Training Those Without
Supporting International teachers who are without a recognised teaching qualification with The British Teaching Diploma (BTD)
When the British Teaching Diploma (BTD) was first conceived, the intention was to build a Diploma that would support any teacher working in an international school who was without a recognised teaching qualification such as PGCE. It is designed to show the necessary skills, aptitudes and behaviours of an outstanding teacher. Attendees then learn these techniques and apply them to their own classrooms.
The BTD is Endorsed as a Level 7 Qualification from an Ofqual recognised awarding body and involves 72 hours of taught time spread over a timescale of up to 12 months. They attend online workshops delivered via Zoom. Typically they are scheduled for the early evening. With over 100 delegates now having passed the Diploma since its inception, it is quickly proving to be a highly cost effective way for schools to up-skill teachers who haven’t had the opportunity to gain a recognised (and vastly more expensive!) teaching qualification.
Built around 12 Modules, the structure of the Diploma was heavily influenced by Barack Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction, particularly in terms of the sequence and design of the modules. However, the BTD has also drawn extensively from a range of other initiatives, ideas, and movements in various fields and areas, such as Cognitive Science, Thinking Skills, and Formative Assessment. The BTD also looks back even further and revisits seminal work pioneered by, among others, Bruner's work on scaffolding, Leitner's ideas on retrieval practice and Frayer's work on vocabulary acquisition.
The stages shown below illustrate the structure that the BTD follows. The idea is to take the attendees on a journey through the 12 Modules that support the idea of a learner moving from novice to eventually mastery of the knowledge and skills relevant to their age and stage of school life
So this framework adopts the following stages in the following order:
A Purpose and Planning
Initially, the teacher needs to think about recognising the purpose of the lessons and considering effective ways of planning a series of lessons. We draw from ideas around the principle of Backwards Design (Ideas: Curriculum by Design)
B Review
Making connections between the current lesson and what has gone before is a key aspect of the review stage. For lessons where an entirely new topic has been delivered, there is an opportunity to potentially connect to pupils' prior learning so that they can see how today's lesson builds on pre-existing knowledge or awareness. All of this supports the formation and subsequent elaboration of a mental schema (Ideas: Bjork and Retrieval Practice)
C Input
D Provide Models
E Guided Practice
These three stages C, D and E all involve an element of new instruction and teaching by the expert, i.e., the teacher. This stage recognises that teachers are the best facilitators of new learning, even though their longer-term view is to move pupils to a position where they can function ultimately as independent learners. Stage E (Guided Practice) is where this shift begins. (Ideas: Richard E Mayer Multimedia learning and Sweller’s work on Cognitive Load Theory)
F Check for Understanding
This stage is, in many ways, a transition stage between where the teacher engages in a final whole-class checking exercise but is the stage before allowing the pupils to work independently through completing tasks or demonstrating skills without any teacher assistance. Once the teacher feels that there has been a sufficient level of success across the class, they will then feel confident in allowing the pupils to work independently and this happens in this stage. (Ideas: Formative assessment)
G Adaptive Teaching
Re-thinking how to differentiate is at the heart of this stage and examines the role of the teacher who focuses on observing first and then responding second - this is typically through a range of scaffolding approaches (Ideas: Bruner’s work on Scaffolding Frayer’s work on vocabulary)
H Independent Practice
At this stage of the framework, pupils are engaging in independent practice, and for many in a class, there will be no need for much, if any, teacher assistance. However, there will still be a proportion of pupils who require support.
I Closure
The final stage of closure describes the types of techniques and strategies a teacher would utilise at the end of lessons. It's often an element of a lesson that can be overlooked or missed out on, often due to time pressure, but one that the BTD will promote as extremely important.
Over 100 attendees have now achieved the Diploma from schools as far apart as Argentina, Spain, Cyprus, Macao, Jordan, Serbia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Nepal. Their glowing testimonials speak of a highly interactive and practical Diploma that puts effective teaching as well as effective learning a its core.
Here is just one comment that is typical of attendees when reflecting on the ideas they have taken from the BTD:
“This module was incredibly useful for two main reasons. First of all, every teacher will welcome any initiative to make the planning less complex while also making sure that the quality of the lesson is not affected (or potentially even superior). Secondly, it was interesting to see how many of the verbs that we use on a daily basis to identify objectives can be misleading and not very efficient.
I personally have spent countless hours writing very elaborate and detailed plans for every lesson and because they were so detailed and specific, it was not possible to reuse them again in the following years which led to more planning and more work. This module challenges the idea that the more detailed the lesson plan is, the better the lesson will be. Complex planning is not good use of the teacher’s time since it takes away energy and time that could be allocated better.
Also, I was not aware of how often I relied on using the verb ‘understand’ when planning a lesson and identifying the learning objective of the lesson. Having had a look at my former planning, it was the most common verb I used. The verb represents the objective of the lesson and therefore should not be too abstract and instead should be quantifiable and something that the teacher can easily assess.
In the future, I will rely on the 3 column method for planning and thinking about the 3 ‘I’s’. What is the intent behind the lesson, how it will be implemented and what impact it will have on the student?”
(Teacher in BIS based in Serbia)
Please reach out if you or your school would interested in hearing more
https://www.britishteachingdiploma.com/