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.