SYDNEY CONSERVATORIUM OF MUSIC

A story of documenting evidence for teacher professional standards

Jennifer Rowley: jennifer.rowley@sydney.edu.auRuth Weeks: ruth.weeks@sydney.edu.au

Background

• Who? Faculty & Educational Designer/ePortfolio coordinator partnership

• How? Pebble PAD• Why? Introduction of graduate teacher

professional standards & and this created demand for documentation/evidence of achievement

• When? 2009 – Planning (grant); 2010 – Trial & student training; 2011 - Implementation

Professional Standards

• What were they? • How could achievement be “proven”?• What was the relationship between

professional standards and assessment tasks?

Embedding into curriculum

Activities using eportfolio

ePortfolio as “story” rather than “storage”

• Evidence or artefacts required to document achievement of professional standards

• Boring ?• Resulted from training, literature and

intellectual growth – the more we did it the more we understood

• Having an ‘expert’ at a critical time of implementation

PebblePad

• PebblePad was a suitable platform as it is more than an ePortfolio and cv tool – it’s a PLE that encourages and scaffolds the process of reflective learning

• Centrally supported and ‘safe’• Opportunity for integration into other virtual

learning spaces

ePortfolios and teaching philosopy

Students’ early comments on PebblePad

• “Love the idea of online portfolios! Being able to chart progress and  add to it as you go while retaining useful past information simply  and effectively is an invaluable tool.” (2nd May 2010)

• “I agree that maintaining this information in an electronic form is going to be useful, particularly when seeking employment. I think that PebblePad is also going to be a good tool for establishing a CV and updating it as required. I was concerned that PebblePad would only be as useful as a personal record however, if we only use it in the expectation that others will read it in the future it will be any easy way to tell your own story in an informal way not always possible, or appropriate, in job applications” (7th May 2010)

ePortfolios and CVs

ePortfolios and the Capstone experience

Synthesis of learning

Examples of students’ work (with permission of students so no names changed)

• https://eportfolio.sydney.edu.au/pebblepad• Tara’s story: used an assessment task from a composition

unit of study (2009) taught this to her class whilst on prac (2010). She then filmed this and placed on Pebble PAD to meet one professional standard (2011)

• Joyce’s story: created a blog whilst on prac (2010) and demonstrates the achievement of professional standards (2011).

Going beyond

• Progressed well beyond original task• Rich learning biographies• Demonstrating development as a teacher

holistically• Student engagement and student experience

Questions?