EDF5875 Innovative pedagogies for engaging learners

Learning is most effective when students actively engage in the learning process through rich, meaningful, and contextually appropriate experiences. In this unit, you will explore the gradual release of responsibility from teacher to student, examining how explicit teaching builds the knowledge and skills students need, and how inquiry-based and problem-based learning can be sequenced to consolidate and extend learning. You will design and evaluate interdisciplinary learning experiences that foster student engagement and motivation, drawing from relevant contexts and curated resources. You will then critically examine the conditions necessary for effective collaboration, addressing challenges and exploring strategies to promote inclusive and productive group dynamics.

The unit will deepen your understanding of how teachers explicitly build students' capacity for independent learning, including critical and creative thinking, evidence-based reasoning, and the deliberate teaching of metacognitive strategies. As a reflective learner, you will apply these principles through inquiry-based and problem-based learning, experiencing for yourself the sequence from explicit instruction to independent application, and considering its implications for your own professional development. Through this process, you will critically appraise and refine the concepts you hold that define explicit teaching in each of these approaches to curriculum design.