Experience Initiative: Don't stop at the movement!

(Baonghean) - In teaching activities, writing down experience initiatives and applying them to practice is an important activity to continuously improve the quality of education and training. This work is included by the education sector as one of the criteria for assessing the professional capacity of teachers at all levels. However, it must be frankly acknowledged that the quality of many experience initiatives of the education sector is still modest.

With more than 10 years of teaching Literature, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, a teacher at Anh Son Secondary School, has many concerns and innovations in teaching methods to improve the quality of teaching. One of the effective methods is to use illustrations related to the lesson topic to stimulate students' thinking. From a picture and with the teacher's suggestions, students can expand their associations to the lesson topic. With this method over the years, the quality of Literature lessons has always brought excitement to each student.

Nguyen Quynh Anh - Class 8A said: "Literature lessons like that are very interesting. From the picture, many students have different opinions but the same topic has given us many perspectives on an issue. That helps us have a comprehensive and specific view of the lesson as well as issues in life". Through summarizing the lessons, Ms. Ha has compiled them into "teaching experience initiatives" and the school's subject group has implemented and applied them effectively. This is also one of the SKKN topics that many schools in Anh Son district are applying and won a provincial award in the 2010-2011 school year.

The teaching aid model "human heart mechanism" won the provincial prize in 2012 by Ms. Le Thi My (Anh Son Secondary School).

As for Ms. Nguyen Thi Loan (Linh Son Secondary School) and Mr. Nguyen Huu Hao Quang (Anh Son Secondary School), who teach Biology, their research project on "Using mind maps to promote students' positivity, creativity, and independence" was awarded a provincial prize by the Department of Education and Training's Experience Initiative Review Council in 2013. This work was initially researched and summarized by the two authors from teaching Biology in grade 6, but was soon widely applied at all levels. When using mind maps in teaching, teachers will systematize the lesson content in a visual, scientific, and logical way without missing any ideas, creating teaching methods, coordinating the use of equipment together... contributing practically to the innovation of current teaching methods. As for students, drawing Mind Maps themselves has the advantage of maximizing creativity, synthesis and generalization, attracting them to participate in lectures actively and voluntarily... thereby acquiring new knowledge easily and naturally.

The effectiveness of the creativity and scientific research in teaching by teachers is also reflected in many subjects, fields and at many different levels of education. The overarching goal of scientific research is to innovate teaching and learning methods; foster and improve the professional capacity of the teaching staff; bring excitement, ease of learning and stimulate creativity for students. Scientific research is evaluated based on the following factors: Novelty, that is, discovering and building content; breakthrough methods, appropriateness and improving efficiency and quality in the teaching and learning process; Scientificity - the content must be reasonable, closely related to the issues raised, using methods for analysis, comparison and synthesis; Practical application - feasibility, ability to be widely applied and effectiveness in management, teaching and learning.

As a person who has participated in the SKKN scoring council of the Department of Education and Training for many years, Mr. Vu The Hai - Deputy Head of the Department of Vocational Education said: "In addition to the above requirements, SKKN works must also ensure the presentation form, ensure easy understanding, be suitable for reality, actively contribute to innovation in teaching methods at all levels, subjects as well as improve the management of education and training quality, management of school facilities, equipment, office work... If in the past, SKKN mainly focused on natural and social subjects, in recent years, teachers have also focused on the fields of life skills training, moral education, environmental education, and extracurricular education for students".

Experience initiatives have become one of the most vibrant and widespread activities at all levels and grades. The process of this activity is based on the teaching practice that teachers have effectively implemented and then summarized into reports to all levels. There are some SKKNs that take many years to summarize, but there are also SKKNs from only one aspect of a lesson, a specific Math or Literature lesson. The most important thing is the effectiveness and wide applicability of SKKNs. Ms. Hoang Thi Thu - Principal of Cau Giat Town Primary School (Quynh Luu District) said: "The teaching process requires each teacher to always innovate thinking and innovate teaching methods.

In the current conditions, with the application of information technology, teachers can increase interaction with students through images and sounds, bringing knowledge to them through vivid visualization. At the primary level, it is even more necessary to apply in that direction. Therefore, in our school, in addition to improving facilities, teachers also promote the application of new and effective teaching methods. During that process, there are effective initiatives that are successfully summarized and reported to the department, but there are also experiences that only serve to teach better and are not reported. The most important and remaining thing is the assessment of students and the quality of education is affirmed...".

Over the years, the Education sector has always valued and encouraged effective scientific research projects of teachers at all levels. Therefore, the number of projects participating in the provincial scientific research projects is large every year. In 2013 alone, there were 1,162 scientific research projects, the Department of Education and Training established 25 subcommittees to appraise, evaluate and classify scientific research projects. However, of these, only 29.6% (344 projects) were classified, of which only 2.32% (27 projects) achieved type A. This number shows that the effectiveness and impact of scientific research projects "going to the competition" (provincial competition) is not high. Many scientific research projects are just a collection of results from different documents, lacking practicality and not demonstrating the creativity of the author.

The practical applicability of some scientific research projects is still limited, focusing on general theories, and specific implementation solutions have not been proposed. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, due to the pressure of teaching according to many new programs, teachers at schools are summarizing scientific research projects according to the trend. Therefore, there are still scientific research projects that are done hastily, or even copied from the Internet (in 2013, there were 4 cases of copying that were criticized by the Department of Education and Training); Secondly, many projects have not been "spread" but are only small experiences that many places have done; Thirdly, the scientific research competition is held annually but there is no incentive policy on funding for organizing and implementing the topics as well as the value of the prizes is not attractive.

In fact, many SKKN projects of the Education sector have overcome the above shortcomings, have been highly appreciated by society and have been effective for many years in many regions. According to the assessment of Master Nguyen Duc Vinh - Head of the Department of Education and Training of Anh Son district, a person who has had 6 SKKN projects highly appreciated by the Department of Education and Training: "To have effective educational innovations or innovations, each individual teacher must be concerned. Along with that is the encouragement and support of colleagues, professional groups, and school principals. The material value of the award is only a part of promoting SKKN activities, but what is more important is the honor and recognition of students, parents, and colleagues when the initiative contributes to improving the quality of education. It is necessary to clearly identify the motivation to have highly effective SKKN projects in practice...".

Nguyen Son