Page 104 - Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century

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Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching and Learning 2021
Sink or swim! I chose to tread water, keeping my head above the fear of failure by holding tightly onto the strong floatation support that the training the faculty offered in remote and online teaching.
Introduction
This reflective essay documents snippets of my journey of working remotely with first-year master’s level students within the Department of Educational Psychology.
The master’s in Educational Psychology (MEd Psych) programme is a sought-after programme in the country, with the University of Johannesburg being the only university offering the programme as a part-time option. The MEd Psych offers an integrated programme, which includes completion of the coursework module, a minor dissertation and a 12-month internship programme. Successful completion of all these components leads to registration as an educational psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).
Prior to the March 2020 Covid-19 hard lock-down regulations, the programme was taught predominantly in a traditional contact classroom mode affording students ample opportunity for application of clinical practice learning related to educational psychological assessment, therapy, career guidance and learning support skills. Whilst some opportunities of blended learning were present within the programme, the core remained face-to-face contact sessions with students. The sudden move to remote teaching, due to Covid-19 lockdown regulations, was both unprecedented and an unwelcome change for staff and
students within the programme and is the context for the reflections herein. A broad definition of reflective practice includes the deliberate, purposeful process of enquiry engaged in to improve professional practice (Brookfield 1988; Schon 1991; Weiringer 2011). A particular area of focus relates to the situations or circumstances that prompt engagement in the reflective process (Brookfield 1988; Sellars 2012). The essay illustrates
the dynamic tensions and consternations experienced as a lecturer in the Educational Psychological Interventions module with the move to remote teaching, and how these were managed, to reframe the disquiet.
Almost two years later, with some hindsight into the coping strategies used during the Level 5 lockdown within the country, I reminisce with gratitude of the team at UJ who worked tirelessly to ensure the academic staff felt supported and equipped with various tools to cope with the remote mode of teaching. Sink or swim! I chose to tread water, keeping my head above the fear of failure by holding tightly onto the strong floatation support that the training the faculty offered in remote and online teaching.