Short teaching courses

GERRIC

GERRIC at the UNSW School of Education offers face-to-face and online sessions for the Mini-COGE, the Mini-COGE Advanced: More curriculum differentiation and the Mini-COGE Advanced: Gifted learners with disability.

Supporting Students on the Autism Spectrum

23 May - 6 June

Students on the autism spectrum deserve high quality education. High quality education recognises students’ dignity, builds on students’ strengths, and is grounded in high expectations, self-determination development and use of evidence-based practices. This course is intended to upskill all relevant practitioners to provide high quality education to students on the autism spectrum in any educational setting.

Teachers have been described as facing “unprecedented pressure” due to soaring disability rates, with the number of students on the autism spectrum increasing by almost 15 per cent per year. Added to this, “there are fewer staff trained to support them as the number of special education graduates fall” (Baker, 2019).

The course features a strong emphasis on individualised expert guidance, rich, lived experience accounts, guest speakers, and collaborative reflective routines spread across a two-week period. Live face-to-face sessions and self-paced guided online modules cover two broad domains:

• Evidence-Based Practice for Social and Communication Skills and Sensory Issues,
• School Transitions, Collaboration with Families, and Life-Span Perspective.

Evidence-Based Practice for Social and Communication Skills and Sensory Issues

• What evidence-based practices can I apply in class to support students on the autism spectrum?
• What technologies can I access to support communication difficulties?

Please note there are two compulsory live lecture sessions: 23 May and 6 June. These sessions start at 9 am and conclude at 1pm.

Topics include:

• The prevalence of autism
• Common misconceptions about people on the autism spectrum
• The diverse terminology and classification used in relation to autism
• The importance of language we use with people with disabilities
• Social interaction patterns related to autism and ritualised repetitive behaviours
• Sensory issues often experienced by people on the autism spectrum across the lifespan
• Communication difficulties and the technologies to support them: i) alternative and augmentative programs (PECS and Makaton); ii) mobile devices (tablets, smart phones).

School Transitions, Collaboration with Families, and Life-Span Perspective

• What evidence-based practices can I apply in class to support students on the autism spectrum?
• What strategies can I use to support home-school collaboration?

Topics include:

• The learning characteristics and needs of school-aged students on the autism spectrum, and strategies and adjustments to support them
• Transitions to and from school, particularly focused on student involvement in Individual Educational/Transition Plan (IEP/ITP) development
• Resilience in families, siblings, and grandparents of people on the autism spectrum
• Supporting the collaboration between home and school.

Critical Interpretation and Classroom Pedagogy in Visual Arts

Professional Learning in Visual Arts Education with Dr Karen Maras
12 - 15 July, 2022
9.30am - 4.30pm
UNSW Sydney and Art Gallery of New South Wales

About the workshop

This course provides a unique opportunity for teachers seeking professional learning in visual arts or students enrolled in the Master of Education to investigate artworks from the AGNSW in conjunction with investigations of the research and pedagogy of critical interpretation in art education.

You will engage first-hand with selected artworks and research these by applying the practices of the critic and the historian. This research, combined with in-depth learning about the development of critical interpretation as a form of reasoning in classroom exchanges, will inform your further work in designing and implementing high-quality teaching and learning programs in visual arts. Consideration will be given to how you can support students to build interpretations in the classroom of artworks that reflect the diversity of discourses within international contemporary art.

Course content will address:

• recent research on how students’ interpretations of art are structured and contribute to their knowledge and understanding of visual arts
• the role of explanatory frameworks (the Frames) in supporting students’ developing interpretations of contemporary art practice
• teaching strategies that support students to adopt the role of an art critic through critical reasoning exchanges in the classroom in Years K-12 Visual Arts.
• how to design teaching and learning programs geared to the students’ learning needs in a particular stage that provide opportunities for them to extend their knowledge and understanding of art writing and critical practice
• approaches to implementing assessment for learning in art criticism and how students’ critical understanding of art can be assessed.

Engaging in this course will deepen your knowledge and understanding of ways you can support students’ learning in K-12 Visual Arts. Particular emphasis will be given to strategies you can use to support students to adopt the role of the critic and construct and represent informed points of view about the meaning/s of art.

Dates, times, locations:

Offered in intensive mode, this 4-day course will be offered in UNSW Trimester 2 to coincide with July School Holidays NSW.

• Day 1: Tuesday 12 July – UNSW Kensington Campus.
• Day 2: Wednesday 13 July – AGNSW, Sydney.
• Day 3 Thursday 14 July – AGNSW, Sydney.
• Day 4 Friday 15 July – UNSW Kensington Campus.

Mentoring and coaching

Professional Learning with Associate Professor Tony Loughland and AIS Education Consultant: Teaching and Learning, Jorja Marum.

This course can be organised as an in-service delivered to a group of teachers at your school. Email us at education.events@unsw.edu.au to enquire about an in-service.

Interested in this course and would like an update when future sessions become available? Email us at education.events@unsw.edu.au.

About the workshop

The third level of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers requires that Highly Accomplished Teachers be able to demonstrate with evidence that they are able to support and assist less experienced colleagues with all aspects of their professional knowledge, practice and professional engagement.

Our mentoring workshops enable teacher mentor and coach to build upon their current knowledge and skills to be effective in a standard-based professional learning culture.

The modules:

• Reinforce and affirm the basic skills of mentoring and coaching.
• Use the GROW model as a foundation for mentoring and coaching.
• Teach participants evidence-based, innovative mentoring and coaching skills.
• Assist participants to position their practice within a standards-based professional learning culture.

All three workshops draw from a range of resources, including research articles, policy documents, pro-formas and video excerpts. The interactive and collaborative tasks allow participants the opportunity to practise the skills of mentoring in an enjoyable learning environment.

This course enables teachers to access Recognition of Prior Learning.