Pontydysgu - Bridge to Learning Pontydysgu.org

I have always been interested in the potential of work based learning. Although much of what I have written about is informal learning, formal work based learning programmes also seem to me to be important. Apprenticeship is probably the largest such organised form of work based learning. And, if speakers at last weeks INAP conference in Vienna are to be believed, apprenticeship programmes seem alive and kicking. Indeed, some countries like Italy, have witnessed a dramatic increase in apprentice numbers in the last five years.That is not to say that apprenticeship training is without problems - especially in those countries which have developed mass university education, like the UK, apprenticeship lacks prestige. Drop out rates are sometimes alarmingly high. Quality of apprenticeships may vary. School or workshop based training may lack authenticity.Apprenticeship programmes are probably strongest in the German speaking countries. In Germany and Switzerland some two thirds of all young people embark on apprenticeship training, in Austria around 40 per cent do so. In Germany and Switzerland occupations prepared for by apprenticeship cover all economicsectors i.e. in craft, industry and trade, liberal professions, and services. In Austria, apprenticeship prepares predominantly for artisan-type occupations and full-time higher level vocational colleges prepare for associate professional and technical occupations. Apprenticeship in the German-speaking dual-system countries is structured by the concept of Beruf and apprenticeship training can only be provided in a recognized occupation. The Beruf or professional occupation is defined by a coherent set of skills that combine together to form both an occupational and a social identity (Steedman, 2005).A major threat to the future of the apprenticeship programmes -and one that is not limited to the German speaking countries is a lack of training places. Moral responsibility to provide training opportunties is no longer sufficient motivation for employers who are concerned at the cost of training. Of course one answer coudl be large state subsidies but this seems hardly realistic.On my way back from Vienna I talked to Lars Heinemann from the University of Bremen who is working on a project called IBB 2010. Lars has just completed a major study into apprenticeship (I will provide link as soon as I have one). Essentially, the IBB project has developed a complex statistical tools for looking at the cost and quality of apprenticeship. Initial results suggest vast differences in the cost. Cost is far lower in the craft trades. The major variable appears to be whether training takes place in a training workshop or directly in the workplace. Where training takes place in the workplace, apprentices contribute more to the production process (or services) and thus the overall cost to the employer is lower. Now the project is looking at what practices could be transferred - both to improve quality and to reduce costs.I think this is important work. Only last week I lambasted UK prime minister Browns announcement that Mac Donalds amongst others are to become awarding bodies for qualifications gained in their workplaces. the reason I guess for this is to address precisely the same problem that faces the German speaking countries - a lack of willingness on the part of employers to provide training. But I think the German answer sounds potentially much more appealing in maintaining broader training programmes and refusing to let companies take over the curriculum.

The first post of the year. And practice seems as good as any a subject for short entry. For the last couple of hours I have been searching the internet for examples of appropriate and effective (or good, but I never liked that term) practice in blended learning. It is for a European funded project producing a guide for teachers on blended learning. And although the subject may seem a little old fashioned for UK based e-learning researchers, in many European countries this is a new concept. I also like the project because of its focus on pedagogy and pedagogic practice rather than on technology and platforms as is all too common.

It should be easy, I thought. Most e-learning in the UK is, in reality, a mix of different modes and forms of learning. But it was to prove not so - or perhaps my search strategies were uninspired. Whilst it is relatively easy to find research articles about blended learning - and tehir are a number of handbooks etc. these tend to focus on rubriucs of curriculum and technology design. It is much haredr to find anything which really dives into the practice of deisgn and delivery of blended learning.

I started wondering why. Perhaps it is because we still seem to have problems in evaluating effective and approariate learning using technologies. Is it because we do not know what we are really looking for? Is it because we have inadequate understanding of what makes for effective learning? Or is it because we do not understand the processes of inetraction in teaching and learning.

I was talking about this with my friend and colleague Jenny Hughes. Jenny has worked for many years in training teachers and trainers. We were discussing the difficulty in recognising and researching effective teaching practices. In truth we know little about what actually happens behind the closed classroom door. Of course teachers and trainers exchange experiences - mostly, I suspect, through telling stories. Some teachers and trainers exchange materaisl they have found to be useful. We have some pretty good programmes for school managers. Yet we still have great difficulty in explaining what makes for effective teaching - even more so in passing that on to others. Indeed it sometimes seems that teacher training colleges teach everything else except how to teach. Jen and I went on to talk about how we might design a research project to identify effective teaching practice based on observation and developing shared metadata for describing practice.

