New Solutions for Teacher Training from GoReact and Mosaic

Jenny Gordon:

Okay, I’m Jenny Gordon from GoReact and I’m joined by my co-host and our partner from Penrose Education. Rob Caudwell. Great to have you with us, Rob.

Rob Caudwell:

Hi Jenny.

Jenny Gordon:

So we are looking forward to having a great discussion with our wonderful panel today. I just wanted to let you Rob, first of all introduce yourself and Mosaic, if you wouldn’t mind.

Rob Caudwell:

Yeah, no, I’d be delighted. So hi everyone, my name is Rob Caudwell and I’m one of the founders of Penrose Education and we’re an EdTech company that has built a specialist teacher education platform that we call Mosaic. And that brings together all of the different aspects of what a great teacher education program needs into one place. So combining LMS tooling and assessment processes as well as mentoring and coaching cycles into a single cohesive joined up experience. And we think that taking together, it makes it really easy for student teachers to make connections between their theoretical and academic learning with their practical experience in the classroom as they learn to teach. And that’s what we are all about.

Jenny Gordon:

Brilliant, thank you. And that’s why we work so well together. I’m obviously from GoReact in a product that is built for video feedback and assessment and we are working together as a team, really as a partnership to combine our products and what we do together to give our teaching students and the instructors who have to look after them all the time a better experience and hopefully we’re doing a bit to support that. More on that later though, I mean the objective of this webinar is more broad than that and it’s an opportunity for us to explore the challenges and opportunities in teacher education of which there are many I’m sure we could all debate, but also to talk a little bit about innovation and how technology solutions can support some of those challenges as well. I think it’s also, it would be remiss of us not to talk about the additional challenges around teacher retention and the training challenges as well as those broader opportunities.

So hopefully we’ll cover all of that today. If you do have any questions, please feel free to pop those in the queue and a section on Zoom. If you can see that my team are brilliant at filtering those up, if the questions relevant to the area that we’re discussing at the time, we’ll try and pull it into the conversation and if it sits slightly at odds, we’ll ask them at the end. Before I introduce our guests to formally, I just wanted to run through a little bit of housekeeping. These sessions usually take about 45, I say 45 minutes. Last time I said 45 minutes, we went right up to the hour. So that’s because it’s a great conversation to have with colleagues but we won’t go past the hour and there will be an opportunity for q and a at the end. If you don’t get the chance to ask a question throughout, we’re recording this session, if you have to drop off, you’ll be set the recording. If anybody registered but they couldn’t join, they’ll get that recording too. We want the session to be as interactive as possible, so please do ask any questions that you have and we’ll be sure when we send out the recording to share contact details and things like that if you have any specific questions that you don’t want to raise on the call today. So without further ado, let me formally introduce our panel of guests. Well I’ll let them introduce themselves actually their role and where they’re from. Can I start please with Jodie?

Jodie Greaves:

Hi everyone, I’m Jodie Greaves and I am head of teacher training at Plymouth Marginal University. We’ve been working with Mosaic for a few years now as a system for us and with GoReact for the last 18 months to two years. So yeah, really excited to be here and share our expertise with you.

Jenny Gordon:

Thank you very much for joining us Ali.

Alison Ewen:

Hi Ali, you work closely with Jodie. I’m a lecturer at Plymouth Marjon with a real passion for coaching and mentoring. I did a postgraduate course to develop my expertise and have been working with Jenny as Jodie said over the last 18 months to try and refine our systems and support our trainees in being the best that they can possibly be. So looking forward to hearing everybody else’s ideas too.

Jenny Gordon:

Thank you so much Ellie and it’s great to have you here. And last but definitely not least it’s just the way you are on the screen. Jayne. Wonderful colleague Jayne.

Jayne Leggott:

Hi, so my name’s Jayne Leggott. I’m a senior lecturer at the University of Derby and I’m program lead for the assessment only route to QTS, both home and international where we have been working with Great GoReact so that we can be live anywhere in the world watching lessons as they happen.

