In the temporary absence of books on Elizabeth I to read I have started reading "Reflective Teaching and Learning" as this is one of the core text books required for the course. I am finding it a lot more interesting and easy to read than I had thought might be the case.

I have nearly finished the 4th chapter. So far there has been plenty of food for thought and much of what I have read echoes my own thought process about teaching, especially the teaching of History. For example it talks about learning in out-of-school contexts and how valuable it is, something which I am already a firm believer in as you will no doubt glean from my blog posts so far.

I have found the sections on classroom management to be particularly interesting; the book quite rightly points out that this is the primary concern of most beginning teachers and I have to say that I am no different in that respect in spite of 15 years experience of training and facilitation delivery to adults I know that I will still have a lot to learn.

Something that has helped put my mind at ease is how much of subject matter of the book I already know. The section of reflective practice is familiar from Learning and Development in general and Coaching specifically. Classroom layouts, Transactional Analysis, Kolb and learning styles, learning objectives and some of the theory of lesson planning are other sections which which I am more or less familiar. This is encouraging and I hope that I will be able to draw on my long experience when I start teaching in school; I firmly believe that this experience will be a real asset, as long as I can tap into it appropriately.