Forum
Report from second Professional Dialogue Seminar series 2
Held at Warwick University on 1 March 2011
The Forum is a partnership of the Higher Education Institutions offering initial teacher training (ITT)
programmes (further and higher) in the West Midlands area. They are the Universities of
Wolverhampton, Warwick, Staffordshire, Worcester and Birmingham City.
The Forum set up Professional Dialogue seminars in 2009 as a series of events to share good
practice across the West Midlands where Teacher Educators from each of the ITT teams within the
partnership are invited to exchange ideas on topics of educational interest. The second series of
seminars is running from September 2010 to August 2011.
The second in this second series of Professional Dialogue seminars was held at Warwick University
on 1 March 2011. The themes were ‘Teaching theories and principles of learning and communication’
in the morning and ‘The impact of CPD on practice’ in the afternoon.
The seminar was well received by both partner colleges and
universities. Comments from the sessions were that participants valued
‘Exchanging ideas and sharing good practice with other colleagues with
some interesting ideas to use practically to demonstrate the link
between theory and practice’ from the morning and ‘Generally have a
better understanding of CPD and how it may be developed within our
own team’ from the afternoon.
This report is a collation of the ideas from the day and is by no means a complete picture of all the
interesting and stimulating discussion which took place. It is written to share the key points across the
Forum partnership.
Teaching theories and principles of learning and communication
The morning session was on teaching theories and principles of learning and communication and this
started with teacher educators, working in seminar groups, discussing the main aims behind the
teaching of theory. Teacher educators identified that the main aim for trainees was for practical help
to manage their practice. They also agreed that theories need to be integrated to avoid the
dissociation which can occur when separated from learning and practice.
ITT teams all approached the teaching of theory by integrating it into their own sessions and then
relating it to trainees’ practice. Although there were differences in how this was done, a general
model around the following stages was identified:
1. Teacher educators modelled a theory using a strategy which embodied it, either each session
or within a specific module.
2. Trainees were made conscious of which learning theory was being modelled by the teacher
educator, the theory was explained and the feelings and issues invoked by that theory
explored.
3. General examples of how a particular theory would work in practice were explored with
trainees together with the impact of the learning approach on the trainees’ learners eg
behaviour management linked to behaviourist approach and physical environment linked to
which layout is underpinned by different theories.
4. Trainees linked theories to their own practice with examples. A double loop practical
approach was used to help trainees link theory to practice where they found this challenging.
The second loop model was:
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ask the trainee to give an example of an issue with their current practice
the teacher educator or group then links this to the theoretical approach and the
impact on their learners to explain why the approach isn’t working
a different theoretical approach is suggested with an explanation of why this might
work.
The trainee tries this out, reflects on their practice and feeds back the results.
There was a commonality around the theory used in the PTLLS programme. This was a light touch
approach, linked to the learning cycle, differentiation and an understanding of what learning is, using
Kolb, Gibb, Maslow and Bloom.
The CTLLS programme explored theories of communication, assessment, active experiential
learning, participation and differentiation with assessment of the theory linked to practice and trainee
reflection on their own approach.
In the DTLLS programmes the main learning approaches of behaviourist, cognitive and humanist
were explored. A range of theorists within a learning approach are used ie Pavlov, Watson, Skinner
for behaviourism; Piaget and social constructivism in the cognitive approach and Maslow and Rogers
for the humanist approach. Some strategies on how these were modelled in practice were given:
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Piaget: do a task on how to make discovery learning realistic and present to group.
Constructivism: (observational learning framework) look at the principles followed by an
activity to demonstrate the theory filmed with flip cameras. The group revisit the session
using the video and discuss.
Motivational: Top tips based on motivational theories are given to the group eg Hertzberg,
McGregor, Maslow, attribution theories and self efficacy theories and then trainees link the
tips to the theories.
Assessment: Dylan Williams’ traffic light and voting systems were used for checking
understanding and were especially useful for ‘struggling’ trainees.
Theorists were also chosen for specialist areas eg numeracy used constructivist and Gestalt. This
raised discussion around a Learner centred approach versus structuring learning to achieve a result
in a behaviourist way such as that adopted for teaching numeracy or
reading.
There was a lot of discussion around the difficulties trainees had with the
concept of theory. This raised questions around whether the concept of
theory was understood in practice; it was the word ‘theory’ that caused a
problem; or the issue came when writing an assignment around theory.
Further discussion also raised the following questions:
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Whether it was only important to enable trainees to use theory in practice or whether it was
also important that trainees could analyse the theory of practice within the wider profession of
education.
Whether a move from writing an essay to a practical assessment would mean a move from
analysing theory to describing theory and the effect of this on the professionalism of teaching.
The level of critical thinking around theories and whether trainees were empowered to
critically analyse and challenge theories.
