Summary:
- Teaching students are taught how to learn.
- Teaching students are taught how to mark assessments.
- The lecturers teaching education degrees have often been teachers themselves.
I did a post-graduate degree in teaching. This means that I did do another degree in a completely different field before going and studying to be a teacher. While my grades where never particularly poor, I did notice a significant increase in my grades during my teaching degree compared to my first degree.
I could not find any research discussing this phenomenon that I noticed, so I am unsure if this is common or just my unique experience. If you know of any research into this topic, please let me know in the comment section below.
There are studies on factors that influenced the grades of tertiary students, and most of these factors sit outside of individual students’ control. While it appears that socioeconomic status and ethnicity play a large role in the success of tertiary students across the board, the research suggests that this is due to a larger instance of family commitments and expectations that limit study time, as well as the need to work part- or even full-time while studying.1
I’ve also noticed this in pre-service teachers; that there are certain demographics that are more likely to pass and become teachers. Most of this is down to commitments that require time, and not being able to fulfil these commitments during lengthy practical placements.
Teaching students are taught how to learn.
This first point is perhaps the most obvious. When you are doing a teaching degree, one of the main topics that you will cover is how exactly learning works. A lot of time is spent on the biology and psychology of learning, obstacles that often get in the way, and how to overcome these obstacles.
After a certain amount of training in this area, teachers should be pretty good at knowing how to learn. I’m sure that you’ve all heard stories about psychologists who can’t form good habits, doctors who don’t exercise enough and even cleaners that can clean all day but struggle to do so when it is their own house. If you’re in this boat, it can actually have an impact on how you do your job as well2. These things happen, and just because you know how to help others learn, it doesn’t mean that you will become a good learner yourself.
The fact remains that if you are studying to become a teacher, you do get a bit of an advantage when it comes to being able to optimise your own learning. You learn about the psychology of different studying techniques, and the role that personality can play in determining the best learning strategies. While not all teachers may be able to put this in practice when it comes to their own learning, they at least know how they could.
Teaching students are taught how to mark assessments.
I feel like this is an even more important point than my last one. As teachers, we are taught how to judge a good assessment and give it a grade. When this finally clicked for me and I was able to use it to my advantage with my own assessment pieces, it did feel an awful lot like gaming the system. I felt like I was giving particular responses that I knew where what the assessors wanted to hear, as opposed to what my natural response would be.
This is the purpose of assessment, though. As teachers, we want to be able to judge whether or not a student can do something. Whether that thing is as simple as remembering a fact, or as complex as being able to apply what they know in unfamiliar contexts to solve a problem, all of this information should be included in the assessment criteria.
Being able to read a rubric and determine exactly what the person marking your work wants to see is a skill. It is a skill that everyone who studies teaching is explicitly taught. Whether students who are studying to become teachers use this skill to their advantage or not is up to them, but they are equipped with the skills to do very well in their assessments.
The lecturers teaching education degrees have often been teachers themselves.
This is something else that is often overlooked. While not all teaching professors, lecturers, and tutors have much experience in schools, a number of them have extensive experience. Many of the lecturers that I had during my teaching degree had been teachers and then principals for many years before deciding to side-step into teacher education and research.
look at our own students’ strengths.
In most fields of study, only very rarely do you have someone who wants the job purely because they will be teaching the next generation of people to work in their field. In the professions, however, this is more of a focus. A number of school leaders take jobs at universities specifically so that they can train future teachers, and they take great pride in this.
I had many lecturers who were passionate not only about education, but about demonstrating to us how to do it best through their own practice. I had lecturers who would do some truly experimental things, at least by the standards of most university lecturers. Students who are learning how to become teachers are greatly benefitted by having experts to teach them.
Do all teachers get top marks at university?
No, and they don’t need to. It is not a sign of a bad teacher if you have struggled to achieve top marks at university, particularly as teaching is such a social and improvisational profession where the true skill-set is not something that can be assessed through an essay.
Pre-service teachers do have an advantage, though. In being taught how to teach, they are taught how to learn. They are given all of the skills, techniques, and background knowledge to make great learners. The mode of learning and being assessed at university does not do justice to everyone’s style of working and learning, but teachers do certainly make for fantastic learners.
References:
1Tani, K., Dalzell, E., Ehambaranathan, N., Murugasu, S., & Steele, A. (2019). Evaluation of Factors Affecting Students’ Performance in Tertiary Education. Online Submission, 3(2), 1-10.
2Din, N. U., Moore, G. F., Murphy, S., Wilkinson, C., & Williams, N. H. (2015). Health professionals’ perspectives on exercise referral and physical activity promotion in primary care: findings from a process evaluation of the National Exercise Referral Scheme in Wales. Health Education Journal, 74(6), 743-757.
