WAGGA’S teaching professionals have scoffed at the idea of a British professor looking to alter the title of teacher to a ‘learning designer’.
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That’s the call from Kings College London Professor, Guy Claxton, while he was in Sydney last week.
While Riverina organiser of the NSW Teachers Federation agrees partially with Professor Claxton’s comments, John Pratt argued the term learning designer is an “understatement of a teacher’s day to day life.”
“Teachers certainly are many things to students: their care givers, their advisers, their teachers, their piggy banks, their sport coaches, and so forth,” Mr Pratt said.
“I don’t think a teacher ever wants to be referred to as anything but a teacher and this ‘learning designer’, is just one of the many things a teacher does.”
Mr Pratt said he remained “very suspicious” when someone from the English education system offered advice.
“Currently the English education system is regarded pretty much as the worst in the world”, he said.
“We have nothing to learn from England, in fact teachers should run a hundred miles before they start listening to anyone from England about their teaching job.
“This role of learning designer sounds to me more like a script writer and this produces the script for unframed, unqualified teacher’s to deliver lessons.
“England is not the place for anyone in Australia to be taking academic guidance with regards to teaching,” Mr Pratt said.
Similarly, Cameron Abood a high school teacher and councilor for NSW Teachers Federation said while change in the education system can be good, teachers do a lot more than just “designing lessons and learning”.
“Revamp is a very strong word, we do need to look at the education system and how it works, but going to a learning-designing model doesn’t justify what we actually do as teachers,” Mr Abood said.
For those who are educational designers, they can appreciate both the teacher and learning designer.
Geraldine Rurenga, an educational designer from Charles Sturt University in Wagga said educational designers have skills and experience in the design of learning experiences, curriculum and assessment.
“Together we work in a multi-discipline team to ensure the content that is being taught, and the way that it is being taught will achieve best outcomes for students,” Ms Rurenga said.
In regards to Professor Claxton’s interpretation of the modern-day teacher, Ms Rurenga believed he was referring to the idea that teachers are now facilitating learning rather than controlling it.
“In primary and secondary education we want students to be prepared for jobs that, due to technological developments, may not even exist yet,” she said.
“The teacher does not have all the answers that students will need, they need to have the curiosity and skills to find solutions themselves.”
Educational designers and teachers in the academic environment are researching the way in which learning and teaching academics work together in a “highly-skilled” and “multi-faceted” way.
“In many cases it is almost impossible for one person to keep abreast of the incredible pace of evolving technologies that are affording new learning spaces, pedagogues, and ways of learning (for example online, mobile, augmented reality, virtual reality etc), in addition to the professional and discipline content,” Ms Rurenga concluded.