Impact of Education on Local Area

Sir Michael Wilshaw, asked whether the Further Education sector could be considered “fit for purpose”. (Ofsted: 4: 2012 cited in Cannicott. S: 11: nd) He concluded that there were significant challenges with the quality of teaching and governance but did not attempt to define what a college’s core purpose should be. Yet looking at the characteristics of the school leavers enrolled at colleges, it is evident that colleges are well positioned to be drivers of social mobility, particularly when it comes to working with school leavers. More than 850,000 16-18 year olds attended a college in 2012. (Cannicott. S: 12: nd) I will be focusing on how my placement college: Brook House Sixth Form college has attempted to, through a selection of policies, to widen participation and inclusion, and how this may have encouraged personal development, economic growth and community regeneration.

Background

Bsix college is based in the London Borough of Hackney, which is the second most deprived borough in the country and the fourth most diverse in London with over 100 languages being spoken. Despite this information, Hackney has gone through a lot of developments. The most telling statistic of change, however, is that in 2006 32% of residents were educated to degree level whereas now the figure is 48%, at the London average but well above the national average of 34%. This transformation, fuelled by an influx of young graduates, is most rapid and most visible in Clapton, the home area of BSix. This rapid change has also has a direct effect on areas as ‘murder mile’ (as was) on the Lower Clapton Road, has been a deterrent for some young people and their parents. After a serious reputational, educational and financial crisis in 2007-09 the College has stabilised at 1520-50 full-time students. The student cohort reflects the diversity of East London. The biggest groups are Black African (31%), White (19%) and African Caribbean (9%). The gender breakdown is 60% female and 40% male. 65% of students receive some form of financial support from the College.

Widening participation and inclusion

Bsix aims to encourage young people from diverse backgrounds: ethnicity, socio-economic, home language, gender, special needs, disability, and giftedness to continue and aim higher through education. Education is seen as something to aid learners to progress and achieve in life and for this reason, they particularly focus on low achievers and learners from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is reflected in their (lack of) entry requirements, which are generally, lower than other colleges I compared them to in Hackney. As a result, BSix offer a wide range of courses at all levels from entry to advance.

Additionally, they attract earners from a wide range of ethic backgrounds, which provides for a celebratory and anti-discriminatory atmosphere: "The college provides a harmonious and stimulating learning environment in which students feel safe and happy. The cultural diversity of the students gives the college its distinctive character and is celebrated widely" (Ofsted: 2013)

Partnership with secondary schools and universities

According to the Bsix website, I could see that the college is in partnership with a number of local secondary schools and Russell group universities, which provides learners with a gateway into further and higher education as well as attracting learners from ethnic minority backgrounds. To name a few: Tawhid Boys School (private muslim school), Petchy Academy, Canterbury Christ Church University and University of Oxford. Bsix also works with them to enable students to visit the universities and get a taste of university life and higher education as well receiving expertise in certain subject areas. This gives learners a steadier pathway into higher education and enables them to really explore their chosen area of study. As a result BSix was 2011 winner for the outstanding provider of the year and later won a TES FE award.

Student Voice

Despite still being in the process of being perfected, the college attempts to involve students within the management of the college through its programme of Learning Advocates (similar to student representatives). They are trained to observe lessons and to judge the quality of what we offer. They have also spoken at many conferences to leaders in schools and sixth form colleges. This coupled with student surveys offer the college an opportunity to critically reflect on its inner workings. Ofsted state: "Inspection by students who are trained thoroughly to carry out the role, has been introduced and makes a valuable contribution to reviews of the quality of provision." (2013)

References

Brook House Sixth Form College Website. Last viewed 18^th June 2014. Access online: www.bsix.ac.uk

Bsix (2014) Background Information for Applicants Available online. Access: www.bsix.ac.uk

Cannicott. S with Kempton. J and McDaniel. S (nd) Smarter Accountability in Further Education. Last viewed June 20^th 2014. Access online: http://www.centreforum.org/assets/pubs/smarter-accountability-web.pdf

