InTuition September 2013

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Benefits Status Voice Issue 14 Autumn 2013

The journal for professional teachers and trainers in the further education and skills sector

InTuition From drugs to diplomas How brilliant teaching saved one member’s life Interview p10

Meet your IfL president-elect, Penny Petch

Deregulate and be damned: FE teaching under attack

Strategies for managing learner behaviour

Feedback?

Throw a snowball at it…

News p5

Analysis p12

InSight p26

Geoff Petty p30 www.ifl.ac.uk

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Thank you to all our members As a member of IfL you are demonstrating your dedication to excellent teaching and training on behalf of young and adult learners.

We value your commitment and will continue to support you throughout your career.

By combining some of IfL’s benefits and services, you can derive greater benefit from your membership.

Visit our website to find out more

www.ifl.ac.uk/benefits INT.09.13.002.indd 2

Do you know someone who you think would benefit from IfL membership? Why not share with them what being part of our professional body can bring. To refer an IfL member, simply complete the online form at www.ifl.ac.uk/referamember

13/09/2013 11:25

Welcome

An issue that’s packed with hard facts and inspiring stories

Contents News 4 FE teaching regs scrapped

On a recent call to my sister in Australia, the chat turned to work.

Christine is a teacher who works in a school for learners aged between

three and 19 years with special educational needs. She talked about her own CPD, the complex challenges she faces and how she is supported through a committed focus to professional

Letters Your views and input

6

Opinion The virtuous professional

8

Cover interview 10 Plymouth teacher Cheryl Powell

development being reinforced in Australia.

When I told her about the UK Government’s recent decision

Feature Our profession under fire

12

to remove the 2007 regulations requiring teachers and trainers in English FE institutions to gain a teaching qualification, she was incensed. Christine made many of the same arguments put forward by thousands of IfL members and many trade unions.

As outlined in our revised strategy released earlier this year, IfL will not accept any moves to deprofessionalise teaching and

CPD Matters 15 Work-based assessment Workplace teaching strategies Devil in the data Research 23 Trainee teacher research

training in the sector. This edition of InTuition focuses on the

Give us your feedback on our latest issue

vital need to protect initial teacher training and professionally

InPractice Modelling a Mooc

24

qualified teachers and trainers working in FE. The quality of learning and the reputation of the sector depends on having

For more information visit www.ifl.ac.uk Or follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter

properly qualified teachers.

InSight 26 Special report on behaviour

Powell’s remarkable journey from a young woman bedevilled by

Geoff Petty 30 Feedback’s snowball effect

circumstances to a grounded, professionally-qualified educator

Books

32

InFocus Pedagogue column

34

Noticeboard

35

But it’s not all cold, hard facts. Our cover story about Cheryl

is both emotive and inspirational.

Finally, a quick reminder that nominations are now open until 2 October 2013 for 28 places on IfL’s Advisory Council.

If you feel you could make a difference to IfL and would like to give something back to the profession, then you might want to consider standing for election. We are seeking as many

Editorial board

nominations as possible from members who hold Fellow, Associate or Member grade status to stand and support IfL on a range of issues, including initial teacher training. Full details are available at www.ifl.ac.uk/elections2013 As always, please send us your reactions, thoughts and feedback with us at editor@ifl.ac.uk Thank you for your continued support.

Marie Ashton Managing Editor

InTuition Contacts EDITORIAL

editor@ifl .ac.uk InTuition , Institute for Learning, 49 – 51 East Road, London N1 6AH

Managing Editor: Marie Ashton Editor CPD Matters: Jean Kelly Editorial support: Michelle Charles Publishing and Editorial Adviser: Alan Thomson www.ifl .ac.uk/intuition

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InTuition is sent to all current members of the

Institute for Learning (IfL) and is available on subscription to non-members.

For non-member subscription enquiries, or to purchase single copies, telephone IfL on 0844 815 3202 or email editor@ifl.ac.uk

John Gannon, independent teacher/ trainer; Dr Maggie Gregson, University of Sunderland; Professor Yvonne Hillier, University of Brighton; Jacquie Higgs-Howson, Barnet College; Professor Ann Hodgson, Institute of Education; Ian Nash, Nash & Jones Partnership; Gemma Painter, National Union of Students; Marion Plant OBE, North Warwickshire and Hinckley College and South Leicestershire College; James Noble Rogers, Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers; Geoffrey Stanton, Educational Consultant; Sheila Thorpe, Chichester College; Bobby Singh Upple, director of EMFEC; John Webber, Sussex Downs College; Tom Wilson, Unionlearn

Annual subscription rate for four issues: £50 (UK); £60 (rest of the world).

IfL is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee. Registered in England and Wales No. 4346361.

The views expressed

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in this publication are not necessarily those of IfL or members of the editorial board.

Registered office: First Floor, 49 – 51 East Road, London N1 6AH Published: June 2013 ISSN: 2050-8950

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News

Unqualified teachers pose a risk to learner achievement By staff reporters Government has scrapped the qualifications requirement for teachers and trainers working in further education settings in England. The decision was taken despite persistent warnings from IfL and partner bodies about the potentially devastating impact on learners and the professional reputation of the sector.

The FE Teachers’ Qualifications (England) Regulations 2007 were revoked by statutory instrument – a process normally requiring no parliamentary discussion or approval – on 1 September.

Those wishing to teach in FE no longer need to undertake any form of initial teacher training (ITT) or education (ITE) and, potentially, need never gain a teaching qualification.

The Government says it is now up to employers to decide what teaching qualifications, if any, are appropriate for their particular

situation. It says this is in line with the policy of allowing FE providers greater autonomy.

IfL has condemned the move as reckless, placing politics before the needs of millions of learners who deserve the best possible teaching and risking the reputation of the FE sector and the professional standing of its teachers and trainers.

Toni Fazaeli, IfL’s chief executive, said: “IfL has persistently made the case for the national expectation that FE teachers and trainers should be professionally qualified as teachers as well as qualified in their area of vocational or subject expertise.

“IfL, its members and many partner organisations in the sector, such as the National Union of Students and Association of Teachers and Lecturers, see it as tragic that the ongoing achievements of FE teachers and trainers in improving outcomes for learners and in professionalising their own practice – many of these

Membership distribution in England and Wales

4

South East England

15%

London

12%

West Midlands

12%

South West England

11%

North West England

11%

Yorkshire and the Humber

11%

East of England

10%

GUARDIAN

IfL pledges to continue its campaign for teaching qualifications

ETF chief executive Peter Davies

successes recorded in the government’s own research on the impact of the initial teacher qualifications regulations – could be sacrificed simply to meet a current policy style and fashion for deregulation.

“Governments are elected to give substance, not to trumpet style. The expectation that learners should be taught by expert and qualified teachers is substance.”

Toni confirmed that IfL’s campaign for teaching qualifications will continue and urged all members to lend their support (see panel below).

IfL recently published Should teaching qualifications be left to chance? a collection of articles by leading thinkers and practitioners defending teaching qualifications. This is available to download free (see panel below).

IfL also continues to play a major role in shaping the activities of the new Education and Training Foundation (ETF).

IfL is leading developments for members and the sector on

vocational updating and practitioner research as part of the overall work of the Foundation.

The ETF, whose newly appointed interim chief executive Peter Davies (pictured) replaced the previous interim chief executive Sir Geoff Hall in September, is an employer-led body whose responsibilities include developing a qualified and professional FE workforce.

The Foundation is not a regulator and has no other powers to require FE providers to ensure a minimum teaching qualification requirement or to make employers provide qualifications and training for teachers and trainers.

Instead, the Government says that Ofsted’s common inspection framework will hold FE providers to account for the quality of their teaching and learning.

In addition, a new FE Commissioner, still to be appointed as InTuition went to press, is expected to be given the power to intervene if a provider is graded inadequate

by Ofsted. It is expected that the commissioner will have the ultimate sanction of recommending the dissolution of a badly performing provider.

Toni said: “In IfL’s view these new arrangements are wholly inadequate for ensuring new teachers have any kind of guarantee of being supported to become qualified teachers.”

• Feature, page 12

East Midlands

9%

North East England

7%

Join the campaign

Wales

1%

Other regions

3%

Support IfL’s ITT campaign by visiting bit.ly/protectITT You can also download Should teaching qualifications be left to chance? at bit.ly/lefttochance

Issue 14 | Autumn 2013

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www.ifl.ac.uk

IfL

Fewer vocational experts may seek careers in further education if they are unable to gain the teaching qualifications that underpin their credibility as professionals, IfL’s president elect Penny Petch has said.

Penny, who takes over from outgoing president Beatrix Groves in October, told InTuition that she had grave concerns about the Government’s decision to remove the statutory requirement that all teachers and trainers working in FE settings in England are qualified teachers or are working towards a professional teaching qualification.

Penny, who is head of teaching and learning development at Chelmsford College, said that leaving it to individual employers to decide whether and to what level their teaching staff ought to be qualified risked professional standards and quality across English FE. She said: “While employers will want to take qualifications and staff training seriously, they must also meet the demands of conflicting pressures. So for how long will paying for staff to

IfL

Vocational experts may spurn FE jobs

Presidential moves: Beatrix Groves and Penny Petch

be qualified remain a priority?

“Vocational experts looking to teach in FE understand the value of professional qualifications and if there is no requirement to gain a professional teaching qualification then where’s the incentive? It is about professional credibility.”

Penny’s previous career as a nurse and a midwife instilled in her the importance of professional representation.

“I’m typical of people who work in FE in that I’ve had a previous career and belonging to a professional body is second nature to me,” she said.

“Fourteen years ago when I joined FE there was a sense that it was a bit second rate but that has changed. Professional practice is high on the agenda thanks in large part to IfL. That’s why the Government’s deregulation saddens me.

“IfL is independent and it allows people to stand up for themselves and fellow professionals in the sector. I think there is strength in unity and if you are part of IfL you can make it work for you as your professional body.”

Penny said that she intended to focus on core issues around the quality of teaching and

learning, assessment and professional development. She also said she wanted to look at more support and development for middle managers, many of whom are teachers promoted with minimal training for their new roles.

IfL’s elected chair, Sue Crowley, said: “I would like to welcome Penny as IfL’s new president. IfL has a distinctive role in the sector, and our elected representatives help ensure that advocacy and policy are based on evidence from teachers and trainers working in all parts of the sector. We also thank Beatrix hugely for her active contribution to IfL as president for the past two years.”

Member poll How important is a minimum teaching qualification to the status of the profession?

93% 3%

IfL’s online offering just got better IfL’s popular online professional development tool REfLECT is now more useful and versatile than before with the addition of new and improved userfriendly features.

REfLECT+ is available at no extra charge to members as a space in which to store resources and data to aid the planning of your professional development and the assessment of its impact.

REfLECT+ boasts a new, cleaner design that is more intuitive than the previous version. It also utilises a drag and drop feature to allow members to create webfolios and carry out other actions.

The tool also allows members to do things like create a blog or a personal

CV using templates. There is also a greatly improved help function which includes video demonstrations and pages that can be printed.

Switching from REfLECT to REfLECT+ could not be easier. You will be asked if you wish to switch when you log in.

When you agree to the change, all your files will migrate automatically from the old format to the new, it’s a process that will take just 24 hours to complete.

And don’t worry if you don’t want to switch right now as the old format will remain active for the next year. www.ifl.ac.uk/reflect

4% ● Very important ● Moderately important ● Not important (1,096 respondents)

Next issue Litigious learners: are you covered?

Teacher training in the United States Any views on these and other topics? Contact editor@ifl.ac.uk

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News & Views

• Ear to the ground : Toni Fazaeli, IfL chief executive

GETTY

FE learners ‘want and expect’ qualified teachers

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level 5 diploma level. Let me know if you work in one. We should celebrate them.

On sampling a whole range of prospectuses, prospective learners are not being given information on whether teachers are qualified. It is obvious that it is totally irrelevant to learners if the teacher or trainer is employed full or part-time, just as it is totally irrelevant to the patient if the nurse is employed full or part-time. The individual wants and expects a qualified nurse, teacher or trainer.

Now that the state is no longer expecting all further education teachers to be qualified in the public interest and for the benefit of learners, the responsibility now sits with each individual college and provider across the country. And it is for each teacher or trainer to push for support from their employing organisation to become trained and qualified.

I have added QTS to my signature. Let’s all wear the badge and the initials and be proud of our teacher qualifications.

Let’s each of us work to make sure that the organisation where we work has a clear policy to employ qualified teachers, and to train and support new entrants to level 5 teacher qualifications.

Our profession and the four million learners across further education and skills deserve no less.

Special thanks for IfL’s efforts I completed my QTLS last year and got a job at a mainstream secondary school where I’ve now come to the end of my first year as a special educational needs teacher.

I wanted to say thank you to everyone at IfL for all the hard work you put in for teachers in further education as this wouldn’t have been possible without you.

I have really enjoyed my first year and have been getting outstanding and good lesson observations. It’s different and it’s hard work but it is rewarding.

