July update

All 3 training sessions have now happened - Cairns, Wide Bay and Toowoomba. Went very well I feel and we now have the flow working and the integration of the different components. I've learned heaps, especially about coaching and mentoring, and the dynamics of working with different groups and different facilitators.

Lots to think about now in terms of the next steps at operational and strategic levels and keeping strong communication going with all stakeholders. Also need to progress the Reframing the Future side of things - as well as the rest of my job at TNQT!! Fun times ahead.

Getting ready for training

Had a good meeting week before last with Gillian, Bob, David and David and I think we're pretty well set now for the training. We had a session with Neva and we're well on track for integrating the coaching and mentoring framework.

Norie is giving me a hand to put together a visual display about "the story of TROPIC" which we can put on the wall during the training, so that participants can see where it's come from and where it's going.

Now have about 11 participants for the training in Cairns. Things are looking good.

May update

Attended the Reframing the Future forum in Sydney May 18 and stayed on for the weekend - unbelievably beautiful weather, even went for a swim at Bondi.

The forum was good - lots of good contacts, interesting projects and deep thinking about networks. Now I just need to integrate that thinking and the focus on the RTF project, with what we already have underway with TROPIC.

Have tried the new observation sheets (amended by Michael in TAFE Tasmania) with a video and then with Sarah-Jane's class and Colleen's chat session. The sheets work well, a big improvement I think but a few minor changes needed.

This afternoon I'm off to Brisbane to meet up with Bob, Gillian, David and David to plan the training and discuss a few other things including the RTF action plan. A lot of discussion to fit into a tight timeframe. Then tomorrow we have our workshop with Neva.

micro-skills

Mary and Sarah-Jane ran a micro-skills session on Monday afternoon. About 12 teachers participated and all seemed to get a lot out of it. I liked the 'high five' idea (I'll pinch that one) - thumb representing 'be positive', then fingers: 'no blame' (one finger pointing at you means 3 fingers pointing back at me), 'don't be rude', 'commitment' and 'look after the little fella'. Similar to the one Phil from Outdoor Rec showed me but a slightly different slant, and drawing it up on the board was useful.

Getting each person in the group to give a brief description and demo of each skill worked well, then role plays were a lot of fun. Lots of good useful discussion too.

The other thing I wanted to mention was an article I read in the Weekend Australian, about the potentially negative effects of praise. The gist of it was, praising kids for being 'smart' has been shown to negatively affect their learning because they then tend to not make the effort when things get difficult. They can become 'addicted' to praise and reluctant to make mistakes. On the other hand, praising kids for effort or for specific things they do has been shown to positively affect their learning. Relates strongly to Descriptive Encouraging and shows we should do lots of it - works for adults too!

Today I gave a presentation based on the one I gave at AVETRA. Five people showed up, which is not too bad. Good chance to update a few interested people on what has been happening.

April update

Things seem to be moving pretty quickly now. Had a Leaders teleconference yesterday where we firmed up a few things:

• next Leaders teleconference May 10th at 4:30 - we will be communicating by email in the meantime
• Leaders workshop May 31-June 1 (meet on Thursday in Brisbane at time and venue tbc; all day with Neva at OLI on Friday)
• training sessions: TNQT June 25-27; WBIT July 4-6; SQIT July 9-11 - we talked about the value of the other Leaders coming to Cairns to assist/observe/evaluate the training
• videos - a good cross-section of sessions available (I do still need to line something up in Cairns - maybe Mary?)

AVETRA conference

The AVETRA conference was great - international perspectives on VET, some interesting presentations on professional development, organisational capability, VET history, amongst other things - and being in fascinating Footscray. Vietnamese restaurants, Filipino grocery stores, African cafes - so many different languages, so many people, Africans nearly 7 feet tall, Vietnamese, Chinese, Italian, people milling around shopping, eating, talking.

The presentation at the conference went well - only about 6 people there but they were interested. I have posted the paper on the wiki.

Met Susanne from CIT who gave a presentation on their comprehensive evaluation of a mentoring program they ran there. She kindly offered to send me their documentation and bits and pieces - will be very useful.

the importance of learning slowly

This link courtesy of Stephen Downes' OLDaily: http://brandon-hall.com/garywoodill/?p=14 - it's a review of a book by a German psychiatrist about how "the brain is based on vector algebra rather than numerical computations". I'm not sure my own neural pathways are up to understanding it fully but I like the sound of it. Worth a read.

