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Preservice teachers are required to have professional knowledge of discipline-specific curriculum and pedagogical studies. Signature Pedagogies consists of concrete, operational acts of teaching and learning; reflects a set of assumptions about how best to impart a certain body of knowledge and know-how; and includes a moral dimension that comprises a set of beliefs about professional attitudes, values, and dispositions. The Lee Shulman model will frame the direction of this course and will provide a framework for preservice teachers’ development of their own signature pedagogies. This will help ensure that teachers have acquired the specialised knowledge and skills for research, an intellectual framework on which to develop their professional practice as educators, and for further learning (AQF 9).

The purpose of the course is to provide preservice teachers with an understanding of the framework of signature pedagogies and have them consider the characteristics for their discipline or teaching areas. Opportunity is provided for preservice teachers to consider the pedagogical basis of their own teaching and learning. Connections will be made with the philosophical basis for knowledge creation and the course will provide opportunities for preservice teachers to find their own alignment to this.

Preservice teachers will identify the distinctive (`signature') pedagogies that are relevant to their disciplines or teaching areas. Although there are some common pedagogical approaches across clusters of disciplines, there are also distinctive practices within specific disciplines. These distinctive practices are intended to do more than inculcate knowledge, they also set out deliberately to teach the ways of thinking about their disciplines, doing the disciplines and being a discipline specialist. Their purpose is to induct participants into the `profession' and its traditions and conventions.

Signature pedagogies deal with things that we as educators have to know and know how to do, and about the way we are in the world and the ways in which we orient ourselves to being and making meaning in the world. The combination of knowing, doing and being that are found in signature pedagogies is not separable into distinctive pieces which can be planned for and learned or taught separately, but must be experienced holistically.

On successful completion of this course preservice teachers should be able to:

1. demonstrate a broad knowledge and understanding of literacy and numeracy teaching strategies and established theories of signature pedagogies and generic pedagogical frameworks relevant to their discipline/s and critically analyse relevant signature pedagogies and related implications for teaching and learning (Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) 1.2, 1.5, 2.1);
2. organise content into an effective learning and teaching sequence and to use curriculum, assessment and reporting knowledge to design learning sequences and lesson plans. These sequences will demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of their learning area and the specific content and skills that inform it (APST 2.2, 2.3);
3. plan, implement and justify effective teaching and learning by setting learning goals that provide achievable challenges for students of varying abilities and characteristics, planning lesson sequences through the planning of a sequence of teaching and learning using knowledge of student learning, content, and a range of effective teaching strategies (APST 3.1, 3.2, 3.3);
4. demonstrate knowledge of teaching strategies that respond to the learning strengths and needs of all students, including those with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds (APST 1.3) and a broad knowledge and understanding of the impact of culture, cultural identity and linguistic background on the education of students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds (APST 1.1, 2.4);
5. critically select and/or create and use a range of resources, including ICT, to engage students in their learning and apply teaching strategies that effectively use ICT to enhance student learning (APST 2.6, 3.4) and then reflect on the importance of professional learning and the implications for improved student learning (APST 6.4);
6. demonstrate understanding of assessment strategies, including informal and formal, diagnostic, formative and summative approaches to assess student learning;
7. demonstrate advanced cognitive, literacy and communication skills, including spelling, grammar, punctuation and bibliographic referencing.