Getting the practical teaching element right
the session, what were we focusing on?” And she made the connections
herself. But if I hadn't been in that input session, I wouldn't have been able to
do that.'
This example also illustrates a point to be returned to later, of the importance of
the size of the teacher training team, and/or of the connections between a wider
team in ensuring integration of theory and practice.
Within the group teaching practice model, teacher trainers can set practice
teaching tasks to ensure trainees try out a range of methods and cover a range
of subject knowledge. They can also give observation tasks to the whole group
and focus on this in the feedback session.
The group practice model also has the advantage of saving on travel time for
trainers to observe their trainees, with a group working together rather than
visiting trainees spread in placements over what can easily be a large
geographical area.
It is rare for learners to have problems with the training groups, but sometimes
trainees do:
‘There are sometimes trainees who can't cope with it, who find the whole
process in front of peers and then discussing and evaluating in front of peers
too much, though they are usually people who in the end, for one reason or
another, turn out not to be suited to teaching....it doesn't work in teaching if you
want to go and do it with nobody looking or if you aren't able to get into those
reflective, self-evaluative discussions without seeing it as a criticism of you,
rather than as a development.'
In this sense, training groups have the further advantage of helping those
trainees who may not be suited for teaching to find this out sooner rather than
later. This finding is echoed by the Plymouth research which also includes as an
advantage of this model:
‘Trainee teachers quickly came to realise whether or not they were suited to a
career in teaching.' (Burghes 2006)
The centres using this group approach were typically working with a small and
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