Jenny Gordon:

Brilliant. Yeah, you’re doing some super innovative things so it’s really great to have you all with us today. And I am not a feminist but it’s also great to have a huge panel of ladies. Rob. I’m sure you’re enjoying that as well, but I just think it’s great to have the female empowerment side of things playing a good part today. Look, let’s get into it. We’ve got some really good questions that we’ve, we’ve already sort of shared between us, so none of these are coming as a big surprise to our team today. These ladies Rob and I would like to think ourselves as well as experts in this field, but I think the way that we do that and continue to be good and understand what we can do with innovation and how to solve some of the challenges is by having these discussions and talking together.

And the more that we can do that and share the more that we all progress and hopefully serve these teaching students all around the world even better the we’re already doing every day, but the current challenges in teacher training and retention are clear. The statistics tell a story that is concerning for us all teacher training programs play a vital part in addressing the ongoing teacher retention crisis in the UK and around the world. But what do you see as the most pressing challenges for teacher training institutions today? Can I pose that question to Ali first?

Alison Ewen:

Hi, yeah. Many challenges in terms of a status in the country now whereby teaching is seen as something that is really complex and hard. Significant challenges in terms of thinking about workload and things like offset have been key haven’t they? And so sometimes attracting people into the institutions now has become a little bit more challenging. We experienced after the covid year, we tended to get quite a few people wanting to retrain and there were this splurge of extra people that were thinking teaching was for them. And it’s quite interesting that many people think teaching is a lot easier than it actually is. So when they start a course, even if they’ve been in schools for a long time, like teaching assistants for example, they haven’t realized the complexity and the thought that happens behind teaching a lesson. And so in terms of our institutions, I think it’s about us trying to be really clear about what it’s like to train as a teacher, what the journey is going to entail and how we can make that journey really successful for our trainees in terms of clear expectations, the type of curriculum that we design and as you said earlier, that notion of assessments and how we can ensure that our assessments are accurate and supporting our trainees in being prepared to teach in their ECT years.

Jenny Gordon:

Ali, you said people coming into the profession just don’t understand how tough it is. It’s a hard job. And what other factors affect that kind of retention rate or what other things do you see particularly young people coming into the training programs, what else is making them quit or really reconsider what they might do? And Jodie and Jayne, please feel free to come into this as well.

Alison Ewen:

I think mentoring is absolutely key. Our relationships with our partnerships schools when they go on their placements is absolutely key. We see some really skilled mentors being able to really support trainees and help ’em to make progress and that can make a significant difference to retention and obviously the way we train the mentors is going to be key to that. The processes that we set up in terms of assessment, in terms of how to support them to set targets and give feedback, et cetera, are all going to be absolutely key to our retention.

Jenny Gordon:

Absolutely. I was listening to a radio show the other day with a young teacher who’d come in and said, so much of my time learning to be a teacher is nothing to do with teaching. How big a part do the mentors play in supporting that understanding of the role as well, Jodie?

Jodie Greaves:

Yeah, it’s absolutely key and the link between what we at Duke University and what schools are helping to facilitate in schools needs to be really clear. Those links need to be made in order for the mentors to really understand where they’re stepping in and what they’re reinforcing. So that understanding of the professional role and all the things that happen that aren’t necessarily in the classroom, but the different hats that teachers have to have and class teachers and mentors really have to model that and show the trainees what those expectations are and to have that broader understanding of the expectations of professionalism and things that don’t stop at the school gates necessarily. That understanding of the teacher standards and that professionalism in the community and upholding that public trust that’s essential and schools will be role models for that and reinforce that with what we’re saying as well. So it’s really key in understanding the role that isn’t just in the classroom.

Jenny Gordon:

Yeah, absolutely. And do you see that technological innovations platforms, whether it be the ones that we represent or not, isn’t about that it’s about how innovation can support students and ultimately retain them in the profession. Do you see that as being a big part of that process as well?

Jodie Greaves:

It is absolutely fundamental because the distance that we have with some of our trainees, some of our mentors, they need to be able to access training materials. So any mentor training that we do or student training we do, we record so that they’ve got that to look back at. The platforms that we use are accessible and easily understood by all so they can get anything that they need to support. So all of that is so important to delivering effective teaching for the trainees to be able to have all the support they need and be able to access everything they need on platforms. So it’s fundamental.

Jenny Gordon:

And Jayne, I know we work really closely together Without certain platforms you simply wouldn’t be able to deliver certain aspects of your courses and assessment, but do you see those as also being fundamental for your students that you never actually see?

