FLiTE resources
Guiding and assessing student teachers
These stories are about assessment (judgments around pass/fail); guiding student teachers’ teaching; providing learning opportunities for student teachers; and teaching student teachers.
Teacher Educator Story 1
This story is written by a school-based teacher educator about assessing a student teacher.
Teacher Educator Story 5
This story is written by an institute-based teacher educator about providing opportunities for student teachers in school.
Teacher Educator Story 12
This story is written by a school-based teacher educator about supporting a student-teacher to make progress.
Collaborative working
These stories are about communication in partnerships; working in partnership across institutions; working in partnership within an institution; working with school leadership; and roles of teacher educators in the partnership.
Teacher Educator Story 2
This story is written by an institute-based teacher educator about working collaboratively with school-based teacher educators.
Teacher Educator Story 6
This story is written by a school-based teacher educator about the communication between the Initial Teacher Education Provider and the school.
Teacher Educator Story 10
This story is written by a school-based teacher educator about working with colleagues to promote learning from school-based practice.
Quality
These stories are about the quality assurance of initial teacher education; the training of mentors and the training of school-based teacher educators who are supervising the training of student teachers in their school, or a cluster of schools.
Teacher Educator Story 3
This story is written by a lead school-based teacher educator for a group of schools about training mentors.
Teacher Educator Story 7
This story is written by a school-based teacher educator about monitoring quality of mentoring.
Teacher Educator Story 9
This story is written by a school-based teacher educator about quality assuring the mentoring relationship.
Professionalism, growth and well-being
These stories are about the professionalism of teacher educators; the professionalism of student teachers; the personal growth and identity of teacher educators; the personal growth and identity of student teachers; and the wellbeing of student teachers.
Teacher Educator Story 4
This story is written by an institute-based teacher educator about a challenge that arose during a student teachers’ assessment.
Teacher Educator Story 8
This story is written by an institute-based teacher educator about a safeguarding issue.
Teacher Educator Story 11
This story is written by a school-based teacher educator about working with a student-teacher who has a mental health issue.
Using the stories
Terminology
Across providers and countries, a wide range of terms are used for the different participants in teacher education. The following table indicates what terms have been used in the resources and, for guidance, what terms might be appropriate substitutes in your setting. When you are using the stories, you may find it helpful to make it clear at the beginning of the workshop what and who the terms refer to, and to identify the key people within your setting/ partnership.
| Terms used in the resources | Alternative terms |
|---|---|
| Initial Teacher Education (ITE) | Initial Teacher Training (ITT) |
| School-based teacher educator (SBTE) | Professional mentor ITT supervisor ITT co-ordinator Senior Link School-based trainer/tutor |
| Teacher mentor | Co-operating teacher School-based mentor |
| Student teacher | Trainee Associate teacher |
ITT/ITE provider | School-centred ITT provider (SCITT) School Direct Partnership Higher Education Institution (HEI) Teacher Education Institute University |
The resources are focussed firmly on the issues being faced ‘on the ground’ in teacher education, rather than on organisational issues. The responsibilities of teacher educators vary between partnerships, reflecting the variety of ways that initial teacher education has been organised between teacher educators in schools and HEIs or SCITTs in recent years. Even though the resources might not exactly match the way your partnership distributes responsibilities, there is rich learning in their content, and using them collaboratively.
Using the stories to support mentor development
When using the stories for collaborative professional learning and development for effective mentoring, you may find this table useful, where the stories have been cross-referenced to the National Standards for school-based initial teacher training (ITT) mentors (2016) for those working in England.
How to use the stories
Each of the Teacher Educator stories has suggestions and ideas for your use of the story. Many of these different ideas have been contributed by the teacher educators taking part in workshops that we have run. You may decide that you would like to use a story in a different way, or to swap around the ways you use the stories. Ten ways and ten more ways to use the stories are provided for you to easily consider other ideas for your own workshops.
Writing and using your own stories
Writing a story about a challenge in your practice
Writing stories about practice is a useful activity for teacher educators to carry out for reflection and self-discovery. This resource will help you write your own story about practice, or you can use it to support others in their writing.
This resource will enable you to use different perspectives (or lenses) to help you to critically reflect on your practice so that you can develop it.
Reflecting together on your stories of practice
Reflecting together on stories of practice can help us to discover what is happening during critical moments, deepen our understanding and decide what we will do to embed our new ideas.
Teaching Resources
Developmental Mentoring
This video is about how student teachers develop, and ways to support their development. It is for anyone who is mentoring in initial teacher education.
Educative Mentoring Approach
This video introduces the educative mentoring approach for those working in initial teacher education, and how it can be applied in practice.
Co-planning lessons
This video develops the discourse around lesson planning.
Peer intervision for mentor development
This is a brief introduction to the process and advantages peer intervision for mentor development
Equality Diversity and Inclusion: Resources for facilitating conversations and learning
This resource has been created to facilitate conversations about equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).
The booklet provides research-informed guidance for setting the context for these conversations to take place, and some suggestions for using the cards with individuals and groups.
There are 27 cards that provide a conduit for conversations and a visual prompt for exploring these issues.
Teacher Educator Viewing frame for a Teaching Session
This practical teaching resource has been designed for teacher educators and student teachers and has three potential applications:
- As a planning resource, you can consider your own practice and plan your use of modelling for a class
- As a peer observation resource, you and other teacher educators can use it to focus in on specific aspects of your practice
- As a resource to develop the noticing skills of your student teachers, you can invite your student teachers to notice your practice and record this using the Viewing Frame.
Using the Teacher Educator Viewing Frame