Including Passion within Teacher-Candidate Assignments: How Genius Hour has created a more positive perspective on teaching and learning.

Abstract

As the educational world becomes more technologically inclusive, the need for teacher candidates to become proficient at integrating technology into their practice is crucial. Teacher Education programming in Ontario needs to reflect the current climate of K-12 teaching. In order to improve the learning environments for our teaching candidates, Teaching and Learning with Technology instructors decided to incorporate the concept of Genius Hour within our courses. Using this strategy, we hoped the teacher candidates would become more passionate within their learning, while developing the necessary technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge and skills. This study sought to understand the ways in which Teacher Candidate participation in Genius Hour influences their perceived participation within the course, as well as their opinions on the benefits of teaching with Genius Hour. According to teacher candidates, Genius Hour allowed for the time to focus on something of personal interest, with 2/3 of the participants seeing personal improvements in creativity and participation in their overall program.