Jayne Leggott:

Well we feel like we do see them. We feel like we are there in the minute. I mean enables us to be anywhere in the world with our candidates, with our students and supporting them in real time. It’s really valuable. Yeah,

Jenny Gordon:

Absolutely. And I suppose for students and candidates to wear safeguarding and rules allowed see each other and have that peer support as well should be indeed. Definitely. Definitely.

Rob Caudwell:

Rob hand over next question. Ready? I’m ready to jump in. I think we’ve naturally started talking about this already, but I’m going to ask a specific question about this and I’ll maybe go the opposite order. So I’ll start with you Jayne. I think it’s really exciting to work in teacher education at the moment. Some of you might use other words, but I think it is exciting because I think what we see is that new benchmarks are being set all the time of what excellent teacher training can look like and which is really exciting and I was just wondering if each of you could share some kind of examples that you’ve seen of that, some standout practices or features of your courses that you think are contributing to you being able to give an excellent offer to the students that you work with. James, we start with you.

Jayne Leggott:

Okay. Well I think one of our standout practices is probably that we are able to adapt and meet local and national and international need within our programs. For example, at the moment we have a candidate who’s going through our assessment only route, very experienced teacher, but he’s working in an online school so we are adapting and working with him and the school to enable that to create that more bespoke pathway for him. We are also evolving to meet the needs of online teachers in other ways. So we’re training students to use pedagogies that are effective in an online space and we have new programs coming for 2025. We have a postgraduate certificate in online teaching and also we’re using technology to support international cohorts. So like I said, we can be that in the minute live with our candidates and it’s a very powerful tool.

Rob Caudwell:

Amazing, thank you. Jayne, I’m going to come back to you but I’ll go to Jodie and Ali first and then we’ll come back. But Jodie, what about you?

Jodie Greaves:

Yeah, so I’ll talk a little bit about DFE reform and how we’ve done that and I think Allie then can probably jump in with where we act and that sort of side. So I think it’s been very pressurized having the new reform and all of the things that we have to implement. One of the things I think we’ve done well is the initiation of the IAPs and the consideration of how we can use different methods to support our trainees in areas that we think are really, really important. So things that are not necessarily in the CCF but that we think that our trainees really need and that specific to our region. So things like diversity is one of our key areas. That consideration of coastal deprivation being in the southwest really considered how we sequence the curriculum and how it’s spiraled for them to be revisiting and using everything our technology is mosaic for example, to really structure and break down those tasks that we want them to do and to be able to be a lot clearer with our expectations of this is what we want you to do, here’s the resource you need now upload that so it’s in one place, it’s really easy for them to follow those tasks and be able to implement them.

And also our mentors then can see that too so that they’re really consistent with their understanding of their part in the trainees journey and the curriculum expectations. So I think that the link between our curriculum and what we’re teaching in university and how that carries on running in schools I think is really successful thanks to the platforms we’re using and also our understanding of the intensive training and practice and adding value to our trainees and not going simple or easy, but actually being really brave and standing to our guns of what we expect, what we want the trainees to be able to deliver in school.

Rob Caudwell:

Amazing. Ali, have you got something else to add to that?

Alison Ewen:

Yeah, I think linking back to that notion of retention is this idea that trainees need to see that they are making progress. Mentors need to know what is appropriate for the trainee at different stages because absolutely key to students’ retention and success and development of confidence and confidence is that we are giving them tasks at the appropriate level of challenge, at the appropriate stage such that they build on what they’re doing, become more confident and competent and end their journey feeling really successful. And for us to be able to do that we need key things like assessment to be really well considered so that the time in university for example is really supporting the trainees development of how to be a successful and effective teacher. So we’ve been using act for example to support us with assessments at the university, which has really helped with some of the problems with AI because we’re all up against how do we manage that, what do we do?

But we’ve been able to ask the trainees to video record themselves for example and reflect on that such that we know it’s definitely them. They’ve applied their learning directly to an experience so that we know it’s accurate and it’s going to have an impact on their success in the classroom. So in terms of the use of video, I know we’re going to go into it in a bit more depth further down the line, but that journey for the trainees needs to be really carefully considered and stepped so we start with tasks that aren’t going to be too much out of the trainee comfort zone, they’re not going to feel like failures and we literally make sure that can experience some success so they start to build that confidence and then stage things up gradually so that we know that they are going to be fully prepared for the life of the teacher.

