Assessment Task 2 Professional Portfolio Sample Assignment

Assessment Task 2: Professional Portfolio

Part 1: Educational Philosophy

Visual communication is one of the most essential skills that are required currently as it helps in effectively communicating the perspectives, information, proposals and ideas to people from different backgrounds. The visual communication theories also help the students in understanding the psychology and perception of visual theories that includes the design principles of visual communication and strategies for composing the elements of the visual communication presentation (Ryan & Ryan, 2013). As a professional educator, I believe it is essential for all the professional educators to understand the learning needs of the students before developing the syllabus of the particular subject. The purpose of education has three aspects, which are to provide learning to those who want to learn and have the accessibility to the available resources, empower those learners who want to share their own knowledge and provide a platform to those students who face issues in terms of physical health, financial and educational resources. The learning goals and objectives should be for each individual student, which should include targets like achieving full potential, identifying the importance of their own subject, becoming independent learners and more active in the entire process of learning. It is my duty to assist the students in achieving their learning goals and objectives (Haerens et al., 2011).

As a visual communication teacher, I focus on choosing those learning theories that suits the learning needs of the students. I aim at mapping my developed learning strategies and theories against the pedagogical framework. It is highly essential for all the professional educators to choose develop learning strategies that includes mediating artefacts like different case studies, narratives, matrices, tables, visualisations, frameworks, models and vocabularies (Saunders & Rennie, 2013). These strategies reflect the professional practice of the educators and their teaching purposes. During my professional career, I have observed that different pedagogical and learning theories have been developed for improving the educational system. As visual communication demands to impart more of technical and practical knowledge, it is essential to use models that involve all the recent teaching techniques and theories. Apart from the learning texts, there are diverse technological product ranges that are designed to encompass the systems, processes, machines, environments and services. In my teaching Assignment, I generally choose the Social Learning Theory and De Bono as my teaching strategy. The Social Learning Theory by Albert Bandura involves the development of new behaviour that can be done by imitating others or observing them (Laurillard, 2013). As visual communication is a cognitive process that influences people in the social context. I have chosen this strategy as it involves the strategy of punishment and reward. The students feel more encouraged by observing the behaviour of those students who are being awarded for their effective work and assignment. On the other hand, I have selected the learning strategy of De Bono has the concept of six thinking hats that can assists the students to focus on the learning outcomes of the teaching sessions. This helps in enhancing my own teaching quality and it even minimizes the counterproductive behaviour (Metzler, 2017).

As per the chosen strategy and learning theories, it becomes difficult for me to abide by the principles of those theories. In visual communication, it is very important to select and apply the right design elements, media, presentation formats, design principles and the materials as these form the main visual language resources. The creativity level of each student varies and each of the design communicates different message to the audiences. The main challenge I face is the interpretation of the work done by the students. Sometimes, it becomes difficult for me to analyse and interpret their work. Hence, I choose the strategy of feedback, interactive presentation and personal interaction. The interactive presentation helps to analyse the thought-process of the students and about what they have learnt. This helps me to analyse how the students have been to understand my teachings and the learning guidelines (Friend et al., 2010). As one their main activities as per the visual communication syllabus is to design the logos, it is important to analyse if they have been able to generate innovative ideas, mapped it with the design principles, used the Adobe illustrator effectively and has been able to use the annotations properly or not. The feedback received from the students at the end of every learning session helps me to analyse how the students have been able to understand from the entire learning session. It not reflects the learning abilities of the students, but also reflects my teaching ability.

After assessing the performance of the students, I try to undergo the process of self-assessment that can help me to analyse my own performance as an educator. In the self-assessment process, the most important step is to consider the performance of all my students. In case the overall performance of the students has a huge difference, it reflects my inability to impart the learning outcomes and knowledge effectively. Moreover, it is essential for me to develop a programme that can help all the students to understand the curriculums in the same manner (Adams & Bell, 2016). This would help in reducing the performance gap of all the students. Moreover, I refer to the feedback received from all the students to find out my areas of strengths and weaknesses. In addition, I usually take the TSAT (teachers Self-assessment tool) developed by Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL). The results from this test help me evaluate my own performance and understand the areas of improvement. Other than this, when I check the assignments of my students, I mention about the positive and negative points along with the sections that impressed me. In Appendix 1 and Appendix 2, the snapshot of my comments on my student’s rubric has been attached. This reflects my attentiveness towards even the minor details of the work done by my students. It is highly essential for me to make sure that I am able to give my best towards assessing the performance of my students so that it can help me to improve my own performance.

Apart from the classroom learning, it is essential for me to ensure that along with improving my own performance to improve the wellbeing of the students and include them in all the activities. I aim at teaching them about the embedded policies and regulations of the classroom behaviour and values. It is important for me to create opportunities for the students so that it can motivate them to contribute towards their future development (Solis et al., 2012).

