Árbol de decisión

There was less variation of NQF level between the teachers’ teaching qualifications. Half the teachers had a Certificate of Education and 6 had education degrees or PGCE qualifications. The only teacher with a lower teaching qualification was T17 who held two Bachelor degrees and a PhD in non-teaching subjects and had concluded there was little advantage to gaining higher teaching qualifications. There did not appear to be a correlation between teaching qualification and teaching style. T16 with a degree taught in a problem solving style while T1 and T14 also with degrees taught in a ‘procedural’ style.

Perhaps of more significance was the teachers’ reaction to their initial teacher training (ITT) courses. When asked how well they felt their training had prepared them for their teaching role all but T2, the most recently qualified, responded negatively.

T1: I don’t think it did, really!

T4: To be honest, not a great deal.

T5: The Cert Ed, [shrugs shoulders] yea I suppose it did what it said on the tin [everyone smiles]. But as far as classroom management it’s a non- starter. Absolute non-starter.

All of the teachers, including T2, felt that they had gained more by being in the classroom and emphasized the practical experience of teaching.

T1: my teaching skills have improved, more through experience and discussion

T4: The most important things I got out of it were the teaching practice

T14: I think I got more experience when I got out in the classroom.

T17: To be honest my experience prepared me more than the formal qualification, but obviously you have to have the qualification. So from my point of view there was an element of jumping through hoops. Yeah, there was a large element of jumping through hoops.

Teaching skills were described, either implicitly or explicitly, as gained through classroom experience and ‘trail and error’. One greenhorn teacher [T1] went as far as to suggest that teaching qualities were within one and not learnt. Many of the participants perceived courses, especially the lower level courses, to be

helpful for orientation to the teaching community of practice by providing understanding of jargon, but felt they did not necessarily provide teaching skills.

T1: I can speak the language now and that – that //helps me to fit in//[quick] but I don’t think that my ………… teaching improved because of the structure of the lessons that we were having

T6: It gets you in the way of teaching and thinking about teaching and assessment and [short pause] delivery but >

T14: The 730 prepared us with the lingo, it got you practising standing up in front of a group of people, which I found to begin with a little bit intimidating. So that was nice, but the actual teaching I think I learnt more once I got my own class and interacted with learners.

Some teachers felt these types of course to be more practical and therefore of more value than higher-level more theoretical courses.

T3: I think the OCR qualifications, the TTAIT and the TCOS, were absolutely brilliant. The Cert Ed more theoretical and although it makes you think about some issues I think a lot of it wasn’t relevant to anything I’ve ever done. Subsequently, the OCR qualifications more practical and I think without them I would have found it much harder.

T16: 730 asked a lot of you, //it asked me to solve problems as I went along// [bangs on table with finger to emphasize words] That was a good preparation for what I was to do later.

But many of the courses, especially the higher-level courses were criticised for not providing the ‘right’ skills, although descriptions of deficiencies could be contradictory for example T8 felt there was too little attention on course administration while T14 felt there was too much. For many workshop teachers

criticism stemmed from a perception that courses were oriented towards whole group teaching and so did not address their personal teaching needs.

T6: It’s not really designed for facilitating classes like we do. It’s more the direct tutor lead teaching.

T7: we do two different sorts of classroom. We don’t teach standing in front of the classroom. So that sort of teaching I’ve never had the chance to put into practice,

This latter type of criticism hints at a lack of engagement with theory; these teachers seemed not to apply theory to their different context. Only T2 and T16, who were newly qualified or worked as a teacher trainer respectively, directly related their teaching to theory. The majority of the teachers appeared dismissive of theory. For some it was because they felt themselves to be practitioners and perceived theory to be difficult and not relevant

T4: I’m not a theoretical person I’m a doer. I suppose from - I like the doing of it,

T15: [sigh] I’m not one to talk in long words or anything like that so I found the jargon, the terminologies and things like that, found that quite hard going.

But for T9 who trained before beginning teaching the problem was that she felt she lacked the practical experience to be able to understand the theory.

T9: an awful lot of the theory, I’m not sure because I knew so little about teaching, that it made that much sense.

When asked if she had considered returning to a theoretical course now she was experienced she replied that she could see no reason too, perhaps again

T16 took a dual approach to training. He argued that good teachers could provide trainee teachers with a ‘superb training’ experience but that the educational process could be too concerned with attainment targets and standards which he called a ‘press this button and get your money back’ approach which did not necessarily provided teachers with the right kinds of experiences to become good teachers.

T16: you will end up with is something which looks good, maybe even sounds good, maybe even gets more results [laughs] but at the end of the day - you know in terms of actual number of people passing certificates - but doesn’t actually produce good teachers.

T16 favoured practical problem solving activity which he felt was offered to him in his initial low level teacher training experiences.

Teachers’ professional training is not located solely in ITT but is ongoing through CPD courses. The teachers were also asked about their CPD opportunities over the previous two years.