Rob Caudwell:

Amazing. Yeah, I really like that. Making sure that they’re feeling success and I think something that we talk a lot about Mosaic is they need to make progress obviously, but they also really need to feel like they’re making progress and really need to be able to show that they’re making progress to other people and other people can see that and can come with them on that journey and I think that’s a really interesting point. Thank you so much Ali. I think we’ve already naturally started doing this anyway, but I’ll ask the question in case Jayne has got anything to add or if Jodie or Ali has something to add, but are there any other things around new practices that you’re trying or new things that you are working on in your provision that is helping to support teacher trainees to stay in the profession and when they finish training or to meet the specific needs of the context that they’re going into? Is there anything else that Jayne or anyone else would like to add before I hand back over to Jenny?

Jayne Leggott:

I think it’s just as I said before, it’s ensuring that we are teaching pedagogies that are appropriate for different spaces, appropriate for online spaces as well as face-to-face teaching and that we’re upskilling that the next generation of teachers to meet the need that’s out there

Jodie Greaves:

And really focusing on wellbeing as well. So for the trainees to understand not only how to support children’s wellbeing in school but support their own wellbeing and understanding what they can do to support themselves when they might find things tough. So we hold a wellbeing conference where the trainees are encouraged to write an action plan around what they can do for their own mental health and wellbeing, thinking about any triggers they might have and what they can do to overcome them and give them some opportunities to experience things that they might not have experienced before. Obviously it’s a really big part of the profession, being able to regulate oneself and being able to balance everything that’s going on in the classroom. So that’s one part of our curriculum that’s important is to get them to really think about what they can do if they do struggle.

Alison Ewen:

I think kind of building on that is the notion of to support trainees to make progress, they need feedback and both Mosaic and GoReact have helped us and mentors be able to provide that feedback such that trainees can develop, take advice, they self-reflect themselves. Again, I know we’re going to this in a bit more depth later on, but that kind of starting the journey where they’re very reliant on perhaps feedback after a lesson observation for example, from mentors to at the end of their journey we’re hoping that they’re able to set their own targets, see their own strengths and solve problems independently is where we’re aiming and the platforms that we are using really support us in enabling trainees and mentors and lecturers be able to all work together to enable that.

Rob Caudwell:

Amazing, thank you so much everybody. I’m going to hand back to Jenny

Jenny Gordon:

And it is a natural move into that area of feedback and I think I’ve said this to everybody on this call millions of times because it still fascinates me that feedback. Obviously in our surveys that we do every year with our students, the biggest thing that they report is that they would like more feedback just getting a grade or a mark isn’t good enough, they want to know why, but they’re aligned. Alliance on that from an assessor or an instructor is what we’ve ingrained in learning and we’ve also got to make it possible for learners to give themselves some self-reflection as part of that feedback process, get reflection from other stakeholders who may be peers or maybe mentors and certainly some of the innovation and the technologies that we see available in the market now enable that much more readily. Jayne, in your case, tell me some of the countries in which your learners are based.

Jayne Leggott:

So currently we have learners in Myanmar, we have Thailand, China, the Isle of Man literally all over the world to be fair

Jenny Gordon:

And their feedback to them you have to give it through technology because you can’t fly around and be there, but in the same way Allie and Jodie that you’ve got students at different ends of the southwest as well, that challenge is real. Getting to everybody and giving them the feedback that they expect is a real thing, whether it be local or international. So I think that some of the platforms that are available do enable that to happen. Let’s talk about Jayne, how you are giving feedback to some of your learners, the different tools and the different ways that you are giving feedback. Your colleagues are giving feedback and they’re feeding back to themselves.

Jayne Leggott:

Yeah, it’s really exciting. So our lesson observations are remote so we’re there, like I said, we are there in the moment in real time, but we are there virtually and we also have a mentor who will be there actually in real life. So we’re able to see the full classroom, we’re able to see the teacher and we are able to comment on the platform live. So it’s possible to comment using predetermined markers which we put in against our assessment frameworks, which are our university derby first assessment frameworks, which it’s tied tightly to the teacher standards and we can flag during that lesson and comment according to those markers, which is really powerful because it’s our in the moment reflections which can then mirror the mentors reflections. I think it’s also important because this ability to watch the session back and review practice to see exactly what was said, what was done, and then the precise impact of this, we found it an incredibly powerful tool for developing practice and the one that’s been really embraced by the students and the mentors we work with, the mentors tend to get very excited by this.

