Developing work-ready professionals

This page lists the workshops and presentations for one of the streams of the 3rd ACU Learning and Teaching Conference 2014.

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Preparing pre-service teachers for professional experience expectations: Online preparation modules
Presenters: Dr Joanne Harris and David Lee

One of the most demanding components of an initial teacher education degree is that of the professional experience, and the challenge for pre-graduate teachers, given a crowded degree program encompassing curriculum, learning theory, pedagogy and classroom skills, is to develop an understanding of what it means to be a professional.

To help meet this challenge, a team of Professional Experience coordinators developed four online modules for students to undertake independently, covering

1. professional standards in teaching, 
2. legal responsibilities of teachers, 
3. child protection, and
4. managing relationships. 

This presentation discussed how well this self-directed learning has served the students in their preparation for professional experience, and how the authoring team went about developing, implementing and monitoring these online modules.

Presentation (PDF 206KB)

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Developing competencies around music technology
Presenter: Dr Timothy McKenry

The rationale, development and implementation of an ‘app’ created as part of an ACU Learning and Teaching Grant were presented during this workshop.

The app was designed to develop competencies around the use of industry-standard music and audio technology for undergraduate students. It was developed as a tool for remediation and to help students relate the work they do through their degrees to the kinds of activities undertaken by professional musicians. It has also proved useful in working with students in the use of music technology across multiple degree programs, where a traditional ‘introductory’ unit is neither feasible nor efficient, and providing for differing levels of prior learning. Many students, particularly those from low-SES backgrounds, have never encountered this kind of technology prior to commencing tertiary study.

The challenges both to mainstreaming music technology into the broader curriculum and to responding to industry needs and  nnovations in the face of these challenges for training tertiary music students were highlighted during the workshop.

Presentation (PDF 1.2MB)

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Transforming maths anxiety: a lecturer – student counsellor collaboration
Presenters: Sue Wilson and Monica Raven

This session described how a lecturer/researcher and a student counsellor worked together to develop a maths anxiety workshop for education students. It demonstrated how this kind of collaboration, bringing together two fields of expertise, mathematics education and psychology, can lead to greater understanding of the issues and obstacles faced by pre-service teachers and potentially contribute to student retention.

Participants gained insights into the effects of anxiety, and the anxiety warning signs that teachers can use to spot and support anxious students, and discussed how to generalise this model to other situations such as exam anxiety.