Epic goes to the movies... Films of Effective Practice

The QIA's Skills for Life Improvement Programme 2006-7 has been designed to support creative change in a wide range of self-improving organisations. The programme website is now live at www.sflip.org.uk and there you will find introductory information about the national programme and the three main strands of inter-related activity for this year: workforce development, quality improvement and innovation in teaching and learning.

Within the programme we have an opportunity to capture some of the very best examples of effective practice through a series of DVDs/videos/films. These will then be available for sharing with practitioners and teacher educators across the field.

Design and consultation phase

The programme started by consulting practitioners on topics for the films. We circulated project email networks with a list of potential themes for each film and received over a hundred replies. The four most favoured themes were:

• embedded learning and partnership teaching
• teacher education
• literacy teaching and learning in a range of contexts
• approaches to numeracy teaching – a range to include language and maths, dyslexia and maths, adult numeracy and self development of personal maths skills

Respondents also fed back some useful ideas for a future list, such as training bilingual job seekers, and effective use of RARPA.

The responses were discussed in the project Advisory Group and it was decided to work with the top four themes, but to try and incorporate some of the other suggestions. So, for example, one suggestion of developing reading skills could be incorporated into the literacy video. Each film will be approximately one hour in length and will have footage from four different lessons or learning sites, in a range of settings.

The Advisory Group went on to discuss the format of the films. They want a flexible design, with the films broken up into small chunks, which can either be shown separately or continuously. The group felt that, often, showing how not to do something is more illuminating than showing good practice. The project team decided to take up this point through the teacher education film. In this film, the teacher would simulate facing a particular challenge, such as dealing with a confrontation in the classroom. We would then film two different endings, one where an effective response is made to the challenge, and one which does not work so well. Obviously this approach is quite challenging to make and we will need to film extremely experienced teachers with willing learners, but we are optimistic that it will work for us.

The project team also consulted trainee teachers on what they would find useful in a film of effective practice. The results of the consultation phase resulted in the drawing up of a design document which was agreed by the consortium partners and the QIA.

Filming and evaluating the prototype

Filming for a prototype took place in January and is being edited at the time of writing. There are three films for the prototype: two lessons of ESOL embedded into construction and business studies, and one entry level 2 literacy lesson. The film will show short extracts from these lessons, followed by an interview with the teacher, some learners and a panel of experts. The aim of the prototype is to demonstrate the format. If the Advisory Group and consortium partners are happy with it, then we will go ahead with the other 11 films.

Filming the final product

Plans are already underway to film on further sites. These are still tentative, but we have some very interesting sites and topics, including:

• Literacy embedded into football coaching
• Numeracy for kitchen design
• Literacy embedded into family learning (Holloway Prison)
• Skills for life in the electronics workplace
• Numeracy for ESOL learners (15 - 19 year olds)
• Working on literacy through a library reading group

The films, with accompanying booklets, are expected to be ready in the summer.

Dissemination of the films

We see the films as being helpful in all aspects of quality improvement, from initial teacher education to continuous professional development. We want to ensure that the films are widely available and widely used. We hope that the films will be available as DVDs and through the internet. In addition, we are discussing the possibility of running short awareness-raising seminars to disseminate the films and brief teacher educators and managers on how they can be used.

Helen Sunderland