Ofsted (2013) Brook House Sixth Form College Ofsted Report. Last viewed June 16^th 2014. Access online:

http://www.bsix.ac.uk/PDF/Staff/BSix%20Brooke%20House%20Published%20Report.pdf

Ofsted (2012) The report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills: Learning and skills, p.4. In Cannicott. S with Kempton. J and McDaniel. S (nd) Smarter Accountability in Further Education. Last viewed June 20^th 2014. Access online: http://www.centreforum.org/assets/pubs/smarter-accountability-web.pdf

Coming to an end

I've decided that I should take an element of Brookfield's reflective lenses further. I want to create a questionnaire for my learners that will hopefully open my eyes to what they really think about my classes and teaching methods. This will enable me to see the areas I might need to improve in. 

When I get my own classes I will implement a sort of questionnaire/evaluation/ILP at the beginning of the year, middle and end to really see what students think about their learning experience, the college, theirs and my developmental needs, goals and target, learning needs, and any other difficulties.

Anyway, I am going to give out the student surveys nearer to the end. 

Photography Unit

I've been quietly reflecting on my photography unit and I feel like I could have planned it in more depth and possible used a wider and more diverse range of assessment methods.

Combo disciplines

I think I should have made more of an attempt to combine sociology into media. Certainly for the more capable students with the theory.

Assessment methods/sketchbook:

-    despite putting pictures on the wall of what a distinction sketchbook should look like and the list of subjects that were needed. I found learners were still clueless when it came to putting it together. Reflecting on it now, I think I should have put posters up to illustrate generic examples of what the layout of the sketchbook might look like. For learners who find sketchbook daunting, I will allow them to use A3 pieces of paper to illustrate their journeys and ask them to keep a production diary that they fill at the the end of each lesson.

Photographs:

-    learners started taking their photographs really late in the unit. I wanted them to manage their time and independently allocate time to take the photographs and improve them within the given time slot which was 3 weeks. Most of them didn't and if they did, the photographs were rushed with no context. Next time, I will set up a collection of deadlines so learners can tackle each task step by step. In order not to impinge on their autonomy, I will accompany learners on some of their final productions and support them in terms of their confidence and idea development.

Course Curriculum

Module 3 has played a significant role in the development of my teaching practice and ideas. My independent research, during the planning of my course, led me to the investigation of the praxis, process and hidden curriculum models, which ultimately led me to question our current education system, purpose and context, subject hierarchy and my role as a teacher. I focused on critical and emancipatory pedagogies as well as equality and diversity ideology to enhance the incorporation of inclusivity. The process of creating my course enabled me to understand further what kind of teacher I wanted to be as I analysed my position in teaching, the way I chose to encourage learning and the change in my values. My main influences were: Michael Apple, Paulo Freire, Ken Robinson and Dr Christine Rose. Like myself, they all reject structures such as selective, narrative and banking education. However, I was disappointed with the way in which education seemed to be shifting away from curriculums such as process and praxis, and becoming more focused on the product model. Curriculum should aim to create expressive, creative individuals with the skills, knowledge and criticality needed to make a difference and equip them for life. I reflected on my teaching and role as a teacher:

I analysed the way in which I encouraged my students to engage and learn. I noticed that I moved away from my original purpose for coming into teaching and got caught up in the pressure to perform as a teacher. Within this pressure there was a growing need to provide evidence of ‘good’ teaching. Module three enabled me to revaluate my role. I wanted to adopt ideas from the above theorists and incorporate them into my teaching but I found that the current climate in education meant that my efforts were aspirational or difficult to achieve because of my lack of experience. In accordance to the implementation to ICT, I found myself wanting to take a step back from the age of information. I think that like all things it has its advantages and disadvantages, however, I do not think it is a vital element in producing an Ofsted grade one. In my case, teaching media is ICT heavy but I find it frustrating that learners have used ICT or rather the Internet as their sole method of research so I have made it compulsory for learners to include references to books in their writing.

