This post was partly inspired by Ferghal who has just completed module 1 of the Chartered Teacher course (well done!). In his post, he wrote:
I’m hoping that as my confidence grows, I will be able to post my assignments online before submission and make use of this community.
I really wish that I had done just that with all my modules, too. Blogging about the final dissertation stage and receiving words of encouragement – or maybe just the occassional comment from others online was definately very benificial to me. Even just writing for a potential audience forced me to focus more on the different chapters. Rather than leaving loads of unfinished drafts, I felt the need to ‘tidy’ them up a bit before submitting them to the ‘world’.
David left a comment on Ferghal’s post to congratulate him and to ask what his next plans were. He mentioned ‘double modules’. I only heard of this option recently. Stirling are allowing the choice of completing the Chartered Teacher pathway in 3 years by opting to write double the amount of words on half the amount of modules (or so I’ve been told?)
With the UWS route, I completed four core modules at Post graduate certificate level:
Reflective Practice: Critical Self-evaluation and Development
(Module 1, Self-Evaluation)
Effective Teaching for Effective Learning
(Module 2, Learning and Teaching)
Equality and Diversity in Education
(Module 3, Education for All)
Essential Personal Communication
(Module 4, Working Together)
Followed by 4 Option Modules. The modules I chose were:
Teaching and Learning of Core Skills: Numeracy
Developing Cognitive Flexibility
Mentoring and Supporting Students, Probationers and Colleagues
Introducing eLearning, eTeaching and eAssessment
Each of these modules had to contain between 3 to 4000 words (I think it started out as 3000, but as the course progressed the ‘wordage’ crept up to 4000). It took 4 years to complete these eight modules. I then had the choice of undertaking 2 smaller dissertations (10-15000 words) over 2 years, or one larger dissertation (20-25000 words) over 1 year. I chose the larger dissertation over 1 year.
When I began the CT journey, there was no option to complete the course by doing double modules. I’m glad I completed all 8 core and option modules because I learned so much about so many different topics. If the Stirling option had been available, would I have chosen it ….. probably 🙂
(although the cost would have been an issue – presumably the double modules cost double the money, meaning an outlay of around £2000 a year instead of £1000?)
Ferghal also shared his essay via scribd (I tried to leave a comment on his blog explaining how to embed it in to edubuzz, but I linked it to the carronshore blog by mistake. I’m not sure what happened but it seems that some comments appear right away and some require moderation??)
Anyway, if anyone wants a VERY long read, here’s my dissertation 🙂