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University of Central Lancashire - Case Study

 

Introduction and Background to the Project

The UCLAN Partnership set up a small working party in 2005 to develop a pilot Individual Learning Plan (ILP) document that would be generic to all of the colleges in the partnership and be given to the next intake of students for Full-Time Pre-service and Part-Time In-service Teacher Education programmes - CertEd / PGCE (Post Compulsory). All programme leaders were issued with documents for all of their students and approximately 350+ students were given the pilot ILP. Although the ILP was expected to be used as part of the teacher education programmes and fitted into the Portfolio of Personal Achievement (POPA) folder, there was initially a perception that it was ‘extra’ to their programme files; this is borne out by comments from both students and tutors.

 

Conceptual Framework

Equipping our Teachers for the Future: Reforming Initial Teacher Training for the Learning and Skills Sector (DfES, 2005) is about more than developing specific skills; it is also about creating a sense of professionalism. In the post-compulsory sector, particularly for in-service teachers in training, we need to promote acceptance of the profession of teaching as at least equal to that which trainees feel is their own vocational and occupational profession. Before entering their teacher education programme, many of these professionals were unaware that there was such a body of knowledge about teaching and learning. In teacher education there is rightly a great deal of emphasis on teaching and learning and creating a positive student experience. Trainees are taught how to become effective and creative teachers, how to reflect on their practice in order to become more innovative in the classroom. This is no less important for them as teaching professionals as it is for their own learners. Teacher educators have a complex role of teaching about teaching and learning and also modelling good practice themselves.

 

Key idea
"We wanted to develop an ILP which recognises that personal development is a gestalt of ways of learning and is certainly part of a life-long process. Throughout our lives learning occurs in a multitude of ways; all of them contribute to our personal development. Planning, Action and Recognising Achievement (PARA) is part of that."

 

Prior to the pilot materials being sent out it was decided by the Scheme Management Team to conduct an evaluation into their impact and quality as an ILP tool. As the pilot territory was so large (16 different FE colleges) it was felt that a statistically significant picture could be ascertained which would be recognised as valid by the whole partnership. The pilot materials were very basic but provided a baseline assessment of a process in action.

 

• The main question was: ‘Does this tool work in the way that we intend?’
• A subsidiary question was: ‘How can we make it better?’

 

Attached to this evaluation brief were related issues:

 

• The HR interface with Teacher Education
• Recruitment, retention and achievement on the Teacher Education Programmes.

 

These two issues are dealt with in the main evaluation report of this project.

 

The evaluation encompassed all of the partnership colleges spanning a geographical area of some 3,000 square miles. This mainly qualitative research took six months and included new and existing students to the teacher education programmes CertEd and PGCE (Post Compulsory).

 

‘This data capture phase was completed over a number of weeks allowing for learner reflection and consideration of the issues on which the methodology focused. The extended period of this data collection period, given the number of replies, proved extremely useful in terms of results from learners and their consideration of and reflection on the whole ITT, ILP and (Personal Development Profile)PDP process. In sum, this section of the final Delphi report reflects the responses of individual members of the ITT course from a major provider of ITT in the North West of the United Kingdom (UK). Furthermore, the length and depth of the study provide a clear indicator of what is perhaps the most significant issue for this investigation, this being the learner’s reaction, response and gained knowledge from a course specifically designed to aid their progress as an effective teacher in whatever their specialised subject area.’ (From Delphi 2)