Further Reading: 

Apple. W M (2004) Ideology and Curriculum (3rd edn). RoutledgeFalmer, New York and London

Freire. P (2003) ‘From Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ In: Darder. A, Baltodano. M, Torres. D.R. ed. The Critical Pedagogy Reader. RoutledgeFalmer: New York, London

Freire. P (1972) Cultural Action for Freedom, Penguin education. Penguin, Harmondsworth

Rose. C (2010) Embedding E&D within Curriculum Planning and Teaching and Learning Delivery – Guide by Dr Christine Rose distributed at City and Islington College Professional Development Day 9th July 2010

TED (2006) Ken Robinson: How Schools Kill Creativity, February 2006. Viewed 21 March 2014. Access online: https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity

Homework Continued

As expected, learners did not do their homework but their enthusiasm to get a merit/distinction was refreshing so I decided to have a gentle talk with them. I have found that the imbalance of teaching hours means learners uphold a unit over another. For example, they will have video production classes 2-3hours a day and compared to other units which only get 1 hour. I have tried to extend this by adding workshops to the lessons especially during practical tasks but it doesn't always work because learners end up doing other pieces of work. According to other teachers, learners are unable to prioritise their lessons. This is mainly due to the fact that they do not do homework. I shared with them, the way in which I juggle university, teaching, work and homework:

Monday: teaching

Tuesday: teaching

Wednesday: university

Thursday: teaching

Friday: teaching

Saturday: off

Sunday: work (paid)

"By the way guys, I don't get paid to teach you..."

Their facial expressions were priceless and it put them in their place. In the end end I gave them individual targets. Each learner was (for now) required to do at least 1 hour homework except for one learner who was ahead, I decided to give her a target of 2-3 hours.

Despite all this effort I think the college itself needs to be tougher on entrenching rules on doing homework.

Homework

I have come to the conclusion that I need to get the students to do homework. Sadly, they never do homework and this is obvious from the fact that they have a tendency to hand in their assignments late. I was told that it is a requirement for learners to do a minimum of 5 hours homework and reading outside of college but this is not being emulated with the year 2 BTEC media class. 

I gave the learners feedback and told them to improve their worksheets, complete the extension tasks and work on documentary photography. I half heartedly asked them to do it over the weekend and give it to me on monday. To be honest I am expecting a disappointing result but I am going to prepare myself for this:

• Ask why it has not be done (Get their side of the story)
• Reward (hopefully) whoever has completed it through accommodation cards
• Highlight time management and responsibility 
• Make connections with university and deadlines 
• Make connections with the workplace and deadline 
• Highlight the fact that I am a trainee student teacher and I am juggling work, university and teaching and still manage to meet deadlines. 
• Keep them back to complete the work if I need to 

I need to try get leaners to do homework. This is where I will really test behaviourism and humanism. 

Using Schon

Now I am doing the photography unit, I decided to challenge the learners by teaching them semiotics.

Level
I found whilst teaching them 'signifier' and 'signified, I may have confused them. They seemed to grasp denotation and connotation better so I decided to stick to that when asking them to use semiotics as a method to look at images.

I think I should think about rehearsing. I know this is not something I will probably do in the future but hopefully that will be because I will have gained more experience.

Timing
I initially thought that my presentation and the work sheets would consume the lesson's time but I had 15 minutes remaining and so I thought on my feet (thank you Schon) and decided to give them an extension task to find either a photographic, advertising or magazine image and use semiotics to deconstruct it.

For future lessons, I will need to consider adding extension tasks for students who are ahead as I am trying to encourage learners to use their sketchbooks, I will use them to get learners to do extra research or develop their ideas in their books.

Marking 
At the end I got back all the worksheets and marked them. I sat there and thought about the way I marked:

• What colour pen shall I use?
• Shall I make a distinction when another student does better work e.g. "excellent work" or "very good work"?
• Should I give feedback on work that will eventually be stuck in their sketchbook?

I think I will ask my mentor for some advice and look at some previous marking they have done so I have a better way of approaching this.