A report of the Unplugged Conference of the 21st May by Catalina Dumitrescu. Catalina is a teacher trainer at Oxford TEFL Barcelona ‘It’s so easy not to practise what you preach. It´s better to sit down and talk. We all have so much to say. Not a good idea to be talked at.’ – Luke Meddings [...]
It is going to take place at Vilnius Pedagogical University http://www.vpu.lt/ The Conference invites ELT teachers, researchers, teacher educators and decision makers to exchange, discuss and develop their ideas on the challenges of the digital world. The conference programme is expected to offer many opportunities for contact between ELT practitioners and researchers via plenary speeches, workshops, [...]
Five more days to go and then our Unplugged Conference is on in Barcelona. http://www.tdsig.org/unplugged/ You
can also register on the day in reception at OxfordTEFL if the online
registration doesn’t work. I will now continue our discussion on Giving Feedback. On our annual IATEFL Conference in Brighton we had an interesting PCE entitled ‘Does my bum [...]
Changing demographies in our countries have their effects on our classrooms. A true exchange of ideas requires an understanding of different beliefs and value systems. What role does diversity have in your education? Do teacher training colleges in your country teach diversity?
In the next issue of our Teacher Development Newsletter we will run an article on how our members deal with noisy and disruptive classes. A colleague of mine explains to his classes at the start of the year that pupils will be given an extra assignment if they don’t listen. He has a special folder [...]
This week our dilemma is on ‘no child/learner left behind.’ What to do with diversity in your classroom? Teachers move away from the problem-based approach and move more towards the needs-based approach. Do you think you are trained to cater for pupils/learners with learning difficulties? And what do you do with highly talented pupils/learners? Do [...]
In the Netherlands there is an ongoing discussion on how we could improve our education. A panel of 10 educators came up with the following suggestions: improve image of the teacher more opportunities to grow for teachers, but make sure you name and shame when teachers don’t achieve don’t just look at the marks of [...]
The answer to this question is ‘yes’. But it should be clear what we mean by ‘critical friend.’ The concept would no longer be meaningful if it could not be distinguished from helpfulness, sympathy or peer coaching. An essential characteristic of a critical friend is that someone who wants to learn by seeking support for [...]
"The domain of like-minded desires"
Critical friendship is an intriguing concept. The term appears in many books and articles about research and about collaborative learning. However, it has rarely been defined clearly. It is my aim to define it more precisely so that we set it apart from concepts like collegial consultation and helpfulness. I will do this by presenting [...]
In this month’s blog I would like to tackle the concept of critical friend. In the next NL you will find an article on this topic. What all critical friends have in common is that they are good listeners and respond to problems and questions with integrity and a positive attitude. Of course the two [...]