Schools’ views are changing towards teachers in FE and if we can bridge the gap to show them how practice can be crossed over then I’m sure opinions will continue to change.

So thanks for allowing teachers like me to make the move without taking pay drops.

Tabbazim Caan

ALAMY

It’s been a September to remember… and for all the wrong reasons for the teaching and training profession. Government has decided that it is no longer a national expectation the teachers in further education should be qualified and it has removed the regulations. In doing this, it has not listened to evidence or to the views of IfL and unions, including the National Union of Students.

September is also one of the key times in the year for joining an adult or further education course. I decided to enrol on a part-time evening course and, as you would expect, I asked if the teachers were qualified as this was going to cost me hundreds of pounds (and some FE courses now cost thousands of pounds this year).

This is the answer in the post-regulatory world that I received: “I am sorry but I can’t tell you if the teachers on this course are qualified or not.”

When I asked about the organisation’s current policy, I was advised that they do expect part-time teachers to gain a PTTLS and full-time teachers to have a DTLLS or PGCE – that is, only full-time teachers are properly qualified at level 5.

Needless to say, I did not enrol. I am looking for a college or provider that is committed to having qualified teachers at

• Your views

Send us your views Email us at editor@ifl.ac.uk or tweet us at twitter.com/ IfL_Members #IfL_InTuition.

Please note that letters may be edited for publication.

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Benefits Status Voice

News in brief

Issue 12 Spring 2013

InTuition

The professionals How QTLS changed the lives of two former TAs InPractice p24 Please give us your feedback on our new issue – see page 3

Lifelong learning champion How to address Helena Kennedy QC is FE’s disappointing IfL’s newest patron Ofsted reports?

Professional teachers and trainers hold the key to Scottish reforms

Go easy on grades: learners thrive on medals and missions

Interview p10

CPD Matters p18

Geoff Petty p30

Features p12

www.ifl.ac.uk

QTLS offers credibility After reading the recent article about QTLS (InTuition, issue 12) I wanted to thank IfL for helping to advance my career. After four years’ as a lecturer and coordinator in a further education college, I have been appointed to a senior management role in a secondary school (academy).

Making the leap from lecturer to management, let alone the jump from FE to secondary school, would not have been possible without the credibility that QTLS has given me.

I took advantage of gaining QTLS when it was first offered (at no fee), but I understand why it now needs carry a charge. It may seem hefty, but trust me, it pays off.

Tony Greenlaw Editor’s note: more than 14,000 teachers already hold QTLS from IfL, giving them career flexibility across FE and schools.

Pick of the Tweets Ali Pali @AlicetheKing So proud of my mum being elected as president of the institute for learning, she is such an inspiration HEAcademy @HEAcademy Looking forward to reading ‘Should teaching qualifications be left to chance?’ New from @IFL_ Members bit.ly/IfLittdoc

World class skills Congratulations to all Team UK participants in WorldSkills 2013, including medallist Kirk Croft and his IfL member training manager Peter Walters (pictured).

Kirk, an apprentice with Leicester-based KJK Decorating Services who studied at South Leicestershire College, received a medallion of excellence at the WorldSkills event held in Leipzig in July.

Peter, a lecturer at Stokeon-Trent College, has been a UK WorldSkills training manager for painting and decorating since 2009.

In all, Team UK won two gold medals, one silver, three bronze and 17 medallions of excellence in the four-day competition. The next WorldSkills competition is in Sao Paulo in August 2015.

IfL is offering providers Vocational Masterclasses based on best coaching practice for WorldSkills.

Masterclasses provide a day of competition, using modified WorldSkills competition briefs and assessment criteria. www.ifl.ac.uk/worldskills 2020 vision Wise further education providers should make a long-term investment in what could be a smaller number of teaching staff, according to a paper from the 157 Group of colleges.

Its report, Further education in 2020: making the system work, says that while many teaching posts have been casualised and remuneration reduced in recent years, the further economies that FE will be required to make by 2020 “may depend on reversing those processes to increase the effective impact of fewer people.”

The report, published in June, offers a range of

WORLDSKILLS UK

The journal for professional teachers and trainers in the further education and skills sector

WordSkills medallist Kirk Croft with IfL member Peter Walters possible scenarios for FE in 2020 and says that the skills of FE teachers and trainers need to be reshaped away from ‘information transmission’, much of which it says will be available via new and emerging technologies, to emphasising interpretation, adding coherence and gap-filling. www.157group.co.uk/files/ further_education_in_2020 .pdf Last chance There is still time to put yourself forward for election to IfL’s Advisory Council and have your say in the governance of your professional body.

Nominations for the Advisory Council close on 2 October. In order to nominate yourself you will need to register for a special user account (see below).

You will then be given instructions to access the nomination site and complete the required nomination form.

The site is hosted and managed by Electoral Reform Services Limited.

There are 28 places up for election of which 18 are reserved seats serving the regions, workgroups and

equality and diversity.

Voting will open on 23 October and close on 20 November with results due to be announced on 27 November.

For more details and to register and apply go to: www.ifl.ac.uk/elections2013 BIS Governance report A database containing information on the composition of college governing bodies should be set up in order to ensure they are properly representative, a report has recommended.

Concerns about the lack of women governors and chairs of governing bodies and a lack of black and minority ethnic representation are set out in A Review of further education and sixth form college governance, published by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills in June.

It also recommended a recruitment facility on the Association of College’s Governance Library to encourage more applicants, including members of staff.

IfL believes teachers are vital on governing bodies.

Read the report at bit.ly/15dmK0g

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News & Views

Opinion Moral values define the good practitioner

By Terry Hyland

At the core of Western culture is the Socratic question about what is the best way for people to live. A similar concern, about the need to understand and control human emotions and behaviour in the quest to enhance mind/body wellbeing, is also central to much Eastern philosophy, particularly the Buddhist traditions.

What unites these visions is the common ideal of fostering a moral community in which all people are treated as we would ideally like any person to be treated, along with the insistence that this task is a practical one that can be realised through education.

The pragmatic elements in Western moral philosophy are admirably summed up in Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, practical moral wisdom aimed at regulating the affairs of humans. In Buddhist practice, the concept of right livelihood – the ethical commitment to non-harming and respect for all in the conduct of vocations and professions – has a central role to play in achieving the ideal of human flourishing. Moreover, both Eastern and Western practices are in full agreement that this ideal is to be achieved through learning aimed at alleviating ignorance, delusion and destructive emotions in the process of fostering knowledge about the best ways to build harmonious communities.

Such practical concerns are at the heart of the professions, particularly in publicservice spheres such as teaching, medicine and social work that are defined by the interaction and relationships between service providers and clients.

However, the ethical aspects of teaching – especially in the further education (FE) and university sectors – have, arguably, never received the full and proper attention given to them in other public service spheres.

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This is quite astonishing given the crucial centrality of ethical (general regulating rules/standards) and moral (fundamental principles of fairness, respect for persons, justice and the like which underpin the general rules) issues inherent in all learning/teaching encounters.

The affective sphere of professional education and development – that which deals with the moral values, emotions, attitudes and interpersonal aspects of learning/teaching – has, as I have argued forcefully over many years*, always been neglected in teacher education.

The FE sector has witnessed a permanent revolution in policy development over the last two decades, particularly in relation to training and qualifications.

Over just a few years we have moved from a largely unregulated sector, where many FE staff were unqualified, to a tightly controlled system of training/qualifications and then to the current government policy of revoking this framework and deregulating the sector once again.

During the same period an obsession with narrow employability outcomes in the form of skills and competences has unduly influenced all aspects of learning and teaching in the sector.

Almost all of this instrumentalist tinkering has taken place within the cognitive domain, as if the affective dimension concerned with values and emotions had nothing to do with the work of teachers and students. This is a serious omission that should be addressed urgently by FE staff and policy-makers.

Learning and teaching are intrinsically moral and emotional activities. Interpersonal relationships with students, the provision of inspirational role models, dealing with emotional issues through learning support, ensuring fairness and equality of

SUPERSTOCK

Initial teacher training and continuing professional development programmes within further education should be as concerned with professional virtues as they are with knowledge and skills

treatment are areas of equal importance to planning and delivering lessons.

All FE initial and continuing professional development programmes should be as concerned with professional virtues as they are with knowledge and skills. FE teaching can be seen as a form of right livelihood in which moral values define the good practitioner. According to Aristotle we learn to be virtuous by performing virtuous acts, and FE presently stands in need of a lot more of these.

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Opinion Why FE will become a qualified success

By Dr Carol Azumah Dennis Public anxiety aside, standards are rising with much of that due to professionally trained and qualified teachers

*Terry Hyland (2011). Mindfulness and Learning: Celebrating the Affective Dimension of Education (Dordrecht, Springer)

Terry Hyland is emeritus professor of post-compulsory education at the University of Bolton and research director of the Turning Point Training Institute, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland.

Email: hylandterry@ymail.com

The relationship between standards in education and public anxiety about those standards is perverse. When reliable data suggest the former is improving, the latter seems to rise inexorably.

It was heartening to read (InTuition, issue 13) that a growing number of further education providers have managed to secure an outstanding Ofsted grade for their teaching and learning under the new common inspection framework (CIF). These achievements are to be celebrated.

Yet I find it hard to believe that Ofsted did not see a single instance of outstanding teaching and learning in any of the visits they conducted between 2010 and the introduction of the CIF in 2012.

I see far fewer teachers than Ofsted but I observed several who were outstanding during that time. I also saw more than a few who were clearly on their way to becoming outstanding. Less than a handful of the teachers I saw required me to draw upon all the tact, diplomacy and sensitivity I could muster when planning my feedback.

Crucially, what I didn’t see were teachers who, when placed in the right environment – one that is supportive, intellectually stimulating and conducive to their wellbeing – did not inspire me with their progress.

Another challenge around quality and standards in education is the complexity of the issues: judgments that present themselves as objective are, in fact, much more complicated. The public’s anxiety about what education’s errant middle child gets up to isn’t helped by this complexity.

Despite the proliferation of good practice guidelines, frameworks, research evidence and inspection, what quality is and how to achieve it remains contested.

I am hesitant in drawing on Ofsted to defend initial teacher education. In their view, there is scope for the sector to improve the quality of teaching and learning.

This is not the only legitimate view, but it is a powerful one that government should take

seriously. There are other authorities with a view. Published on the same day in March 2012 as the interim Lingfield Report, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) evaluation of the impact of the 2007 FE teaching regulations is an interesting read (bit.ly/FEregs07).

Anyone who spends time with recently qualified teachers will recognise BIS’s conclusions: those who complete their PGCE or Cert Ed grow in confidence; their ability to use different teaching methods to support learners is enhanced and their professional aspirations are raised.

According to BIS, regulated qualifications establish FE teaching as a worthwhile career and they create an environment within which professionalism may flourish.

Furthermore, in the five years since the revised qualification pathway was introduced, FE providers have recorded year-on-year improvements in learner achievement – their Ofsted profile depends on it. While evidencing a causal (rather than correlative) link between teaching qualifications and learner outcomes is a tricky process, what is evident is that a regulated sector is an improving sector.

Public anxiety about quality and standards in education – exaggerated by politicians and stoked by the press – is often misplaced. But professionally trained and qualified teachers are necessary if more FE providers are to join the select few in achieving the most desirable grades within the CIF. • See more about IfL’s pamphlet, Should teaching qualifications be left to chance? on page 14 for evidence of initial teacher qualifications making a positive difference.

Carol Azumah Dennis is a programme director for post-compulsory education and training at the University of Hull.

Prior to this, she worked a manager in FE. Twitter: @azumahcarol

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Interview

Education is a powerful drug

Cheryl Powell entered further education 11 years ago, enrolling onto The Prince’s Trust Award. At the age of 30, she was lucky to get on the course at City College Plymouth. After a three-hour interview, her tutor Steve Murphy believed that finding a way to fund Cheryl’s education was worth the effort and the immense risk; the risk being that Cheryl was only a fortnight clean of long-term heroin addiction.

Steve, an IfL member, is pragmatic about the huge leap of faith he took on that day. He says: “There’s a risk that comes with every student we enroll and managing that risk is our responsibility.

There’s very little opportunity for people in the situation that Cheryl was in, but she knew that this was her chance to do something positive with her life.”

Her life prior to that day had dealt her more difficulties than most people, thankfully, will ever have to face. Sexually abused as a child, time spent in foster care and the deaths of her father, cousin and boyfriend within a month contributed to years of self-harming, anorexia and a growing dependency on drugs and alcohol.

Cheryl explains: “I was taking anything

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I could get my hands on, not to get a buzz, but to block everything out.”

A manipulative, violent, drug dealing, new partner added to Cheryl’s downward spiral, introducing her to heroin to which she became addicted.

To fund her habit, Cheryl began to work in a lap-dancing club and, despite now describing her time there as ‘selling her body’, she also remembers the comfort of being with people who were living similar lives to hers.

