Effective Teachers have a mastery of the content and discourse of their discipline(s)
from which the subjects (or curriculum areas) they teach are derived.
* Teachers should desire to achieve excellence in their teaching.
* Teachers should be able to develop programs that are relevant to the content.
* Teachers should have an understanding of their content so that appropriate links between areas can be made between content areas.
* Teachers should take into account why, whom and how they will teach specific content.
Content knowledge does not exist on its own it is part of a wider curriculum and can be interpreted in different ways. It is the teachers’ job to find the most appropriate interpretation and develop an appropriate way of teaching this content to a particular community.
To develop this competency I will need to:
1) become more familiar with the actual content.
2) study the curriculum to find links between it and the content.
3) observe the students I will be teaching to become familiar with their learning
style.
4) become familiar with the school in which I will be working so that I may
become an insider in their discourse community.
5) practise and evaluate lesson plans to see how effectively and creatively
I can teach the content.
By doing this I way eventually achieve excellence in this competency.
Strengths and Weaknesses of this competency:
The strength of this competency is that it highlights the importance of tying
all
the content of a subject together in order to come to a complete understanding.
However, a weakness is that it doesn’t acknowledge the hidden content
that is being taught, the social education about the morals and norms of behaviour
in society.
Current evidence of this competency:
We have not yet been introduced to the curriculum of our subjects however we
have undertaken two literature courses where we made class presentations
and a drama course in which we created a lesson plan.