Teaching Aptitude and Attitude: Judgement, Not Recall
Teaching Aptitude and Attitude is not a subject-matter test. It presents classroom situations, learning objectives and claims about learners, then asks which response shows sound professional judgement. The quality of the choice - democratic, learner-centred, ethically defensible - carries more weight than any isolated fact.
Core concepts
- Teaching as a planned, goal-directed, interactive process; maxims of teaching: known to unknown, simple to complex, concrete to abstract, particular to general.
- Learner-centred classrooms: the teacher facilitates and diagnoses; the learner discovers.
- Bloom's revised taxonomy: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyse, Evaluate, Create - read the verb in the task.
- Assessment: formative (during learning, feedback, low stakes) versus summative (end of course, certification); CCE; diagnostic testing.
- Individual differences and motivation (intrinsic versus extrinsic); Piaget's stages, Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, Kohlberg's moral reasoning.
- Attitude's three components - cognitive, affective, behavioural - plus professional ethics, inclusive practice, and RTE 2009 coverage of ages 6 to 14.
Worked example
A science teacher asks groups to design a rainwater-harvesting plan for their own school building. Which Bloom level? Students are not recalling facts or applying one demonstrated method; they are producing an original plan to a specification. That is Create, the highest level - not Apply.
Traps that cost marks
- Options that punish, shame or publicly rank students.
- Choosing 'inform the parents' or 'refer to the head' when the stem tests immediate classroom handling.
- Labelling a diagnostic or formative check as summative, or grading it.
- Picking the socially desirable statement rather than the one that fits the specific situation.
- Stretching RTE 2009 to secondary classes; it covers ages 6-14.