In at the Deep End: A Survival Guide for Teachers in Post-Compulsory Education

Jim Crawley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136928727
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Teachers working in Post Compulsory Education are recognised as being subject to a particularly acute set of pressures and challenges. These can include highly diverse and sometimes challenging student groups, trying to manage a complex curriculum which changes regularly and rapidly, and having to respond to the intense demands of inspection, quality assurance regimes and major government policies.

Now in its second edition, the highly regarded In at the Deep End: A Survival Guide for Teachers in Post-Compulsory Education will help you to manage the varied demands of teaching in PCE more effectively by offering friendly, professional advice and a range of teaching and learning activities which will help you become an effective, confident, committed and reflective teacher.

With a range of strategies, activities and spaces to reflect, this positive and practical 'survival guide' provides advice on:

• Meeting initial challenges, working positively with your students and handling challenging behaviour

• Accessing support, working with your local colleagues and a greater community of practice

• Using straightforward techniques to help you manage pressure and conflict

• Supporting skills for life, key skills and essential skills

• Making positive use of Information and Communications Technology to support learning

• Teaching your specialist subject

• Managing inspections, developing as a leader and becoming a 'Reflective Practitioner'.

Lively and engaging, and built from the experience of many teachers across the last 30 years, this book will help all teachers overcome everyday problems and pressures to keep their 'heads above water', and become efficient, skilled professionals in the Post Compulsory Education workforce.

PART I
Welcome to post-compulsory education (PCE)

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

This chapter will introduce the upbeat and positive rationale behind the book, which is essentially that teaching in the post-compulsory sector, although at times challenging, exhausting and frustrating, is also often a hugely enjoyable and rewarding area of work, which makes a contribution to civil society like no other. Guidance on how the book can work for you best, and how it is structured to provide variety and activity is also included, and a ‘call to arms’ to send you all on your way looking forward to your teaching and of course to the rest of the book!

An introduction to the deep end

As a teacher you bring your own unique life experience, personality and skills with you to the job of teaching, and you will often need to draw deeply on them in the rich and varied world which is PCE. In addition to preparing and carrying out your teaching in a rapidly changing and developing curriculum you will encounter a maze of bureaucracy and administration. While you are trying to prepare for inspection, working towards the latest quality standard or benchmark, and expecting your next internal classroom observation, there are some essential personal qualities which will keep you going, and help you survive as a working professional. They are enthusiasm, energy, resourcefulness and resilience, and perhaps the most indispensable of all, and at times the single most important, a sense of humour. If you don’t possess most of these qualities in abundance at the start of your teaching career, you may want to take a careful breath, and consider a more peaceful life! Believe me, there will be times when laughing is the only possible reaction to some of the situations you will encounter.

Starting work as a teacher can be complicated and confusing, as there is much to learn, and never enough time to learn it. Many of the ‘official’ aspects of being a new teacher can seem almost irrelevant as you struggle to plan and organise your timetable, which contains more than 20 hours of teaching and many other related tasks and activities. It can feel very much like being ‘in at the deep end’ and at times sinking could be much more straightforward than swimming.

There are however many things which can help over the early stages of being a teacher, including help from other colleagues, support from the culture and habits of your organisation, and learning through your own successes and mistakes. The trouble is that, by the time you have learnt all these things, you have often already been teaching for one or two years. Then of course they all change again! You will have often thought ‘If only I’d known that when I started’. This book has used the benefits of a considerable pool of experience of the author and many friends and teaching colleagues to try to provide you with some of those answers, hints and tips in advance, or at least earlier than you would get them if you relied on just learning from your own experience.

As we will explore in more detail later in the book,

learning is something essential in human life.

Foley (2004), when discussing adult learning, puts this nicely:

As … David Kolb (1984) has noted learning is human beings’ primary mode of adaptation: if we don’t learn, we may not survive, and we certainly don’t prosper. All human activity has a learning dimension. People learn informally and formally, in many different settings; in workplaces, in families, through leisure activities, through community activities, and in political action.

(Foley 2004: 4)

Although this comment is about adult learning, and PCE works with students as young as 14, it resonates strongly within the overall approach of this book. Even though the implication from such a view is that teachers and teaching are a relatively small part of the wide world of learning, it is a crucial part, which in many cases and situations can be the key to positive and successful learning.

At the heart of this book is therefore one of the most positive aspirations which any career can possibly have. As you strive to combine the ‘essential you’ and those other qualities with important skills, understandings and approaches relating to teaching and learning, you genuinely are on one of life’s most important, yet often under-rated missions, which is to help other people to learn.

You may or may not feel that education can change the world, but there is no doubt that at some stage, and if you’re both lucky and good at your job, you will often help to change someone else’s world and life for the better.

Never underestimate the power of learning.

As a teacher, what will drive you on is the knowledge that learning can still transform, and can really make a difference. Let’s face it, if that isn’t worth trying to do as well as you can, what is?

Good luck with the journey!

Making the book work for you

There is an intentional progression through the book, which shadows the journey of the teachers reading it. In the early chapters you will cover topics and themes which will be most relevant to new teachers, at the time when they feel immersed in the ‘deep end’. We will then progress on to more detail about areas of work which you will take on as you gain more experience, and the later sections focus on the expected development of a more confident mastery of the craft of teaching. The structure is designed to help your own career pathway to move in the same direction. Navigation through the book is clear and straightforward with generally short chapters, each of which starts with a summary of content. Themes covered include:

basic principles and practicalities of teaching and learning;

management and survival skills which will help your day-to-day work;

developing support networks;

actively promoting equality and diversity through your teaching;

extending your own specialist subject;

working with learning technology;

getting the best from mentoring;

being ‘actively critical’;

getting involved in research and development;

managing your managers.

A glossary of relevant terms appears at the end, whilst a bibliography is included on a chapter-by-chapter basis. The book is not referenced directly to national standards, and use is not made of learning objectives for chapters or activities as is often the case with other books in the field. This is partly because national standards for PCE tend to change frequently, whilst many key concepts and practices involved in teaching remain surprisingly stable, but mainly because this book is much more concerned with accessibility and a developmental approach than closely mapping to particular standards. Much of the content will relate directly to teaching standards in terms of topics, professional knowledge, values and the actual skills involved, but it is a more holistic notion of teaching which underpins the whole book, as will be evident from the start. National standards do have some benefits, however, and defining some of the key areas associated with teaching is one of them.

The most recent set of national standards were published by Lifelong Learning UK in 2006. They include the following statement about the ‘key purpose’ of Teaching:

Teachers in the lifelong learning sector value all learners individually and equally. They are committed to lifelong learning and professional development and strive for continuous improvement through reflective practice.

The key purpose of ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART I Welcome to post-compulsory education (PCE)
• PART II Don’t panic
• PART III Surviving in the classroom
• PART IV Surviving outside the classroom
• PART V Moving out of the deep end
• PART VI Moving towards mastery
• Glossary
• Index