My Overview of Pedagogy

Like Wendy I found myself being introduced to Productive Pedagogies as the answer to providing the best possible learning to enable the best possible outcomes for all students. At this time I was in a band 5 school as a Teaching Principal with a second teacher with similar views to myself of the learning theories that I had - Social Constructivism with Cognitive Constructivist aspects included.

At the same time the Qld Education Department had been launching new curriculum with outcomes based assessment of the Essential Learning. Being an extrovert and ready for a challenge, as a collaborative staff, the two of us set out to see if we could make the curriculum fit both the requirements of the Department and our perceived needs of the students. Considerations for all four aspects of the placemat of the productive pedagogies were embedded into the planning of units - Intellectual Quality, Connectedness, Social Support and Recognition of Difference.

All four areas were recognised and a much as possible all KLA's were integrated into units of work that were developed over a period of a term. Whilst Literacy and Numeracy were taught as stand alone subjects, using a cognitive constructivist approach, they were also integrated into the units of work covering the other KLA's and here the approach leaned more toward the social constructivist approach. Integrating ITC activities into the units became a challenge that we felt was imperative if students in our small school were going to be able to keep up with what we believed the larger schools in our area were doing.

How could we use technology as part of the learning activities without making them an ad-on but an integral part of the learning experience? I guess this is what this course is about. The difference is perhaps that the students are more familiar with many of the technologies but haven't really considered how it could be used to enhance their learning. Teachers likewise have barely tapped into the potential.