PTLLS Essay One 27 Jan 13 1

Essay One

“Explain the role and responsibilities of a teacher and the relationship between different professionals in the lifelong learning”

Overview of teaching or instruction within education, teachers facilitate student learning, often in a school or academy or perhaps in another environment such as outdoors. A teacher who teaches on an individual basis may be described as a tutor.
The objective is to teach through either an informal or formal approach to learning, including a course of study and lesson plans that will teach skill, knowledge and/or thinking skills. Different approaches to teaching are often referred to as pedagogy (1). When deciding what teaching method teacher will use, they will consider students' background knowledge, environment, and their learning goals as well as standardised curriculum as to determined by the relevant awarding body or awarding body. Some teachers place learning outside of the classroom by accompanying students on educational trips. The increasing use of technology, specifically the rise of the internet over the past decade including physical development with Ipads and touch screen devices, has begun to shape the way teachers approach their roles in the classroom and even the way they interact with learning.
Teaching using pedagogy also involves assessing the educational levels of the learners on a particular skill. Understanding the pedagogy to assess the students in a classroom involves using differentiated instruction as well as supervision to meet the needs of all learners’ in the classroom. Pedagogy can be thought of in two manners. Firstly, teaching itself can be taught in many different ways, hence, using pedagogy of teaching styles. Secondly, the pedagogy of the learners comes into play when a teacher assesses the pedagogic diversity of their learners and differentiates for the individual learners to appropriate level.
I feel the most significant difference between primary school and secondary school teaching is the relationship between teachers and children. In secondary schools they will be taught by different subject specialists each session during the week and may have 10 or more different teachers. In most In primary schools each class has a teacher who stays with them for most of the week and will teach them the whole of the curriculum. The relationship between children and their teachers tends to be closer in the primary school, were as in secondary school that closeness doesn’t really extend to all the teachers and doesn’t really form that close bond as I would call it, “Apple and Gift” (A+G) for primary, “Greif and Agro (G+A) for secondary.

The examples I shall be using will be Teacher, Trainer, Assessor, vocational trainer

Firstly the responsibilities of a teacher or lecturer is to check preparation before commencing any teaching activity and last minute photocopying of any recourses they may need or require. They then teach their lesson as per the schedule or the timetable.
Break – check any e-mails that will need attention then take the second part of the lesson. Once the second part of the lesson has been complete break and completes any administration that will need to be completed. Break for lunch and discuss with a colleague any discipline problems that might of occurred from the morning, finish any other admin and prepare for next lessons for the afternoon sessions, also any other enquires from new work colleague or sick notes that might have been handed in mark register then teach lesson, after the lesson there will be an afternoon break. Any tests for reflective activities should be handed or ready to be handed to the last part of the lesson. They will finish this lesson and now the job of Admin will start, reviewing learner’s progress and my share with colleagues or recording documents for this to reflect on what went well and what could be changed. Check for any syllabus updates or Ofsted updates

The responsibilities of a trainer is to check on what will be trained who will be trained and how many will be trained, he will make sure he has all the relevant training material he will need to give out as handouts he will then set up the room for how or what will be trained, for example if the trainer was doing first aid training they would make sure there was enough room for the resuscitation dolls to be worked on and enough room for simulated exercises. Book the delegates in or signing in sheet, the trainer then will discuss the domestics with the delegate (fire, health and safety procedures etc). The trainer will then give the delegates the aims and objectives of the course with outcomes to be reached and the time of who, when, where and why so everyone will have an detailed account what will be happening. The trainer will deliver the planned training and complete with checking the understanding what the lesson has covered and to check with the learners what they had understood the lesson was, this is then evaluated and a record is kept of what was good about the session and what was not so good about the session and what could be made better.

An Assessor will still start most of his days, checking their diary to the company, what location they will be travelling to, a learners file might be required depending what notes had been made by Admin, they will arrive at a workplace and sign in, he will probably speak to the line manager of the learner in the company about any issues or anything that might of come up in conversation from the last visit. The Assessor will then meet with the learner and review what they had agreed to do, if it is a first visit, mainly instructions of role and responsibilities but an action plan would be agreed. The assessor will go through any evidence the learner may have had to gather during the last visit, the assessor then will evidence reference the learners work in against the standards, the learn will be encouraged to actually look at what they had produced and reference it in to their portfolio so they can see what standards will be met and where. The assessor may (if they had planned to do so) make observations of the learner actually doing some real work or in their work role, this will also be referenced in to their portfolio and from this an action plan will be generated for the next visit, this will be discussed.

A Vocational Trainer (VT) will be similar to an assessor but their role is slightly different, they will meet with a learner, who is more than likely to be unemployed, this learner has a rough idea what they would like to do, for example they maybe interested in something in IT, so the VT will have a bank of placements already to be filled and if they identify that a learner is suitable will place the learner in that environment, but VT will work with different training providers to help deliver a qualification to that learner, for example, if the learner in IT doesn’t have all the IT experience in that role, a cost effective way is send him/her on a bite size Comptia A+ course, which can be completed over the interweb or at a training centre. The learner will also be expected to spend 1 day in a job search session delivered either by the VT’s organisation or an organisation, which has been contracted with. The VT will then visit the learner, at their placement and review their progress and also talk to the line manager about their progress, this is documented to ensure an accurate learning objectives are being carried out. The VT will also visit the job search tutor and the training provider to ensure the learner is also progressing, finally the VT will review the time sheets submitted by the learner to ensure that they are attending in line with the agreement set out in the objectives as laid out on the induction day the learner attended.

The challenges

The 4 different role I have touched on are all learning activities just in a slightly different way, vocational learning present a problem logistically as your captive audience is out in work places that could be some distances instead of being with 1 building. From an assessor point of view the learners are more prone to forget some tasks as they are in work mode for their placement, so a strict discipline is best maintain at all times.

A teacher and trainer they are very much of a captured audience, they have a classroom of people for which they have to be the entertainers and with that, their lessons of content have to be of interest to them and give value.

The amount of paperwork with the Vocational side can be daunting just keeping it up to date can be challenging, so it is vital that good support from admin is there and giving that support

(1) Pedagogics as a System Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz, 1848, Translated 1872 by Anna C. Brackett, R.P. Studley Company http://www.archive.org/stream/pedagogicsasasy00bracgoog#page/n4/mode/2up