“There were lots of girls who were in the same situation as me. It was a support group really,” she says.

After numerous altercations with the police and eight months spent in a probation hostel, Cheryl’s final straw was returning from a night working in the club to find her partner in bed with her best friend. She recounts this as the turning point: “I thought ‘no, I’m better than this’.”

With the help of a friend she’d met at the club, she fled to a flat on the other side of town. There, with medical support, she finally defeated her drug addiction.

Days later, she saw an advert in the local paper for the Prince’s Trust

TONY COBLEY

We always tell students that education can change lives and open the door to a world of opportunity. For award-winning teacher and IfL member Cheryl Powell further education didn’t just change her life, it saved it. By Sarah Simons

programme that was to change her life.

“I went along for the interview and my mum came with me. I was afraid to leave my house and in a bit of a state. Steve was the very first person I met,” she says.

Commitment pays off Steve worked with Cheryl and saw her potential even in those early days. He says: “Once Cheryl gets her teeth into something she’s very dedicated and determined to get on with it. She’s a very caring person and has real empathy.”

Cheryl successfully completed the Prince’s Trust Award and then worked voluntarily at the college for more than a year helping young people from difficult backgrounds. Her demonstrable commitment paid dividends when a position on the team became available.

Ten years on, having qualified with her Diploma in Teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector (DTLLS) Level 5 and going on to gain her Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS), she is now a manager in the department and credits her progression not only to the

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“I wouldn’t change my past as it’s brought me to where I am now... you can change your life for the better” support she received but in discovering her own love of learning.

She laughs: “They all call me a swot. I sit at home in the evening doing various CPD courses and producing lesson plans. I do them on a nightly basis. If I find a subject I think, ‘Ooh, that’s good, I’ll put something together for that!’”

Cheryl was an Adult Learners’ Week National Awards winner in 2012 and was honoured as such at a ceremony held jointly by IfL and the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace).

Steve has always regarded Cheryl as a highly professional member of

the team, but believes that in gaining her DTLLS and QTLS she has further developed her skills.

He says: “It was a way of formalising that professionalism and recognising that the successful teaching skills she took for granted, and did intuitively, were based in theory. It allowed her to become a very reflective teacher.”

Though he had worked in education as a trainer for many years, Steve along with other members of the team gained his QTLS at the same time as Cheryl.

He is clear of its value.

He says: “It’s a good thing for teachers to go back to being students and remind themselves of what it’s like and the pressures that are there. The QTLS gave us a sense of validation and rubber stamped that we are good at what we do.”

Cheryl adds: “I think I’m taken more seriously by getting my teaching qualification and QTLS. I know that I’ve earned it and had to work so hard. It’s something that I’m really proud of.”

Though Cheryl herself was working at the college as a drug and alcohol

awareness trainer prior to gaining her teaching qualification, she is clear on how becoming a teacher has transformed her role.

“It’s made such a difference. I think the on-the-job qualifications really work.

You’re not just learning about it but putting it into practice every day. I don’t think teaching qualifications should stop being mandatory and that’s coming from someone who worked for a long time without one.”

Though Cheryl’s pre-FE life was traumatic in the extreme she values the knowledge and experience it has given her to pass onto the young people she sees daily. It is for that reason she has shared her story She says, “I wouldn’t change my past, as it’s brought me to where I am now.

Some of the young people I work with have very low aspirations. I want them to know it can happen. You can change your life for the better.”

IfL Member Sarah Simons is writer and lecturer

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Our profession under fire Government has decreed that teaching qualifications are optional across much of English education.

Alan Thomson reports on the growing backlash from further education

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In future, is it possible that academics and commentators will ask themselves: “At what point did England decide that teaching is no longer a profession?”

A reasonable hypothesis might be that attempts to deprofessionalise teaching gathered pace during the 18 months between March 2012 and September 2013. During this time, the statutory requirement that school teachers undergo initial teacher training (ITT) and are qualified was rolled back in academies, while the requirement that teachers and trainers in further education and skills settings are qualified to teach

was abolished. To teach in an academy or a free school a person no longer needs Qualified Teaching Status (QTS) or Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS) status.

While ministers have stressed that they expect the vast majority of teachers in traditional state schools will continue to have QTS, the number of academies is growing rapidly. Their approach to the deregulation of teaching in FE and skills has been blunter.

The FE Teachers’ Qualifications (England) Regulations 2007 were revoked by statutory instrument on 1 September this year, as ordered in the Draft Deregulation Bill published in July.

A spokesperson for the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) said: “It will be for individual institutions to decide what teaching qualifications are appropriate for their particular situation.

“The highest quality of teaching is paramount to the success of each college and we trust FE institutions to employ those they believe to be best qualified for the job. The institutions will be held accountable for the quality of teaching.”

Revocation of the regulations was recommended by the Lingfield inquiry Professionalism in Further Education – set up

by BIS in the wake of a campaign by the University and College Union against IfL – which said that regulations relating to IfL and mandatory teaching qualifications were unenforceable and no longer fit for purpose.

On the same day that the interim Lingfield report was published in 2012, BIS published a research paper, Evaluation of FE Teachers’ Qualifications (England) Regulations 20071. The research marshalled compelling evidence that regulations and qualifications do, in fact, have a profoundly positive impact on FE teaching and learning including: • Contributing to year-on-year improvements in learner achievement rates • Improving teachers’ and trainers’ scores in internal observations • Increasing the proportion of FE teachers holding a recognised teaching qualification from 74 per cent in 2005-06 to 77 per cent in 2009-10 • Increasing aspirations for staff to progress in their careers linked to a clearer qualification and career pathway BIS accepted the interim findings of Lingfield and the requirement to register with IfL was revoked in September last year.

But it granted a stay of execution on the 2007 teaching regulations, ordering them to be retained until 1 September 2013.

A Consultation on the Revocation of the FE Workforce Regulations, published by BIS in August 2012, said that the

COMMENTARY BEATRIX GROVES, IFL PRESIDENT Phrases like ‘naturally-gifted’ and ‘born teachers’ are often appropriated to support arguments for the scrapping of mandatory teacher training as in: ‘Teachers are born not made’ and ‘Good teachers have a talent that no amount of QTS/QTLS will replicate.’

Imagine arguing that good dentists, engineers, electricians or driving instructors are born and not made by rigorous training, evinced by qualifications? Who would want a ‘gifted’ amateur let loose on their teeth, for example?

In what professional sphere – other than teaching it seems – is ‘you’ve-either-got-it-or-you-haven’t’ a substitute for professional training, competence and trust?

Has the Government’s extensive research on the matter identified a vast, untapped pool of aspiring teachers with an innate gift for teaching so obvious and so consummate that they render the entire academic and professional body of knowledge around teaching and learning redundant?

Unlikely. And if the odd ‘naturalborn teacher’ is put off a career in education because of some bothersome teaching qualifications then, frankly, education and learners are the better for it.

Rules should be able to accommodate the exceptional, but exceptions should not determine the rules.

Teachers, like other professional groups, are a community of practice underpinned by specialised and standardised learning and training.

Take the formal training and qualifications from any profession and, essentially, you’re left with a hobby.

IfL and its members rightly reject the illogical notion that teaching – uniquely among England’s professions though, notably, not in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland – requires no statutory underpinning through formal training and qualifications.

The soldier or chef who wants to become a teacher has just as much capacity to succeed in their new career as the teacher who wants to become a lawyer.

All society asks is that each of them is professionally trained and qualified for their new role.

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Government would review its position on the teaching qualification regulations in the light of evidence from a number of additional sources, including the proposed FE Guild, since renamed the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), and the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning (CAVTL).

In August this year, less than a month before the regulations were due to be revoked, a spokesman for BIS told InTuition that a number of “interlocking developments”, including the decision to create the ETF and the CAVTL report had “helped to shape the Government’s position on revocation of the regulations”, as ordered in July’s Draft Deregulation Bill.

However, the CAVTL report in March recommended revising and strengthening the education and training arrangements for vocational teachers, not their abolition.

Meanwhile, the ETF, the employer-led body set up to develop workforce professionalism, has no formal position on teacher qualifications or powers to compel employers to ensure teachers and trainers are qualified.

Teachers and trainers are angry that BIS’s decision to deregulate not only flies in the face of CAVTL’s principles on teaching professionalism but disregards its own evaluation of the 2007 regulations and the many responses, including IfL’s, to its consultation on revocation.

An IfL survey of 5,000 members2, submitted to the BIS consultation, found that almost nine out of 10 (87 per cent) teachers and trainers agreed or strongly agreed that teaching qualifications should be national and mandatory. Eight out of 10 IfL members said that qualifications are central to recognition as a professional.

The Government’s wide-ranging deregulation bill has attracted the attention of Parliament which has set up a select committee (Joint Committee of the Draft Deregulation Bill) to take evidence on the likely impact of the bill’s proposals. IfL will be asking the committee to investigate the procedures followed by BIS in relation to the revocation of the teaching regulations, including whether it gave sufficient consideration to the evidence available to it.

The committee is due to report in December.

IfL, the independent professional body for FE teachers and trainers, has made the case persistently for a national requirement that teachers and trainers are qualified to teach for the benefit of the profession and learners. It is supporting a growing backlash across FE and beyond against moves to deregulate the teaching profession.

The Institute has published a pamphlet 1 2

MIDKENT COLLEGE CASE STUDY Providing professional support for new and experienced teachers and trainers is integral to the educational approach embraced by MidKent College.

It is summed up by teacher-coaching manager Rosie Douglas, MIfL, who said: “We have fought for professional recognition in FE for a long time and if there is no government desire to protect teaching qualifications then colleges have to pick up the baton.

“If we give people professional support, we are going to see an improvement in outcomes. The last thing we should be doing is slipping back.”

MidKent College has run with the baton of professionalism for several years now following staff complaints that historically some initial teacher training (ITT) courses failed to fully furnish them with the strategies and skills required for teaching. As a result, MidKent developed a more holistic and practice-based approach to ITT. It worked closely with Christ Church Canterbury University to develop an ITT curriculum that could be delivered largely by college staff on campus and that would allow pedagogic theory to be taught while also building practical teaching competencies.

There is support from teacher coaches who operate out of the college’s two Inspiration Stations – rooms that provide the space and facilities for teachers and trainers talk and work together. Learning technologists are available to help teachers improve their digital literacy as well as deliver IT solutions.

Additionally, teaching and learning managers are embedded within each faculty offering help with specific problems, for instance supporting a teacher who is moving from a workshop-based setting to one that is classroom-based.

Ms Douglas has noted significant benefits for staff. She said: “Since we started the coaching model we have had no inadequate grades among new staff. Anybody who has been signposted for coaching and who has had observation in the following year has improved and often by two grades. It’s fair to say that our teachers no longer see continuing professional development as something that’s being done to them.”

Should teaching qualifications be left to chance? in which a range of authors argue for learning excellence delivered by professionally qualified teachers and trainers across FE and skills.

IfL chief executive Toni Fazaeli said: “The flimsy and contradictory lines currently being cast up by the Government and some employers in the sector for abolishing any national expectation that teachers should be qualified boil down to some employers saying ‘we need freedom’.

“Some freedoms are at the direct expense of others’ rights and prejudice others’ chances in life. No employers in the health service are saying we need the freedom to employ unqualified doctors, nurses or surgeons. The right for patients, the public, to be treated by professionally qualified health workers is paramount – just as the right for learners in further education to be taught by well trained and qualified teachers is paramount.”

The National Union of Students has launched a campaign to keep professional teachers and trainers at the heart of FE. Joe Vinson, NUS vice president (FE), said: “With more FE students having to pay higher fees for their courses, why does the Government think it’s okay to provide substandard teachers in the future?

“To have someone at the front of a workshop or classroom with no quantifiable or standardised way of

supporting a diverse group of students is a disservice to the students themselves, the college and the community they serve.

Professor Ann Hodgson, assistant director (London) of the Institute for Education and an IfL patron, said: “This must be seen as a retrogressive step. I can’t think of any country in the world that thinks less is more when it comes to qualifications for teachers.”

Martin Freedman, head of pay, conditions and pensions at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said: “Everyone who is teaching needs to be trained to teach so that they understand the range of ways in which young people learn and know how to help each individual student. This measure is another move to casualise FE teaching. It is likely to lead to lower pay for lecturers, drive down their living standards, make it harder for FE lecturers to work in schools and result in a poorer education for students.”

Alan Thomson is publishing and editorial advisor to IfL

IFL’S PAMPHLET Read Should teaching qualifications be left to chance? at bit.ly/lefttochance Support our campaign for initial teaching training at bit.ly/protectITT

Evaluation of FE Teachers Qualifications (England) Regulations 2007 (BIS, March 2012) bit.ly/FEquals (download) IfL response to BIS: Consultation on Revocation of the FE Workforce Regulations bit.ly/BIS_regs (download)

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CPDMatters Promoting ideas to teachers and trainers in the further education and skills sector

It’s time to debate our professional identity Dr Jean Kelly Director of professional development ‘You can’t fatten a pig by weighing it.’ How many times have we heard this exasperated cry from educators bemoaning data-driven quality systems?

