will typically use quizzes as formative assessment. They are used as study material and to provide feedback to the student of where their understanding currently lies. The use of frequent formative assessment helps to reduce student test anxiety by making assessment a very normal part of the learning process (Ugodulunwa & Okolo, 2015). End of unit exams are summative and weighted much heavier to align with the goal of assessing if competencies have been met.
Final words
As educators, I feel we are never really done learning or developing our teaching styles. Teaching is a fluid process and for every rule, there is an exception. The above narrative captures my current teaching style and philosophy but I don’t believe I will ever be done trying new techniques.
References
Kelly, J. (2012). The Peak Performance Center: Learning Theories. Retrieved from
Kerka, S. (1992). Higher Order Thinking Skills in Vocational Education. ERIC Digest No. 127.
              Retrieved from: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED350487
Ugodulunwa, C.A. & Okolo, U.P. (2015). Effects of Formative Assessment on Mathematics Test Anxiety and Performance of Senior Secondary School Students in Jos, Nigeria. Retrieved from:
http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jrme/papers/Vol-5%20Issue-2/Version-2/F05223847.pdf