We were asked to prepare a short presentation to give to our tutor groups to introduce ourselves, and to share something we had found ( be it an article, image, or resource) about pedagogy (i.e. teaching methods and practices).
The Task: Prepare a five minute talk, with up to five slides or images, in which you:
1. Sketch briefly your teaching context and other professional/creative identities (use images)
2. Share something you learned about pedagogy and/or pedagogic research from the item you chose, and any questions it raised for you.
I was not particularly taken by any of the reading resources offered. I found them too dense, and hard to take in. I was feeling frustrated and so started at the beginning and Wiki’ed the definition of Pedagogy
During this first attempt at research I found the Socratic Method really interesting, and exactly describes they style of pedagogy I am interested in learning the techniques of, as my primary focus of the PgCert is to learn more techniques and methods to encourage students to explore their concepts more to find the answers, when they come to me looking for opinions as their answers. For example, when they ask Questions like "should this be blue? or orange?" rather than giving an answer based on my opinion, I want to learn more methods and questions to lead them to their own answer based on their concept.
Today, I can do this with most students easily, by asking them directly, "What makes most sense with your project?" but I have encountered very difficult students who directly ask for your opinion, and say they don’t know, or don’t want to make the decision. and really push, and it is in these moments that I feel I need more questions, or techniques to lead them to their own conclusion.