Faculty of Humanities and Education (Postgraduate) - The University ...

POSTGRADUATE REGULATIONS & SYLLABUSES 2012 - 2013
THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES & EDUCATION
2. Three Professional Knowledge courses, which will help
students to construct professional identities, and to
develop curricular knowledge, pedagogical knowledge,
and pedagogical content knowledge, as well as a capacity
for critical thinking, problem solving, and decision
making related to the content and implementation of the
curriculum, and to their contexts of practice. They orient
students towards finding solutions to identified challenges
encountered in schools and classrooms. Finally, the courses
will promote values clarification by requiring students to
respond to dilemmas of everyday practice. The courses
are:
• EDLA 5241: Designing Instruction for
Adolescent Learners:
The Teaching of English (6 credits)
• EDSC 5271: Designing Instruction for
Adolescent Learners: The Teaching of
Science (6 credits)
• EDSS 5281: Designing Instruction for
Adolescent Learners: The Teaching of
Social Sciences (6 credits)
• Educational Assessment (3 credits)
• Leading Professional Enquiry (3 credits)
3. Practice in Education (9 credits)
This is a practicum which, by providing practical
experiences in diverse classroom contexts, seeks to build
students’ personal, practical knowledge; to present them
with models of professional behaviour; and thus to develop
the knowledge, skills, and attributes needed to effectively
manage classroom dynamics. The practicum has three
phases:
1. Supervised observation of practice
2. Supervised practice, in collaboration with
cooperating teachers
3. Supervised, independent practice
The programme has been designed to broaden and refine
participants’world views by spiraling and integrating formal and
informal knowledge within the curriculum content. It merges
elements that draw upon their personal experiences with formal
concepts and theories from the disciplines, and further integrates
significant opportunities for reflection and critical analysis.
The programme is so sequenced that students will revisit and
refine their professional skills and their understanding of core
concepts as they are presented, with increasingly challenging
professional dilemmas at different stages of the programme
and in different contexts.
TOTAL: 30 CREDITS
SEMESTER: I
YEAR: I
COURSE CODE: EDFA 5211
COURSE TITLE: FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS FOR THE
BEGINNING TEACHER
NUMBER OF CREDITS: 3
PREREQUISITES: NONE
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course introduces participants to
fundamental concepts in education, which will help them to
understand and reflect on the functions, goals, and purposes
of education; the influences that have shaped education and
schooling over time; and the world of the adolescent learner.
Knowledge of these concepts will also help them to interrogate
their own decisions to become teachers. The course places special
emphasis on the varieties of contexts and problematic issues in
education that teachers face, encouraging the participants to
apply this theoretical knowledge in analysing their experiences
of schools and the wider education environment.
This theoretical knowledge is developed through an
introduction to relevant concepts in the foundation disciplines
of education—philosophy of education, psychology of
education, sociology of education, and language in education.
Both disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches are used in
this course, applying concepts and theories from the foundation
disciplines to topical or controversial issues in education. The
integration of the foundation disciplines in education is achieved
through (a) an issues-based approach to the organisation of the
course; (b) tutorials where discussion of issues is encouraged
across disciplines; and (c) lectures in the separate disciplines.
Assessment focuses on students’ability to synthesise theoretical
and conceptual knowledge and apply such knowledge to the
school context.
Purpose of the Course/Rationale
For pre-service teachers, an initial course delivering the
foundational concepts in education is essential to an
understanding of their work, especially a course that allows
them to explore the nature of teaching and learning in the 21 st
century. This course serves to anchor the entire programme for
participants. They are introduced to structured and disciplined
ways of examining education and schooling (issues with which
they have some familiarity). The course therefore seeks to
supplant bias, habit, and personal experience as the primary
means of understanding issues in education. The intent is to
provide beginning teachers with a firm grasp of conceptual
tools that they can use to describe and explain educational
issues, especially as they confront these issues in a variety of
school settings and with a diverse clientele. Course delivery
includes opportunities to confront the realities of the schools
to which they are assigned with the theories and concepts of
the foundation disciplines in education. The general theoretical
knowledge gained in this course is a necessary platform for
the more specialised and in-depth foundation courses such
as Addressing the Needs of the Whole Child and The Educational
Milieu, as well as other courses focusing on different aspects of
education. It is therefore the support for the entire programme.
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