It may be old, but it still sounds loud and clear. This edition of CPD Matters presents three points of view on how to manage the alienating effect of providing assessment for assessment’s sake.

The CPD Matters section offers IfL members a selection of scholarly and accessible articles, aimed at supporting and enhancing professional knowledge and practice.

Articles are not refereed.

All of our three writers emphasise the importance of professional judgement, which can often be seen as getting in the way of objective data. Jim Douglas focuses on assessment as a key measure of quality data and expresses his concern that although there is rarely one right answer in work-based assessment, this has become an ‘inconvenient truth’. He suggests coaching as an approach that will help assessors in work-based learning – and learners – move away from what he thinks is the dogma surrounding objective techniques of assessment. This applies to those within teaching and training too.

Hilary Read also sees the increasing danger of the factual ‘tick-box’ approach to vocational assessment and putting qualifications as end points of success in themselves. She offers some practical ways, derived from her own experience, research from City and Guilds and the recent report from the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning (CAVTL), in which teachers and trainers can and should take control of the design and development of quality measures in the workplace.

A rather ironic view on how to obtain a clear focus on the real quality of teaching and learning undistracted by the side show of targets is given here

by Rob Smith who illustrates how he came to ‘get’ quality and how it was measured in ways foreign to his experience and that of his learners. He also offers you the chance to complete a survey if you have strong views on this issue, with the results to be covered in a future edition of InTuition.

CPD Exchange Don’t forget, if you want help with your own academic or action research, or to share information and data with fellow IfL members, you can visit www.ifl.ac.uk/ cpdexchange

If you would like to contribute to or ask a question for a future edition of CPD Matters, please email us at editor@ifl.ac.uk for further details InTuition

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A coaching approach to work-based assessment

By Jim Douglas, FIfL Adult learners see competence assessment as a daunting prospect that is unrelated to their work. Part of the problem is that the role of assessor has been separated from that of trainer and that little attention is paid to how assessors can contribute to teaching and learning. A coaching-based approach to assessment can help to overcome this

In my experience, adult work-based learners meeting their assessor for the fi rst time tend to ask the same question: “I know I have to do it and I know that it’s a pain, so how can I get it done in the fastest possible time?”

Learners seem to regard competence assessment as unrelated to their work.

They will talk happily about their work and gain real satisfaction from this, but fi nd the prospect of assessment daunting. How have we managed to create a system of competence assessment that is such a struggle for learners and so disliked by them?

The answer may lie in our model of vocational training, which is overspecified and largely assessmentdriven. The role of assessor has been separated from that of trainer and too little attention is paid to the ways in which an assessor can contribute to an experience of learning and development that learners will find motivating and enjoyable. The Richard review of apprenticeships seems to support this view with its recommendations on simplifying and end-loading assessment so that there can be a stronger focus on learning during an apprenticeship programme.

As an assessor of health and social care learners, I have found that a coaching approach to assessment can bring benefi ts to both learners and to assessors. Doing this, however, requires assessors to question some of the dogma surrounding ‘objective’

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techniques of work-based assessment and adopt a more engaged approach.

Although the Training, Assessment and Quality Assurance standards (City and Guilds 2011) provide an adequate description of the technical competence that assessors need in conducting initial assessment, planning, assessment and review, surprisingly there is no reference in the standards to the need to develop and maintain an effective relationship with learners.

A coaching approach to assessment adds this dimension.

Pay attention to feelings Assessors need to be able to recognise and feel comfortable about discussing the anxieties and insecurities that can be felt by both learners and trainers when they fi rst meet.

Everyone’s experience of teaching and learning is coloured by their childhood experience of schooling and their exposure to traditional methods of teaching. These approaches tend to encourage passivity in learners and the view that teachers and trainers are powerful experts who know all the answers. Learners from different cultural backgrounds may bring experiences such as extreme rote learning and different standards of acceptability of evidence.

Learners may be reminded of negative experiences of previous education and training, along with associated feelings

of failure and the fear of being judged and found wanting. Assessors may wonder whether they themselves know enough to be credible with the learner.

Such dynamics can get in the way of the development of an honest adultto-adult relationship between learner and assessor.

Release the resourcefulness of the learner It is a common view that sharing the qualifi cation specifi cations and assessment criteria with learners and giving them ownership of the portfolio at the beginning provides transparency about the process of assessment and empowers the learner.

I have found that this often has the opposite effect, and sometimes is enough to convince less confi dent learners that they will never be able to achieve the qualifi cation.

The fact is that all learners are different: some will want an overview of the whole qualifi cation, some will want a clear route map, and others will want early experience of success before they feel motivated to commit to the whole journey. What all learners share is a sense of dependence on the assessor at the beginning. They feel they know nothing and that the assessor knows everything.

A coaching approach aims to decrease progressively the learner’s dependence and encourage resourceful independent learning. I have found that it helps to

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Assessors need to be able to recognise and feel comfortable about discussing the anxieties and insecurities that can be felt by both learners and trainers when they first meet

ask learners for information about their work and the organisation they work for, and to be open about what I need to learn in order to be able to assess effectively.

All assessors know that it is what learners are able to do between observation visits that counts when it comes to good progress being made; disempowered and dependent learners tend not be able to accomplish much between visits.

View assessment as a shared learning journey As Professor Alison Wolf puts it, “the process of assessment is complex, incremental and judgemental. It has to be because the actual performance which one observes... is intrinsically variable… one person’s performance is not exactly the same as another’s and cannot be fitted mechanistically to either a written list of criteria or an exemplar. To complicate matters further, all work settings are also unique and learners are working within different expectations, rules and constraints.” (Wolf 1995).

Assessors are aware of this complexity at the outset but, understandably, learners are not.

I fi nd that initial assessment is more productive if it is a process of mutual discussion. This dialogue should include the assessor’s background and approach as well as what the assessor needs to learn about the work that the learner does.

While it may not be possible or desirable to fully achieve this at the fi rst meeting, the assessor should aim to get alongside the learner, engaged in a dialogue about what the assessment criteria really mean in the context of the learner’s work. When this point is

reached, the assessment task immediately becomes easier for both the learner and the assessor.

Use a holistic approach The Qualifi cations and Credit Framework assessment criteria are simpler and shorter than the NVQ specifi cations that they replaced but there can still be as many as 300 assessment criteria in a Level 2 qualifi cation. It can be challenging for assessors to organise this number of assessment criteria into a holistic assessment strategy that is driven by naturally occurring evidence and learners’ abilities and interests.

However, an atomistic approach to work-based assessment – taking each learning outcome in turn until a unit is completed – is inefficient because of potential overlap and repetition. It also creates difficulties for the assessor in making judgements about overall competence.

Although the conventional model of vocational assessment suggests an objective assessor gathering facts until all the assessment criteria have been met, the reality is that successful and effective assessors tend to behave in a much more engaged and fl uid way.

“All the research evidence that we have on assessors’ behaviour emphasises the very active role that their concepts and interpretations play. Assessors do not simply ‘match’ learners’ behaviour to assessment instructions in a mechanistic fashion. On the contrary: they operate in terms of an internalised holistic set of concepts about what an assessment ‘ought’ to show and how far they can take account of the context of the performance, make allowances, refer to other evidence about the candidate in deciding what they ‘really meant’ and so on.” (Wolf 1995).

An assessor using a coaching approach to assessment engages in a continuous dialogue with the learner, developing a shared understanding of competent practice and how it can be described, and checking that they are both ‘on the same page’ in this understanding, rather than just on the same page of the assessment specifi cation.

Use emotional intelligence and professional judgement “When assessing, you must always remain objective... Feedback should be based purely on facts that relate to what has been assessed and should not be based on your personal opinions.”

(Gravells 2012).

This definition of objectivity in assessment, taken from a leading training handbook for assessors, would make a little more sense if there was general agreement among assessors in a vocational area about all the facts relating to each learning outcome and the exact number of facts to be gathered in order to show evidence of it.

This is rarely the case. In practice, assessors rely mainly on their vocational experience to make a judgement about competent performance. These professional judgements are neither facts nor personal opinions, yet they lie at the heart of effective assessment practice.

In situations where the assessment of competence involves an understanding of other people’s motivations and feelings – something that is particularly true in health and social care assessment – assessors have to use not only their skills of observation but also emotional intelligence to make sense of what they see. This kind of evidence is as valid as facts and, in health and social care assessment, probably more signifi cant.

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Making the most of the workplace

By Hilary Read, FIfL Talking to other assessors about the benefits of a coaching approach, it seems that this is what good assessors do anyway. The trouble is that the offi cial language of assessment – objectivity, facts, task focus and so forth – tends to dominate the discussion of assessment at assessor meetings to the exclusion of anything else.

Assessors know that there is a signifi cant risk in reducing the process of assessment to a scramble for facts.

Learners will think that if only they can gather enough facts, the portfolio will be complete.

The truth is that there is rarely one right answer in work-based assessment and it is more useful for assessors to share this inconvenient truth with their learners and support them in developing their own unique way to show evidence of their competence.

References • City and Guilds (2011). Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement (QCF) • Wolf A (1995). Work Based Assessment.

Milton Keynes. Open University Press.

• Ann Gravells (2012). Achieving your TAQA Assessor and IQA Award. London. Sage.

Jim Douglas Jim has worked in and around further education for 28 years in various roles. His first teaching job was on a work-based qualification for social care workers. The ideas in this article have been developed from his most recent QCF assessment work with home care workers and social care managers. Jim is currently working on tools and resources for work-based assessors to enable them to put these ideas into practice.

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Vocational programmes tend to emphasise summative assessment outcomes with little or no curriculum planning or teaching linked to the workplace. A new report recommends that this should be reversed With the introduction of reformed qualifi cations in education and training this September and the scrapping of regulation for further education teachers to have any qualifi cation at all, this article takes a look at some of the basic requirements for teaching and supporting learners on vocational programmes, and gives help with what this looks like in practice.

What the research tells us Current vocational programmes often emphasise summative assessment of outcomes to achieve qualifi cations with little or no curriculum planning or teaching linked to the workplace.

Research carried out by the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning (CAVTL) into the strengths of adult vocational learning recommends reversing this emphasis.

“We need to turn the current way of doing things on its head and return qualifi cations to being the kite-mark of a learning programme, rather than the defi nition of a curriculum. This means putting the focus back on curriculum and programme design, and the development and updating of occupational and pedagogical expertise... Together with a funding regime based on qualifi cations, this [emphasis on qualifi cations as the curriculum] has exacerbated a focus on ‘assessment as learning’ and qualifi cations.” (CAVTL 2013).

The Cavendish Review (2013) is critical of the tick-box approach to vocational training and assessment of healthcare assistants and care workers within the

NHS. It describes how funding is used to deliver qualifi cations and gives the following example of poor practice under the heading ‘Qualifi cations and tick sheets do not denote performance on the job’: “The way the market is funded can create incentives for trainers to sign off as many people as possible as quickly as possible. The Review has heard of small care homes being offered free training from providers that are supposed to ask the employers to co-fund, but which simply take government money and shorten the courses. It is a mystery why governments should have paid up for so long, with so few questions asked.”

Similar criticisms can be levelled at other sectors, including the training of vocational teachers and assessors, respective guardians of the curricula and standards within the vocational sectors for which they are responsible.

The Cavendish Review found that this results in employers placing low value on vocational qualifications and recommends focusing on staff performance: “Given what the Review has heard about the low value of some vocational qualifi cations, it is correct to place the emphasis on staff performance, rather than qualifi cations.”

The Richard Review of Apprenticeships (2013) is also critical of qualifi cationdriven approaches and describes the purpose of an apprenticeship in terms of ‘doing the job’:

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“Not the intricate detail of today’s occupational standards, or the microlevel prescription of today’s vocational qualifi cations, which drive a focus on continuous bureaucratic box-ticking and assessment and obscure the real task of an apprenticeship – to teach new knowledge and skills, and demonstrate to future employers that an apprentice can do their job.”

Towards effective vocational pedagogy The City and Guilds Centre for Skills Development’s (CSD) report How to Teach Vocational Education (2012) argues that vocational education has ‘an overall goal of the development of working competence’. The report specifi es six outcomes to this end, all of which require learners to apply what they learn within both the real-life working context and a specifi c vocational area: 1. Routine expertise: mastery of everyday working procedures in the domain 2. Resourcefulness: having the knowledge and aptitude to stop and think effectively when required 3. Functional literacies: adequate mastery of literacy, numeracy and digital literacy 4. Craftsmanship: an attitude of pride and thoughtfulness towards the job 5. Business-like attitudes: understanding the economic and social sides of work 6. Wider skills for growth: having an inquisitive and resilient attitude towards constant improvement – the ‘independent learner’

Vocational learners must acquire skills that help them self-learn and develop outside the context of the classroom or workshop. This means a successful vocational pedagogy must include scope for fl exibility and updates.

