Thoughts about teachers as knowledge creators

" ... the teacher has to play a key role in modeling knowledge building through being creative and innovative in pedagogical practices. Professional learning and development will best be supported when teachers can share, create, and improve new knowledge on teaching, learning, and assessment as a KBC." (Lai, 2014, p18)

This is a thread of interest that has emerged following a huge amount of reading into constructivist pedagogy. This thought echoes a problem in day to day teaching. We're encouraging our students to follow Learn-Create-Share  in their learning, doing innovative things in our classrooms but we forget to share as teachers. Too often, we're too shy, too busy, too much in our classroom siloes.

As a teacher, I live in a bit of silo. I am the only visual art teacher at my school, the nearest colleague being 35 km up the road. It can be quite isolating.

I have been really lucky to have had the generous support of colleagues as I've explored what knowledge building looks like with my art history class.

I wonder though how we can make the innovations in our practice more visible and accessible to our community?

 

Lai, Kwok-Wing, & Pullar, Ken. (2014). Designing knowledge building communities in secondary schools.