Evaluate own role in life long learning Essay

Evaluating My own Role and Responsibilities in Lifelong Learning To evaluate my own role and responsibilities as an assessor I need to be honest with myself as well as brave. I have a good understanding of my role and responsibilities, but to improve I need to become a reflective practitioner which can only be achieved if I am prepared to evaluate my own performance [ Petty.G pg 527]. By using Kolb’s learning style model, I realise it’s useful concepts can help me understand how my learning behaviour can help others to learn. My role is to communicate effectively with the learners, but do I? Recently I was helping a learner prepare for his functional skills writing assessment. I explained to him how to layout a letter, which side your address goes on which side the recipient’s goes on etc. After the assessment I was informed he had put his address on the wrong side at the top of the page. Did he not hear what I said? Did he forget? Easy to blame the learner, but did I explain well enough and what did I do to confirm his understanding? Poor performance is sensitive subject, but if I’m not prepared to face up to my failures then I can’t expect my successes to be acknowledged either.[Petty.G Pg518] So I have concrete experience of contributing to a learner loosing marks on his assessment. Now I need to reflect on the experience and think how effective was my teaching, obviously not good in some areas but his greetings, layout, structure and ending were good so I was effective in other areas. At this stage of abstract conceptualisation, I ask myself why was I good and effective in some areas, and not in others. Here I think about the methods I used, and do I need more question to confirm understanding, maybe some fun activities. This is when the final stage of the cycle kicks in, it’s when I plan active experimentation. Here I decide how I can do things differently, what new methods shall I try that will produce improved results, and maybe take that brave step into the unknown with new material. Being self critical is not enough though, it’s my responsibility to get direct and indirect feedback when I can, learner questionnaires, college observations also indirect feedback can be just as effective, this can be collected during training or assessment through observation. Maybe learners are not engaged, making no eye contact, separate conversations carrying on the classroom, all good  feedback. I use my CPD records to detail my development. Today I was observed and my folders were quality checked by our Internal Quality Assurer, who also spoke with learners and gave me verbal and written feedback. IQA records I keep a long with minutes and details from our standardisation meetings, where we have the opportunity to liaise with other trainers, teachers and lean practitioners. I keep all Individual Learner Plan where records of initial assessment are recorded, where any needed support has been identified and details of planned and actual reviews are written. Reference List Petty.G. (2009) Teaching Today Fourth Edition, Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes LTD www.cardiff.ac.uk/isru/educationalandtraining/infolit/hilt/section8.1.doc 23/03/14