Ensuring effective teacher training during ITaP week

Brighton’s student secondary teachers spent a week engaging in the Department for Education’s (DfE) intensive training and practice (ITaP) initiative.

Over the duration of their PGCE year the student teachers have four weeks of ITaP learning which is be different from the rest of the curriculum and focuses on specific, foundational or pivotal areas of the ITE curriculum. The DfE specifies that it should include:

• expert input with an introduction to the area of practice, opportunity for observation and deconstruction
• opportunities for trainees to plan and practise in a low stake’s environment and in a live classroom context
• expert feedback
• opportunities to apply the aspect of practice in the future.

The core aim is to ‘help consolidate trainees’ knowledge of key evidence-based principles for effective teaching, and to enable them to practise their application and integration into their developing professional practice’.

This was Brighton’s second ITaP week and the student teachers took part in activities including:

• an introduced to modelling to support inclusive teaching – this took the form of a lecture, reading, discussion in mixed study learning groups and time for reflection
• a day focusing on their subject area – building on the knowledge and understanding gained during the modelling session and applying it to their subject.
• Two days spent in school – applying their learning to the context of the school, enacting their planned teaching methods, reflecting, reviewing and re-planning.
• A day reflecting and discussing the week in mixed study and subject learning groups, setting targets to move their practice forward.

Feedback from the student teachers was overwhelmingly positive. When asked how it will change their practice:

“I ensure that the models I am using are beneficial to my students and appropriate to the subject criteria. Using multiple exemplars, modelling artistic behaviours. Better application of behaviour management. More awareness of use of modelling etc”

“I introduced more adaptation into my modelling and focused on improving my ability to live model.”

And when asked what they found most useful:

“Experimenting with different modelling techniques to see which works better for my students. Discussing and understanding the theory and other people’s experiences have been super useful.”

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