A guide for literacy, numeracy and ESOL teacher educators
has also been used for literacy and numeracy by providers in London (LSU 2006).
Recent research carried out by the University of Plymouth (Burghes 2006) used a
similar model of collaborative teaching practice working in groups, and found
parallel advantages. The Plymouth evaluation concluded that ‘the model
represented a real enhancement in the quality of initial teacher education (ITE),
particularly for the first teaching placement for trainees’, and that it established
strong links between theory and practice.
In this model trainees get feedback from both the trainer and their peers and all
the trainees can contribute to collaborative formative discussions on the basis of
shared experience with a known group of learners. Trainees benefit from co-
planning the teaching practice with their peers and their trainers. A key
advantage of the training group model is that trainees can work together on
planning with the same students in mind. One trainer commented on their own
experience of adopting this model:
‘Previously where people were out their in their own workplaces and coming
into the course, in response to a suggestion for a particular learning activity,
they'd say: "oh, that wouldn't work in my situation or with my learners”; with
training groups this resistance never happened again, because you've got a
shared group of learners, you are doing collaborative planning. And you can
support trainees in trying out approaches they feel uncomfortable with.'
In this model, the trainees learn from watching each other; they develop ways of
working collaboratively and offering mutual support. It is also possible for the
trainer to model techniques with the training group and for the trainees to
observe more experienced teachers teaching the group. Again, as this is shared
experience it lends far greater focus to the group feedback discussions and can
be drawn on in the input sessions enhancing the link between theory and
practice. This link works in both directions. In formative feedback discussions it
is possible to refer to a taught session to illustrate or elicit a point.
One trainer described an example of how she was able to use the content of a
taught session to revisit and clarify the issues around an activity used with
beginner readers:
‘I can remember observing someone doing a language experience activity and
she was really getting into a tangle and getting stuck and as soon as we sat
down to reflect on it I was able to say "do you remember when we looked at it in