VIEWS & OPINION
Rising to the challenge of holistic PGCE training: the role of outdoor learning
Comment by MIKE SIMMONS, Deputy Director at the Arthur Terry National Teaching School
Wise heads, young shoulders
Comment by FELICIA JACKSON, Chair of the Learn2Think Foundation
At a time when the political climate seems to be more about point-scoring than problem solving we need, more than ever, to pay attention to and promote children’s understanding of difference and accepting of diversity.
I work at the Arthur Terry National Teaching School (ATNTS), where we achieve consistently high academic results and I believe this is because of our innovative approach. We have 1700 pupils including a large sixth form of 400, and have been an academy and a national teaching school since 2012. Our Post Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE), which includes Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), runs across 12 subject routes. This mainly school-based method of training teachers is an initiative carried out at ATNTS in conjunction with Birmingham City University and was started some five years ago. We admit around 50 student trainees annually. I believe that it is important to provide opportunities for trainee teachers to really think about what a teacher is or could be as there is so much more to becoming a teacher than subject knowledge, good organisation and developing strong pupil-teacher relationships included. We have taken pupils on Outward Bound® residential courses for over 20 years. Annually our Year 7 pupils are offered the opportunity to attend a weekend residential in December at The Outward Bound Trust’s Centre in Aberdovey and around 150 out of approximately 240 pupils come along. I believe the residentials are an important part of the school year and promote behavioural change and development in both our pupils and trainee teachers. Increasing aspiration, motivation, improving mental strength, gaining confidence and self-belief are just some benefits. Since 2015, PGCE trainee teachers are given the opportunity to attend Outward Bound residentials alongside qualified teaching staff so they can work with pupils in an outdoor learning environment. It helps the holistic development of the trainees and contributes to their professional development. Having selected PGCE trainees along also provides an additional layer of support to both staff and pupils.
This helps with succession planning for future trips and there are cost advantages, important in the current straitened financial climate. 4-6 PGCE trainees work alongside 6 experienced teachers so costs of staff cover are minimised. We build in an added layer of mentoring and safeguarding training and trainee teachers act as coaches to pupils on residentials, rather than being there simply for their own professional development. And because PGCE trainees must prove they have met eight teaching standards, including ‘fulfilling wider professional responsibilities’, active involvement during these residential helps them to meet this requirement.
The world is constantly evolving and consequently the social, cultural and environmental challenges that society faces is forever changing. The role of Outward Bound residentials for trainees is important in enabling them to create authentic relationships with pupils in a short period of time. Trainees develop a sense of independence in a supportive environment as well as appreciating and respecting the natural world. We find it imperative to drive improvements for the school and the teaching school by crafting a system whereby every pupil, PGCE trainee and staff member has the potential to achieve regardless of the social and cultural challenges they may face or be blessed with.
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www.education-today.co.uk
At the Learn2Think Foundation we recently ran our inaugural Young Journalist Prize, in conjunction with The Week Junior and the Guardian Foundation. The children chose to write about what mattered most to them and entries covered issues ranging from bullying, homelessness, sexism, racism in football, tolerance, the environment and more. And many had a directness and clarity of thought that some adults seem to have missed. One boy wrote: “When I see someone wearing different clothes or speaking a different language, I don’t want to focus on that but whether the person is a nice and kind person. That is far more important to me.”
It appears that attacking someone because of their race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, or gender is increasingly acceptable in the world of adults - if it wins you a point in an argument, or provides someone else to blame for a problem. Former US President GW Bush, when recently talking about politics, warned that “bigotry seems emboldened”. In the UK, recent data issued during Hate Crime Awareness Week showed police recorded 80,393 offences where hate was deemed a motivating factor in 2016/17. That’s a staggering increase of 17,875 recorded crimes in England and Wales. A Home Office comment said, “The increase over the last year is thought to reflect both a genuine rise in hate crime around the time of the EU referendum and following the Westminster Bridge terrorist attack.”
The challenge that we face in education is that hate often arises from an environment where fear and inequality - in economics, education or power - are what drive behaviour. It is critical to provide children with an educational framework which enables them to stand up for themselves while accepting others. It’s also worth remembering that we can underestimate children and that they are capable of understanding the issues and coming up with their own ways of addressing them. An eight-year-old girl eloquently addressed what we need to do to prevent the blatant misogyny evidenced by Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behaviour:
‘We all have to play a part. Schools should not accept sexism and should take action to stop it. Teachers should take it seriously… Everybody should be taught about sexism and gender stereotypes, so we realise that some of the things we take for granted in our society are actually wrong and unequal… And everyone should stand up and object when they see or hear sexism, even if it’s scary. We only change things when enough people stand up and say “that isn’t OK”. ‘
The winners of the Journalism competition will be announced on Tolerance Day 2017, the 16th November. There is also still time to sign-up at
www.toleranceday.org to use lesson plans, assemblies, poster and books to use to mark the day and enhance children’s understanding of each other, and how to assess what they’re told using the Truth Detectives.
November 2017
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