It feeds into our direct instructional coaching approach. It allows us to capture at any set moment it is easy to pause, to look at the precise action and clearly see the impact of those actions and then link it back to our assessment frameworks so that we can set those very targeted and very precise action sets. But something that’s very exciting that we’ve been using at the moment is the AI facility on GoReact and we found this fascinating because we’ve been able to use this as a discussion point with our mentors and candidates. So it’s given us a totally different perspective and it allows for an in-depth reflection and the analytics also give us an insight for example, into lesson pace, which is interesting as well. Then we can track this and discuss this and critically analyze it as part of our post session discussions. So I would just say that the benefit of this approach as part of your assessment pedagogy for students, it helps ’em maybe to feel a little bit less judged because again, it links back to the comments of the AI feedback which we can then track back and rewatch because everything’s recorded and it enables them to a really collaborative approach I suppose, which where we can deconstruct and unpick and see real learning which is done with the students, with the candidates opposed to done to them. So it’s really powerful

Jenny Gordon:

And I guess I did a year of a teaching degree before I left because I wasn’t a strong enough person to continue. Basically I wanted to be a teacher my whole life. I went to do it and I had such a bad experience that I left the profession. There you go. If there’s any reason to be having this conversation, it’s because of people like me. So I never got to see myself standing in front of a classroom doing anything. I think the other thing that technologies can offer is the opportunity for candidates to actually see themselves doing something that they’ve never seen themselves do before and that sort of debrief when you sit down with your mentor and you talk about what was good or what needs improved, to be able to watch it again and to see it again is super impactful, very much scale. I think you can see how potentially more quickly or at least more confidently learners can move through that process because of that reflection component. But Jodie, it’s not always easy, is it integrating these technologies because you’ve got so many different stakeholders to bring on the journey with you. What sort of challenges have you faced at Maron when it comes to integrating these technologies into your training programs?

Jodie Greaves:

It’s a real challenge due to multi academy trusts now being that there’s so many layers that we have to go through to get things implemented. So thinking about react in particular and schools worry around GDPR, sharing information, safeguarding, all of those things. We’ve had pushback from mentor thinking that schools wouldn’t be okay with implementing it and that lack of understanding of actually how data shared and permissions and things like that. So I’ve had to have quite a few conversations with Matt data protection leads or MAT leads in particular to explain how it works and it’s been really well received then. Yeah, absolutely fine, no problem once they’ve got that understanding. But because there are so many layers to and so many people that now need to sign things off, it can be a challenge to get the message in to the right people, especially when we’re sending letters out to mentors that might not then get to the data protection officer.

So it around having those clear conversations, but we still were having to make some adjustments and saying if your school’s not available or not allowed to use this technology for any reason, then do this instead. But we’ve had a lot more schools onboard after going through that process and starting to use it and having a go and feedback from our trainees from using it have been, I was really scared I didn’t want to see myself to actually that was really good way to show that I was doing something I didn’t realize I was doing in a good way was talking about success and actually they can see success for themselves saying, oh actually I was standing and I was a teacher. I was using questioning really well. So a real positive influence on our trainees practice and yeah, we’re just keeping going.

Jenny Gordon:

We say that, don’t we Ali? When we first started talking about how to implement with learners, the majority of your youngest learners, they just left school, they’re coming into their first year. We talked about how we could introduce this in a non-confrontational way and we talked about them getting to read a story to the camera, not even in a classroom, just so they became comfortable listening to themselves. Nobody can, well I dunno about you, but I can’t bear listening to myself on video or anything. But then when you can affect change because you’ve seen it and because you’re given a structured way of considering what you’re watching, you’re not just asked to watch it and give feedback, you can give some guidance to the students what they should be looking at that in time does start to become easier for them, right?