More on this next week. And I will give you my list of examples of effective and appropriate practice when I finish it. In the meantime, if you have any examples, I would be very happy to hear from you.

Happy new year.

I am increasingly interested in issues of quality in teaching and learning. So this announcement of the scrapping of public sector targets reported in the Guardian has to be welcomed. It is very clear that targets do not work as a measure of quality…….has the UK government finally realised it?

Mr Burnham said: “We will avoid wherever possible the more crude approach of setting a one-size-fits-all target that is dropped down from on high … The direction of travel is for public services to look and feel differently in different parts of the country. We want them to face downwards and outwards, having a dialogue with their local communities rather than with the centre.”

Thats fine but I’m not in the least but sure what looking downwards and outwards mean. Does this mean being imposed top-down? And what form does such a dialogue mean. I fear this may be just more focus groups. And that equally does not guarantee quality

Technorati Tags: quality

I spent a tedious morning yesterday subtitling a video into five different languages (and in the course of it discovering every bug in i-Movie). To entertain myself I was listening to BBC Radio 5 - mainly because I’m thinking about chat show formats and their applicability to simultaneous on-line teaching and learning.

And on came this fascinating report.

“Five Live Report: ‘Bullied Teachers’

Teachers have always had to face cruel gossip from kids, but until very recently the trouble has usually been contained within the school building. Now - with the advent of the video mobile phone and websites like Bebo.com and ratemyteacher.com, they are finding themselves publicly humiliated and even falsely accused of sexual impropriety. Reporter James Silver looks at the internet phenomenon encouraging school children to grade their teachers and talks to those in the profession at the receiving end of malicious comments and allegations.”

The big discussion was over the web site, ratemyteacher.com. Students create their accounts and are able to rate their teacher. There is a flag for alerting to inappropriate content which the site managers say will then be taken down and investigating. One cause of controversy is whether this does happen and if so, how long it takes. Clearly the process is not as effective as the service claims.

The second, and here the teachers unions in the UK were most unhappy, was over the stress it can cause to teachers. My fear is that students are probably quite fair - teachers are unlikely to be stressed by unwarranted invective but may well get stressed by learning the truth of how students perceive their teaching.

There appears little effort by the (commercial) service developers to educate students in providing constructive feedback, neither is their a mechanism for discourse between teachers and students.

Given that such services will flourish in the future, education providers are going to have to rethink how students can be involved in the development, design and management to teaching and learning. It is only by giving learners a voice (and by listening to that voice) that constructive and inclusive approaches to quality (for this is - albeit crude) a quality system) can be developed.

NB. The programme is available to listen to over the internet for the next six days. But you will have to listen tot he whole programme and I think this report occurs about half way through. What a pity that the BBC does not make this sort of content available as a download for remixing - this would be a great piece of content for starting a discussion with learners over the use of the internet and quality systems.

Technorati Tags: quality2.0, social software

I am still at the OECD meeting on Open Educational Resources.

There is a recurring discourse on quality. How do we ‘measure’ or represent quality. Many of the initiatives presented here are from higher education. Higher Education has a tradition of peer review and projects such as the Merlot repository are working to extend the peer review process to Open Resources.

In vocational education this would be a non starter. We do not have the resources, infrastructure or traditions and cultures for such a process to work. But even in Higher Education I am unsure such a process really can work. Who chooses the ‘expert’ reviewers? On what basis? What are the criteria for review?

More fundamentally the quality of materials depends to a considerable extent on the context of use. What is of high quality for me may not be for another user. Surely we need to find some way of representing users in any quality mechanism. That could be as simple as star rating systems. However, I think we need a more sophisticated mechanism which can capture the context of use as well as a quality rating - and ways of displaying such distributed metadata.

In other words - we need to build / adapt social social software for developing, sharing and re-purposing open educational resources. If you are interested in this work, please get in touch.

Technorati Tags: OER, open_content, social software