Job Discussion Forums

[hamel]

sorry, but is the PGCE a canadian teacher's degree? i heard another teacher (canadian)mention that he had one, and i havn't come across the PGCE in the united states.
perhaps these degrees are country related--thanks.

[The_Hanged_Man]

Well, just to add my experience to this, I applied to Teach for America (a teacher recruitment/placement ngo) while I was teaching at a conversation school in Japan. During the interview I was not asked one single question about my esl experience despite it being my current work experience and nor did I bring it up. I was accepted into the program. Honestly, I don't think having esl experience really helped or hurt me in any particular way, and I believe they just considered it to be a working holiday.

Also, for the interview I did for the high school I am currently working at, I wasn't asked at all about my experiences overseas. I think most people, in the States at least, don't know what to make of it and just decide to overlook it.

Personally, I think TEFL experience helps you in getting your foot in door as it shows an interest in education. However, it still isn't considered to be 'real' teaching experience for a K-12 school. Neither is teaching at a university. At my school, former college teachers and me with my years of TEFL experience started at the same pay scale as kids straight out of uni.
To be fair though, K-12 teaching in the States is a world apart from the stuff I was doing overseas and I almost went nuts my first year in making the adjustment. Right now, I am looking to back overseas but at an international school this time. Hopefully, I will be able to have the best of both worlds!

[keepwalking]

PGCE is a Post Graduation Certificate in Education and is a British teaching qualification. You do it after your degree - obviously - although not necessarily immediately after. It is a one year course that combines theory of education and the practice. You spend most of your time in the classroom, taking classes. At first you are supervised by a mentor and then as you get more experienced you are left alone with just occasional observations. The theory is assessed through seminars you present and essays on aspects such as special needs, gender issues etc.

It is without doubt the hardest course I have ever done but is excellent preparation for the rigours of high school teaching.

[Chris_Crossley]

My alternative to the PGCE was a "post-graduate" (so to speak) Bachelor of Education (extension) degree, albeit one of two years' duration rather than four because I had gained my first degree five years before I started this one. I was fortunate enough to gain two years of government funding for this degree in addition to the three I had had for the first, albeit unrelated (subject-wise) one.

My first degree was based on the humanities, but I trained in the physical sciences, specializing in physics, which was (and still is, even a decade after I finished) considered to be a so-called "shortage subject" in state secondary schools in England and Wales (and probably in Scotland and Northern Ireland, too).

I had 18 weeks of teaching practice during the two years of the degree, but I believe that, nowadays, even for a one-year PGCE, one is expected now to spend even more weeks in the classroom than back in the halls of academia, away from the inattentive pupils whom one desperately tries to interest in velocity/time graphs despite the popularity of other things. Mind you, those experiments involving the air-cushioned slide, where things are suspended in the air and pushed towards each other at high speed, are quite fun to do!

Interestingly enough, those two-year extension degrees are no longer offered at the university where I did mine, though ten years have now passed since I completed it, so only the traditional one-year PGCE is now offered alongside the four-year B.Ed. (Honours) degree for those leaving high school who want to become teachers.