KNOWING
YOURSELF
Knowing Yourself – The Key To Successful Teaching In FE
If you’ve ever thought about a career teaching adults in the FE sector, and wondered were to start; the answer may be closer than you think.
Behavioral experts and researchers tell us that the most effective teachers are those who understand themselves, eg, factors such as your motivations for teaching, your teaching philosophy, your attributes and your confidence levels. These are key internal factors that can influence and inspire your career as a teacher or trainer. These factors are crucial to your career because they work on an emotive level. Understanding them will bring clarity to your teaching and help drive you forward. Without understanding them, your career in teaching may not reach its full potential.
Here are seven key areas that you could start to look at.
1. Your Motivations
2. Your teaching philosophy
3. Your attributes
4. Your confidence levels
5. Your communications skills
6. How do you deal with conflict
7. Your ability to build rapport
1 - Your Motivations
Understanding your motivations for wanting to teach can be crucial in achieving a successful teaching career.
Motivations can be internal or external but many experts agree that internal motivators are more likely to lead to a teaching career that is rewarding and successful.
For example, motivators such as wanting to pass on skills and knowledge, helping others learn, seeing others develop, or providing a great learning experience, could all be described as internal motivators that are focused on learners.
Alternatively, other internal motivators could be your own personal development such as progression of career, change of career, promotion at work, or simply pursuing your dream career.
Motivators such as these, which have a focus on the learner or personal development, or a combination of both, are a very good foundation for wanting to teach.
exercise in forming the basis for a successful career in teaching. A teaching philosophy should reflect your thinking on how you would like to teach and can lead to you forming your beliefs and values of how you believe adults should be thought . A teaching philosophy is a self-reflective statement of your beliefs about teaching and learning.
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"Confidence helps us move towards a goal or outcome we would like to achieve"