Alison Ewen:

Yeah, definitely. There is this notion of real fair and we start very simply with a non assessed piece of work. It’s not even going to be looked at by tutors and the idea like you say, is that they read a story and they think we have a criteria. We do a seminar where we talk about how to successfully read a story and create a criteria together. Things like obviously character voices and pauses and actions and then they critique the video of themselves and talk about what they were good at so that we really start with that positivity. Some of them literally will hold the book and have the book videoed and not want their face shown to start with and then we gradually stage it up and once they see the benefits, because for example when they’re in a lesson trying to remember what happened in that lesson, when they’re nervous and they’ve got so much going on, often their memory of the lesson is not accurate at all and they don’t notice really important aspects.

I had a trainee just this week who basically was asking questions and choosing the same person, the same child to answer that question three times. She obviously didn’t notice that, but in the video she was like, what? Asking the same person all the time. And we’ve had examples where for example a mentor said, look, we really need you to be much more enthusiastic with your teaching and the trainer’s like, I just don’t get what you mean or my personality isn’t to be enthusiastic. And then you video them and they watch themselves and they’re like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that I was. So that noticing things that then they can do something about to develop and refine their practice has been really, really positive. One of the things that we’re working towards with this linked to wellbeing is we are absolutely aware of the fact that going in and doing alas observation, whether it’s face-to-face or even remotely is not always accurate. There’s lots of research to say that actually to get an accurate picture you would need to do at least 20 lesson observation of that person

Because children are unpredictable. The training changes obviously if they’re going to be observed, they might be more nervous, they might be over prepared and so to get an accurate representation of their capabilities, you can’t do it in one lesson. And so kind of different approaches to this notion of a lesson observation to setting a target, it might be questioning, we’ve talked about that for example, and during the week they do little video clips of them questioning to show that they’ve progressed in that skill and they can share those videos. One of the things that we know school struggles with is release time for mentors to go and observe. So if the trainees videoing themselves during the week, then it can be an after school meeting to say, okay, this is how I’ve met this target, this is how I’ve improved with transitions in the classroom or whatever it is they’re working on. And that approach, we’re not there yet. We’re kind of working towards that kind of aim because of wellbeing and stress. I wonder if you’d still be there if that kind of approach was there, but actually if I go wrong, I could talk to my class teacher and say it didn’t go really well today. What can I do differently in a supportive environment tomorrow to make progress in this target area?

Jenny Gordon:

I think that’s not to move away from looking at the ITT space, but I think that’s the same for any sort of in-service teachers as well. Not being able to get out and peer review and spending time in other classrooms and looking at practice possibly does contribute to that kind of wellbeing impact, negative impact, the kind of stress around am I still doing the best I can do? Where’s my benchmark? What’s the quality? So the byproduct of using platforms like Mosaic and GoReact are that you building up practice libraries, you’re building up things you can share, you can scale the targets that you’re talking about that you set through the platform and then can then be evidenced, which hopefully makes your time as instructors and lecturers at university also better because the solutions are enabling you to be less stressed. I know one of the biggest driving forces for you guys down in Plymouth was the journey time, the observation time and all of that sort of thing. And I think that those cost and time savings are potentially a byproduct from the introduction of these solutions, but they’re sort of everything else that you create around it. Jodie,

Jodie Greaves:

We also have a school who are piloting getting to record expert videos of different practices. I know that when we talk about our mentors or class teachers being observed as an expert colleague doing such and such a task, that can be really overwhelming for them. So for our mentors and our school staff to be able to a bit low stakes in that they can record a video of questioning and if it doesn’t go well, they can delete it and do it again rather than having the trainee come and observe them. That’s another powerful tool for us to be able to use so that our mentors and class teachers feel that they’ve given their best that they can to exemplify whatever the trainee is working on at that particular time. So hopefully it works really well in the school and we’ll start to use it across multiple schools as well.

Alison Ewen:

And I think the timestamp nature of the video saves a lot of time so they don’t have to sit for the whole lesson and see whatever aspect they’re looking for. You can go directly to this is the part of the lesson that exemplifies this and we know time is so precious we,

Jenny Gordon:

I think when it comes right back to the beginning around the retention challenges and how to give everybody the time that they need to feel valued in what they’re doing and the support and the feedback, these innovations can really lend themselves towards that. Rob, I’m over to you for the next area.