Teacher educator recruitment and development, the criteria for this, whether teacher
educators needed to keep updated on their subject and if so, how this could be achieved.
The open discussion was welcomed and participants commented: ‘Discussion around ‘theory of
practice’ or ‘practice to theory’ was relevant and the ‘challenge’ of getting learners to critically analyse
theories was interesting’.
The resources that teacher educators used to teach theory were very varied and are included at the
end of this report (I’ve added links to make it easier!). Trainees could access resources on college
intranets, VLEs, libraries and Warwick University online library.
There was discussion around learning theories in ICT and whether these were new theories; just
different names for the same theories; or off-shoots from classic theories and a flowchart on the
Atherton site was cited as useful here. Jisc mentioned the ICT theories of Communities of Practice
and Situational theories in this context and the Escape Project which explores the process of
assessment in terms of high risk v continuous constructivism. There was recognition that online
engagement required good communication skills and time to develop critical thinking in learners and
that this isn’t always recognised by management.
The Impact of CPD on Practice
The afternoon session started by trying to define ‘What is CPD?’ Participants agreed it intrinsically
involved improving practice and the need to empower and enable
practitioners to reflect on new learning and/or skills. This raised the
question of ‘how do we know what we need to improve?’ and
discussion around the conflict between knowing what improvement
was needed and declaring it.
The fact that being able to make, reflect on and share mistakes is
the sign of a good practitioner was agreed but it was recognised that
there were implications in declaring development needs and the
question of whether it was acceptable for teacher educators to be seen to make mistakes, and the
reactions of Management, were discussed.
Current practice
The area of CPD which had been most useful to teacher educators was sharing practice both within
their own team, in partnership meetings and visits to other colleges. Observations both formal and
informal were also useful and this could be either being observed or carrying out observations. Most
teacher educators felt that opportunities for their own CPD were limited but the following were cited as
events which had been helpful:
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A Teaching and Learning exhibition held at the end of the year to showcase good practice
within the college.
External Speakers: Dylan Williams had been invited to do a whole college development day.
External support: JISC ICT help for the teacher training programme
An action research set to enable teachers recognised as good practitioners to try out new
strategies in a safe environment.
Issues
The FE culture is competitive with quality assurance v development and is not a culture to encourage
research, experimentation or academic approaches. It was difficult to access research that had been
carried out by practitioners and a directory of research projects would be useful. However there were
also issues around the quality assurance, validity and academic rigour of projects which were not
formally monitored.
External events which participants had found valuable had been discontinued and there were not
many events which were innovative, which made it hard to know what was worth attending.
Teacher educators are held in high esteem and, with the cuts in staff development, colleges rely on
them for whole college development. This raised issues around whether they are then given the time
and support for their own development.
The question of the need for teacher educators to be up-to-date with technology was raised and there
was discussion around whether, as technology changes so fast, CPD should take the form of an
update about what’s new rather than in-depth learning.
Resources: Websites
James Atherton ‘Learning and Teaching’ website is good but has a particular slant. See
http://www.learningandteaching.info/
Infed: http://www.infed.org
Excellence Gateway for assessment and videos: http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/
Youtube for videos: http://www.youtube.com/
Jim Crawley ‘itslifejimbutnotasweknowit’; http://www.itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/
Business Balls for Blooms Taxonomy; http://www.businessballs.com/
Learn Higher for study skills and communication theory eg Tuckman: http://www.learnhigher.ac.uk/
Gilly Salmon: e- moderation and online communities with links to Maslow.
http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/E-moderation_five-stage_model
Escape Project: Russell: Process of assessment high risk v continuous constructivism.
https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/2299/4331/1/Assessment%20for%20Learning%20%20An%20introduction%20to%20the%20ESCAPE%20project.pdf
Primary planning ‘wilt’ and ‘walt’. (Wilt, Tib, Walt resource can be downloaded free at:
http://www.fresherschools.com/resources/index.php?entry_id=1116281400)
Prezi Powerpoint is collaborative Cloud computing used to store materials on internet site and pay
per month so these can be shared: http://prezi.com/
Allen Crawford-Thomas at RSC JISC has sent the following links: In relation to teaching theories,
teacher educators may find this link helpful: http://crusldi1.staffs.ac.uk/bestpracticemodels/ .
Educators can join the debate by joining the best practice group at:
http://learning.staffs.ac.uk/moodle/course/category.php?id=1.
The IFL have a members group on Linkedin. This is professional social networking group and is good
way to introduce teacher educators to the world of web2.0. Much of the debate can be evidence as
CPD. the link is:
http://www.ifl.ac.uk/get-involved/connections/related-links/cpd/cpd-guidance-and-resources/cpdresources/the-best-of-cpd-on-twitter/related-links/join-our-members-group-on-linkedin
WMCETT offer a range of CPD modules either as accredited or non-accredited CPD. Details from
J.Chamberlain@warwick.ac.uk