We had one session before we started the PgCert properly, this was in December and was a chance for us to get acquainted with each other, the course, our tutors and how the next year was likely to play out. Although in many was different, this session holds a few similarities to my first workshop with many of my students. It is a chance for them to orient themselves in the Fabrication Lab, to learn what technology is available to them and how they can access it and potentially most important to meet and form an impression of me as the teacher (Giles, 2011)
Creating a relationship between teacher and student is an emotional practice which is integral for successful teaching (Karpouza & Emvalotis, 2019) this is based on the idea that when students feel that they belong within a classroom/teaching environment they are more engaged with the learning process. (Osterman, 2023)
Lindsay started this first session by walking around the room and asking for each of our names, which she jotted down on a sheet in the position that we were sat in. She later utilised this to remember each of our individual names like a game. From this point onwards she had memorised my name. I was hugely impressed by this not only as a skill but as the feeling of individuality and importance it gave me as a learner. Katelyn M. Cooper, Brian Haney, Anna Krieg and Sara E. Brownell (2017) collected data which explains that name learning creates this feeling among other many other students. Through our following few teaching sessions we had sticker name tags applied for the benefit of building community between students and for our second teacher who wasn’t there in the first session.
Name learning is something I plan to put a much more intentional emphasis on going forward in my teaching. I will test using name stickers for this and creating a personal “lay plan” of names based on where students are sat. I will also do further research into how to ingrain names and improve student belonging in the classroom.
Bibliography:
- Giles, D. (2011). Relationships Always Matter: Findings from a Phenomenological Research Inquiry. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 36(6) Available at: https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2011v36n6.1 Accessed: 19.03.24
- Brownell S E, Cooper K M, Haney B, Krieg A, (2017) ‘What’s in a Name? The Importance of Students Perceiving That an Instructor Knows Their Names in a High-Enrollment Biology Classroom’ CBE Life Sci Educ. 2017 Spring; 16(1): ar8. Available at: doi: 10.1187/cbe.16-08-0265 Accessed: 19.03.24
- Eleni Karpouza & Anastassios Emvalotis (2019) Exploring the teacher-student relationship in graduate education: a constructivist grounded theory, Teaching in Higher Education, 24:2, 121-140, Available at: DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2018.1468319 Accessed 19.03.24
- Osterman, K.F. (2023). Teacher Practice and Students’ Sense of Belonging. In: Lovat, T., Toomey, R., Clement, N., Dally, K. (eds) Second International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24420-9_54 Accessed 19.03.24