Assignment 1b: Three reflective written responses

Description of the assessment

This assessment task is similar to Assignment 1a, except this time there are three reflective responses to be written. Reflective learning responses are a polished piece of writing to communicate your understanding of issues and their implications for your learning and teaching. Reflection is a common feature of both teacher education and the everyday practice of teachers. 

Statement 1 (Cognition Study Guide topic) 

Mentally review the theoretical perspectives of Piaget, Vygotsky and Information Processing Theory as presented in the mini-lectures, the readings and the pre-recorded tutorial. Choose one of these theories and reflect on how that theory can be applied to your teaching via a hypothetical classroom example. 

Statement 2 (Cognition Study Guide topic) 

Analyse the relationship between Working Memory (WM), schematic encoding and cognitive load. Discuss why it is important for teachers to understand this relationship, and describe ways in which this relationship can affect the instructional design aspects of your teaching. You will want to be particularly familiar with the Study Guide notes for Cognition, as well as the pre-recorded tutorial for this topic, in order to respond to this statement sufficiently. 

Statement 3 (Development Study Guide topic) 

The development of vision in infancy, including acuity, colour perception, depth perception, face perception, and object perception, is essential to learning and development across the lifespan. Our experiences in moving, exploring independently, and manipulating materials contribute to our visual development. Briefly explain the implications this has for instructional guidance at the early childhood level, and discuss whether it can also have implications for teaching older children and students. You might like to Google “epigenetics” as a key word for furthering your understanding of the nature/nurture relationship for this particular item, as this will give you additional insights into how the environment can affect genetic expression across development. 

Marking criteria

You can obtain a copy of the marking criteria sheet from the Assignment 2 section and familiarise yourself with the criteria for this assessment item. Your reflective responses will be assessed on:

• How clear your response is to the reflective prompt, demonstrating understanding of the concepts and principles involved in each topic 
• How well you demonstrate evidence of reflective analysis and interpretation, using readings and other credible sources to support your ideas and reasoning
• The level of professional, academic writing that you provide (spelling, punctuation, grammar, paragraph structure, APA 6th referencing style, etc.) and how well this articulates your ideas 

Guide to writing Reflective Learning Responses

Remember that an outline of the Reflective Writing Guide can be found in the Assignment 1 section. This is based on SCU’s Reflective Writing Guide, and can also be found at www.scu.edu.au/academicskills/ 

All the best with this assignment!