contradictions and dilemmas - developing a framework for professional development for trainers

Contradictions and dilemmas - developing a framework for professional development for trainers

Graham AttwellPontydysgu

Lifelong learning is leading to wider contexts and processes of learning including work based learning, informal learning and e-learning

There is a diffusion of the training process with increasing numbers of people responsible for some form of training

Professional trainers have new roles and

responsibilities

Traditional structures and systems have failed to keep up with the changes

There is a need for opportunities for CPD -

linked to practice

Professionalisation requires opportunities for Continuing Professional Development and recognition of competencies

Our focus: Trainer, tutors, and others in enterprises who integrate training and education functions in to their jobs with varying degrees

A focus on practice

On the one hand the trainers themselves can be regarded as the experts on learning and training at the workplace. On the other hand workplace trainers are experts on the “local knowledge” of work processes, tasks and functions. Training workers exhibit, develop, transfer and covey the knowledge useful at work, i.e. the so-called work process knowledge (Boreham, Fischer & Samurcay, 2002).

to what extent do existing “train-the-trainers” provision, policies and practices and the way of their recruitment correspond to the “internal logic of training” at the workplace?

1.Pre-training biography/experiences;

2.Initial take-up of training functions;

3.The everyday practice of learning support;

4.Changes and developments with regard to this role (e.g. expansion in terms of content or time; promotion etc.).

A model of practice

One goal of our project is to identify typical problems and challenges (across the different contexts of our study) that workplace trainers encounter during their professional development ‘circle’. Such problems can be seen as the major incidents of making professional development necessary and setting it off.

Trainers of continuing VET: in firms

They are members of the firm (in the majority of the cases managers )

In few cases (>10%) professional trainers are working in specialized training firms

Professionals from consultant firms work occasionally as specialists but also as trainers

CONSEQUENCE: DICHOTOMY of professional situation (identity NOT as trainers)

Trainers in firms: Characteristics

Secure jobs Good wages Teaching duties are PART (small) of

overall working duties Very elaborated knowledge of firm + staff Often training (in didactical techniques

etc.) for becoming good trainers

Important findings

No specific professional trainers employed full time by the firms

Firms tend to train their employees exclusively by people of their own staff

Only for specific subjects (e.g. ‘Effective Press Relations and Media Interview Training’, ‘Crisis

Management’ and ‘Management of Change’) cooperation with specialized training firms

Contextual contradictions and dilemmas

Professionalisation versus the wider contexts and

opportunities for learning

Formal versus informal learning

Identity as a trainer versus identity as a (skilled) worker

Pedagogic skills versus technical skills

Individual versus organisational learning

Regulation versus innovation

Certification versus the practice of

training

Frameworks for learning versus Frameworks for

qualification

one of the keys to promoting learning organisations is to organise work in such a way that it is promotes human development. In other words it is about building workplace environments in which people are motivated to think for themselves so that through their everyday work experiences, they develop new competences and gain new understanding and insights. Thus, people are learning from their work - they are learning as they work Barry Nyhan

but studies in work and work practices are seldom related to

training and still less to the training of trainers

Developing Communities of Practice

What it is about – its joint enterprise as understood and continually renegotiated by its members.

How it functions - mutual engagement that bind members together into a social entity.

What capability it has produced – the shared repertoire of communal resources (routines, sensibilities, artefacts, vocabulary, styles, etc.) that members have developed over time.

Dimensions of a Community of Practice

Promote a culture of knowledge sharing and exchange

The completeness of a job. A complete/holistic job offers learning opportunities because it allows workers to prepare and support work autonomously Rik Huys

Katleen De RickTom Vandenbrande

Difficulty. A confrontation with problems is a prerogative for anopportunity to learn

Rik HuysKatleen De RickTom Vandenbrande

The number of short-cycle tasks in a job. Acquiring occupational qualifications requires that the job has a variety of tasks that belong to this occupation


Autonomy, or ‘regulation capacities’ in a job


Contact opportunities. Social contacts allows one to learn from others and to solve difficulties together with others and learn fromthese solutions. It thereby allows for the development of social communicativequalifications;


Organisational tasks. Insight into the functional interdependence between workers in organisations helps to reveal the innovative potential of workers


Information supply. Without information and feedback on one’s own work it is difficult to learn from work and mistakes made.


New Pontydsygu web site - www,pontydysgu.org

Graham Attwell

Thank you for watching