Employability Skills for Graduates Looking for Teaching Jobs

Assignment 5: The Final Product – A Discursive Essay

All of the eight Employability skills communication, teamwork, problem solving, initiative and enterprise, planning and organising, self-management, learning and technology will be regarded as important by employers seeking to employ a graduate.

However an employer seeking to employ a teacher will consider communication, organisation and enterprise and Learning as the principal skill to be most proficient at. ‘Communication is crucial across all levels of employment. Employers interviewed advised they felt communication skills contributed to a harmonious workplace and better customer relations’ (McLeish, 2002) as teacher customers are the parents of the students.

Teaching effectively would not be achievable without communication, as teachers are constantly imparting new knowledge, or transmitting information’ the Concise Oxford Dictionaries definition of the word communication is ‘the act of imparting, especially news’, or ‘the science and practice of transmitting information’ (Prozesky, 2000)

Feedback is an important component of communication and essential to teaching, being able to provide useful feedback can have a considerable effect on a students learning and development, and help to lessen any misunderstandings about what is expected.

Feedback has been shown to be one of the most significant activities a teacher can engage in to improve student achievement (Hattie, 1992).

(Tjeerdsma B, 1997) gives an appropriate example of why having good communications skills and feedback skills are so important for teaching and how misuse can affect the learning of students.

A Phys Ed teacher is coaching a particular Badminton serve, a pair of students are having trouble gettin...

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...distracting and potentially confusing for its students, grades would be difficult to determine and markings could not be considered accurate. Communication is the cornerstone of a functioning classroom, and strong relationships. Most employability skills require communication to be used well because there is some level on human interaction involved, for example teamwork without communication would be completely ineffectual. To progress or make advancements in anything at all requires learning skills. Keeping up with the changing world of technology is not possible without strong learning skills, so although technology would be considered an important skill by an employer it can only be developed or improved by using the skill learning.

University of California - Los Angeles (2006, July 26). Multi-tasking Adversely Affects Brain's Learning, UCLA Psycholo