School of Languages at XJTLU Conference 2024

In the unique professional development journey of each individual teacher, the future is not set; there’s no fate but what we make for ourselves. This presentation shows how our team has provided scaffolding and support for colleagues in the design of courses leading to the Cambridge International Certificate in Teaching and Learning to enable each participant to maximise their potential.
Apart from regularly running these online courses for commercial clients, we have also offered places to significant numbers of tutors from our own institution, with ten tutors from our department studying on the current course, including both EAP and content tutors. As well as engaging with the synchronous and asynchronous content provided by the course team, participants each work closely with a mentor. In the first part of the course, one of their tasks is to observe an experienced teacher and then together with their mentor complete an observation form in which they distil the features noted in discussion of the lesson. Later in the course, participants are observed teaching by their mentor and encouraged to reflect on their key strengths and key areas for improvement. This combination of observing experienced colleagues, working with their mentor and sharing their thoughts in an online discussion forum provides an essential experiential basis to ground their engagement with the academic literature during the course.
The concluding section of the presentation will demonstrate how our course participants are empowered, drawing on their first written evidence of learning in which they describe how their understanding of how people learn has developed as a result of engaging with the course, and conclusions from their final evidence of reflection in which they evaluate the significant developments in their professional practice resulting from their participation in the programme.