Entering the Profession and Becoming Critical

This unit is the culmination of three Approaches to Teaching and Learning units that establish a critical perspective of formal education, schooling, teaching and learning. The notion of ’critical’ is taken to mean a self-determining, all-sided and comprehensive engagement with and understanding of social and educational issues that enable appropriate strategies to be implemented for improvement. For teaching, this denotes recognition of economic and cultural factors that impinge on families and classrooms and how the personal learning of students can proceed with integrity. This process requires engagement with parents / carers and the broader community to understand the factors surrounding student's lives. It involves collaboration with teaching peers to evaluate and improve practice.



Critical perspectives emerge from continuing experience with significant complex issues, with colleagues monitoring their functions and procedures and observing the impact of actions taken to achieve particular outcomes. The enactment of curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and research strategies is consolidated through this process.