Training in real life systems

All right, allright, I get the message, I need to write some blog entries. so here's the first one for 2008. What a slackarse I've been!

I've begun a new job called a Teaching and Learning Coach - raa, raa go get 'em. The job is to work with teachers in schools to develop their teaching skills in order to improve students learning, which is why we teach, although some of us seem to forget this. The system has at last recognised that the most effective professional learning takes place in the workplace, the classroom. Here's a couple os snippets from McKinsey research 2006/7 'How the world's best-performing school systems comeout on top':

...despite substantial increases in spending and many well-intentioned reform efforts, performance in a large number of school systems has barely improved in decades... you could define the entire task of (a school) system in this way: its role is to ensure that when a teacher enters the classroom he or she has the materials available, along with the knowledge, the capability and the ambition to take one more child up to the standard today than she did yesterday. And again tomorrow.

...despite the evidence, and the fact that almost every other profession conducts most of its training in real-life settings (doctors and nurses in , clergy in churches, lawyers in courtrooms, consultants with clients) very little teacher training takes place in the teacher's own classrooms, the place in which it would be precise and relevant enough to be the most effective.

There you go. Makes sense doesn't it.