Assignment 1 Discussion/Evaluation Page 2
This approach also aligns with the productive pedagogies, which, as a teacher with Education Qld, I use to inform my practice.
Productive Pedagogies are effective pedagogy, incorporating an array of teaching strategies that support classroom environments, and recognition of difference, and are implemented across all key learning and subject areas. (Education Qld. 2002)
Elements of 21st century learning (connectivism….a learning theory for the digital age) also link closely to the project outcomes. Watch the Connectivism video
From my project research and reflections I believe that I have developed an increased awareness of the new literacies and their role in facilitating critical literacy skills and understandings. I believe that the carefully structured questions challenge students and are of high importance in relation to the evolving nature of learning in a high tech and globalised world.
Changes in society are occurring so rapidly that we need to take time to think about whether they will have positive or negative effects upon our ways of living. Asking questions such as:
In whose interest?
For what purpose?
Who benefits?
(Education Tasmania, English learning area,)
The Four Resources Model of Literacy has provided me with a very structured way to plan the learning sequence. Each resource was relevant to the learning stages – from learning subject specific text in the code breaker stage to critical evaluation and analysis of blogs in the text analyst stage. I feel that the series of critical literacy questions provides the basis of the productive pedagogy approach (higher order thinking skills) and the other elements of this approach are also embedded into the learning experiences.
Overall, the planning and partial implementation of this project has made me aware that I need to improve the literacy quality of my everyday practice by:
- Focussing on the metalanguage of each subject – (an example of this is in a Social and Community Studies task, I have created a wiki glossary where students are invited to contribute to the glossary of financial terms…rather than me ‘giving them the list’.)
- Using critical literacy techniques in my subject areas.
- Encouraging student questioning to clarify understandings
- Carefully structuring oral questions so that students are led to understand.
To be literate in the 21st century requires a complex combination of skills and behaviours. No longer is the literacy toolkit of the past adequate for today's learner. As teachers we need to recognise this and adjust our teaching methods to cater for learning in the 21st century.
There is a need to think about literacy for lifelong learners in new ways. We need to equip students with the ability to combine and recombine existing and new literacy skills in different ways, for new purposes and with new technologies. Critical literacy skills are also essential. (Education Qld. New Times, New Literacies)