Rob Caudwell:

Thanks Jenny. So thank you all three of you for such interesting ideas and reflections and things to mull, but I’ve got final question for you, which is whether there’s any other advice, things that you haven’t had a chance to mention yet, any other advice that you’d give to other people working in teacher training or teacher education that are looking to innovate or even just improve their programs? What kinds of advice have you got for them? And I’m going to start with Jodie because I think she’s not got to go first yet. Maybe I’m wrong.

Jodie Greaves:

No, I don’t think I have. It is a really tricky one because everything is so jam packed. There’s so much for our trainees to do, so much to learn. So I think it comes back again to that really clear messaging, communicating well to our trainees and school staff. So having that real clear messaging expectations and platforms we’re using at the moment are helping but even in our guidance so that everything matches so that they know exactly what they’re doing when those really, really clear expectations and clear communication I think is key to success, really making sure everyone knows what they’re doing and the expectations on different members of our school community and team.

Rob Caudwell:

Right. Well I really like that and I think if you, especially, and I know that different course lengths are different parts of the world and things, but in the UK when you’ve got nine months, how much of trainee time or mentor time do you want them to be taken up with? Can I find the right thing or can I remember what I’m supposed to do here? I don’t really understand what this is asking me. So the clarity that you can give there, it’s just going to make it take away one thing for them to worry about. It’s still difficult learning, still difficult, but if we can at least make the process side of things easy then yeah, I’m with you on that one. Ali, have you got anything else that you’d like to add in any other ways advice for the people on the call?

Alison Ewen:

Yeah, trying to find ways to celebrate what the trainees do and help them to develop independence is absolutely key. I dunno if it’s the same for other people, but we are really finding that there are kind of latest cohorts which were the Covid cohorts are really scared about making choices of decisions. They’ve obviously been very nurtured and we’re finding that they’re finding it really hard to be independent. And so we know that for our VS for example, we’ve got three years and by the end of that we want them to independently self-reflect and think about their own strengths and development points, set their own targets and problem solve together. And so it’s making sure that we give our trainees the space to do that gradually and safely. We talk a lot to our mentors about creating a safe environment. We try and do that at university. We’re very lucky that we’ve got a small cohort each year and we have extra support that they can go to, but we have to really think about how we can support ’em in coming from where they are and recognizing that they do find things really difficult. And if we’re going to maintain them in the sector, then we have to be really supportive and make sure we give them those opportunities to be independent, but gradually.

Rob Caudwell:

Yeah, that’s really helpful. Thanks Ally. I think you’re kind of exactly right. Again, in a nine month program, the temptation is just to focus on what happens next, right? What’s the next thing? What am I doing tomorrow, what am I doing next week? And if you can carve out that protected time for reflecting and for celebrating and for finding ways to do some metacognition on the top of things, it’s going to make a huge difference. Same question to you Jayne. Is there anything else

Jayne Leggott:

That you would add in? I would literally just very much second what’s been said that these are very powerful professional development tools. They can be part of a really positive culture of critical reflection when they’re used well. I think there’s so many advantages.

Rob Caudwell:

Amazing. Thanks Jayne. Okay, so a final question. I might just see if any of you have anything to add rather than go round again, but thinking again about what might be coming next, right? Where’s teacher education headed, not just where it’s now, what do you think the role of technology, and it doesn’t have to be specifically GoReact to Mosaic, what’s, what do you see the role of technology becoming in teacher education as we progress further into this wonderful decade that we’re living in? Or perhaps a different question is what do you hope? What might be coming? What are the types of things that you’d like to see? Maybe I should pick up?

Jodie Greaves:

I don’t mind going actually when you just say someone, it’s easier. I think the integration of AI is going, is it really important in the classroom for teachers to understand how they can use it effectively and how to teach children to use it effectively and talking about reflection and all the way through the course, getting our trainees to critique and to consider what things are good for them to use, what things are not. And so we’ve already started to implement that into our curriculum of when you have an input, what are your prompts like how would you encourage children to use prompts effectively? How do you then critique that and make sure it’s fit for purpose and for them to understand that and to be able to teach children how to use effectively is really important because we know that it’s there and we know it’s only going to get better. So it’s about embracing that and using it to the advantages that teachers can. So it is another way of helping to reduce workload for some things, but also freeing up time to do other things. So yeah, essentially important.

