Major Educational Issues in Further Education - Essay Example

Assessor Peter Tunnicliffe Educational Issues Unit 117 Place: Major Educational Issues in Further Education United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) have distributed quite a few questionnaires to Governments of its member countries anent emerging educational issues from time to time. This exercise, especially during 1985 to 1995, has brought forward responses from nearly 50 countries. Indeed, it has highlighted global issues of further education from nation to nation (Dyankov 1 and 4, 1-53). Out of about 15 major global issues, the further education concerns occupied nearly 40 per cent projection and significance. As such, major contemporary issues of further education relate to technical, vocational, continuing, guidance, teaching, learning, methods, material, processes, staff, general education, training, counselling, access of girls and women, rural development, further education and industries, preparation of teachers, institutional interaction and cooperation, and constant updating of teaching-learning skills. All these issues are current concern to further education. Further Education has, therefore, become not only a national but also an international movement in view of its widespread global application. From among all above mentioned issues of further education, more important one appears to be specially the context of retention and achievement - its ever dynamic enhancement and persistent maintenance of higher standards. This is not possible without pupil-teachers -- at City & Guilds Certificate on Further Education Teaching Stage 2 - perfecting their teaching-learning skills. Two questions arise while writing about this matter: What level of retention and achievement has to be maintained throughout for excellence How teaching and learning can become an ever perfectible process towards excellence According to Learning and Skills Council (LSC), overall level of retention and achievement generally varies between 66 to 87 per cent among youth of 16 to 19 years (Government of United Kingdom, LSC) after due training. What is more important here is maintaining a consistent performance on the higher side of teaching and learning through dynamic and skilful efforts towards an excellent retention and achievement levels. How it is to be done S. Wallace has an interesting and revealing perspective in this matter. This author writes quite analytically: For a student teacher, or a teacher at the beginning of his or her career, it is usually (and understandably) the case that the focus of his or her anxieties, and therefore his or her planning, is upon the performance of teaching rather than upon the achievement of learning. I use the word 'performance' here advisedly, because the inexperienced or student teacher tends to envisage a lesson as a time to be filled by his or her own activity. They have to be 'teaching' all the time - which can mistakenly be taken to mean doing all the talking, making themselves the constant focus of the class, having to fill any potential silence with words. This, ironically, may mean the students have less opportunity to learn and that the teacher has no time to focus on whether they are doing so. If we remember, however, that the primary objective is about students' learning and that this, after all, is what all the teaching is for, we can begin to adjust our focus and to recognise that the careful planning, implementation and recording of assessment are central to what the lesson is about. It's not just about teaching; it's about learning. The teaching is only a means to that end (Wallace 64). Retention and achievement are clearly related to teaching and learning skills and maintaining quantitative alongwith qualitative levels of excellence through further education, continued and periodic updating of skills, and use of every possible tool for obtaining information, knowledge, experience and continuous self-assessment. How to impart information and knowledge is indeed extremely important. However, if teaching is also designed as a process of learning then it proves to be of much greater success and also an enjoyable educational journey in mutual sharing and achievements. There are several approaches to teaching and learning such as "situated learning", "constitutional model of learning", "strategic approach" etcetera (Bailey 1-7). It is certainly necessary for trained teachers to obtain information about the theoretical and practical aspects of teaching and learning and different prevalent approaches. That is what is known as an integral part of updating of information as a trained teacher. The "knowledge" aspect must also be given continuous attention in training of teachers. Retention and achievement level gains in terms of quality through skilled analysis, in depth understanding, urge for finding the truth for the sake of knowing and a devoted attitude for quest for ever new frontiers of furthering education. Information and knowledge both together help in uplifting the level of retention and achievement without which a student of Further Education cannot move, as it were, even a twig leaf forward towards sharpening one's teaching and learning skills. Only seeking and stockpiling information does not serve the purpose. This information has to be utilised in real life situations of teaching-learning process with the help of tools of knowledge. These tools of knowledge are inference, logic, analytical grasp, theoretical understanding and an urge for a quest into the realms of deeper and fundamental realities. For instance, such reality that lies beneath the "shadows of the cave". Prosser and Trigwell (17) have put forward a comparison of these aspects of surface and deeper levels of teaching-learning processes. Marton and Saljo (4-11, 46) have also considered this matter: They put their contention in a tabular format: Deep Approach Surface Approach Intention to understand Intention to reproduce Vigorous interaction with content Memorise information needed for assessments Relate new ideas to previous knowledge Failure to distinguish principles from examples Relate concepts to everyday practice Treat task as an external imposition Relate evidence to conclusions Focus on discrete elements without integration Examine the logic of the argument Unreflective about purpose or strategies First six aspects of above mentioned "Deep Approach" and first three of the "Surface Approach" are essential for consistently higher retention and achievement levels of a teacher being trained for "City & Guilds Certificate on Further Education Teaching Stage 2". Combining the best not only of these two but also going for the best available information, knowledge and training is necessary. Alongside these attitudes and approaches, self-assessment skill of one's performance, level of information and depth of knowledge is also needed to be developed. Keeping due track of the formal assessment and feedback results certainly helps. A trained teacher, however, must learn to go beyond this formal assessment for continuous evolution towards excellence. One must, in this context, learn not to be in love with what one does, presents, writes and speaks. This is necessary for professional competence. Objectivity and impartiality despite all human weaknesses will have to be evolved over a period of time as a result of training of an accomplished teacher. Otherwise, continuous process of retention and achievement cannot sustain the vicissitudes of complacency in human nature. A teacher's training is not complete when it ends in a course. Teachers need to be committed to lifelong professional development. Their skills must always need to remain up-to-date according to learners' needs and environment. The first step is to ensure that teachers are professionally trained and well-equipped at the very start of their teaching career. This first step must never end throughout life. There is always ever more and more to learn in the teaching-learning process. One life is too short for this purpose. Therefore, real and one of the most important issues in Further Education is the context of retention and achievement. This has to be looked in a holistic fashion. A piecemeal approach to this aspect will not do. This issue is very deeply connected to teaching-learning processes. Both these are further inter-related to other professional formal as well as "beyond formal" dimensions of life long process of teachers training. This inter-linking has to be kept in mind while looking into any aspect of continued and further-education. It is a constant process - endless forever. A line of educational leadership amongst youth has to be developed. This has to continue. The movement, in this process, is from information to knowledge and performance via updating of teaching-learning skills through training in Further Education. Sources Cited: Bailey, S. (2002). "Teaching students and Supporting Learning - is it the Same Thing", Learning & Teaching in Action, Autumn, Vol. 1, Issue 3. Dyankov, A. (1996). "Current Issues and Trends in Technical and Vocational Education", UNESCO International Project on Technical and Vocational Education (UNEVOC), Section for Technical and Vocational Education, Paris, UNESCO. Marton, F. and Saljo, R. (1976). "On Qualitative Differences in Learning: I - Outcome and Process", British Journal of Educational Psychology. Prosser, M. and Trigwell, K. (1999). Understanding Learning and Teaching. Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press. United Kingdom, Government of, LSC. (2006). http://www.lsc.gov.uk, http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk, and http://www.statistics.gov.uk/copyright.asp for more information. Wallace, S. (2005). Teaching and Supporting Learning in Further Education, Second Edition, Southernhay, Learning Matters. Read More