Dtlls_Unit_5

DTLLS Unit 5 Continuing Personal and Professional Development This paper will cover various aspects of Continuing Personal and Professional Development (CPPD), it will identify the requirements of Continuing Personal Development (CPD), it will also critically analyse my own approach to reflective practice, general and my own teaching roles, the impact of my beliefs on others and the impact of my professional skills on others. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in some opinions is only the process of completing a course, gaining the qualification and recording things you have done throughout this period and beyond in your job. There is much more to this, the Institute For Learning (IFL) is the governing body that all practicing teachers in the FE sector are required to be members of. The IFL require that teachers complete a minimum of 30 hours CPD annually. There are many activities that CPD can be drawn from; some of these are reading professional journals, attending courses, seminars and conferences. No matter the type of activity, one of the most important things that you are a trying to achieve is improvement in your role as a teacher. In my opinion the most effective way of doing this is by reflection, by reflecting on these activities you should be able to identify aspects or areas within your role that can be improved, otherwise it would be pointless carrying out CPD. When planning to complete your CPD there are some important aspects to be considered, these include identifying what you need to achieve. This is in your current and future roles and how long you need to achieve this. You need to determine what knowledge and skills you require, formulating a sound plan including time, available opportunities and factors that could affect your plan. Some things to be considered are strengths and weaknesses and what knowledge and skills you need, reflecting on learner feedback, observation reports and IV or line manager feedback. It can be helpful if you can be objective and critical of your own performance at this stage. It is important to record and log the evidence for yourself, your employer and more importantly for IFL. The process of logging this information may not be as straight forward as it first appears, as there are many avenues you can go down to identify relevant learning or improvement within. Some of these may be small or seem to be not too relevant, so thinking outside the box or being creative can often identify innovative learning you have done that can be used to enhance your teaching skills. All of this information can be logged in a Reflective Learning Journal (RLJ). Finally and possibly most importantly is to review and evaluate the results, here it would be helpful if you have the ability to be self critical as you analyse the results. As stated earlier this should show an improvement in your abilities and skills as a teacher. The company I work for have a policy in place that all learner facing employees have a minimum of four Observation of Learning and Teaching (OLT) procedures carried out annually. My Line Manager normally carries out these OLT’s, he has been working in the FE environment for over ten years and although he is currently completing the same qualification as I am, he has a wealth of experience from which to draw upon when completing the report on me. The fact I respect him as a person and a professional ensures there is no friction during or after the observation. The results of these OLT’s can be an excellent resource when used reflectively and in discussions with my line manager we can look to improve the quality of my teaching by identifying the positives and negatives, strengths and weaknesses which can only help to improve the quality of my teaching. As part of a closely knit team I also have another excellent tool available to me, this is peer observation. The use of peer observation can work in both directions, me as the observer and the observed. When observing my peers I can often gain valuable information and in return when being observed I can receive valuable feedback. Much of this is done informally and by working together we can all improve as teachers. We all teach and assess the same subjects but we all have our own style of delivery and our own speciality within the subjects. This allows us to ask advice from each other if we are not so strong on one subject and we can hopefully return the favour from a subject we are stronger in. As a team we must hold regular team meetings, these team meetings provide an ideal opportunity to share ideas and experiences, it also allows the team leader to conduct standardisation meetings. During these meetings he can ensure we are aware of any changes but more importantly by the use of examples he can assess how current we are and ensure we are all fully aware of the current standards and are working up to and within those standards. Using information gained from our OLT’s he can identify any training needs and discuss these including an action plan and timeline, this is possibly the most valuable information taken from the OLT’s. As a company the information collected from the OLT’s is invaluable in maintaining high performance rates and the quality of our teaching (product). Throughout my own learning journey there have been aids to assist me in analysing my development. I have learned to utilise peer reviews, observation reports, self assessment and feedback from learners. All of these provide me with vital information that will allow me to progress and improve myself, working closely with my peers allows cross pollination of ideas. Observation reports provide an unbiased and objective view of where I am at any given time in my role as a teacher. Self assessment and learner feedback provides an opportunity to reflect on my performance, this can help to improve and vary content and delivery of lessons avoiding stagnation. While constantly striving to improve as a teacher one of the best tools available in my opinion is reflection. There are a variety of things to help us think reflectively. The Peters (1994) model asks us to think of a concrete example and then to step back and allow ourselves to test our assumptions about that situation. Brookfield (1995) suggests that we can look at a situation from our own viewpoint, from our colleagues’ viewpoint, from our learners’ viewpoint and from theoretical literature. He calls these the four critical lenses. Brookfield identifies critical reflection as a fundamental approach to teaching. He suggests that not only teachers but also learners should develop an approach which demands the “hunt” for assumptions. It