Practice Context/Influences on practice/Summary



There are high expectations of tertiary educators in the 21st century. In this module you have explored dual professional roles and examples of organizational strategies. This has led you to consider how the expectations of your roles as a professional and a teacher in the workplace influence what you do.

In previous units, you explored digital citizenship and reflection, self-evaluation as skills for reflective practice. Now it is time to prepare a reflective essay to discuss what you have learned.

You may have examples work in your portfolio that you wish to link to throughout the essay, and this is encouraged. Therefore, the essay needs to be added to the portfolio.

The Reflective Essay
In this essay, you are asked to describe your work context and explain how your professional expertise supports your role as a tertiary educator. Refer to the literature, and course resources to explore the concept of the dual professional and discuss what this means in general and to you personally.


 * Prompt: what is needed to help a novice teacher become more expert?

Discuss what it means to be a 21st Century educator, and outline the skills and knowledge that you believe, and have learned, are essential to this role. Explain how you currently reflect on the effectiveness of your practice and self-evaluate your teaching. Outline your plans for developing your reflective practice in the future.

Identify the organisational strategies of your employer that are relevant to your role. Describe and discuss how you currently action or plan to action these strategies in your work practice.

Questions to help develop your story include:
 * What are the skills and knowledge required to be a teacher/educator in your current tertiary teaching workplace?
 * What are the new skills that you had to learn / are still learning about, to be a tertiary teacher/educator?
 * How do you reflect on your teaching effectiveness and self-evaluate currently? (Which reflective model helps you to do this?)
 * Why is it important to develop reflective practice skills, and how will you do this?
 * What do you have to do to maintain the specialised knowledge from your previous specialty practice?
 * How do you combine both roles?
 * What are the the institutional /organisational strategies and priorities of your employer?
 * How important are these priorities in your own work?
 * What do you do that supports or reflects these strategies and priorities?

The essay needs to be approximately 1200 words - around four pages long.


 * Remember to:
 * identify what you have learned in this unit and overall in the course and the relevance of this to your work.
 * discuss how your new learning has impacted on your practice and influenced future actions you may take.
 * support your essay with educational literature and other forms of information.
 * ensure your choice of literature is good quality, current and relevant.

Don't forget to support this with the evidence of your learning.

Collating Evidence
Some ideas for what you could use as evidence:


 * Excerpts from your learning journal or whatever format you were using to record and keep track of your learning.
 * Excerpts from documentation on your organisation's strategies.
 * A reference list of sources you have accessed and cited in your essay.
 * Examples of reflections or online discussions you took part in.
 * Examples of your teaching.

'''Submit the draft essay to your course facilitator for feedback, prior to submission for marking.

Questions?
If you have any course related questions make use of the Frequently Asked Question site on Moodle FAQs