Part 2: Plan for professional learning

Professional learning refers to the means by which the staffs, administrators and teachers to enhance and acquire the skills, knowledge, disposition and practices that are necessary to support and create high learning level for all the students. As teaching is one of the most critical jobs, it is essential for every professional educator to plan their teaching methods and future learning plan (Cheng, 2014). With my experience in the educational field, I have observed that it is not possible for the teaching professionals to ace in every area of teaching. In a few sections, teachers like me are not very proficient and need to improve for which a proper plan is required. With a proper professional learning plan, I can improve my teaching ability along with my career graph as an educator. It will further assist me to handle various critical situations in future adeptly. With the help of self-assessment and performance review, I have observed two areas in which I need further development. These improvements would help to become more effective as an educator and fulfil the learning needs of all my students (Page, 2014).

One of the areas in which I need improvement is about the idea of student psychology. The student psychology and education is interlinked. My first responsibility as an educator is analysing the student psychology, which is the mental ability of the students to understand and grasp the learning outcomes (Bond, 2014). At times, it becomes difficult for me to analyse the learning needs and ability of my students. In order to improve this area, it is important for me to undergo a training session in which I can understand the concept of student psychology. The training session would be a six months session with which I can overcome my weaknesses. As the training sessions are designed as per the Australian Professional Standards (APS). With the knowledge received from the training sessions, I would be able to understand how I can manage to understand the learning abilities of the students. Moreover, it would also help me to develop better relations with the students (van Nierop et al., 2015).

I have also come to know about another issue in which I need improvement. There are situations where I fail to take lead in the classroom and group activities of the educators. This only reflects the lack of leadership skills. In order to improve this area, I have to undergo leadership-training sessions for six months. This would provide me a wider perspective about leadership skills and provide me the opportunity to assess the relevant expertise and learn about different and new information process (Funkhouser & Mouza, 2013).

Given below is the timeline of my areas of improvement-

Table 1: Timeline for professional learning programme

(Source: Created by the author)

Plan 3: Response to job advertisement

Given below is the cover letter provided as the response to a job advertisement regarding the position of ‘Design Teacher of Art/Visual Communication’ of Strathmore Secondary College. The job is for a fixed term and the main role is of the class teacher. The given job advertisement has certain selection criteria, which have been mentioned in the job advertisement. The letter contains about my professional background, my understanding related to teaching visual communication designs and my abilities and qualities that can help me to get the job at Strathmore Secondary College.

Reference List

Adams, M., & Bell, L. A. (Eds.). (2016). Teaching for diversity and social justice. Routledge.

Bond, J. J. (2014). Different-yet equal: the historical development of disability discrimination legislation in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia.

Cheng, G. (2014). Exploring students' learning styles in relation to their acceptance and attitudes towards using Second Life in education: A case study in Hong Kong. Computers & Education, 70, 105-115.

Friend, M., Cook, L., Hurley-Chamberlain, D., & Shamberger, C. (2010). Co-teaching: An illustration of the complexity of collaboration in special education. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 20(1), 9-27.

Funkhouser, B. J., & Mouza, C. (2013). Drawing on technology: An investigation of preservice teacher beliefs in the context of an introductory educational technology Assignment. Computers & Education, 62, 271-285.

Haerens, L., Kirk, D., Cardon, G., & De Bourdeaudhuij, I. (2011). Toward the development of a pedagogical model for health-based physical education. Quest, 63(3), 321-338.

Laurillard, D. (2013). Teaching as a design science: Building pedagogical patterns for learning and technology. Routledge.

Metzler, M. (2017). Instructional models in physical education. Taylor & Francis.

Page, T. (2014). Application-based mobile devices in design education. International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation, 8(2), 96-111.

Ryan, M., & Ryan, M. (2013). Theorising a model for teaching and assessing reflective learning in higher education. Higher Education Research & Development, 32(2), 244-257.

Saunders, K. J., & Rennie, L. J. (2013). A pedagogical model for ethical inquiry into socioscientific issues in science. Research in Science Education, 43(1), 253-274.

Solis, M., Vaughn, S., Swanson, E., & Mcculley, L. (2012). Collaborative models of instruction: The empirical foundations of inclusion and co‐teaching. Psychology in the Schools, 49(5), 498-510.

van Nierop, M., Viechtbauer, W., Gunther, N., Van Zelst, C., De Graaf, R., Ten Have, M., ... & OUtcome of Psychosis (GROUP) investigators. (2015). Childhood trauma is associated with a specific admixture of affective, anxiety, and psychosis symptoms cutting across traditional diagnostic boundaries. Psychological medicine, 45(6), 1277-1288.

Appendix 1- Student’s Rubric

Appendix 2- Student’s Rubric

Appendix 3- Lesson Plan for Visual Communication