“Successful outcomes manifest differently across the various types of vocational careers, so a learner who works with physical materials might be faced with slightly different requirements than one with a peoplefocused vocation.”

The CAVTL report recommends a ‘clear line of sight to work’ for all vocational courses: “A clear line of sight to work is critical because vocational learners must be able to see why they are learning what they are learning, understand what the development of occupational expertise is all about, and experience the job in its context. The real work context should inform the practice of vocational teaching and learning for learners, teachers and trainers.”

This is important in retaining and maintaining learner motivation: most learners choose the workplace as their main place of learning to enhance their skills or to gain paid employment via real-life experience.

The report underlines the need to take account of both the complexity of the workplace and the relevant learning domain when planning the curriculum.

Practical strategies Planning and managing learning linked to the workplace setting is not the same as the classroom or the workshop. In the workplace, the teacher is not in control of the context. In addition, dual professionalism (occupational and pedagogical expertise) is necessary on the part of those responsible for planning, teaching and assessing.

“As the working world grows more complex, the worker’s expertise must not only be relevant, but also current.

Here are some practical ways to plan and support vocational teaching and learning linked to the workplace:

1. Plan the curriculum around the learner’s day-to-day tasks The qualifi cation is not the curriculum – what happens in the workplace is. This means planning and managing learning around what the learner does, or hopes to do, in the job.

2. Plan quality assurance systems at the same time as the curriculum If you do not, you will end up fi refi ghting at the end of the vocational programme, particularly if you follow the tick-box approach to delivery and fi nd that learners aren’t performing to the standards in question or – worse – have left, because their learning has not been actively reviewed and managed as they go.

3. Start with the practical work activity and link this to underpinning knowledge (at lower levels) and/or theories (at higher levels) This is a further factor in maintaining learners’ motivation because most workplace learners have chosen this setting to get away from classroombased learning. Nevertheless, the need to understand the relevance of theory to what they do or hope to do by way of employment remains: “It is not a question of whether learning should be practical or theoretical, rather it is a more precise understanding of when, in predominantly hands-on, experiential approaches, theoretical constructs should be introduced.” (CAVTL 2013).

4. Actively manage the learning programme This is about being an advocate for learners and ensuring that they get access to both the knowledge and experience they need, including: • engaging actively with employers to ensure that the right experiences are provided • going back to the training provider to ensure that teaching is given in areas that have been identifi ed through

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formative assessment, particularly if the work place setting doesn’t allow for this • making skills visible to learners as they acquire them and teaching underpinning technical knowledge linked to the work tasks as they occur naturally • knowing how to apply employment legislation and appeals processes that underpin the workplace, and training and assessment respectively, so that appropriate action can be taken if all else fails.

5. Adopt one-to-one approaches On-the-job and near-the-job contexts require the adoption of individualised approaches if learners are to improve and go beyond what’s required to meet the minimum evidence requirements stipulated in the assessment strategies associated with qualifi cations. One-toone coaching, combined with refl ecting on performance, is one way to improve learners’ mastery of skills once they have acquired the basics.

qualifi cations as end points is that learners are not encouraged to go further. Deep knowledge and skills mastery require continual challenge on the part of the teacher or trainer and the setting of further specifi c objectives to encourage learners to improve and hone their skills.

9. Embed or contextualise generic skills Teach them by linking them to work tasks and practices. One example is personal learning and thinking skills within apprenticeships, which are often treated as bolt-ons or mapped to the qualifi cation without the learner or the employer being aware of them.

Communication and problem-solving on the job are valued by employers.

High-order or ‘meta’ skills, such as those of metacognition, also need to be taught. One option here is the use of practical projects that require learners to evaluate approaches used within the workplace and link them appropriately to theory.

References • Cavendish, C., et al (2013), The Cavendish Review: An Independent Review into Healthcare Assistants and Support Workers in the NHS and social care settings.

• LSIS (2013) It’s about work… Excellent adult vocational teaching and learning: The Summary Report of the Commission on Adult Vocational Training and Learning (CAVTL).

• Lucas, B., et al, (2012) How to teach vocational education: A theory of vocational pedagogy. City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development (CSD).

• Read, H. (2012), The best quality assurer’s guide. Read On Publications Ltd. • Richard, D., (2013), The Richard Review of Apprenticeships.

6. Involve and learn from the learner The CAVTL report calls this a ‘two-way street’ but it simply means being open to learning from your learners and what they do at work as well as introducing them to new or alternative ways of doing things from your own professional practice – both of which make a necessity of the next point.

Hilary Read 7. Teach reflection on performance Teaching this to learners and asking them to be self-critical is a good way to encourage them to take responsibility for their own learning and performance.

Similarly, asking learners for feedback on your own performance as a trainer, coach or assessor allows you to model the skills involved.

8. Encourage continual improvement Challenge your learners to do this – and make sure that you allow time for it to happen. The trouble with seeing

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Hilary is the author and publisher of ‘The best …’ series of guides aimed at vocational teachers, assessors and quality assurers and is a champion of work-based trainers, assessors and I/EQAs. She runs CPD and trainer training nationally within the lifelong learning sector.

Her latest publication, The Best Initial Assessment Guide, shows providers how to build a robust initial assessment system to retain and motivate learners.

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www.ifl.ac.uk

Data-driven quality versus ‘real’ quality in FE

By Dr Rob Smith, MIfL Quality assurance systems are supposed to drive up standards, but in reality they hurt teaching and learning. A return to first principles is required to change this The management of data – in the form of registers, student details, student progress and so-called ‘success’ rates (achievement x retention) – has become a major feature of further education teachers’ work.

A key driver behind this obsession with data is its link to funding. The existing funding model for FE relies on complex data production, which has led to a flowering of managerialist cultures (also called new public management – see O’Leary and Smith 2013) across FE. Designed expressly around the monitoring and gathering of performance data, these cultures alienate many teachers because they seem disconnected from the real work of focusing on teaching and learning.

Drawing on personal experience and empirical studies over a number of years from a variety of FE settings, this article looks at the impact of quality assurance (QA) systems on teachers’ work in FE. The research underpinning the article reveals that, while these systems are supposed to drive up standards, there have been other effects that undermine the reliability of data in FE, with a negative impact on teaching and learning. It also shows that managerialist practices, quality processes and regulatory bodies such as Ofsted are not only incapable of dealing with this crisis but are actually a part of the problem.

Finally, this paper suggests ways forward through a return to first principles.

Context: the meaning of ‘quality’ in FE Just over a decade ago, I was a middle manager in an FE college in charge of access to higher education provision.

Every year I had to attend what were known as MOT (‘meeting our targets’) meetings with the principal and other

senior managers. If the success rates came in below target it was the job of the manager to explore all possible ways to avoid the humiliation of not achieving the benchmark the following year.

entry qualifications were fixed, we had no other variable to address. In those circumstances, I felt the MOT simply penalised us for the ups and downs of our students’ lives.

My problem was that access to HE had, for a number of years, failed to achieve the benchmark in success rates. When the benchmark was 80 per cent, we struggled to achieve 65 per cent. The following year, when the benchmark was 84 per cent, we only managed 68 per cent. So I expected a grilling when it was time for my MOT.

It was during that MOT meeting that I suggested the principal provide us with a palm reader who could read the palm of each student at enrolment so we could only recruit those we could retain. He was unimpressed by the suggestion.

The thing was, I didn’t get quality. There was a mystique around the figures and I couldn’t relate the QA process to the access teaching work. Retention was the biggest variable: throughout the course too many people dropped out.

To counteract this, we had introduced a rigorous admissions process in which we quizzed potential students about their reading habits and their social lives and what they were going to give up if they got on the course. They then sat an hour long written assessment. Despite these interventions, our retention rates hadn’t improved.

It was just before my third MOT that a bolt of sudden realisation hit me. It was the MOT process itself that was at fault. Our retention levels had not risen because, as usual, we had students with multiple external and personal issues. Despite our failure to hit benchmarked success rates, we were still immensely proud of our work. We offered personalised support to students in difficult circumstances. The quality of this support was an important aspect of the kind of educational relationships that were created between staff and students on the access course.

We knew the distance travelled. As

The research The above episode illustrates the common managerialist assumption that quality in teaching and learning can be measured simply by looking at success rates. Other factors – the annual student intake, the nature of the course, the type of assessment, even staffing – are habitually ignored as these details are contextual background that simply obscure the ‘truth’ of the numbers.

Research studies I have been involved with in the last decade have uncovered a range of evidence demonstrating how industrial models of QA are inappropriate and counterproductive in FE settings.

The studies looked at these factors across more than 20 institutions: colleges, adult education services and other FE providers in the West Midlands. I also have ongoing evidence year on year that these examples are not out of the ordinary. I have created three loose categories: 1. Manipulating success rates If achievements in specific curriculum areas fall below target, providers resort to a variety of different strategies, the research suggests. For example, a PGCE student in one study (Literacy Study Group 2010) was asked – along with all

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the members of staff in the department – to take an online level 1 assessment as a way of boosting departmental figures.

In a separate study, a lecturer called Joe stated: “In order to get good results, you just pass people... But if you go away on holiday and somebody’s passed whom you thought had failed, at the end of the day, you’re usually told, ‘Well, they haven’t passed it yet but they’ll probably pass it during the year’... The statistics for the results have no connection with reality at all.” (Smith 2007).

2. Recruiting ‘bland’ As shown by the access to HE episode above, recruiting students with any hint that they may not pass the course is risky. In a study undertaken across three colleges in the West Midlands Tom talked about ‘iffy’ students: “If you’ve got somebody who’s a bit iffy – which we often have, particularly as a second-chance institution … – in the old system you could just welcome them in and say, ‘Well, let’s try’. One of the things that I’ve argued is that people need to be able to fail.” (Smith 2007).

With funding underpinning success, clearly failure has to be avoided. Jan, another participant in the same study, talked about how this was limiting educational opportunities.

“Educational values are out of the window because of fear of failure and the funding... That has transformed the opportunities that [students] have. For example, a lot of kids could do an A level in three years. And you can’t count that because funding-wise it means that there’s no funding for one of those years, so why bother?” (Smith 2007).

3. Spoon-feeding and student ‘restraint’ Spoon-feeding and the strategic restraint of student progression are two further phenomena that arise in college cultures where an uncritical use of total quality management approaches operates.

Karen, a teacher from another study, talks

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about the impact of progression targets on one group: “These very targets reward learners for not working and stand in the way of committed learners’ progress… Because the learners won’t complete homework and don’t achieve working independently, the tutor takes more upon himself spoon-feeding the group to meet the requirements of portfolios.

“Within this group are two learners who are enthusiastic… [and] have achieved E3 functional skills in numeracy. One of them is keen to achieve L1. However, because the college is credited with achievement for the learner’s E3 achievement and stands to lose any credit if he fails L1, the line is that the learner should not be pushed any higher… The system works directly against those who do want to achieve and surely merit educational investment.” (O’Leary and Smith 2013) In both examples the so-called quality threshold is maintained but actual teaching and learning suffers.

Conclusions and next steps This article has scratched the surface of an issue that needs to be addressed if we are to get a handle on supporting and improving teaching and learning in FE. This isn’t about blaming teachers or managers for the prevalence of these practices. Instead we need to acknowledge that current frameworks incentivise them and make them necessary to retain funding.

Existing QA processes – geared towards raising success rates – have become uncoupled from teachers’ ideas of quality in teaching and learning. Furthermore, this kind of QA is an integral part of a culture that turns a blind eye to data-driven practices. MOTs and Ofsted have further entrenched this view of quality. As a result, real quality in FE has been displaced by data-driven quality.

In response to this, we need to recreate high-trust organisations in which professional teachers are freed up to exercise autonomy in meeting the needs of students and a commitment

to this, alongside a focus on teaching and learning, must be positioned at the heart of quality. Current funding and QA systems are no longer fit for purpose.

If you are a teacher or manager in an FE provider and this is an issue on which you have a view, please take five minutes to compete this survey: bit.ly/RSmithQA I hope to share the results with you in a future issue of InTuition.

References • Literacy Study Group (2010) The allegiance and experience of student literacy teachers in the post-compulsory education context: competing communities of practice, Journal of Education for Teaching, 36: 1, 5, dx.doi. org/10.1080/02607470903461927.

• O’Leary, M. & Smith, R. (2013) NPM in an Age of Austerity: Knowledge and Experience in Further Education, Journal of Educational Administration and History, 45:3, (forthcoming).

• Smith, R. (2007) Identity, Work and Quasi-marketisation: The FE Experience, Journal of Educational Administration and History, 39: 1, 33–47, dx.doi. org/10.1080/00220620701194275.

Dr Rob Smith Rob is a principal lecturer in postcompulsory education in the School for Education Futures at the University of Wolverhampton. He has taught in secondary, FE and HE settings and researches and writes collaboratively with FE teachers, focusing particularly on the impact of funding and marketisation on teachers’ work threshold. Rob contributes to the work of the Centre for Research and Development in Lifelong Learning (CRADLE), the joint IfL and University of Wolverhampton research and development centre, with a focus on the early years of teaching.