March workshop

We had a very productive couple of days in Brisbane at the end of last month. I'll post the minutes in the wiki (which I'm going to tidy up when I get a chance). The main outcomes:

• a clearer shared understanding of our aims - these are outlined in some powerpoint slides Peter put together with help from Carmen and Deb - which I will also post on the wiki
• agreement to build a more explicit focus on coaching and mentoring
• some valuable training from Neva in coaching and mentoring skills
• plans for consolidation across the 3 institutes before further expansion
• dates for training sessions in each of the 3 institutes, with a target of 10 additional TROPIC Mentors in each (June 25-27 in Cairns; July 4-6 in Hervey Bay -tbc- and July 9-11 in Toowoomba)
• plans for a 'teaching and learning conference' in October
• TROPIC Leaders to teleconference fortnightly - Neva will join us to provide high level coaching to us, and the 5 of us will meet face-to-face in late May to plan the training sessions

Tasmania sent me their amended versions of the observation sheets and microskills which I will also post on the wiki and ask members to comment by May 18.

This week I am going to the AVETRA conference in Melbourne where I will give a presentation about the TROPIC evaluation.

establishing expectations

Just ran a micro-skills session with the new TAA group. It was fun - started with the ball game icebreaker I learned from Kim and it went well.

I love the way nearly every discussion leads to some new learning. While we were talking about 'establishing expectations', Linda gave an example of how deliberately changing her attitude towards and perceptions of a co-worker (in other words her expectations), greatly changed her relationship with that worker for the better. I had never thought of that aspect of establishing expectations before, and it's an important point - it's about seeing the potential in every student and expecting the best of them. It's about managing our own expectations, not just managing our students.

TROPIC in Tasmania

The TROPIC training session in Launceston was an interesting and challenging experience. The biggest learning for me: always consult thoroughly before running a workshop, and never assume anything! The assumption I made was that all of the participants would be teachers - instead there was a mix of senior managers, counsellors, learning support and teachers. A great mix in terms of initiating a program like TROPIC and moving it forward. But a big challenge in terms of running the sessions, especially when I wasn't expecting it. I'm hopeful though that the time spent was worthwhile and that some positive effects will come from it. I will certainly be interested to see what develops there.

Some other learnings and reflections, in random order:

• TAFE Tasmania is very different from TAFE Queensland - it's more compact and cohesive as a system, and there appear to be some great initiatives around teaching and learning, which I'd like to find out more about.
• The role plays for observation and feedback worked well - will definitely make use of them again, and time it so the "teachers" have time to plan ahead.
• Timing is still an issue - feedback indicated some participants felt aspects were rushed, while others felt the time taken was too long. Having better videos will help (and suitable technology for viewing!)
• Need a graphic representation of the micro-skills as hierarchical (ie make it very clear up front that give choice, follow through are done as a last resort).
• Some food for thought in terms of our goals and aims - there was a lot of discussion about how to ensure positive change occurs as a result of the observation and feedback process. I guess the way Mark Davidson has approached this in schools, is to work towards everyone in the school having awareness of the strategies and the language used to describe them (even the dreaded 'cueing with parallel acknowledgment'!). That is where the data collection comes in - within a school, or across similar schools, you can see patterns and track changes over time, and that can be quite powerful in terms of bringing about change.

I look forward to meeting with the Queensland cohort at the end of this month to talk through these and other learnings and their implications for us. It will be great to catch up with everyone again, and we've got a lot of planning to do.

Other than that - it was great to have the opportunity to visit Launceston. A very pretty town with a great variety of restaurants and cafes, and the beautiful Cataract Gorge right on the edge of the CBD.

TROPIC 2007!!!

This year is going to be great for TROPIC!

I'm back at work refreshed from 3 weeks in Brisbane. My partner Brett and I got married (I figured everyone should do it once anyway) and we took the kids on a world tour (that's White Water World, with Dream World in the background).

Plans for this year are:

• train TAFE teachers in Tasmania
• workshop for the TAFE QLD group in March, where we'll decide:
• new leaders
• training for the next cohort of mentors (probably mid-year some time)

And we'll see what happens from there.

wiki

I've created a wiki for TROPIC http://tropic.wikispaces.com/ (and another one for youth pathways). It's amazing how easy it is - and free too. I hope we can get some use out of it. There are definite advantages over a blog, especially the fact that it's shared, not just owned by one person. Also you can lift files to it.

