Learning from colleagues

Over the last few weeks colleagues have been giving seminars as part to the Cert Ed programme. I had the privilege of being invited into two of the seminars, and although on quite separate topics, key skills and community building, there was a common a theme which bound them together, that it, sharing best practice.

Certainly, the message underpinning the key skills presentation was the need to colleagues to work together, as best practice tended to suggest that key skills were best delivered in an integrated fashion. Subject tutors and key skills working together to ensure that our students saw the relevance and need for acquire those literacy and numeracy skills. We already do this highly effectively in some parts of the college and we need to look on how we can build this.

Indeed, building on what already works is an integral of community building. Hopefully, the 2007-08 academic year we see a focus on community building through a number of processes which will focus on developing notions of best practice, and how that can be shared, implemented and its impact then assessed. This will be both exciting and significant as it will give us opportunities to learn from one another.

I certainly learnt much from those colleagues who presented his or her Cert Ed seminars, and I thank them for that.

Gary

2 comments:

Unknown said...

It is a pity that we do not have a more reliable measure of 'success' in teaching keyskills than the results from the national tests, because although passing these may be of value for some students,success at levels 1 and 2 is largely unrelated to whether or not the students have gained and learnt to apply the skills that they require for their vocation. The more emphasis we place on test results, the less we will be able to integrate keyskills in a meaningful way. Cramming for tests can produce excellent statistics, but it is not good education.

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