Rob Caudwell:

Amazing. Thank you Jodie. I think we might be done Jenny, or at least with the questions. I think there are some questions coming through and do, if you ask our listening and have got questions, do you remember to pop them in the q and a? But I’m going to hand back over to you now, Jenny. Thank you

Jenny Gordon:

And thanks. It’s been a really great discussion. There are a couple of questions. One of them is about this recording, whether it’s downloadable and split cuttable up. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll put it in Gore, react and share that recording with you and then you’ll be able to stop it and start it at the different places and identify the different areas of discussion. There you go. I’ll sign up to that one. Another question, Jayne was for you and what you were talking about around your online pedagogy and the certificate details I think relating to the courses that you offer, is that referenceable anywhere? Is that something that can be shared with, I

Jayne Leggott:

Can share a link with you, Jenny, that you would be able to share.

Jenny Gordon:

Yeah, absolutely. We’ll send that out with the follow up. Thank you very much. And then another question was around is there a library of materials potentially best practice or techniques that can be shared as well? Well, something that we have done, and Rob I’ll let you add from the Mosaic side in a sec. Something that we’ve done from the GoReact side is we have put into our library example rubrics, example marker sets, example assessments that you may want to use with your, and I say assessments, lows, a activities that you might want to do with some of your students to them in using GoReact in this instance in a certain way as an introduction to it. We will share links to that in the follow-up information as well. Rob, from the Mosaic side, do you have best practice or techniques or content like that that you can share as well?

Rob Caudwell:

I mean there’s so much best practice. We love all of the people that use Mosaic. I think we tend to, I’m going to slightly answer a different question for one that you’ve just asked. We have a curriculum area on Mosaic, so every provider that uses Mosaic can kind of build up that summary of what they’re hoping trainees or students are going to learn over the course of the program. And if you’re a fan of Jim Knight, that can act as your kind of instructional coaching playbook and that can be something that’s referenced, but there’s lots of different ways that you can use it and we’ve learned a lot over the years about different ways that different providers are trying to position their curriculum within their course. But we’ve got some really nice tooling that helps with that. I don’t know if that’s an answer to Alan’s question, but that’s my answer.

Jenny Gordon:

We’ll certainly reference it and like I said, we’ll share our details so that if anybody has more specific questions we can answer them as well.

Alison Ewen:

Any other interested in the use of digital video? There is a book by John McClean, which is title using Digital Video in Initial Teacher Education by John McCollum. So we could add that to the list if people want to find out more.

Rob Caudwell:

Is that critical publishing book?

Alison Ewen:

Yeah, and he’s got written a couple of papers. He’s from Northern Ireland. He’s here?

Rob Caudwell:

Yeah, he’s on the Cool.

Alison Ewen:

How exciting that is. I started my journey into doing this. There you go.

Rob Caudwell:

If this was an in-person event would be inviting him up onto the stage mic.

Alison Ewen:

Hi John, lovely to have you with her. Thank you, John. This literally was after reading your book, why I became so passionate about GoReact. So thank you.

Jenny Gordon:

Fantastic. Abby, I think we’ve got a QR code that we can share with attendees that you’re going to pop up onto the screen for anybody to take a photograph of. And there’s a link in the chat as well for follow up. We are also going to be hosting a second joint co-hosted webinar with Mosaic on the 12th of February, which we’ll go into a little bit more detail around how the products themselves work. So if you’re interested in that, again, you’ll find how to register to that on the follow-up information as well. I think there’s no more questions come through, so unless anybody else has anything to add, I think it’s a good time now for us to say thank you very much again to our wonderful guests today who are already very, very busy. So we appreciate the time that you’ve taken to talk to us. I’m certainly most grateful for everything that you’ve shared and I know everybody listening will as well. Rob, anything you’d like to add? Putting you on the spot there.

Rob Caudwell:

I wasn’t ready. I was busy typing to John. Yeah, just to reiterate the thanks, it’s been really fun to talk to you all this afternoon. Thank you so much for your time and for coming along. It’s been brilliant,

Jenny Gordon:

Brilliant. Thank you. And have a great couple of weeks in the run up to what is the busiest time for every teacher on the planet. So enjoy and we’ll see you all soon. Thank you.