AT A GLANCE
Keele University worked in partnership with Stoke-on-Trent Children's Services and museum education services to offer Multi-Agency and Professional (MAP) Placements to PGCE students.
Model for working with trainees: Following 2 days induction with leading professionals from children’s services, Associate Teachers (ATs) from Keele were placed in a variety of social work settings across the city. In accordance with the MAPP guidance notes prepared by Keele, ATs completed an individual written assignment examining the specific professional context within the placement and considering the implications for learning in schools.
Following the placements, trainee teachers attended drama workshops to explore the use of drama in exploring issues around vulnerability.
Video production workshops explored techniques and strategies around image-making, interviewing, supplementary filming of set pieces, voice-overs, scripting and text production.
A video entitled ‘All for One’ was produced.
ITT PROVIDER
Higher Education Institution: Keele University
ITT Course: PGCE in Social Science
Course Leader: Yvonne Hill
No of trainees involved: 22 Associate Teachers (trainee teachers)
Year group: one year postgraduate/professional course in education leading to QTS with special focus on the 14-19 curriculum
Subject area: Social Science, including Citizenship, PSHE, Sociology, Psychology and Politics at A level
Logistics: This activity was a precursor to the more formalised educational programme undertaken by PGCE students. The purpose was to contextualise learners and learning in a wider social context and to gain an awareness of the potential for multi-agency and professional synergy.
Provider motivation: The ECM Agenda was a key component of the project. Creative Partnerships exemplified the use of drama and video production in exploring citizenship issues and extending representations of community projects.
QTS Standards addressed: Q3b, 6, 8, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21a & 21b
SETTING
Setting: Stoke-on-Trent Children’s Services and Stoke-on-Trent museum education services
Provision for learners: 2 days induction, outreach placements, creative workshops in drama and video production
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
There were two concurrent themes within the project:
- To provide opportunities for a multi-agency collaboration between educational and social work practitioners
- To look at ways in which the project could be explored creatively through collaboration with drama and film-making practitioners in order to model best practice in representing community projects in citizenship education
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Following a formal two day induction given by Stoke-on-Trent Children’s Services, trainees were placed with a range of practitioners working with young people in the city. The final day was a plenary organised by the department.
Placements included working with professionals in: Youth Offending Teams, fostering and adoption teams, residential care units, Positive Steps programmes, Educational Welfare, Care Management teams, Advice and Access teams and many more.
On returning to Keele the social and emotional experiences of understanding young people in the care of children’s services was explored in more emotionally and intellectually engaged ways during Drama Workshops.
Using images from a classic Dr Barnardos’ advertising campaign, issues surrounding autobiography and intersections with life chances, poverty, affluence, social class, ethnicity, ability, special needs, age and culture were explored. Through the gradual development of group dynamics and drama conventions, still imaging, movement, thought-tracking, role play and spotlight conversation. Devised biographies and life histories allowed the trainees to interrogate and analyse their emotional, psychological, sociological and political understandings of their experiences during the placement. The workshop was instrumental in facilitating a more emotionally engaged process as the starting point for developing more intellectual and theoretical interpretations expected of postgraduate social scientists. For example discussions on various theories on masculinities, femininities and sexuality were developed from scenarios presented in the workshop. Attachment theory and cognitive therapy was also a recurrent theory during the evaluation process within the workshop.
As a result of a heightened awareness of the MAPP as a shared experience the identity of the group was consolidated. The resulting sense of ‘community’ led us to consider the way in which the trainees’ MAPP experiences could be formalised and presented to wider audiences (including other trainees, teachers and multi-agency practitioners).
A structured approach to video production was undertaken in the following workshop. This included planning structuring and scripting the use of animated and still images, including text, and accompanying sound tracks. Techniques of voice-over, pieces to camera, visual imagery and performance were carefully scripted.
In partnership with the workshop practitioners, it was agreed to structure the video into three component sections:
- The preconceptions of the trainees before the placement
- Representations of the range of experiences undertaken by trainees
- Implications of the MAPP for trainees’ professional identity
OUTCOMES
Learning outcomes for trainee teachers:
The trainees gained greater insight into the work of multiple agencies and professionals working with the Every Child Matters Agenda.
The trainees gained understanding of issues surrounding vulnerable and looked -after children in Stoke-on-Trent.
The trainees compared and contrasted ways of presenting and communicating their experiences through traditional ‘plenary’ format and more creative processes through drama workshops and aspects of video production. Film-making skills gained were signposted as transferable in teaching Citizenship issues vis-à-vis community based projects.
Learning outcomes for Keele PGCE course leadership:
I have gained a greater understanding of the intersections between creative practitioners and aspects of sociology. psychology and citizenship teaching.
Topics concerning student voice and community based projects are well articulated through creative partnerships.
Creativity is a fountain of imaginative resources that lies at the core of successful learning.
SURPRISES
- Children’s vulnerability
- Care and compassion of social workers
- Shared professional values
- Impact of social and psychological factors on children as learners
- Power of drama to explore social stereotypes
- Impact of visual media to communicate community based experience
KEY SUCCESS FACTORS
- Successful organisation of placements with Stoke-on-Trent Children’s Service
- Mentoring by key professionals in multi-agency setting
- Structuring of creative workshops in drama and video production
- Creative film-making
- Clarity of purpose, expectation and outcomes to focus creative energy
