reflection

One thing that struck me as odd when I was studying for my teaching award was the way in which teachers must consider the varied learning styles of their students when planning lessons. Clearly this is common sense and good teaching practice, what works for one person does not necessarily work for another. The issue I have with it however is that the students themselves, in my experience, are never taught to consider their own learning method despite it having a huge impact upon an individual’s performance.

I haven’t blogged in a while, mainly because I’ve been so busy with teaching work. It’s fantastic experience and very rewarding, but at the same time I find myself sometimes wishing I had more time to do my research, especially now that I’m in my third year. The other day I came across a very well done hierarchical Bayesian modelling approach for football games. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what area I want to go into for my first post-doc research, and learning standard statistical techniques (including Bayesian methods) is something I’ve been considering.

In my last blog post I touched on the fact that I’m an extrinsically motivated learner, I need to be working towards a goal rather than learning for learning’s sake. Thus, in times where I’m not working towards a specific deliverable such as a report, or a publication, I can find it challenging to maintain focus and motivation and frequently end up bored. This also happens when I’ve been working on the same thing for a while (which is what is happening at the moment!

Thanks to a year long course I’m taking in Higher Education teaching I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the education I received, not only as an undergraduate but throughout my schooling. One issue that I keep coming back to is that I believe I’ve developed disadvantageous working habits due to the use of exams as the primary form of assessment in the UK education system. I’ve always excelled in exams, whereas with coursework I lack the discipline to stay focused without the tight time constraint of an exam.