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ResearchDigest Silent scholars gain voice relevant to teaching their own subject. Papers were wellresearched and proposed interventions to improve teaching and learning. Inspiring and motivating learners were recurring themes, although some also tackled wider policy issues and questioned the assumptions and ideologies that influence education.

Previously, most of these papers would have been filed away in practitioners’ portfolios. The education team at North Lindsey College wanted to promote recognition of the value of the trainees’ scholarship and its impact on practice and so initiated the Anthology Project.

Teachers were encouraged to revisit their work and polish it for publication. The resulting

By Glenys Richardson, MIfL The Anthology Project was developed at North Lindsey College in Scunthorpe to support a cohort of newly qualified teachers in their transition from trainee to fully qualified professional.

It provides an opportunity to celebrate their achievements and to encourage the dissemination of their work.

The teachers worked for further education and sixth form colleges, private training providers and adult and community education. They had recently completed an initial teacher training (ITT) course on an in-service basis.

As part of their programme, trainees had produced and delivered papers on issues

anthology is a well-produced and attractive bound set of papers: a physical symbol that this scholarly work is of value.

The anthology has now been shared with other colleges in the Consortium for Post Compulsory Education and Training (consortium. hud.ac.uk) and is being used to support the next cohort of trainees.

This article is abbreviated from a full paper published in the journal Teaching in Lifelong Learning. To read the full paper, please go to: eprints.hud. ac.uk/17841/ Glenys Richardson is programme leader for education at North Lindsey College and a founder member of IfL

The ‘right way’ – and the English way My research is a comparison of vocational education and training (VET) systems and corresponding initial teacher training (ITT) programmes for the post-compulsory sector, the rationale being that someone somewhere must be doing it right and, if they are, what does ‘right’ look like?

Results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) led me to Finland and the worldrenowned ‘dual’ apprenticeship/ vocational education system led me to Germany.

Some interesting themes emerged. For example, in England, divisions and perceptions of status between academic and vocational education are rooted in the past – politically, culturally and economically – largely due to

GETTY

By Katrina Diamond, MIfL

the demographic and social restructuring as a result of the industrial revolution.

Differing models of capitalism also affect the structure, funding, degree of government intervention and subsequently the status of VET and, in turn, the training of the educators for the sector. Government’s decision to revoke the mandatory requirement to be qualified as VET teacher in England is anathema to my European counterparts and embarrassing for us.

Bosch and Charest (2008) observed: “The difference can perhaps be summarised

as follows: in the coordinated market economies, the modernisation of vocational training is seen as a contribution to innovation in the economy, while in liberal market economies, it is seen as a siding into which weaker pupils can conveniently be shunted.”

My research will add to our understanding of VET and teacher training in England in an international context.

Bosch, G and Charest, J. (2008) Vocational Training and the Labour Market in Liberal and Coordinated Economies; Industrial Relations Journal, Vol. 39, No. 5, pp. 428-447.

Katrina Diamond is head of school for education and training at Gloucestershire College and an IfL member.

This article is based on a presentation she made at the Consortium PCET conference

Research focus on teacher educators

By Sai Loo Recent developments (from the Lingfield Report to the establishment of an Education and Training Foundation) have profound implications for teaching training in England and the activities of teacher educators. Not least, Lingfield’s conclusion that initial teacher training should be optional.

Following the British Educational Research Association-funded Teacher Educators in the Lifelong Learning Sector event in July, it was suggested that a research project relating to teacher educators be explored.

It will focus on areas relating to the training of lecturers, acquisition and application of sources of knowledge, continuing professional development undertaken by teacher educators, and perceptions of themselves as teacher educators. If you wish to take part, please contact Sai Loo at s.loo@ioe.ac.uk Sai Loo is a lecturer in the department of Lifelong and Comparative Education at the Institute of Education

CPD Exchange Don’t forget that if you want help with your own academic or action research, or to share information and data with your fellow IfL members, you can vist www.ifl.ac.uk/cpdexchange

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InPractice

Dial M for Mooc Are massive open online courses (Moocs) the next step for FE? Maren Deepwell, chief executive of the Association for Learning Technology, reflects on the successful running of an open course in technology advanced learning that explored the possibility

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Between April and June this year, the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and its members ran an open course in technology-enhanced learning (ocTEL). The course was designed to enable participants to better understand how to use technology to enhance teaching practice.

While this initial running of the course was aimed primarily at teachers who deliver higher education, the background of many participants encompassed other learning contexts including further education, adult learning and skills, vocational education, research and workbased learning.

It was designed and run by members of ALT on a voluntary basis and it provided an open platform for the course discussion and group working space.

OcTEL successfully explored the implementation of a massive open online course (Mooc) platform that was developed on existing open-source tools (primarily WordPress), which meant that it was easily replicated for others to use.

While collaboration was at the heart of the project, the primary aim was to ask ‘big questions’ regarding the effective use and transformative potential of learning technology. The course provided the framework and content.

The course did not set out to provide all the answers, instead it established a space in which uncertainties could be explored and the future newly imagined.

Having more than 1,200 participants working together to define questions, reflect on change and seek evidence enabled us to really address change and innovation. On the main course site, participants generated 683 blog posts, shared 291 bookmarks (such as on Diigo, Delicious and Mendeley) and put up 1,352 forum posts.

ALT has published all the data about participation in the course under an open licence. This follows the original publication of its market research data last year. This is intended as a resource to support those undertaking research on patterns of participation in Moocs and similar online courses. It also gives users the chance to dig around behind the scenes of what went on in ocTEL’s first run and tell ALT in what respects it was a success and which areas should be covered in any future runs.

The final report about ocTEL has yet to be published, but some things are already clear. While some Moocs are designed by small, tightly-knit groups, our approach has been more widely distributed, including a large team of authors, some of whom have never met.

What we have found is probably

common to any ‘virtual’ team engaged in a creative project. You cannot simply articulate a plan and expect everyone to get it and act on it straight away; you need time to build shared understandings and negotiate the ethos and principles of the course as a coherent, unitary entity – which then has a sufficiently clear identity for people to work separately on the constituent parts.

The importance of authors’ expertise The positive side of our large team is that this enables us to draw on the ALT community and bring a

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broad base of specialist insight to bear on the course design and implementation. Our course aims to provide a comprehensive coverage of a large area (technology enhanced learning) and depending on just a few contributors would tend to lead to a ‘jack of all trades’ approach. By being able to cast our net more widely, we are able to gain breadth and depth.

The importance of the ‘M’ in Mooc Moocs, in theory, have unlimited capacity.

We are already seeing considerable interest from overseas, as well as the UK, but the overseas perspective should make the course a richer experience for UK participants, without diluting or diminishing their experience. As well as building a broad base of capability within the UK community, it also provides a shop window for the UK’s talent and

leadership in learning technology, all of which can add to our standing and profitability in the knowledge economy.

Success indicators One of our key learning points is that the expectations and success indicators for all involved changed throughout the running of the course.

Participants learned more about what they wanted to achieve once they became more familiar with the format of the course, while those running the course had to reflect on the broad range of expectations from students and how technology could be used to best meet them.

As the course was originally designed to be suitable for ‘mix and match’ participation – one week did not require completion of the previous week – we had to adjust our ideas about indicators such as retention rates.

Using learning analytics as far as possible provided a way for us to try to find out how our participants learned, but the open nature of the course also allowed participation without being tracked or registered, but did encourage participation from harder to reach audiences.

Future plans While we are still in the process of analysing results and learning from the experience of running the course, we want to ensure that we make the most of the potential of the course to contribute to professional development in relation to learning technology.

One of our aims for the second running of the course is to enhance the current materials and resources to make them more directly relevant to teaching in other contexts.

You can register to be kept informed about the second ocTEL in 2014 at bit.ly/ocTELregister.

Maren Deepwell is ALT chief executive and a member of IfL’s advisory council • The development of ocTEL was funded by a grant from the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education’s Transformation and Innovation Fund.

• Learning from ocTEL (open course in Technology Enhanced Learning) octel.alt.ac.uk

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InSight

ur: o i v a h e B special report

‘Human first, not just a statistic’ The Ashfield Centre at Vision West Nottinghamshire College is reshaping attitudes with its engagement of hard-to-reach young people, writes Sarah Simons

The Ashfield Centre started in 2007 as a small project at Vision West Nottinghamshire College. Six years on, it is widely recognised as a beacon of good practice in engaging the most difficult-to-reach young people.

Mansfied, the area of Nottinghamshire where the college is situated, has pockets of extreme poverty and social disengagement, a legacy of the pit closures and decline of textile manufacturing. Both industries had previously been key sources of income and employment for local people.

The Ashfield Centre is aimed specifically at young people who have had past difficulties in accessing education and are deemed to be at high risk of ending up not in education, employment or training (Neet). The centre works as a partnership between specific schools of learning and the college’s targeted support team.

With class sizes a maximum of 13 and accepting no more than 120 learners per academic year, the centre provides a supportive environment through individualised teaching, learning and enhanced support.

Later college start times support those from more chaotic backgrounds in gaining a work-day routine and it acknowledges challenges faced by young parents and

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young carers. A free cooked breakfast for every student and free bus service are all practical considerations that break down barriers to re-entering education.

Underpinning Ashfield’s success are strategically developed behaviour management methods, reshaping the mindset of hardest-to-reach learners, empowering them to take control of their own futures.

Sarah Le-good is manager of the centre and has led the project from its conception. She says: “Right from the beginning there were clear goals. We want learners to be happy, to be healthy and to achieve. There will be different criteria for each individual’s success but that is what we aim for.”

There is a palpable sense that every member of staff on site is part of the

Useful books on managing behaviour Classroom Management That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Every Teacher. Robert J. Marzano, Jana S. Marzano, and Debra Pickering.

Teaching Today. A Practical Guide. Geoff Petty.

Classroom Behaviour: A Practical Guide to Effective Teaching, Behaviour Management and Colleague Support. Bill Rogers.

How to Manage Behaviour in Further Education and Meeting the needs of disaffected students. Dave Vizard Managing Behaviour and Motivating Students in Further Education.

Susan Wallace.

Getting the Buggers to Behave. Sue Cowley.

The Behaviour Guru: Behaviour Management Solutions for Teachers.

Tom Bennett.

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www.ifl.ac.uk David Richardson level 1 motor vehicle student at Vision West Nottinghamshire College

The Ashfield Centre’s steps to positive behaviour 1. The 3 Cs: Clarity, consistency and consequence 2. Profiling Learners’ behavioural and academic progression is profiled with a trafficlight system, known to the learner and shared across relevant staff 3. Information sharing Ensuring that all aspects of the learner’s life that have a potential to affect their college experience are shared with all staff in contact with the learner same team, working with a common purpose: the catering or reception staff are as likely to congratulate a student on an achievement or remind them to display their identification badge as any teacher.

This shared ethos and consistency in behavioural expectation is not a happy accident. There is extensive continuing professional development with a focus on behaviour, plus all Ashfield Centre staff (including those with cleaning, catering or administrative roles) have a day of training together. The rigorously inclusive nature of such training ensures consistency of message to students but also serves to increase staff morale and unify the team.

Through this collaboration a set of key behaviours for staff and students was established. By maintaining principles such as owning your experience, encouraging peer support, understanding that effort reaps reward, being positive, polite and professional, staff can reinforce them for students.

There is a deliberate openness in the motivation behind all rules Sarah explains: “Everything we ask a young person to do is based on a reason, which is communicated clearly.”

There is clear encouragement of respectful behaviour, to each other and towards the learning environment.

We want learners to be happy, to be healthy and to achieve.

There will be different criteria for each individual’s success A result of this is that there has never been an act of vandalism or theft. This would be an achievement in any provision but considering that many Ashfield students are initially deemed to exhibit more challenging behaviour, this demonstrates a substantial level of engagement.

Sarah says: “It’s that whole concept that if a student is disrespectful to anything here, they’re really being disrespectful to themselves, because this is their resource.”

Sarah also cites choice of language as a highly important aspect of encouraging students to adopt more positive attitudes.

She says: “I’m fascinated by the concept of linguistic determinism. The language I use about you determines how I feel about you, which therefore determines how you feel about yourself

4. Modelling behaviour Staff model the calibre of behaviour expected of students. For example if you hear a learner swear, you could say, “When you hear me swear, you can too” 5. Value the individual Understand that each person has their own set of individual circumstances, experiences and strengths 6. Start as we mean to go on Set the precedent for behaviour expectation on day one 7. Reflect Remind yourself that should a difficult behavioural situation arise, it’s not personal 8. Buy in Everyone must believe that this works in order to make it work 9. Say what you mean Use unambiguous language that the learner understands 10. Focus on the positives Reward positive behaviour with praise or establish a team points/ stars system

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Supporting excellent teachers and trainers Continuing professional development (CPD) improves and enhances your skills and knowledge for the benefit of your learners.

