You could use name cards or badges to help you and the other learners remember people’s names in the early stages. Alternatively, you could draw a seating plan and add the names of who sits where. However, this won’t help you if people move to different places. Using learners’ names as often as you can might help you to remember them.
Observing your learners’ body language will help you to see if they are not understanding something or not paying attention. You can then ask a question to refocus them. Don’t be afraid of regularly recapping points and repeating topics. Remember, you know your subject, but for your learners it’s probably the first time they have seen or heard anything about it.
If you are new to teaching, you may find you are teaching in the same way you were taught at school or college. This could have included lecturing, reading from a book, or copying information from a board which might not have been very effective for you. You won’t yet know all the other approaches and activities you could use to make learning interesting and engaging. As you become more experienced, your confidence will grow, and you will be able to experiment with different approaches. Not everything you do will suit all of your learners all of the time. However, if you plan effectively, and choose appropriate teaching and learning methods, you should ensure learning takes place.
If you are ever unsure of anything, make sure you ask someone you work with. You should never feel you are on your own. Teaching can sometimes be an isolated role depending where you work, and you might not always get the opportunity to meet with others regularly. However, there are professional networking sites such as LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) which have free discussion groups you could join. You could also keep in touch with your colleagues via email or social media.
Activity
How could you create a good first impression with your learners? What would influence this? For example, your own previous experience of attending a session, which was either good or bad.
The teaching, learning and assessment cycle
The teaching, learning and assessment cycle, as in Figure 1.1, is a systematic process which helps ensure your learners have a positive experience and are able to achieve their goals. The process can start at any stage of the cycle and keep on going; however, all stages should be addressed for learning to be effective. Quality assurance should take place continuously to ensure all aspects are being taught and assessed fairly and accurately (covered in Chapter 11). Don’t worry if what follows doesn’t make sense at the moment as it will be covered in detail throughout the book.
Figure 1.1 The teaching, learning and assessment cycle
Your role might follow the cycle, with all aspects focusing on the learner, and will briefly involve:
• identifying needs – finding out what your organisation’s, your own, and your potential learners’ needs are, finding out why learners are taking the programme and what their expectations are, carrying out initial and diagnostic assessments, agreeing individual learning plans, ensuring learners are capable of achieving their goals and progressing to their chosen destination
• planning learning – preparing schemes of work, session plans and materials to ensure you cover the requirements of the programme, liaising with others
• facilitating learning – teaching, training and facilitating learning using a variety of approaches, activities and resources to motivate, engage and inspire learners
• assessing learning – checking your learners have gained the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding at all stages throughout their time with you, using formal and informal types and methods of assessment
• evaluating learning – obtaining feedback from others, reflecting on your role, and all aspects involved with the learning process in order to make improvements.
Obtaining feedback from others, and evaluating your practice can also take place after each stage of the cycle. Running throughout the cycle is quality assurance. This is a system of monitoring all aspects which occur with learners from when they commence the course through to their completion. Good practice for all programmes is to include a system of internal quality assurance (IQA). This might be a formal requirement if you are teaching and assessing an accredited qualification. These are offered by awarding organisations (AO), who will issue a certificate to all successful learners. Depending upon which country you are in, this might be known as an awarding body or an examination board. The IQA process involves a colleague at your organisation monitoring and sampling aspects of everything you do. This will ensure you are being fair to all your learners, making correct decisions and following the relevant policies and procedures. If you are teaching towards an accredited qualification, there might also be an external quality assurance (EQA) system. This involves a person visiting from the organisation that awards the qualification, to ensure all staff are following the requirements correctly.
Most teachers follow the cycle from beginning to end; however, your job role might not require you to be involved with all of them. For example, you might not carry out the identifying needs stage as other staff within your organisation will do this. You will, however, need to liaise with them to obtain relevant information to help you plan your sessions. You might be training a member of staff in the workplace and only carry out the planning learning and facilitating learning stages, as someone else might assess their progress. Again, you would need to liaise with whoever else is involved with your learner to help support them adequately.
To teach effectively involves not only the approaches you use to teach your subject, i.e. discussions, group work and paired activities, but many other factors that go before and after the taught session. This includes:
• planning logically what you will cover during your sessions
• preparing your materials and resources
• assessing that learning has taken place
• giving feedback on progress and achievements
• keeping records and carrying out administrative duties
• evaluating your performance and the experiences your learners have had.
Never underestimate the amount of time you will need to dedicate to the role. You will need good time management skills to ensure you are well prepared and can give a good service to your learners.
Table 1.1 (on pages 38 and 39) lists examples of roles and responsibilities (in alphabetical order) which relate to the teaching, learning and assessment cycle. However, some people might consider a role to be a responsibility and vice versa, depending upon their job requirements. Don’t be daunted by the list, you might not need to carry out everything depending upon your job role.
Activity
Look at Table 1.1, make a note of which roles and responsibilities you consider to be the most important for a teacher to carry out. Why do you think this is? Do you think any of the responsibilities should be classed as a role, and vice versa? If you can, discuss this with another teacher and see if you agree or disagree. If you have a job specification, you could compare it to the list. Don’t worry if there are any aspects you are unsure of, they will be covered as you progress through the book.
