Getting the practical teaching element right
strongly for more formal agreements between training providers and placement
providers, in order to ensure higher and more consistent quality standards. It
also suggests a standardised form of agreement, and argues for working
towards agreement on costs and benefits of various organisational roles within
training, so that funding can be allocated more transparently.
In a context where the provision of teaching practice placements is carefully and
strategically planned, it should be possible to get beyond situations in which
prospective new teachers are expected to find their own placements in order to
access pre-service training. For those already working, and who use their own
classes as the locations for their teaching practice, this can provide them with a
range of different settings for teaching practice, and broaden the quality of
support they receive. Many such trainees work in organisations for which
education is not the prime focus and are without the capacity to provide teaching
practice support. Teaching practice is a matter for strategic planning and
organisation, and that individual training providers, even large ones, team up
with other organisations to improve consistency and quality.
The aim should be that agreed standards of support are made available to
trainees wherever they need to carry out their teaching practice, in a range of
different placements, and with gradually-reduced levels of direct support.
> Methods of assessing teaching practice
NRDC research with trainee teachers and teacher educators accentuates the fact
that teaching practice assessment is both formative and summative,
developmental and graded. It is carried out in four main ways:
• observations with feedback on trainees’ teaching
• reflective logs
• teaching portfolios
• written assignments.
Each of these transfer trainees’ classroom experience onto paper, translating
the process of learning how to plan, manage, check and develop learning in the
adult literacy, language and numeracy classroom into a concrete form that can
be discussed and developed individually and collaboratively.
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