View comments from Sue Brookes, Academic Manager at Community Colleges NZ, taken at the Symposium in Hamilton, July 2011.
Key content
How the assessment tool can open communication with learners about literacy and numeracy, and the value of professional development for tutors
Transcript
I think the most important thing about the assessment tool is it gives us a clear permission to talk openly with their students. We assess them, and then it brings it right out into the open so we can address the issues that they have. I mean, they know they’ve got problems; but to actually have it sitting there, then we can start to move forward and do something with it. And I think it also gives our tutors some clear guidance as to what they should be working on with the individual students.
The amount of professional development we’ve done over the past two years has suddenly opened our eyes, that we felt initially that we had to embed and numeracy and literacy by stealth, and almost like hide it like it wasn’t really there.
It made us aware that we didn’t have to hide the literacy and numeracy – it wasn’t like putting vegetables in the meat patties to actually get them to eat them. Instead we could actually be quite explicit about literacy and numeracy providing we actually still kept it contextual so the students could see why it was important for them to learn.
I think the best tutors always have been doing it. Within our organisation we bring tutors in from industry, and so they don’t have a teaching background. And we’ve realised that we have to help them actually develop these skills so that they can be more effective.