LONCETT ACL Project

Improving ITT and CPD for Teachers in Adult and Community Learning

The Adult and Community Learning (ACL) project is an action research project focusing on the needs of ACL ITT teachers - both for initial teacher training and CPD.

The project is led by City Lit, and involves a partnership of colleges which includes Brent Adult and Community Education Service, Community Learning and Skills Service Waltham Forest, Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute and Working Men's College.

Objectives of the project are to:

• Expand access, improve recruitment and induction to ITT
• Increase emphasis upon specialist pedagogies in ITT and CPD
• Improve specialist mentoring and workplace support
• Foster and sustain teacher-education communities
• Transfer good practice within and beyond CETT

The aim of the project is initially to identify:

• the courses in which ACL tutors are receiving their training, and whether this includes specialist training which addresses the ACL context
• what are the needs of ACL tutors in a variety of contexts, and what are the barriers to them accessing initial teacher training?
• what issues did tutors bring to an ACL mentoring session and which was more important for mentors of tutors in small community provision - being experienced in the subject area or experienced in the learning context?
• what RARPA resources are currently available online and what factors contribute to good practice in implementing RARPA?

Project Reports

Reports related to different strands of the ACL project are available to be downloaded via the links below.

The first two reports are concerned with access issues and training needs of teachers in ACL as well as with developing collaborative approaches to meet these needs. Following on from these reports the third publication below focuses on an evaluation of a blended and modular learning approach to the training of practioners in the ACL sector.The fourth report presents findings from an investigation into the progress that ACL providers have made in the professionalisation of their staff since the 2007 reforms for the lifelong learning sector.

Also available are two reports on RARPA (Recognising and Recording Progress and Achievement in Non-Accredited Learning), the first report deals with what on-line resources are available to support the implementation of this government-sponsored initiative and the second report describes the work carried out to produce online RARPA resources available on the LONCETT website.