Welcome to the WJETT blog
What is WJETT?
The WJETT blog or Warwick Journal of Education - Transforming Teaching blog is designed to encourage staff and students to disseminate good practice and to engage with their peers on academic cultural critique or areas of research that they find interesting. With the increased focus on ‘teachers as researchers’ in the sector, many qualified teachers are expected to publish the outcomes of any action research projects they undertake. The WJETT blog can be the first step on your journey towards publishing and enables you to experience publishing and reviewing in a friendly and supportive environment.
You will need to scroll down the page below the tags to see the posts.
What is your teaching philosophy?
My teaching philosophy strongly believes that, the core requirement of a student and the key mission of an educator is the wielding of knowledge by love. The importance of love in teaching are continuously been talk about in both Western and Eastern culture. According to Hooks (2003), Love in education empowers the recognition between the educator and the learner. Moreover, what I believe is in order for a person to be a successful educator, they need to love what they do in principle, as well as love what they do every day - Teaching.
It is through love that one can form a real and true connection with the receiver of knowledge. If love is allowed to create an open channel of communication right from the start, the reward will be throughout the entire journey and beyond. Through love, the teacher can show that they truly care about the student and therefore make them pay more attention to the lesson and the knowledge from this particular teacher. I believe that this will create a bond that will last well beyond the academic term, and therefore the lessons taught will have a better chance of retention as well.
Contrary to a lot of opinion, I believe that a “friendly” teacher can go a long way in connecting with the students. Exchanging smiles, genuine greetings and concern, enquire about extra-curricular and other activities in order to widen the scope of the relationship with the students. I fully understand that this approach suits my natural personality and I can connect to my students on a much deeper and broader level. The trust factor increases and also the willingness to accept the knowledge from me are increased.
Teaching is a selfless way of giving out the knowledge and the experience to student. On another hand, teaching has always being my passion. James(1996) mentioned that teaching without passion is only knowledge delivery and tantamount to rote or mechanical skill. Hence, I strongly agree the significance of teaching with passion. Indeed, it is a very raw and basic emotion come from our heart that allows the student to be notice and detect easily. At the same time, hopefully to get reward of a passionate learner, James(1996). As an educator, we have to accept that there are countless ways for us to show our passion, whether it is for the technical aspects of the daily lesson, or the application of the subject in everyday life after the learner left school in the future, or maybe just passion through an interest in getting to know the student individually and creating a deeper personal bond. Most important, it is educator’s responsibility to continually keep the passion, presenting the enthusiasm and build the maximum interest for all learners of my subject.
References
Hooks, B.(2003).Teaching community: a pedagogy of hope. New York, NY: Routledge.
James, W.(1996). Teaching with a passion. American economist. Education connection. Winter 1996. Page199-200. https://watermark.silverchair.comLink opens in a new window
Writing guidance
Can I write about anything in my blog post?
Yes pretty much. Academic cultural critique (Thomson and Mewburn, 2013) is always a good source of content for academic blogs. This can include (but is not limited to) comments and reflections on funding; higher education policy or academic life. You might also want to consider blogging about:
- Academic practice (Saper, 2006)
- Information and/or self-help advice
- Technical, teaching and careers advice
- Your research or practice
- How you’ve undertaken research
- The impact of research on your practice
- An area of research/practice that interests you
- Your teaching experiences/reflections
How long can my blog post be?
Each individual blog post should be no longer than 500 words. Long blocks of text are sometimes hard for readers to digest. Break up your content into shorter paragraphs, bullet points and lists whenever possible. Also include a list of keywords or tags as this makes it easier for Google to find your work.
Do I need to use citations?
No, this is a reflective piece so it does not need to include citations (but you obviously can include them if they are relevant).
Can I include links or images?
We would encourage you to include links to any articles that you have considered whilst writing your blog post. We also welcome the use of images (as long as you have permission to use them) as they can often help to illustrate a point and obviously will not be included in the word limit. Please remember this is a public site so if you want to include images of your students in your classes then you will need permission to do this.
What is the process for submitting a piece of work?
Your blog post should be emailed to A.Ball.1@warwick.ac.uk. Once the submission has been reviewed it will either be uploaded at the beginning of the next available week or sent back to you for editing if it requires amendments. You should then send the amended work to me once again and I will then upload it.