Clinical Praxis Exam - Context

1. Clinical Praxis Exam - Context • Year 7 and 8 IT class. Same content and lessons for both. • Teaching them Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) • Used to create web pages, specifically to instruct the web browser how to render the page content. • Very technical and strict language • No room for errors (caused some problems) • US spelling (also caused from problems) • (Refer to example of a student's HTML code)

2. The Student and the Learning Issue • The intervention was aimed at all students I was teaching, but for the sake of the CPE, I initially chose two students, one being a backup in case of any problems. Both students were having problems in this class. • Alice – Year 7 Girl • Bob – Year 8 Boy • Due to unforeseen circumstances (NAPLAN, Sports Day, Illness, Suspension) I will be reporting on a third student, who showed a vast improvement in his initial knowledge. • Charlie – Year 8 Boy

3. Language and Literacy Considerations • Being an IT class, much of the language relating to the topic was very technical. • As mentioned earlier, a number of problems were encountered because of this. • Very strict language when writing HTML code • US spelling • Why? What problems did this cause? • What language did I use during the Engagement, Building Knowledge, and Transformation stages? • Assessment took the form of an Information Report. (Love, Baker, & Quinn, 2008)

4. Planned Intervention Rapport Building Teacher Immediacy • Behaviourist Approach • Reinforce good behaviours as well as good work (Snowman, et al., 2009) • Rapport Building • Get to know and understand students • Know what they're capable of and what motivates them • Immediacy (Non-verbal and Verbal) Improved Learning Positive Reinforcement

5. Implementation • Behaviourist approach used the principles of operant conditioning to help shape the students behaviour, relating to both the classroom and work. Examples: • Praising students when on task (Positive Reinforcement) • Praising for doing good work (Positive Reinforcement) • Moving students away from their friends if they were not working (Negative Punishment) • Rapport building • Initially before my block placement, I talked to each student to get to know them. • Throughout the block placement in my teaching I used a number of immediacy techniques, as well as trying to relate to the students.

6. Justification • Rapport Building - A good teacher-student rapport has been found to significantly correlate with: • Participation • Affect towards content • Learning (Frisby & Martin, 2010; Frisby & Myers, 2008) • Immediacy – Verbal and Non-verbal immediacy techniques have been found to significantly correlate with: • Motivation • Learning (Gorham, 1988; Pogue & Ahyun, 2006)

7. Reflections • (Refer to assignment sheet and examples of work) • What worked? • Rapport building worked very well. • Immediacy techniques helped build rapport. • Operant conditioning worked. • Ideas for the future: • Language – Glossary of key technical terms and HTML tags to reinforce learning. • Pedagogy – More use of punishment. Why? • Fine tune timing for lessons.

8. References • Frisby, B. N. & Martin, M. M. (2010). Instructor–student and student–student rapport in the classroom. Communication Education, 59(2), 146-164. • Frisby, B. N., & Myers, S. A. (2008). The Relationships among perceived instructor rapport, student participation, and student learning outcomes. Texas Speech Communication Journal, 33(1), 27-34. • Gorham, J. (1988). The relationship between verbal teacher immediacy behaviours and student learning. Communication Education, 37(1), 40-53. • Love, K., Baker, G., & Quinn, M. (2008). Literacy Across the Secondary Subjects. University of Melbourne. • Pogue, L., & Ahyun, K. (2006). The effect of teacher nonverbal immediacy and credibility on student motivation and affective learning. Communication Education, 55(3), 331-344. • Snowman, J. (2009). Psychology applied to teaching. 1st australian edition. Milton, Qld: John Wiley and Sons Australia.