is like detective work, seeking out clues to our current behaviour. In the ongoing process of improving my personal development I tend to favour the Empty Chair technique of reflection, this is commonly used as part of Gestalt therapy to explore patient relationships with themselves or other people in their lives. Using this type of reflection allows me to put myself in the place of the learner and the teacher, this way I can critically analyse in greater detail my performance. By constantly monitoring my performance and evolving I should continue to maintain higher standards in my role as a teacher. Within the lifelong sector there are various roles and contexts for teachers. Some of these contexts are Further Education Providers, Prison and Youth Custody Services, Industrial Training Centres, Adult Community Learning and Apprenticeship Schemes. With so many varied contexts there are many different teaching roles, at some time in the past a teacher may have only taught and marked. Today’s role as a teacher is far more complex, they have many more duties to undertake some of which are done as part of team and some as an individual, at first they may seem daunting or even off putting but they really are rewarding. This role requires teachers to be subject experts, course designers, researchers, communications experts, evaluators, administrators and take part in staff development and be guidance counsellors. The ideal teacher is required to be many things, among some of the more important traits are confidence, consistency, flexibility, ability to communicate and they should know their learners as individuals and their strengths and weaknesses. No one expects you to have all these skills at once but your colleagues will expect you to develop and take a share of the responsibilities in due course. In my role as a teacher in the Lifelong Sector delivering apprenticeships I also have to grow into the role and develop as a professional. Confidence is important, as I begun to realise that knowing my subject matter and keeping control are important but only part of the overall process of being a “leader of learning”. Leadership is a key skill which you must have or develop. You have, somehow, to generate an atmosphere which facilitates learning: formal enough for structured learning to take place but sufficiently informal for active learning to develop. Your personality and manner with students will be key aspects. I work with adults and it is important to be current in all aspects of my role and prepared to answer sometimes very difficult and searching questions. When working with adult learners it is important I am conscious of the impact I as a person can have on my learners, I need to be aware of my own beliefs and ensure they do not generate conflict. I also need to be careful not to make assumptions as this can be detrimental to learning, this can be particularly damaging and lead to a breakdown in trust which can ultimately result in a loss of confidence in the learner. In my role as a teacher another aspect of my character I need to be aware of is my personal behaviour, I must ensure I am always fair and even tempered when facing learners. Failure to do this could lead to a breakdown in the relationship which may have taken a lot of time and effort to establish. As a teacher I teach Functional Skills (FS) in English, Mathematics and ICT. Working in FE it is vitally important to be as up to date and competent in all three subjects as I can be because my learners have already completed schooling to some degree. I may have learners who have a better understanding in some areas than I do, it is here that I can identify skills which need to be developed and added to my RLJ. At this stage I would also add this information to my skills and knowledge audit where I could set short, medium and long term goals for my own learning. These goals need to be constantly revised to identify my strengths and areas which require development, I have recently completed Literacy at level 3 including a portfolio and test. Improvement in numeracy is ongoing but the area I have identified as requiring more work is ICT, reflecting on time spent with learners has shown me I need to update myself and attempt to stay as current as possible in this subject. My learners are of a generation where ICT has been part of their general education and computers have been a part of their daily lives, in contrast to them I am of a generation who have had to change and adapt to a new and ever developing technology. Having identified areas for my own development within my role as a teacher and a company requirement, it as always proves difficult to plan and rectify these learning needs within my working day and I often have to work on these on my on time. I would always strive to be as a minimum one level higher qualified than my learners and as stated earlier this is all part of my expected development as a teacher. Another major aspect of my role is as an assessor for NVQ’s in engineering at level 2 and 3, here I have a responsibility to maintain a high level of competency within this sector. I can achieve this in some different ways such as reading journals, attending seminars, and speaking with the most up to date instructors within the military environment which I work in. Once again the opportunity to converse with my team mates is a fantastic tool where the sharing of information gained ensures we are all fully conversant with any changes in this specialist area, this can be done informally or formally in team or standardisation meetings. In my own CPPD it is vitally important to maintain an ongoing log of peer reviews, OLT’s, my own growth and development and experiences in my RLJ. CPPD should have an impact on my professional practice, this would be as a consequence of identifying any further learning and development needs to ensure my level of professionalism is maintained at as high a standard as possible. All of this information is extremely valuable and can be utilised when preparing my CPD. Bibliography: Brookfield, S.D (1995) Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Hillier, Y (2002) Reflective Teaching in Further and Adult Education. London: Continuum Books Perls, Fredrick. S (1976) Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. California: Julian Press Peters, J.M (1994) Instructors as Researchers-and-Theorists: Faculty Development in a Community College, in R. Bennand R Fieldhouse (eds) Training and Professional Development in Adult Continuing Education. CRCE, Exeter Reece, I and Walker, S (1997) Teaching Training and Learning. Great Britain: Business Education Publishers Limited