Laying professional foundations: what does it mean to develop professionalism from the very beginning of a teacher’s career
In this workshop jointly hosted by the Chartered College and Penrose Education, Dr Ben Knight and Rob Caudwell will explore the crucial – yet often overlooked – role of ‘professional judgement’ in the development of teacher expertise.
Working towards QTS and working towards teacher expertise are two different things – but they can complement each other if the concept of professional judgement is deliberately built into how we support, educate and train new and early career teachers. ITE and ECF courses are stand-alone programmes with clear end goals, but they are also the starting points of (hopefully) life-long careers – they are where the foundations of what it means to be a teacher are established.
It is not enough to think only of the skills and knowledge new teachers are adding to their repertoire – though important! We also need to give trainees/students/ECTs space to develop as professionals: to make decisions and to realise their own agency. It is very hard to figure out who you are as a professional without this space to experiment, make mistakes and reflect. Allowing space for teachers to make and own their decisions – and facilitating this in our course design and approach to mentoring – will all have significant long-term benefits to these new teachers’ careers.
Dr Ben Knight has been a teacher educator in higher education for the past 15 years and before that was a teacher and a senior leader in suburban and inner-city schools for over 10 years. Ben is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the author two books and multiple academic papers. His research, publication and public speaking reflect his interest in educational complexity, group processes, teacher agency and professional development. Ben works with teacher educators, school mentors and education leaders to centre professional judgement across all organisational levels in schools.
Robert Caudwell is the co-founder of Penrose Education – the EdTech company behind the Mosaic platform. He holds an undergraduate MA in International Relations, an MA in Education and Leadership and is currently studying for an MSc in Systems Thinking in the Public Sector. He has experience designing, managing the delivery of and facilitating on various ITE, ECF and NPQ programmes – as well as leading the teacher development offer for a large Multi Academy Trust. At Penrose Education, Robert works with ITE providers to support the design, delivery and management of their teacher training and education programmes via Mosaic.
Robert is a Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.
This workshop will benefit teacher educators and school mentors as well as trainees, ECTs and those involved in supporting them.
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