EDF4006 - Professional engagement and leadership

This unit helps students understand their transition from teacher education into the professional practice of teaching and views teacher education as an important part of the induction process for engaging with the teaching profession. Drawing on a range of research literature and applying the full range of knowledge, skills and practicum experiences developed during the previous three years of their course, students are inducted into the notion of what it means to be engaged in the teaching profession through consideration of the nature of teachers' work and of leadership in education. This includes the ethical, professional, industrial, legal, emotional, intellectual and physical dimensions of the work of teachers and educational leaders. Students critically reflect on their emerging professional identity as practitioners and as potential education leaders, and explore the ways in which they can engage with and initiate professional communities of educators in and beyond their immediate teaching setting. They continue to develop their literacy, numeracy and information and communication technology (ICT) skills and knowledge, undertake focused research into an aspect of professional learning within a particular institutional and system context, and prepare for a career of professional learning through synthesising the variety of theoretical perspectives they have encountered throughout their course.