Lessons · Teaching · the examination on pedagogy and professional responsibilities
The second examination: how you teach, not what you know
Besides the content examination there is an examination on pedagogy and professional responsibilities, which Texas calls the PPR: planning and instruction, the learning environment, assessment, and the legal and ethical duties a teacher carries.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
A candidate who had run corporate training for a decade walked into this one cold, on the reasoning that she already knew how to teach adults. The examination was not about her delivery. It was about what a teacher must do when a child discloses harm, how instruction is planned against state standards, and what a teacher may and may not say about a pupil. She sat it a second time.
How to think about it
Read the state's own description of the domains this examination covers and treat each domain as a separate subject. The professional responsibility domain is the one people underestimate, and it is the one whose right answers come from law and from the educators' code of ethics rather than from taste.
Worked example
Two examinations, two different questions: what you know, and how you teachBoth are required, and neither substitutes for the other.
Domains read off the state's description, one at a timePlanning, environment, instruction and assessment, professional roles and duties.
Professional duties studied from the code of ethics, not from instinctThe answers here are legal duties, and instinct gets them wrong.
Sat near the end of preparation, when there is classroom experience to hang it onMost programmes sequence it this way for a reason.
Your turn
Give the three letters Texas uses for the examination on pedagogy and professional responsibilities.
Content exam proves the subject; the exam proves the teaching
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Studying this as a memory test. It is written as scenarios, and the right answer is usually the least dramatic and most procedural one: tell the person the law says to tell, write it down, keep the child safe, and carry on teaching.