I'll still keep the blog going anyway, it's one way for me to keep track of what's happening with TROPIC. Most exciting news is that I've been invited to run the training in Tasmania. Not finalised yet, but hoping that will happen in late February/early March.

Next week is visits to WBIT and SQIT, and our videoconference.

November already

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to get to Melbourne last week for the 'Going Virtual' conference - all about tele-working and virtual teams. Somewhat relevant to TROPIC because we're a virtual team, although it's proving difficult to get much teamwork happening at the moment. Maybe it's me? Or just that there's so much going on... Fourth term is always frantic, and I know there are structural changes happening in institutes as well. We have a videoconference scheduled at the end of this month so hopefully that will spark a bit more activity. In the meantime I probably need to get something happening or assign some sort of task to keep people engaged - or to re-engage them.

I had an email this morning from Bev Childs who is interested in some professional development for teachers around behavior management. I think she is at BNIT now. So the interest is there.

In terms of TNQT, I might write up a summary of where we all are. I could ask the other two institutes to send a summary of what they're up to - maybe a questionnaire will prompt a response.

Teachers Reflecting On Practices In Contexts

The hibiscus doesn't have anything to do with anything (except maybe a TROPICal theme), but I didn't manage to get any decent photos at the workshop.

It was a good couple of days, very productive and lots of great ideas shared. Now we just need to keep the momentum.

We worked through the sheets, using a video David Thompson kindly provided, and we agreed on a few changes. People expressed some confusion over terms but I think we cleared that up by referring to the descriptor documents, and importantly by giving people some more practice. That's what I think we all need to concentrate on now - practice!

I think we agreed the best approach is the direct approach. It's good to talk at forums and staff meetings, to raise the profile of TROPIC. But I've found the best way to get teachers to agree to being observed, is to ask them directly - always emphasising of course, that it is voluntary, non-judgmental and confidential.

Another significant outcome from the workshop was a name change - keeping the acronym TROPIC, but changing the C from Classrooms to Contexts, which is much more appropriate.

Seems like SQIT and WBIT have some good plans, and we're busy here at TNQT too. We agreed at the workshop that everyone will try to get a few observations done before the end of the year, and WBIT is also focusing on sharing the micro-skills broadly. We also agreed to meet again in March when we will look at bringing two more institutes on board - possibly Mount Isa and Sunshine Coast.

August update

July was a busy month with visits to Bundaberg, Maryborough and Hervey Bay. I went to Toowoomba too but it was too foggy and wet to take photos! Cold too - but very productive.

It was pleasing to hear what people had been doing since the training, in terms of observations, reflection, and discussions with colleagues. I managed to do co-observations with most people. A few things needed clearing up but for the most part I was confident that everyone has got a good grasp of the observation tools in their current form. Some suggestions were made for additions to the frequency sheet - for example, when teachers link to future learning or to assessment.

I'm delighted that our workshop in Brisbane is going ahead August 28-29. There are a lot of things I want to cover and I'm in the middle of planning how we can best cover them. Unfortunately not everyone can be there - distance and time are always factors - but I think strategies to deal with that should be one of the topics we discuss at the workshop.

The photos in case you're wondering are of Hervey Bay, Queens Park in Maryborough and the Burnett Bridge in Bundaberg. Thanks to everyone at WBIT and SQIT for your hospitality enthusiasm and support.

behaviour issues

A couple of weeks ago I gave a short presentation on the micro-skills to a group of TAA students, all of whom train or will be training and assessing in very different settings. Quite a few said they find a lot of problems, or issues, or challenges with behaviour management. Then at a completely unconnected meeting with staff members here we were discussing the challenges posed by young people coming into the TAFE system and I was told that there are more behaviour issues with adult students than with youth. It's interesting that this does seem to be such a widespread issue - especially when it's so rarely if ever discussed in any adult learning or VET literature. I think it shows that there could well be a big gap that TROPIC or something like it could really fill.

I'm hoping that I can maintain contact with the TAA group and their teacher Gail, and find out what successes and persistent challenges they have in addressing behaviour issues in their training. That together with continuing to link with the TROPIC trainees and other teachers at TNQT, SQIT, WBIT and MIIT - not to mention Mark Davidson and some of our school colleagues - could be a good way to build and share knowledge about managing behaviour effectively and supportively.

photos from the Mount Isa trip

Sunset at Karumba, Lawn Hill National Park and Leichhardt Falls. Photos by Jo Pyne.

