School ofPractice

Professional Education
3

102095 Secondary PP3 Self Reflection Form

Pre-service Teacher Details

Pre-service Teacher Name: Rebekah Donoghue Pre-service Teacher ID: 17195892

Pre-service Teacher Phone Number: 0448 121 666 Pre-service Teacher Email Address:
17195892@student.westernsydney.edu.au

Placement Details: If you haven’t complete 60 hours face to face you must provide a detailed statement of
how your experience meets the outcomes for Professional Practice 3. Attach evidence.

Placement Name: Overseas Professional Placement Phone Number: N/A

Experience Program – Taiwan Experience Education
Programme
Placement Address: Southern Taiwan University of Placement Email Address:
Science and Technology s.gilbert@westernsydney.edu.au

Contact Person: Shirley Gilbert

Describe in 500-800 WORDS any features and benefits of the setting you attended. Consider number of
students, location details, age of students, types of educational programs offered and any other salient
aspects of the experience. Consider how this experience will contribute to your development as a beginning
teacher.

AITSL Standards

The criteria for pre-service teacher reflection focus, the first, second, third and sixth standards.
 1.3 Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds
 1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of
abilities
 2.2 Content selection and organisation
 3.1 Establish challenging learning goals
 6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice

Subsidiary questions:
What surprised you about your learning in your community setting?
What research about communities did you engage with before you commenced?
Why were you surprised about your learning?
What goals did you set for yourself in your service learning activities?
In what ways were you communicating with your community participants?
What do you believe the participants in your service learning project learned?
What did you learn? How will the experience shape you as a teacher in a classroom?
How would you help someone else learn what you discovered?

This form is to be completed and submitted to the notes/docs section of your profile within InPlace.
During my time teaching in Taiwan I went on a steep learning curve in unexpected ways. Personal
skills I expected to use were almost redundant, such as my desire to explicitly plan. Instead, I
developed and strengthened skills I didn’t expect to be capable of until much further along in my
career, such as flexibility and thinking on my feet. My biggest learning, however, was how it feels to
be part of a minority, that is not being able to speak the common language in the classroom, and this
experience has had a significant influence on my future teaching praxis.

The Taiwanese junior high school students I taught were diverse in many ways. Their primary
language was Mandarin, they had vast cultural differences compared to my own and within the
cohort demonstrated various religious backgrounds (AITSL Standard 1.3). For instance, during a field
trip to Tainan City one student did not enter the Buddhist temple due to their religious beliefs. This
provided an opening for me to discuss with the student his or her own beliefs and reasons for not
entering the temple. This highlighted to me the diverse range of students I was working with, not just
compared to my own cultural background but even within the cohort. As a result my future teaching
praxis has changed as I feel I am more aware and sensitive to the diverse range of students I will be
teaching.

AITSL Standard 1.5 and 3.1 were met through my participation in OPEP as the Taiwanese junior high
school students I taught were grouped randomly and as such I had to cater to a variety of levels of
understanding and skills within the lesson. For instance, within my small group of students the spread
of ability went from quite advanced in conversational English to next to no understanding. Further,
most students were able to read and write English but actual comprehension was low. In order to
provide all students with equitable access to learning I provided multiple means of representation
and assisted varying levels for expression. Representation of content spread from handwriting
English, to video and hands-on tasks in order to ensure all students were given the same opportunity
to access content. Students were assisted in their speaking as much as necessary ranging from simply
repeating the word to completely breaking down the sounds and structure and rebuilding it to ensure
correct pronunciation. This experience has informed my future praxis as I am now acutely aware of
how hard it is for EALD students to engage in the classroom, and as such, I intend to provide more
scaffolding and support to assist them in meeting their learning goals.

AITSL Standard 2.2 was met during this professional placement as there was no syllabus to refer to,
only the goal of improving student English language skills and as such the teacher had full autonomy
of what and how they taught in the classroom. A basic pre-assessment was conducted with students
in the form of ‘personal bingo’ in which students had to interact with each other and speak English to
find answers to the questions. This pre-assessment exhibited the lack of confidence the students had
in their conversational English and this understanding informed the rest of my teaching. Through
informal conversations with students I also learnt that they enjoyed group work and sport and as
such, I incorporated these types of activities to encourage natural conversation in the classroom. For
instance, in the final teaching session a scavenger hunt was designed in which students needed to
work together to complete a list of challenges. Students could only speak English throughout the
activity and all challenges were in English, however, as the students thrived most when working in
groups, it was a suitable task to have them demonstrate their learning and feel at ease with the
learning environment whilst still being an appropriate task and meeting the teaching criteria.

Throughout the duration of the OPEP in Taiwan I was engaging in conversations with colleagues to
improve my practice, AITSL Standard 6.3. This included both my colleagues from Western Sydney
University as well as the Teaching Assistant from Taiwan. I found great value in discussing with my
WSU colleagues their different approaches to various situations with students and how they were
engaging students in learning. I also gained a lot from being able to watch my colleagues’ lessons as
we all came from different backgrounds, be it KLA or schooling level (primary or secondary). The
experience provided me with many take-home ideas I hope to apply to my future practice, such as ice
breaker activities. Similarly, engaging with the Taiwanese TAs was an invaluable experience as I
gained a deeper understanding of the cultural differences and attitudes towards education. The
understanding gained from having these international conversations I will apply to my future praxis
as I now have a greater appreciation for the complexities of various education systems and I will
consider how this might influence students from diverse cultural backgrounds in my classroom.