Relationships with children and young people

Extract from Guidance to accompany the Standards for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) TDA, 2007

Rationale

Education is part of the process through which people acquire values and learn to apply those values in the attitudes they adopt and the ways they behave. Teachers recognise the role they play in this process, and demonstrate appropriate values, including a professional commitment to raising the educational achievement of all learners. Children and young people are more likely to thrive if they feel that they are valued and are confident that their teachers and their peers will support them. They are more likely to behave in a positive and constructive manner, and adopt appropriate values and attitudes, when they encounter such behaviours, values and attitudes in their teachers

Scope

Trainee teachers are expected to understand and demonstrate the values and attitudes that they want learners to develop. Such values will include, for example: respect for other people, a positive attitude towards learning and teaching, care for the environment and social responsibility. Trainee teachers should put these values into practice both in the classroom and in the wider learning and teaching context.

Questions to consider

Does the trainee:

• Establish positive relationships with learners, particularly through effective communication?
• Communicate and promote positive attitudes, values and behaviour by personal example?
• Motivate children and young people and encourage them to engage in and enjoy learning?
• Establish high expectations for learner behaviour, and resolve conflicts inside and outside the classroom appropriately?
• Encourage a ‘can-do’ approach?
• Promote children and young people’s health, safety and well-being?
• Implement the school’s policies, for example on equality, discipline, bullying and harassment?
• Set a good example through the relationships they forge and in their general conduct throughout the school?
• Demonstrate an understanding of the needs of minority groups?

Cross references

Evidence for this standard may be linked to evidence for assessment against the following standards:

• Q4, Q5, Q6 (Communicating and working with others)
• Q10 (Teaching and learning)
• Q15 (Subjects and curriculum)
• Q18, Q19, Q20 (Achievement and diversity)
• Q21(a), Q21(b) (Health and well-being).
• Q25(a), Q25(b), Q25(c), Q25(d) (Teaching)
• Q27 (Assessing, monitoring and giving feedback)
• Q30, Q31 (Learning environment)
• Q32, Q33 (Team working and collaboration)

ITT Requirement R1.5 stipulates that all entrants to ITT programmes must ‘possess the appropriate qualities, attitudes and values expected of a teacher’.

Sources of evidence

Evidence about trainee teachers’ commitment, attitudes, behaviour and expectations of learners’ achievement are likely to emerge from most aspects of their professional practice including the ways they conduct themselves throughout the school and in the wider learning environment. Trainees’ planning will demonstrate how they aim to develop specific values, attitudes and behaviour in children and young people.