TROPIC training

Had a talk with Robin this morning about her plans of offering mentoring for new teachers around health and maintaining balance. This is something she's proposing as part of her LVT duties. She was thinking of proposing TROPIC training as part of her PD.

I feel that because we are moving in quite a different direction from Mark, that we're better off training our own people rather than sending any more to him. There's so much translation involved, and the current team has already invested a lot of energy in that. On the other hand I feel we're still a pretty long way off from having our own training program.

I guess another point is, we're not exactly inundated with requests for profiling now. Getting more people involved helps to spread the culture - but I think we're better off doing that by running more micro-skills sessions.

On that topic, Robin pointed out that she and Colleen have a lot to offer in terms of innovative facilitation techniques. I'm going to profile Colleen next week so will probably pick up on some of that - which could be incorporated into the revised micro-skills I'm thinking of.

We really need to get all of that basic stuff right before we can think about a fully-fledged training course.

We also need to think about some form of quality control. I don't think we need a two week course, but we don't want to be slap-dash about it either. Things for the team to consider.

update for February

At our meeting last Friday we talked about the direction of TROPIC and agreed the focus has to shift from behaviour management to teaching and learning strategies. We had some discussion about including teaching, learning and assessment strategies to meet audit requirements - basically looking at the big picture and assisting teachers with that. However, while that's very much needed it's too broad as a process for TROPIC which we agreed has to keep to the principle of a "snapshot in time" where observation and reflection take place.

Behaviour management still needs to be part of the picture as this is definitely an issue in many areas. We talked about David Merrill's model of "first principles of instruction" where teaching centres around a problem for learners to solve, progressing through the stages of activation, demonstration, application and integration. (Merrill's paper is at http://www.id2.usu.edu/Papers/5FirstPrinciples.PDF)

From our discussion we made some changes to the flow sheet. There will almost certainly be more changes to come, and to the frequency sheet as well.

An issue that came up in the meeting that we didn't have time to address, is a process for discipline procedures - that is a clear set of steps to follow. In particular we need to know what the duty of care is for under 18 year olds. I am looking into that to report back to the group. What I would like ideally is a concise one-page hand-out for teachers. I'm wading through the Student Information and Requirements document (41 pages) and will chase up anything I can't find in there.

At the next meeting I'd like to look at the micro-skills booklet. I've been thinking about whether we could incorporate some of the things that came out of the Larry Smith workshops a couple of years ago.

Finally, I did a profile on Monday of a very small group. Apparently my presence made the students quieter than usual... It was a diploma level class and I picked up a couple of things that might be worth adding to the frequency sheet - using examples, and keeping the discussion on track.

first workshop

Douglas and I ran a session with the Access Unit on Friday, giving an overview of the micro-skills and the TROPIC program. I felt it went pretty well.

We started by getting each person present (it was a small group) to give a brief description of their worst classroom management experience. Then we went through the micro-skills (took a bit longer than planned). Brief morning tea break, then a look at how the process works and what is on the sheets. For a wrap-up we asked for feedback on the program itself and on the presentation.

The main points were, that it's good to shift to more of a teaching/learning focus rather than the behaviour management per se; and that people who begin teaching with a Cert IV need a lot more support in how to teach.

We may get a chance to run a session with RATEP in coming weeks. I can't think of anything specific I would change in the presentation format - but personally I like to keep it open-ended and more of a conversation. Although we do need to tighten up the time a bit.

2005 first update

First of all, came across this article in OLDaily: http://www.newhorizons.org/neuro/caine.htm - about learning and the brain. This is the kind of stuff I think we should be focusing on - how learning occurs.

I'm working on an application for a New Practices project - applying TROPIC principles to e-learning. The idea is to form a community of practice to try out a tool and method based on TROPIC, to online teaching; then as a group to discuss and analyse and explore over a period of time, gradually refining and improving the tool and method. The outcome would be a case study and a transferrable tool and method for structured peer observation and mentoring in e-learning.

Met with John last week and discussed a database for collating TROPIC information.

Douglas and I have planned a workshop on micro-skills and TROPIC, to be held with the Access Unit this Friday.

Hopefully I will be meeting with Colleen tomorrow to talk about how the proposed New Practices project might link with her TAA project - looking especially at the e-learning competencies in the Cert IV and Diploma.

And, there's a meeting with the team planned for Friday week. Peter from PPU might be visiting early next month - and my role has been formalised to an extent, meaning real management support for TROPIC and for educational quality and innovation. Good news.