Support and Information  

This area enables teacher educators to access support and advice online. It includes: latest news; links to EAL professional organisations, ITE and teacher email forums; a question desk for individual educator queries; and a link to an E librarian and mentor service.

Do you teach in Higher Education, whether on a PGCE, BA or in a SCITT scheme or similar?

Do you help prepare students to teach learners with English as an Additional Language?

Are you interested in exciting, new professional development opportunities to help you prepare your students to meet the professional standards for QTS?

If so, you may want to join NALDIC's initiative to support new ITE staff develop and share understandings about preparing their students for teaching EAL learners in UK schools. Through this initiative you could:

network with colleagues from other Higher Education Institutions

meet with other new lecturers

get email help from experienced colleagues outside your institution

access new resources and publications

If you began to teach in Higher Education in 2008, whether on a PGCE, BA (Ed), GTP or on a SCITT scheme or similar, you can apply for funded places at our conferences and events. If you would like to be alerted to future events and opportunities, register as a new lecturer by downloading and completing our registration form.

Recent events

MULTIVERSE exploring diversity and achievement

London Regional Workshop IV

SHARING GOOD PRACTICE IN DIVERSITY

Polish Pupils in London Schools: Opportunities and Challenges

Tuesday 10th February 2009

The fourth workshop for London from the Multiverse team.

Since the first one in January 2005, the London workshops have provided an opportunity for teacher educators throughout the region to share examples of good practice in preparing teachers confident to address issues of diversity in their future careers.

You are invited to attend our workshop to hear about the research, share good practice and celebrate Multiverse’s achievements over the last 5 years. The workshop will take place at the Resource Centre, 356 Holloway Road, London N7 6PA on 10th February, starting with lunch from 12.15p.m. and ending at 4.30 p.m. 

For those of you who are new to Multiverse, the national Initial Teacher Education (ITE) Professional Resource Network (IPRN) was developed for teacher educators, student teachers and trainees to help them meet the challenge of raising the achievement of pupils from diverse backgrounds. The main speaker for Workshop IV is :

Rosemary Sales, Professor of Public Policy at Middlesex University

Polish Pupils in London Schools: Opportunities and Challenges

The education of newly arrived pupils from Poland has raised issues for teachers and trainee teachers throughout the country. This presentation will be of interest to all ITE providers, but will be particularly timely for colleagues in areas which have had few learners of English as an additional language in the past. This is a unique opportunity to hear about a new research project specially commissioned by Multiverse and to discuss the findings and implications with colleagues and the research team.

From the evidence of our National Conference last May, Embedding good practice in diversity in ITE programmes is an issue for many ITE colleagues. The second part of our workshop will be a session on this topic. We would like to continue our tradition of welcoming examples of good practice from colleagues to share as part of the session For more information contact Dr Raymonde Sneddon – Regional Coordinator (London) – r.m.sneddon@uel.ac.uk

Calling all ITE tutors experienced in EAL

The NALDIC ITTSEAL project has been compiling a range of information and guidance for ITE tutors and student and trainee teachers over the last five years.

As part of this we want to provide guidance on the assessment of Q19 to support tutors who are new to preparing and assessing trainees for working with pupils learning English as an additional language.  An approach that we thought might be helpful is to

• Collate some of the assessment tasks that are currently used by colleagues experienced in assessing student and trainee teachers on issues of English as an additional language and possibly devise some in addition.  This might include informal assessment and practical observation in class teaching, as well as specific written assignments. We would also welcome assessment  materials related to working with bilingual pupils in relation to standards other than Q19.
• Provide some samples of students’ assignments and tasks.

• Offer criteria and comments on assignments of differing quality as guidance for tutors.

Accordingly we are convening a small workshop at which these ideas can be discussed and disseminated.  We would like to invite you to this workshop which will take place in central London on 23rd October in the afternoon.

If you have such materials and could join us on the day, please get in touch with either Maggie Gravelle (m.r.gravelle@greenwich.ac.uk) or Raymonde Sneddon (r.m.sneddon@uel.ac.uk) for further details.

NEW to ITE, new to eal, new standards  - 13.10.07

An induction conference co-hosted between NALDIC and Multiverse for those who began to teach in Higher Education in 2007. The conference was held in Coventry on Saturday October 13th 2007. The morning focussed on supporting students for their placements in schools and the afternoon on addressing EAL in HE-based courses. Sessions included:

Maggie Gravelle – New realities in schools and the new standards

Carrie Cable – Applying principles to practice for student teachers in primary schools

Constant Leung – Applying principles to practice for student teachers in secondary schools

Raymonde Sneddon – Introducing online resources from NALDIC, Multiverse and the TTRB

Kimberly Safford and Nicola Davies: Using digital video in initial teacher education

Panel Discussion

A conference report can be found on the Multiverse website

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