TL21 Transfer Initiative
Features of workshops in the TL21 project
Active participation:
The workshops were designed and convened by members of the TL21 project team, but from the start they were of an interactive nature, with lecture-style presentations being kept to the minimum. As mutual trust and openness grew among participants, participants themselves took a hand in the design of the workshops.
Clearly defined tasks:
These tasks arose from the specific workshop theme (or themes), and were of two kinds: (a) tasks to be carried out during the workshop; (b) tasks to be carried out by participants between one workshop and the next.
Purposeful collaboration:
Participants came to engage in frank exchanges on their ideas and practices, and in particular on the initiatives they were working on in their own schools. This strengthened a sense of mutual support and of a shared responsibility for high-quality learning.
Continuity:
The workshops were designed as scheduled events within a developmental sequence. As distinct from being “once-off” events carried out at periodic intervals, each workshop had particular contributions to make to the progressive development of specific capacities on the part of the participants.
Feedback:
This included (a) feedback (evaluation) to the workshop convenor after each workshop and (b)feedback (progress reports) by participants to workshop colleagues during the workshop on teaching and learning initiatives being undertaken by participants in their own schools.
Emergent learning communities:
Features such as the five above cultivated mutual trust and openness among the workshop participants, leading to significant advances in participants’ sense of professional identity and to a new awareness of such groupings as learning communities in which practitioners had a decisive sense of ownership.
Criteria for the Accreditation Paths in the TL21 Transfer Initiative
Version for Teacher Participants
These Criteria cover :
(A) The Preparatory Year Portfolio (Year 1)
(B) The H. Dip. in Innovative Teaching and Learning (Year 2 )
(C) The M. Ed. in Innovative Teaching and Learning (Year 3)
Introductory Note: These criteria make frequent reference to the furnishing of evidence. As befits action research studies, such evidence can include various forms of record: e.g. documentation of critical friend contacts, of analyses by critical informants, of focus group meetings, of structured and semi-structured interviews, and of a range of triangulation strategies. Equally important, evidence of developments in professional practice can be well captured by other forms of record, such as audio or video recordings, or in a supplementary way by providing key samples of pedagogical resources (from learning games to ICT resources) that have been devised and used in these developments
(A) The Preparatory Year Portfolio must include analytic writing totalling 8,000 words, and relevant supporting materials: e.g., selected illustrative lesson plans and evaluations of their success, selected extracts from journals and from notes of meetings with colleagues; pedagogical materials used, including video/DVD recordings, CDs, ICT materials etc..
The analytic writing in the portfolio must include:
• a coherent account of progress in one’s innovative practice, making reference to challenges encountered, strategies adopted for dealing with them, and significant gains made;
• evidence of sustained critical reflection on one or more selected aspect(s) of one’s own teaching;
• evidence of progressive engagement with colleagues and of the key benefits to one’s teaching resulting from such engagement;
• evidence of regular use in classroom settings of ideas for innovative teaching and learning, such as those introduced and discussed in the workshops;
• evidence of a capacity to pursue independent research on one’s practice, availing of pertinent research sources in an initial but discerning way.
(B) The Practical Research Project for the Higher Diploma award must be 8,000 words in length, and must be supported by relevant appendices and any other pertinent resources used.
The Practical Research Project must include evidence at a more advanced level of the features required in the Preparatory Year Portfolio. In addition it must include:
• evidence of working closely and regularly with colleagues, and of the benefits such actions have sought and have actually accomplished.
• evidence of a creative use of a range of innovative resources in one’s teaching and in one’s pedagogical thinking and planning (e.g. conventional or digital projection, television/video, relevant software, other computer and/or web-based resources.)
• evidence of the kinds of gains made in students’ learning as a consequence of the systematic use of innovative approaches.
• evidence of independent research capability, including appropriate reading: drawing perceptively on an appropriate range of research sources for a project of this scope.
(C) The M.Ed. dissertation should be 30,000 words in length. In certain circumstances a shorter dissertation may be acceptable, provided the dissertation is accompanied by an appropriate range of innovative pedagogical resources devised and produced by the candidate.
The M.Ed. dissertation should include, at a high level of proficiency, the features required in the Preparatory Year Portfolio and in the Practical Research Project. In addition it should include:
• evidence of an important initiative, or series of initiatives, that have been taken or are under way, to influence the wider learning environment of the school;
• evidence of a critical engagement with issues quality in learning, particularly as these feature in the school’s development planning;
• evidence that students have become proficient in taking an active hand in their own learning, and of contributing in creative ways to the learning environment(s) of the school.
• evidence of promising, substantial ideas for good practice that have been tested and critically monitored in action and that are capable of being widely recommended to a range of post-primary learning environments, and to policy-making bodies.