The New Level 5 Diploma in Teaching (DIT)

This educational researcher has made a huge impact in the world of educational research and is referenced widely in blogs, articles, textbooks and assignments worldwide.  Who is he and what are his main findings?  What makes him so influential?

The new Level 5 DiT (replacing the current DET course) is being launched soon and, at Train Aid, we are very excited about this!  We feel that it is a fully comprehensive teaching course for those aiming to work in further education.  This give us a chance to reflect on how to successfully assess learners in a holistic way.  We want learners to feel that they have the chance to show every aspect of their teaching and learning and to come out of the course feeling confident and ready.  Previously, assessment methods have been fairly traditional, with written assignments dominating.  In this blog, we will explore how the DiT will be assessed at Train Aid.

As you may know, the DET qualification is being phased out and is to be replaced by the DIT (diploma in education and training: further education).  We are very excited about this at Train Aid and feel that this qualification is thorough, interesting and open to more varied assessment methods.

Learners’ behaviour can have a massive impact on a teacher, in a positive and negative way. At times, you can be stuck in a cycle of negativity with behaviour management. You know something needs to change, but how? It’s never too late to work on this key aspect of teaching and learning. Remember that any poor behaviour will also be affecting other learners and their access to your subject.

Neil Fleming’s VARK model, established in 1987, is one of the most popular methods used to help learners to identify their preferred learning style and understand more about how people can learn best and retain information within a teaching setting. 

For any successful course to be taught,  careful planning and preparation must take place. The teaching & learning cycle provides any teacher or trainer with a logical planning system to deliver well-structured lessons and to gain constructive feedback from learners & stakeholders. 

The Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) produced by David Kolb in 1984 is regarded as one of the most widely utilised learning styles models within education and training. The model proposes that people learn best from having a direct experience within an activity for the first time, with the opportunity to reflect on the experience.

We are really excited about the changes to the current Level 5 Diploma in Education and Training coming in September!  The qualification is going to be re-named the Level 5 Diploma in Teaching (Further Education and Skills).

Psychologist Abraham Maslow first introduced the Hierarchy of Needs model in 1943.  This is regarded as one of the most popular and well-known theories of motivation which can be applied to many different sectors such as: teaching, leadership and management and sports coaching.

There seems to be much discussion about ‘adaptive teaching’ in education as we look towards 2024.  Av Srivastava in ‘Learning Light,’ explains the meaning as ‘...to use technology to improve education and training by providing individualised programmes to students based on data that is gathered both before and throughout the learning process.’

Online learning has been a hot topic for the last few years.  Many employees are being encouraged back into the office after the sudden need for remote/home working during the COVID pandemic era.  Some companies are suggesting a 2 day at home/3 day in the office working routine.  Like anything, remote work has had its advantages and disadvantages in most cases and there has been much discussion in the media about increased or decreased work productivity.  In education, remote or distance learning was a huge change in 2020, especially to primary and secondary school settings.  University courses were mainly taught online and schools and colleges were closed to most learners during the lockdowns, so virtual learning was vital.  Now that the world is largely back to ‘normal’, is there still a place for online learning in education and training?

ChatGPT has featured heavily in the media, both in terms of educational literature and social media.  It is an artificial (AI) chatbot, developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022.  Amongst its skills are: writing texts of varying length, explaining topics or translating text.  You can ‘train it’ to improve its effectiveness, based on your own preferences and likes/dislikes.

You may have read this title and thought, what does this mean? Is it literally about games? You would be right! The idea behind ‘gamifying’ a classroom is to reflect the best aspects of gaming and bring them in to education. We all know that many young people (and adults!) love to game. Online/digital gaming is an enormous industry, with approximately 3 billion active gamers in the world. That figure has increased by 1 billion in 7 years, due to massive advances in technology and social media.

Behaviour management is one of the hardest challenges for any teacher or trainer to master and unfortunately many practitioners decide to leave the teaching profession early. The difficult reality is behaviour management has no quick-fix, your classroom experiences will shape your confidence as a teacher and improve your decision making when behaviour issues occur. My advice for any new teacher or trainer is to read up on articles surrounding maintaining classroom discipline, this will give you a solid grounding before you enter the classroom environment.

The roles of a teacher/trainer extend much wider than presenting in front of a classroom of learners. Behind every lesson there is a considerable amount of planning and preparation in order to cater for every learner’s individual need and inspire them to achieve their goals. There are a number of roles of a teacher/trainer which they will demonstrate on a daily basis.  Below are the most prominent roles within the education/training sector: 

Teaching is not a career that people choose for an easy life – the workload seems never ending at times. Alas, we can’t turn up at 9.00 and finish at 3.00 – no matter what some people may think! Itis most definitely a job in which you can never ‘be finished’, tidy your desk and smile smugly to yourself at a job well done. So how can we realistically improve our workloads when we are trying to: plan, mark, assess, present data, prepare presentations/resources, sort displays, call parents/carers, design seating plans, write reports, set targets.....oh...and teach?

15% of people in the UK are neurodivergent; they have brains that differ significantly from society’s expected norms…fascinating brains!  This implies that you are very likely to encounter one or more neurodivergent learners during your teaching career.  You may have already done so and would like to learn more and develop or refine your strategies; every single one of those 15% of people is, of course, an individual and will respond to different things.