As an IfL member, you can access a range of benefits and services to support you in your professional practice.

Don’t miss out: visit IfL’s CPD centre and events section

Exciting master’s level professional development opportunity ‘Sustaining criticality beyond initial teacher education’, is a master’s level programme which is open to members with Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS).

Offered by IfL through the Centre for Research and Development in Lifelong Learning (CRADLE), in conjunction with the University of Wolverhampton, this programme module will be essential for all IfL members with QTLS status who wish to attain master’s level credits and extend their capabilities and academic skills.

The programme runs for 12 weeks, part time and online, with one full day (10.00 to 16.00) face-to-face event with tutors at the University of Wolverhampton.

Find out more www.ifl.ac.uk/masters

INT.09.13.028.indd 28

IfL’s online CPD resources can support you in your commitment to CPD wherever you practise and at every stage of your career.

Information of the latest CPD seminars, podcasts and online events Help in organising and managing your CPD via , IfL’s online personal learning space and portfolio Geoff Petty, IfL patron, answers your questions on teaching and training in his regular ‘Ask Geoff’ column A growing online library of resources including IfL reviews of CPD and research on effective teaching and training Career information and resources including IfL’s jobs board

Find out more at www.ifl.ac.uk/cpd and www.ifl.ac.uk/newsandevents 13/09/2013 11:42

www.ifl.ac.uk

when you’re with me or when you’re here, which in turn has an impact on your behaviour.

“For example, the language I use to talk about functional skills can determine how you feel about it. It can have a positive impact on your success.”

In addition to ongoing promotion of positive behavioural choices, students also work through a programme of activities developed by Ashfield staff, entitled See, Reason, Decide, Do: how to make better decisions (SRDD).

The SRDD course is taken on a one-toone basis and lasts up to 10 sessions, depending on the student’s existing selfmanagement of social, emotional and behavioural skills. The aim is to assess collaboratively current patterns of behaviour, looking at antecedents, triggers and physiological responses to behaviourally high risk situations and to devise alternative actions.

The work of The Ashfield Centre, providing a suite of vocational qualifications while reshaping attitudes of learners, is generating a culture of aspiration in an area which has had its share of difficulties. Not only was it described by Ofsted as ‘outstanding’ in 2012, but it has contributed to a 2 per cent reduction in local Neet figures.

Sarah says: “Our young people are regarded as a human first, not as a statistic, not a vulnerability, not as someone who will have an impact on data, just as someone who we want to support and help. If they leave at the end of the year happy, healthy and having achieved, then we are happy too.”

Sarah Simons is a writer and lecturer and a member of IfL

Preparing trainees for disruptive classes

By Merv Lebor and Dom Brockway What happens if a trainee enters a class where there is disruptive or hostile behaviour? How can the trainee capture the attention of a large number of uncooperative individuals?

Normative advice is that trainees have to produce creative material so that the students are engaged, know why they are there and understand what they have to achieve in each lesson. This is the Ofsted answer, but often students do not conform to what is required.

This may be because they have authority issues, had previous negative school experiences, are bored, don’t like subject, classmates or teacher. They may have medical, psychological or social issues too. Each situation is different.

In these circumstances, a training class could be used as a forum offering support and solutions. The priority here is to sustain the trainee’s sense of selfconfidence, flexibility of approach and resilience outside the class.

Working through a series of strategies in the theory room, role playing where tutor becomes student and acts out the bad behaviour can be extremely helpful.

Working out boundaries and ground rules, developing philosophies, like Rogers’ ‘unconditional positive regard’, using transactional analysis models of treating students as adults so they interact adult-to-adult or even reverting to behaviouristic sanctions can be useful. It is good to develop trainees’ sense of self, their stance in class, practised through mock sessions,

moving from self-conscious knowing to intuitive behaviour.

Although planned, our teaching behaviour, with experience, becomes intuitive. Awareness of the flight/fight process can help to deactivate conflict and lead to better management of self and others. Shadowing experienced colleagues or being mentored on these issues will be critical. The key is to begin a dialogue where the problems trainees face can be discussed in an open, supportive and non-judgemental way.

References Lebor, M (2013) Class Wars: Initial Steps into the Fray. pp. 14-23. DOI: 10.5920/ till.2013.4214.

Rogers, C. (1961). On Becoming a Person: a Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy.

London: Constable.

Stewart, I; Joines, V. (1987), TA Today: a New Introduction to Transactional Analysis, Nottingham: Lifespan Publishing Vizard, D. (2009) Meeting the Needs of Disaffected Students, London: Network Continuum Lebor, Merv (2013) War and peace in the classroom: moments of reprieve; a strategy for reflecting on – and improving – students’ classroom behaviour. Teaching in lifelong learning: a journal to inform and improve practice, 5 (1). pp. 21-31. ISSN 2040-0993 eprints.hud.ac.uk/17840/

Merv Lebor and Dominic Brockway are teacher educators at Leeds City College. Merv is an IfL Member.

Positive approaches to behaviour that challenges

By Paul Gawdan To establish and maintain highly effective learning at Glasshouse College, part of Ruskin Mill Trust, we have established and developed the positive approaches to behaviour that challenges method.

In recent years we have reflected on this method and developed our capacity to produce evidence of the impact of ‘practical skills therapeutic education’.

Impact analysis of behaviour management can be defined clearly in individual success stories, narrative and achievement data. Understanding progress and achievement outside accredited learning – and producing evidence of it – is hugely beneficial for a cohort of learners with learning difficulties

and/or disabilities with complex and sometimes challenging behaviour.

We have invested in bespoke assessment tools such as ‘Spectrum Star for Students’ from Triangle Consulting. This tool has developed our ability to track and record progress in the learners’ journey.

In addition, we also use Behaviour Watch software to monitor the impact of interventions and behaviour management. The software gives us real-time data about incidents, allowing us to identify behavioural hot spots by day, time, location, learner, staff member and even environmental conditions. We have the ability to identify victims (or

potential victims) just as easily as we can identify learners in crisis.

In this academic year all of our learners have achieved their accredited learning outcomes, and all graduates made the transition to further education, employment or training.

Ruskin Mill Trust: www.rmt.org LSIS green paper that refers to positive approaches as good practice: www.excellencegateway.org.uk/ node/20869 Paul Gawdan is assistant principal at Glasshouse College and a member of IfL. Twitter: @paulgawdan

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Geoff Petty

Feedback means fixing – not marking Many teachers interpret feedback and formative assessment to mean commenting on students’ work, and annotating it with ticks and crosses and so on. Some think this includes grades or marks although my last two articles for InTuition (Issues 12 and 13) looked at the negative impact of grading.

But the guru on formative assessment and feedback, Dylan Wiliam, emeritus professor of educational assessment at the Institute of Education, interprets the terms differently. For him, the purpose of feedback is not just to comment on progress to date, but to fix the errors and omissions in students’ understanding, and to help students identify exactly what a good piece of work looks like.

Dylan points out that feedback is an engineer’s term. A thermostat tells your boiler that the temperature is 5° too low (this is like a comment or a grade) then this information turns the boiler on (this is the fix). Without the fix, there is no benefit from the feedback.

A misconception teachers often have is that it is they who must provide feedback and formative assessment.

But students can do a pretty good job for themselves and each other, saving you some trouble, as well as teaching students about how to assess and the nature of good work.

Done well, feedback can have a huge impact on students’ learning. Let’s look at an example of good practice: the snowball teaching method.

Snowball One use of snowball is to get students to evaluate an imperfect piece of work. I will imagine you have just explained to your students how to use commas, but this approach could be used to teach them how to write a good marketing plan, care plan, or experimental design. You could

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also use this approach to teach students how to rearrange algebraic expressions, indeed pretty much any intellectual skill.

Having explained how to use commas you will want to give them feedback on their understanding before they start to use the skill. You give them a few paragraphs of punctuated text, but it contains errors and omissions in the use of commas. Students are then told the following sequence in advance, and challenged to find all the errors and omissions in the example given them, and to be able to explain these.

1. Students work alone to detect the faults in the text.

2. Students pair up to discuss the improper use of commas that they have found, and to combine and improve their ideas.

3. Pairs combine into fours, and again ideas are discussed and improved.

Together they create the best, reasoned critique of the punctuation they can.

4. Now you get one idea from each group of four in turn. You choose a member of the group to give one problem with the punctuation, and perhaps another to explain why this is a problem and what the solution is. You don’t comment on their thinking at this stage except to clarify it.

5. For each point made by a group you ask the class if they agree or not, and why. There is class discussion. You record the class’s conclusions on the board, whether these are right or wrong, and without evaluating them.

6. You repeat 4 and 5 above with the other groups, until all the comments on the use of commas have been collected.

7. You now comment on the class’s thinking for the first time, and correct errors and omissions in this.

Snowball

Teacher collects ideas without judging them… …then evaluates the class answer (using ‘assertive questioning’, for example) Why does this teaching method work so well? Look at the diagram of the quality learning cycle. When people learn they make links between neurons (brain cells).

The new learning (red cogs in the diagram), is connected to prior learning (blue cogs). This new learning encodes the student’s version of what you have explained. It is called the student’s ‘construct’ for how to use commas.

This construct will have errors and omissions in it, because it was not made by you, but by the student. If you are not

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The point of giving feedback is to fix errors and omissions in understanding, says Geoff Petty, author of Teaching Today and Evidence-based Teaching. Geoff is an IfL patron

The quality learning cycle This diagram summarises what many of the best teaching strategies do.

See Evidence Based Teaching, 2nd edition by Geoff Petty 2009.

Set a challenging task

Purpose of the lesson

The task has a clear purpose and clear success criteria. It requires the learner to create their own understanding, linked to what they already know – this is called their ‘construct’.

Aims, objectives and other intentions.

This construct will have errors and omissions.

The work shows the level of understanding The learner expresses their understanding in their work on the task. (‘Work’ here means their verbal or written answer to a question, their graphic organiser, how they sort cards, and so on) If the task is challenging and well designed it will reveal the misconceptions and other errors in the student’s construct.

So the work is a window into the student’s understanding.

Improvement

Feedback

The student, perhaps with the help of peers and/or the teacher, can now improve their construct.

The work gives feedback:

The teacher can respond to errors and omissions in the understanding of the class, and individuals.

SHUTTERSTOCK

Students improve their constructs.

convinced, at the end of one of your lessons ask your students to write down what they have just learned on a piece of paper. Collect these in – and read them.

• to the student doing it, e.g.

“I don’t understand this percentage bit.”

• to peers, e.g. “He thinks ‘mammal’ means ‘human being.’”

• to the teacher, e.g. “Quite a few students don’t understand the concept of sensitivity.”

You will be astounded at how your perfect explanations have been garbled and corrupted. And of the vital need for formative assessment.

The best way to fix these errors and omissions is to engage the learners in active learning on a challenging task with feedback. This requires the student to form an understanding, then checks and corrects this understanding, and so improves it. Snowball does this pretty well, as each student will go round the quality learning cycle a number of times: probably when working alone, certainly in pairs when there is a disagreement, again in fours, and yet again during class discussion. The construct is improved at each stage.

You also get excellent feedback on their understanding. This enables you to re-teach the points that students have not understood.

There are no written comments or grades during snowball, but there is plenty of feedback. Vitally, this goes on to produce plenty of fixing. The feedback in snowballing has not just corrected students’ work, it has corrected their understanding and your teaching.

Snowballing will not be enough by itself to teach the use of commas, students will now need individual practice at punctuating text, or creating marketing plans and the like. But they will find this practice much easier if they have snowballed first, and less practice will be needed to establish the skill. This practice could be snowballed as well, or instead. Snowball has lots of uses.

The quality learning cycle can be used to analyse any teaching method to see if it provides the feedback and fixing that students need.

Feedback, or formative assessment, does not require the teacher to do all the work, or to provide lots of comments and marks. Its aim is to get students to understand what they are trying to do, what they do well, and what they don’t, and to fix misunderstandings.

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Books

• Editor’s pick

The good, the bad and the mundane: here’s a book that gives it to you straight Excerpt: Leadership in Post-Compulsory Education ‘Surprisingly little is known about what educational leaders actually do’, p153 Much has been made in recent years of the value of ‘good’ leadership in the postcompulsory sector by government and the research community. Good leadership, we are told, is necessary for increasing the effectiveness and competitiveness of our educational institutions. Yet, surprisingly, little is known about what it is that educational leaders actually do… Models and theories of leadership in education tend to overlook (and more often erase) the seemingly mundane, ordinary and everyday practices of leadership

Leadership in Post-Compulsory Education Marian Iszatt-White et al (paperback, 2012) Continuum/Bloomsbury Publishing: 978-1441156990 For those aspiring to leadership there is an abundance of books that claim to offer the key to success.

However, too few are specific to the learning and skills sector and the practicalities of leadership.

This book aims to fill the gap, focusing on the dayto-day activities of college

principals as they ‘do the job’.

