Empowering Professional Teaching in Engineering - John Heywood Synthesis Lectures on Engineering

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3.1: The process of the “lesson plan” activity (Heywood, J. (2007). Instructional and Curriculum Leadership. Toward Inquiry Oriented Schools. Dublin, Original Writing for the National Association of Principals and Deputies—Chapter 5).

      I would argue, that these studies meet Elliott’s requirement for action research because they “study the social situation (classroom) with a view to improving the quality of action within it” [3]. Because it was action research it was not expected that the student teachers should stick strictly to the plan irrespective of difficulties experienced in the classroom. What mattered was that satisfactory reasons were given for the change in plan. The progress of teaching is often nonlinear. It will be seen that Section 2 requires the student to do the reading that would normally have been given in support of a lecture on a particular theory, or strategy of instruction. Sections 2(a) and (b) required an extensive essay response.

Simplified Model of the Engineering Design Process Lesson Planning Process
Vague statement of what is wanted Knowledge
Problem formulation Problem formulation Cognitive skills
Broad view of problem Affective skills
Problem analysis Assumptions
Details of problem Search Alternative solutions
Many partial solutions mainly in concept form Statement of Aims and Objectives
Decision Construction of Lesson Plan
Preferred solution Specification Implementation of Lesson Feedback
Details of proposed solution First evaluation
Model Test
Evaluation Analysis of Data
Manufacture Final Evaluation

      Nevertheless, it took me several years before I abandoned giving an introductory lecture and replaced it by a dialogue session among the 100 or so students taking the course. It also took me several years before I abandoned the traditional 2/3 hour terminal examination that had been set at the end of the year in favor of a written examination in which one prior notice question given out at the beginning of the course had to be answered. It had the intention of obtaining the second goal of the course (see Exhibit 3.3).

      But, Section 2 also requires the student to take an entirely different approach to lesson planning. They are asked not only to prepare a lesson to meet the requirements of that part of the school curriculum with which they are dealing, but design it in such a way that it would test the theory or practice they were required to evaluate. It was a major task for a beginning educator. It was one that I later found was equally difficult for experienced teachers in continuing professional development programmes. Add to that the demand that they should design a test that would not only test the routine matters of the curriculum, but the theory or practice that they wished to evaluate. It was expected that this test would be administered a week or so after the lesson had been delivered.

      Write an essay on the following:

      In your lesson plans you undertook investigations which replicated previously published research on learning in the classrooms. However, one of the goals of the course is that you should be able to design investigations which help you better to understand the significant events which you experience in the classroom. Describe any significant event which you have experienced that still requires explanation and suggest procedures for its investigation. Give a detailed example of such research. (You may not use material from your assessed lesson plans in this answer).

      Immediately after the lesson had been given the students were asked to evaluate what had happened (see also Journey 2). As Exhibit 3.1 shows they were asked to say “what happened in the class?” “What happened to me?” “What have I learned about myself?” And, “What have I learned about my pupils?” I certainly hoped that they would see this as an opportunity to practice educational connoisseurship, and some students tried to do just that.

      You may take the view that the example shown in Exhibit 3.4 demonstrates such connoisseurship. It shows that sometimes teachers misjudge the effects of a class. In this class the teacher had decided to design a lesson in English (poetry) that catered for the needs of the four different learning styles described by David Kolb [4, see Journey 12]. She chose it so that it could be linked to the problem of bullying which had been raised with her by this class of 12 year old boys. A second point is that students sense what is happening to teachers; perhaps more readily than we would care to believe.

      This activity had two purposes, one that I understood at the time, and one which I learned, The purpose that I understood at the time was the objective of getting these student graduate educators to stop worrying about themselves, and begin to try and understand what was happening to their students, and why. It is only recently that I have begun to realize that this activity contributed to the development of their tacit knowledge, and that it is this tacit knowledge that forms the basis of their technical knowledge and theories of learning.

      Evaluation 1

      The one thing that struck me even while I was teaching the lesson was the mute reaction of the class to all parts of this lesson. They seemed to exhibit little enthusiasm for anything. They are a lively bunch, and I had thought that this poem and topic would be perfect for them. They have just come out of the primary (elementary) school scene so the experience would be relatively recent for them and they had previously brought up the topic of bullying voluntarily. The presence of a supervisor from TCD could have been a contributing factor but this had coincided before with a lesson plan session (lesson plan 1), and a glance at their performances in that class proves that this would not dampen their spirits. My supervisor, who was only present for the first class, even commented on their very quietness, or had they had a class before mine which repressed their behavior, which incidentally, did not dramatically change after she left. Perhaps it was just an off day for them. . My own performance on the day could also have been a contributing factor. On that particular day I was quite sick so perhaps the students sensed that I wasn’t fully with them.

      But

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