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City Lit with Kensington and Chelsea College - Case study

 

 

A pilot model for delivering generic and subject specific mentor support in Adult and Community Learning

 

Key idea
"The aim of our project was to develop a mentoring programme appropriate for the adult and community (ACL) sector. The programme included both subject-specific and generic mentoring. We piloted a training programme for experienced teachers in two colleges, the work-based learning (WBL) sector and voluntary organisations. The project also explored the setting up of a brokerage system for subject-specific mentors."

 

Background

The Initial Teacher Training (ITT) research project at City Lit and Kensington & Chelsea College ran a small-scale pilot mentoring programme appropriate for the adult and community sector. The project ran from January 2005 to March 2006.

 

City Lit (CL) is an adult education provider in Central London, offering a large, mainly non-accredited, liberal adult education programme. Kensington and Chelsea (KCC) College is a further education (FE) college for adults based in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, West London.

 

Both colleges:

• have strong links and partnerships with local ACL and WBL providers
• deliver ITT for Post-Compulsory Education and Training
• have formal and/or informal mentoring programmes
• have made a commitment to coaching/mentoring as a staff development tool for their own staff and for those working in small to medium enterprises (SMEs).

 

Key elements of the programme

The project was organised in two strands:

• Strand 1 aimed to train 12 very experienced teachers in the two colleges as subject specialist mentors for new or less-experienced teachers attending teacher-training courses in the organisations.
• Strand 2 was to offer the same programme to 12 experienced staff and/or managers working in the voluntary or work-based learning sector. These were not necessarily subject specialists.

 

In each strand, a 25-hour training programme was offered free to staff, leading to an Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) Level 3 Certificate in Coaching. As part of the programme, participants were required to complete up to 10 hours of mentoring with a less-experienced member of staff in their subject area, and to attend a final evaluation session reviewing the success of the programme. They received payment for this as part of the pilot.

 

Additionally, the project set up a database of trained and experienced mentors available to the ACL and WBL sectors to support their staff, with a view to developing a ‘brokerage’ service for subject-specialist mentors.