Journal Unit 1
There
are lots of factors which can affect teachers performance into a classroom,
such as professionalism, educational policies, and metacognition. Many of the
factors mentioned are ignored by some teachers, bringing negative consequences to
their performance during the classes.
It is
necessary for teachers to know how students can achieve a better (or the ideal)
learning progress. It means, what teaching strategies should teachers apply
into the class in order to get a successful students' learning process. Therefore,
it is important for a teacher to manage some knowledge on metacognition.
Additionally
students need also to know how do they learn better, they need to realize whether
they are pragmatic, visual or audiovisual (etc.) learners so they can know how
to study at home. Besides, in order to acquire metacognitive knowledge,
students need to be honest with themselves because they must be able to
recognize when they are studying in a way which do not make students learn as
much as they want.
There
are a lot of people who believe (not only teachers) that Chilean educational
policies do not allow us to have the quality of education we all want. Much to
the contrary, educational policies avoid the progress and improvement of our
education.
Market
expansion has been so high, and impressive around the world that it reached
education just in order to undermine it, rather than improving education
itself. There are many countries where education is not undermined by market
expansion because it is forbidden. However, here in Chile things are done
differently. Even though it is illegal by law to undermine education (or
profit), the law is not being applied as we expect. People profit with schools
as if they were companies and nobody do anything to avoid it.
If we
want to enhance education, it would be completely necessary to delete the
profit. It is impossible to have quality and profit at the same time, because
when you profit with some product, you are only concerned of earning money
rather than the quality of the product you sell.
If we
need to change Chilean education. We must fulfill the law, take into account
metacognition and finally to be good professionals. Teachers' professionalism
is very important in education. It is not enough with having a teacher degree
to be a good professional. There are some attitudes teachers need to have,
attitudes that teachers do not necessarily learn at the university. How to
inculcate values, vocation, how to promote metacognition in classes, how to
deal correctly with specific situations at school, and event the contents we
have seen in this unit are at least some attitudes that teachers must have (and
know), which are not taught at the universities (at least in Chile).
As a
final conclusion of this reflection, I believe around this semester we have
seen crucial topics that a student like me should take into account if I want
to be a successful teacher in the future. These are concepts that every student
of pedagogy should learn at the university, and put into practice in our future
jobs as teachers.