TROPIC in the dust

Last week I conducted observations and had conversations with teachers in Mount Isa and Normanton. Settings included classrooms, computer room, workshop and construction site. Vocational areas included electrical, construction, business/IT and diesel fitting.

There are some great things happening out there. Employment is booming with the mining, and TAFE and the mine have a good partnership going fast tracking apprentices in a range of areas. At the same time there are some challenges with persistent unemployment, disengaged youth and diverse communities. My overall impression was that teachers adapt their teaching styles well to meet the different needs of their client groups, and that they work hard to continually improve their teaching skills. Certainly I found that many teachers were prepared to invite me to observe and/or to engage in conversation with them about improving teaching practice.

I enjoyed my time there and found my conversations with teachers to be very rewarding. I certainly learned a lot.

A few random observations:

• teachers using students' names frequently - helps to maintain rapport and also to ensure that all students are called on to contribute - helps to maintain engagement too, as students need to be ready to be called on!
• a self-assessment checklist can be a very effective way of summarising learning, especially in a self-paced learning environment
• drawing on students' workplace and real-world knowledge is a good way of activating learning - but this can be difficult with younger learners who have more limited experience. One possible approach is to frame their learning with an initial attention-establisher, for example with WH&S to use a 'gory story' about workplace accidents to spark their interest...

June 2006

Susan and I ran the TROPIC training in Brisbane with 14 wonderful participants from SQIT, WBIT and TNQT. I will follow up with visits in July.

I'm going back to Mount Isa this Friday to do some observations and spend some time with the teachers there and in Normanton.

Have been doing some observations and also talking more with Robin, Sarah-Jane and Mary about possible improvements to the program. I'm hoping we can all link in together across the different institutes, and include Mount Isa in the conversations as well.

Had a call this morning from Phillip, a counsellor in TAFENSW who came across TROPIC and classroom profiling from an article on the TAFENSW ICVET website: http://www.icvet.tafensw.edu.au/ezine/year_2006/may_jun/litreview_classroom_management.htm

catching up for 2006 so far

The trial training happened back in November (December?) last year. I was very ably assisted by Susan and we managed to get through everything in the two days. Many improvements were identified, as would be expected, and the teachers involved - Ann, Anne, Mary, Robin and Sarah-Jane - contributed some great ideas and the benefit of their experience.

Robin and Susan have both contributed by allowing videos of their teaching to be made, as did Claire. I still need to encourage people a bit more strongly to get out and do some observations.

Also had a thought, that I could send out weekly or fortnightly good teaching encouragers, based on the items on the flow and frequency sheets - eg greeting students; linking material to what was previously learned and/or to students' experiences, etc.

This could link in with the reading I'm doing currently for the MLM - have finally delved into Bloom's Taxonomy (the original, but condensed) and discovered Cyrs, who approaches the Taxonomy concepts from a very practical perspective.

Getting back to the update - I visited Mount Isa early this year and ran a workshop on the micro-skills. It was really inspiring to be there and to hear about the energetic and innovative ways a lot of teachers out there are meeting their challenges. There is a great partnership between the TAFE and the mines, to fast-track 70 apprentices through two years of training to get them into the mines in a productive capacity quicker. I'm hoping to get back out there to do some observations.

The Brisbane training didn't go ahead in March due to Cyclone Larry interfering with travel plans. It has been rescheduled for May 22-23.

In the meantime John has helped out by assigning two of his Diploma of IT students, Natasha and Shirley, to do an assessable project developing a database to capture quantitative data from observations. They have quite quickly grasped the basic concepts and principles of TROPIC, and this week will show me what shape the database is taking.

For my final project in the MLM (Master of Learning Management, Central QLD Uni), I am doing an evaluation of the implementation of the TROPIC program across the different institutes. I'm using Kirkpatrick's 4-level evaluation as a model, and for my methodology will be surveying all the participants in the training followed by 3 case studies of teachers involved in the implementation.

That's about it. I have done 3 observations so far this year, each one together with a video recording of the lesson.

Oh, one other thing - Mary and I are going to attend a symposium on workplace learning in Brisbane early in May. We will look from there at implementing some teacher development around workplace learning (with help from Trish and support from Professional Practices Unit, and maybe Reframing the Future funding). It would be good to link this in with TROPIC and see how we can apply and/or adapt the observation tools and processes.

Main thing to focus on now - getting some more activity happening with those who did the training.