Getting the practical teaching element right: A guide for literacy, numeracy and ESOL teacher educators

A guide for literacy, numeracy and ESOL teacher educators

Partnerships are critical in developing and maintaining the supply of teaching
practice placement settings: if all the training providers and all the organisations
that employ teachers are partners, then a collective approach to ensuring supply
and quality can be taken, based on the strengths, capacities and specialisms of
each partner.

Close partnerships between individual teacher education providers (for example,
HEIs) and nearby providers of learning such as colleges or adult and community
learning (ACL) organisations can create the possibility of training run jointly with
direct input from both full-time teacher educators and practising teachers, for
the benefit of trainees, trainers, and practising teachers. For one experienced
teacher educator, having experienced and/or practising teachers involved is
essential:

‘...the integration of theory and practice, that's absolutely key for our course,
and everything we do . all the staff on the course are experienced literacy or
ESOL teachers, with many years of practice behind them.'

Partnerships including a wide range of organisations within the sector are
particularly useful in providing a supply of opportunities for observing
experienced teachers at work in a range of contexts, and for building some
experience on different contexts. The RETRO report also points out how
partnerships at the regional level can be effective mechanisms for discussion
and decisions between a wide range of stakeholder organisations on issues such
as minimum quality standards and common admissions criteria.

A well-developed example of such a partnership is in the London region, in
which workforce planning, marketing campaigns for training programmes,
handling enquiries, initial advice and guidance, admissions procedures, mentor
selection and training, and the organisation of teaching practice placements are
all to some extent centralised through the LSU. The LSU also provides and
maintains the Talent website offering news, job advertisements, learning
materials, and information about professional development opportunities. The
LSU has a regional placement development manager, whose role is to monitor
and chart the availability of placements for Skills for Life teacher training
programmes across the London region, to support the mentors where necessary
by developing training programmes, and to develop new placements, particularly
in shortage areas.

The LSU report on quality assurance in teaching practice in London argues

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