I did 4 semesters in the school of Education, handed a project and was supervised. I can teach at K12. What I refuse to do is to sit an entrance exam and follow the four years of graduate school (two of which I have already covered and the other two I was exempted from) just to enroll for the Masters or do a PhD. This is what I call bureaucracy and refuse to comply with.
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Dekita Kitchen - Recognition of skills and experience
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Recognition of skills and experience
Posted: September 30th, 2008, 3:29pm GMT by bdieu
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Recognition of skills and experience
Posted: September 28th, 2008, 10:45pm GMT by Elizabeth H-S
Violeta and Bee--
This seems to be a very tough kind of problem. In California, I would not be allowed to teach in K-12, although I taught the teacher training courses in university because I do not have a teaching credential. The Schools of Education have spent years making sure only they have control of who teaches. As a result, it takes 3 semesters beyond the Bachelor's degree (4 years of college) to obtain a Credential. Thus, many potentially good teachers don't want to jump through the hoops, and they go into other fields of work instead.
I could submit a petition to the Dept of Education, with accompanying documentation, and (after paying a fee, of course) hope that it would be accepted, but I would still probably be required to submit to several courses of supervised teaching. Funny, isn't it!
Somewhere there must be a serious politician who would undertake to pass legislation to change these situations, but let's face it, there isn't enough "pork" in the barrel to make education a worthwhile enterprise for most. And the teachers unions are really against any changes that would make their Credential less valuable.
The only quick solution I can see is online education. There are a number of accredited schools that can accelerate the process--this includes Bachelor's degrees, higher degrees, and even teaching Credentials. Usually, they are quite costly. But if the American economy dissolves (as it looks like right now!), maybe the dollar will have so little value that these online degrees would become cheap for you.
I don't know whether to hope or despair
--Elizabeth
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Recognition of skills and experience
Posted: September 5th, 2008, 3:48pm GMT by bdieu
How are you going about your portfolio, Vio? Have you managed to collect what you needed?
Which brings me to the question. Are any of you here collecting and archiving your artifacts in some sort of professional portfolio? What kind of social/cognitive/professional presence do you have online?
Would your institution accept an online portfolios or professional narrative or are we still in the era of the printed CV and personal reference/indication?
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Recognition of skills and experience
Posted: July 31st, 2008, 1:51pm GMT by vcautin
Uff,
Well here in Chile you also need a "Licenciatura" to apply for a Master's or PhD.
Believe it or not I am also going to sit the national entrance exam for college, again, just to see of I can improve my first score. I cannot apply to a number of scholarships because my score (12 years ago, when I had just graduated from highschool, and not form a regular highschool, but a vocational one (I am a secretary), where only 4 out of 39 of my classmates got the minimun score to even apply for college) was too low.
After that, I entered the English teaching program here in Iquique, Chile, and graduated top of my class, but the score in my test is still holding me back.
I totally agree with you, Bee, about recognizing experience and skills, not only credentials. I think that this is even more important in this topic we're discussing, connectivism. Doesn't it advocate life-long learning? Managing personal learning , etc? How can we be motivated through working in our oun learning if institutions, and jobs, only ask for credentials?
Uff, a lot to talk about! And I agree with you 100% I am here waiting to see how that openness will transform our educational systems. I have faith that the change will come.
Let me add another ingredient to my complaints :) Iquique is a beautiful coastal city, really nice to relax, but it's really far from the capital and the major cities. There are no Master programs related to what I want to study, not even to go and observe. That's why the only way I can continue learning is through a scholarship and I have to move. :(
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Recognition of skills and experience
Posted: July 30th, 2008, 3:18pm GMT by bdieu
This thread was started by Violeta Cautin, who mentioned GRE and her learning projects in the getting to know each other forum.
I have been thinking of doing some kind of formal course again but I would not be officially accepted at the university here in Brazil because I would need to sit the entrance exam again, which I find ridiculous. I sat it in 1970 for Social and Political Sciences (at that time my interest was Anthropology - still is) but as I did not finish the course, I am required to do it again.
Now what is paradoxical is that I was allowed to do the 2 last years of graduate studies in English Language and Literature (as I could speak/understand/write the language better than some of my professors, I was exempted of the first two years which are, in Brazil, basically learning the language). Although I graduated with honours (ten out of ten in linguistics) and I am allowed to teach at secondary school, I cannot postulate for a masters or a PhD (well, I could eventually, as a listener, but would not receive accreditation or have my papers commented). Instead of sitting some kind of GRE, I would need to sit the entrance exam and do the 4 college years, a rule I refuse to comply with - even though it has already caused me unpleasant situations.
This kind of system, the bureaucracy which blocks participation (nobody is responsible for it - nobody can do anything about it, nobody can solve this), and the multiple barriers to learning and access to knowledge are the main reasons I am observing with much interest the wave of change brought by ICTs towards openness, deobstructing the pipes and making the energy, exchanges and communication flow. The connectivism course will be an interesting experiment and experience in architectures of participation and how people organize themselves to make this happen.