Digital Pedagogy

Pedagogical Principles 

Pedagogical Principles that inform our teaching include facilitating deep learning through higher order thinking, understanding our students and how they learn, promoting collaborative learning through communication, encouraging learning through problem-solving using relative and real-life examples, supporting learning that is directed by students themselves, is socially supportive and incorporates cultural and community knowledge and active citizenship.

In common language, Pedagogical Principles is building on the foundation of students' base knowledge to extend what is known and construct meaning. This will enable students to become confident, informed and creative citizens.

Personally, I struggle to remember specific moments from my high school years, but I can identify them now in my undergraduate degree. For example, the pedagogically sound usually appears in my units that are specific to pedagogical practices as these unit coordinators and Professors are the masters of their craft. The pedagogically woeful experiences have come from either the Business or Arts/Literature faculties as again, they are the masters of their craft however, the art of teaching is not it.

The pedagogically sound experiences will not only include a lecturer presenting their PowerPoint on a screen, but they will embed other visual and audio content, student interaction and participation using the Zoom whiteboards, breakout rooms for small-group work. These practices are included to support and enhance deep thinking and learning.

A teacher cannot underestimate a student’s tacit knowledge, nor can they assume that students are capable of deep thinking and learning without having established foundation knowledge. 

It is important to engage prior knowledge and social interaction in pedagogical practice, along with individualised and socially supportive learning, to ensure students are given the best possible outcomes for constructive and creative deep thinking in a safe and structured learning environment.

Most of the units I have engaged in within my undergraduate degree already assume that I have a base knowledge of English and a general interest in the course work. Distance education topics often rely on collaborative and social learning by embedding ICT in the unit. By using problems that a real and relevant to us as pre-service teachers, the course work helps us apply knowledge using real-life contexts.

Bloom's Taxonomy: Reflecting on higher-order thinking

English as a core subject in secondary education is content-laden. The Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2019) aims to ensure that students:

• learn to listen to, read, view, speak, write, create and reflect on increasingly complex and sophisticated spoken, written and multimodal texts across a growing range of contexts with accuracy, fluency and purpose
• appreciate, enjoy and use the English language in all its variations and develop a sense of its richness and power to evoke feelings, convey information, form ideas, facilitate interaction with others, entertain, persuade and argue
• understand how Standard Australian English works in its spoken and written forms and in combination with non-linguistic forms of communication to create meaning
• develop interest and skills in inquiring into the aesthetic aspects of texts, and develop an informed appreciation of literature.

While the holistic nature of the Australian Curriculum is embedded in teaching and learning, it is the top end of Bloom's Taxonomy that will allow the students to demonstrate their proficiency in their learning. Though learning through recall and comprehension has its place, it is through higher order thinking (analysis, synthesis and evaluation) that students are motivated and engaged in their learning (Collins, 2014). Students are motivated to engage in thinking about specific things and undertaking assessment that requires rational and critical thinking.