Quick-n-dirty research project
Would anyone like to make a small (or large!) contribution to a quick-n-dirty research project please?
Years ago, when I was on the Board of the LSIS Excellence Gateway, I worked with a metadata specialist and a taxonomist (and many, many specialist staff and inspectors from every corner of FE & Skills) to produce the sector’s first Taxonomy of Issues. This was a list of every possible issue in the FE & Skills sector. It was then used to create a navigation system for the thousands of good practice resources in the Excellence Gateway. In other words, you’d simply click on the issue you had, and you’d be returned just the right case studies and good practice to help you resolve your challenge. You can still find this work here: www.ccqi.org.uk/taxonomyofissues.
A substantial part of my work now is helping providers create Quality Standards that set out the positive impact they ideally want to have on learners. These then become the corner stone of their quality systems – rather than relying on ephemeral documents such as the Ofsted EIFs, which, as many of you will know, have major gaps.
But I’m curious to see if we can produce a comprehensive taxonomy of the issues we face with our learners. Are you ahead of me? You’d look at the challenges your learners are having, click on the challenge in the Taxonomy of Learning Issues, then consider the suggested teaching strategies to overcome them (and maybe even the teaching strategies that are causing them..).
This might be what a quick-n-dirty evaluation of your learners could look like. John is an over-contributor, desperate to answer every question without due consideration, or respect for others. Usma is a bystander, lacking the confidence to answer any questions or contribute to discussions. Aden doesn’t seem to be able to commit his learning to long-term memory. Julia exhibits learned dependence and over relies on teacher feedback to move her work forward. Trevor has pretty much no resilience and gives up as soon as things begin to go wrong. Etc..
If you’d like to contribute to the first phase of this research project, then just add a typical issue or two to the comments section below. I’ll then collate them all into a wiki, which you’ll find under the ‘collaboration’ tab on the Centre for Creative Quality Improvement website.
I’ll publish the results soon, along with phase 2.
Looking forward to seeing how you describe our challenges! And do feel free to share this post and/or tag other interested parties.
Best wishes, and thanks in advance. Tony.
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