It is an in-depth study of the practicalities of their work rather than a ‘how to’ manual and the book should therefore be viewed as a resource for reflection rather than a toolkit for practice.

The book provides a refreshing change from much leadership theory which focuses on developing top level strategy, vision and transforming culture.

Instead, it reveals the mundane, everyday routines of the leadership role. It is these

work in favour of more abstract references to ‘vision building’, ‘producing strategies’ or ‘transforming or engineering cultures’. And yet such accounts of leadership rarely explain how such work is (or should be) carried out in practice. For us, such questions have yet to be adequately dealt with in leadership research, and this lack of understanding of the everyday doing of leadership work may risk jeopardising any attempt to prescribe appropriate methods for improving educational leadership within the sector.

aspects, usually hidden from view, that give insight into what skills leaders need.

The book is divided into three main parts. The first sets out research methodology and provides an overview of leadership theory. The second provides individual stories under the key themes of mundane work, production and performance and the use of technology.

Leaders describe their practice in detail – including why things have gone wrong as well as what has been

successful. The final section summarises findings and provides ‘cautionary tales’ and a framework for reflection.

There are tensions in the style between the aim to provide a demystification of leadership practice and the academic presentation of research findings.

Much is made of the justification of the ethnographical approach and the first section of the book reads too much like a research thesis. Having noted this, the book makes its point

IfL jobs board IfL has created a job seeking service tailored to the needs of teachers and trainers in FE and skills.

In response to member feedback, IfL is developing benefits and services to support you in your career journey.

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• Other new publications just as clearly if the reader wishes to start reading on page 60 and skip over this first section. The final chapter is particularly insightful.

The notion of identifying ‘teachable moments’ is one I think all leaders, whether aspiring or experienced, would find a great tool for developing their practice.

Janet Smith is deputy principal of South Thames College.

A fellow of IfL, she has worked across the learning and skills sector, teaching in a number of further and higher education and adult and community learning providers, for more than 20 years. She has held senior leadership roles since 2005.

Member offer Bloomsbury Publishing is pleased to offer IfL members a 25 per cent discount on Leadership in PostCompulsory Education.

To order copies, go to www.bloomsbury.com and enter discount code GLR9BV when prompted.

Education, Work and Identity: Themes and Perspectives Michael Tomlinson (2013) Bloomsbury Academic: paperback 978-1-4411-7411-6 This important and wideranging academic book sets out to map and analyse the complex and changing factors that govern the interactions between education, employment and people’s social identity.

Chapter five critiques the UK’s traditional academicvocational divide which, it is argued, devalues vocational education and can lead to different learner outcomes that “tend to map onto social class inequalities”.

Chapter eight discusses the situation of teachers and trainers and asks whether education professionals risk being deskilled in the face of market and political pressures that recast them as “operative commodity producers in the production of appropriately skilled workers”.

Towards a Royal College of Teaching

A to Z of Teaching Jonathan Savage and Martin Fautley (2013) Open University Press (McGraw-Hill Education): paperback 978-0-3352-4700-4 A is for assessment and B is for behaviour… the strength of this 238-page book is not so much in the number of listings under each letter (‘J’, for example, produces only one entry “judgements”) but in the teaching and learning concepts it introduces and summarises.

It is good to see support for teachers as professionals in a brief discussion of the issues under ‘P’ for profession.

The vast majority of entries include key questions, references and further reading suggestions.

The book is aimed at school teachers but the majority of the concepts will also apply equally to further education and work-based learning.

Various contributors (2013) Published by the Royal College of Surgeons: 978-1-9040-9622-1 “It is time to create an organisation that will reflect our collective aspiration for the profession,” writes David Weston, chief executive of the Teacher Development Trust in this booklet that argues for the creation of a professional body for school teachers.

Authors and contributors, including the leaders of all the main teaching unions, support the creation of a new professional body amid concerns over longstanding political interference in education and the current administration’s decision to allow unqualified teachers to teaching in some state schools – a similar deregulation is underway in further education.

IfL chief executive Toni Fazaeli is also a contributor to the book.

Visit www.ifl.ac.uk/jobs to get the most out of your IfL membership InTuition

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Forum

A space for members to air their opinions.

They do not necessarily reflect the views of IfL

Pedagogue As the start of the new academic year begins, my mind wanders to how many new faces I have seen appear at this particular time. Inevitably, they are great people, real experts in their chosen vocation (HR has sent word that they are a real catch) and bring with them enthusiasm and ideas about their new career. By the end of term they have walked.

Many of us understand the reason – being a professional teacher in our sector is just not what somebody on the outside thinks it is.

Over the years I have needed to be

a teacher, vocational expert, mentor, coach, assessor, examiner, friend, enemy, relationship counsellor, drug and alcohol adviser, stand-in parent, disciplinarian, careers adviser, shoulder to cry on, role model, referee and legal adviser, to name but a few, and each one as important as the other at various times.

These skills were embedded during my initial teacher training (although I didn’t realise it at the time) and honed with years of experience and continuing professional development.

Crikey! I’ve just created the

first heptadecagonic model of professionalism without even trying.

The current government has decided that there is actually no need for proper recognition of professionalism within our sector. In addition, the requirement for teacher qualifications is now at the discretion of senior managers, always popular with the bean counters.

The planet heptadecagon was orbiting slowly in the right direction, at the stroke of a pen that direction has been reversed.

I wonder what planet they are on?

Pedagogue is an IfL member

Strictly online

REX

Should FE teaching qualifications remain mandatory? IfL members joined the debate hosted by #ukfechat on 27 June

Airtime An occasional column in which members pay homage to their favourite TV characters I am turning into Victor Meldrew. I certainly hear myself shouting “I don’t believe it” all too frequently. Most recently it was when I read that grants of up to £20,000 were available for maths and English graduates to teach in further education.

Now far be it for me to diminish the importance of FE putting right what schools appear to get wrong, but shouldn’t we be trying to get the very best engineers,

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caterers, mechanics and carpenters to teach in FE? You never know, if you pay enough to attract highly experienced subject experts, they may just know a thing or two about the application of maths and English in vocational contexts. I mean, I’m a plumber who (once more) has just shouted “I don’t believe it” over the misuse of a reflexive pronoun.

Contributed by “Luke Watson-Dabocks”, FIfL

Delani @DelaniLeeann Just because you have vocational skills doesn’t mean you know how to transfer them!

Matt O’Leary @drmattoleary Key issue 4 me not just about quals but impact on FE prof identity Richard Eno @enorichard A certificate doesn’t guarantee a job. Neither do skills but I bet an employer would prefer them Tech Stories @EdTech_Stories What’s rationale for having unqualified ppl teaching in colleges anyway? Because bad policy decisions putting ppl off teaching?

Jo Bale @jo_bale My opinion: quals = professional Carolyn Houlihan @clyn40 Yes feel the same too. Doesn’t mean we are better than someone unqual but is step forward to prof status Sarah Simons @MrsSarahSimons For many learners FE is 2nd or final chance. For that reason FE needs SuperTeachers, not just subject specialists. Quals essential Joanne Rich @joanne_rich Qualifications don’t make a good teacher but they do raise status and professionalism Jayne Stigger @fossa99 I judge colleges by ‘would I let my child study here’. Would you let unqual teacher teach your child in college for formal qual?

Phil Bird @pysproblem81 Remember reading a quote – quals are like a driving licence, don’t make you a great driver, but they stop you killing anyone Stephen Greenwood @SGSLTDinspire We should practise what we preach ie that quals get you places Malcolm Ferguson @Maccas55 The sector needs high professional standards for credibility Alezed @alezed People need to know getting qualified is not a punishment it should be seen as a support mechanism

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NoticeBoard IfL Calendar OCTOBER BLACK HISTORY MONTH

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InTuition Live webinar: Professional formation and getting the most from REfLECT+

QTLS and ATLS* application deadline for those who declared their intent 1 Dec 2012 - 31 Jan 2013 To apply visit bit.ly/qtls-atls

Seminar for teachers of law and related areas at Clifford Chance LLP – a professional updating event developed by IfL and the Law Society

World Teachers’ Day – our chance to celebrate teachers and the teaching profession everywhere www.worldteachersday.org

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21 – 27

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Professions Week.

As one of the founders of Professions Week, IfL is involved in a number of events (please see below).

Voting in IfL’s Advisory Council Closing date for expressions elections opens of intent for QTLS and ATLS* bit.ly/qtls-atls CPD and technology seminar in partnership with IBM

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27

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Voting closes in IfL’s Advisory Council elections

IfL Advisory Council election results announced

Opening date for expressions of intent for QTLS and ATLS*

IfL conferral of QTLS and ATLS status*

DECEMBER

Association of Colleges conference – IfL will be there to bring members’ perspectives to the main FE employer event of the year

NOVEMBER

*IfL runs regular cycles for QTLS and ATLS, from expressions of interest, to application and conferral

InTuition Live webinar : Professional formation and getting the most from REfLECT+ IfL’s next InTuition Live webinar will be on professional formation and the new REfLECT+. IfL’s head of professional status and recognition Sue Colquhoun will offer advice about the process of attaining Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS) or Associate Teacher Learning and Skills (ATLS) through professional formation.

Register for the webinar, which takes place on 1 October 2013 from 4-5pm at www.ifl.ac.uk/ events. You can also register to receive a recording of the event.

IfL jobs board IfL is working to develop a jobseeking service tailored to the needs of teachers and trainers

in our diverse sector. As we continue to develop this service, you can expect the number of jobs listed to increase significantly in the coming weeks and months. www.ifl.ac.uk/jobs

Professions Week: 21 – 27 October 2013 IfL is a founder and supporter of this collaborative project to raise awareness of the professions and give teachers and careers advisers the resources to help 14- to 19-year-olds make informed decisions about their careers.

IfL is scheduling a series of CPD events, as detailed in the calendar above, in partnership with IBM and Clifford Chance through the Law Society.

To find out more, visit www.ifl.ac.uk/events or www.professionsweek.org

IfL’s practitioner guide to Ofsted The first in a series of practitioner guides will soon be released to support teachers and trainers in their everyday practice. IfL’s practitioner guide to Ofsted provides hints and tips on managing a stress-free Ofsted inspection before, during and after the process. Available for £9.95 plus postage and packaging, order details will be available shortly at www.ifl.ac.uk

Gain master’s level credits with QTLS

IfL Advisory Council elections: nominations

Sustaining criticality beyond initial teacher education is a master’s level programme which is open to members with QTLS. Offered by IfL through the Centre for Research and Development in Lifelong Learning (CRADLE), in conjunction with the University of Wolverhampton, this module will be essential for all IfL members with QTLS status who wish to attain master’s level credits and extend their capabilities and academic skills.

The programme runs for 12 weeks, part time and online, with one day (10am-4pm) spent with university tutors. www.ifl.ac.uk/masters

Could you make a difference to IfL? You may wish to consider standing for election to IfL’s Advisory Council. Nominations are open until 2 October for 28 places on IfL’s Advisory Council. Further details about IfL’s governance, what’s involved and how to stand for election are at www.ifl.ac.uk/ elections2013. You can also listen to a podcast from former and current council members.

IfL at the party conferences IfL representatives are attending the conferences of the three major national political parties in 2013. This forms part of our work to raise the status of teachers and trainers on a national level.

Regular updates and blogs from the conferences are available on the IfL website. www.ifl.ac.uk/conference2013

Have you changed your contact details recently?

If you have changed your phone number, email address or employer, please let us know your most up-todate details. This will ensure you can access all your member benefits and the information you need to make the most of your membership.

• To update your details, simply login to www.ifl.ac.uk to edit your information - it’s a quick and easy way to keep us updated.

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The first ever national Professions Week will take place from 21 to 27 October 2013.

IfL is one of the founders and supporters of Professions Week, a collaborative project led by a number of professional bodies to raise awareness of the professions and give teachers and careers advisers the resources to help 14 to 19-year-olds make informed decisions about joining the professions.

In support of Professions Week, IfL is holding CPD events to support IfL members in their vocational or subject updating.

Clifford Chance seminar for teachers of law and related areas

CPD and technology in partnership with IBM

Thursday, 3 October 2013

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

This seminar, to be held at Clifford Chance’s city office in Canary Wharf, will give you an inside view into how the firm works and up-to-date information about legal practice that you can use in your teaching. There will also be opportunities for networking with legal professionals and other colleagues.

This event will introduce real-world challenges to help you experiment in teaching creatively and in using new technologies, giving you hands-on experience valued by employers in today’s marketplace so that you can use these ideas in your own teaching and training.

BOOK TODAY Both of these events are available to book now at the subsidised rate of £35 (plus booking fee) for IfL members.

Find out more at www.ifl.ac.uk/events

Visit the Professions Week website for further information and resource guides to support teachers, trainers and careers advisers at www.professionsweek.org

STOP PRESS: IfL and the Institute of Education are running a free seminar for members on

24 October, 2013, titled Professionalism: the International Dimension. Details www.ifl.ac.uk/events

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