Teacher Undertaking CPD

Getting started

This pathway is designed for teachers who teach in technical subjects in further education colleges or other similar providers. We will focus on the subject specialist pedagogy of technical education and training, although using the term pedagogy can be controversial in further education settings in England. The government’s Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning (CAVTL) found that “A robust vocational teaching and learning system must be underpinned by a serious focus on vocational pedagogy. And yet, as we have gone round the country visiting sites of vocational teaching and learning and in our seminars, of all the terms we have discussed the one that gets people most agitated is ‘pedagogy’” (CAVTL 2013, p13).

The status of technical education
This may reflect the relatively weak status of technical education and training in comparison to academic education, which dominates perceptions and policies in England. Discussing pedagogy for academic subjects is considered entirely normal, but not for technical courses.

Why pedagogy matters for vocational learners
To quote Lucas and his colleagues in a report for City and Guilds, “The evidence suggests that serious consideration of pedagogy is largely missing in vocational education and … vocational learners are the losers as a result of this omission” (Lucas et al. 2012, p13). We agree, which is why we have produced these resources to inform and improve your pedagogical decision-making in order to improve the experience and the learning of your students.

Play

Professor Kevin Orr
University of ​​​​​​​Huddersfield

Your Journey

These resources are designed to support your thinking about what informs the decisions your trainee teachers make in the planning and management of their sessions with their own particular students in their own particular context. For that reason we focus on certain concepts that trainee teachers will adapt and apply to their own circumstances as they decide is appropriate.

We start with what we mean by pedagogy, and then explore several underpinning concepts that support your decision making:

  • Pedagogical content knowledge
  • Content representation [CORE]
  • Occupational identity
  • Recontextualisation

Importantly, this approach to teaching where teachers have autonomy to make appropriate decisions for their students is underpinned by the teacher’s strong subject knowledge to inform these decisions. We have assumed this subject knowledge in developing these materials.

On the following pages the resources are sequenced to lead you through the concepts in an order that we have found to be useful, but feel free to move around as you wish.

Login

Programme structure

Start / Continue