Career Portfolio Leraning Guide

 

Contents

 

Rationale

Build Skills Employers Value

 

Resources

 

Rationale

 

Free Teaching Resources

 

The widening participation in higher education is a major component of government education policy in the United Kingdom and Europe. It consists of an attempt to increase not only the numbers of young people entering higher education, but also the proportion from so-called "under-represented groups" (those from lower income families, people with disabilities and some ethnic minorities).

 

Ideas & Resources for Widening Participation in HE

In this way it is hoped to redress the inequalities in participation between social classes. Widening participation is one of the strategic objectives of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). The issue of widening participation became a political issue after the Laura Spence Affair which hit the headlines in 2000 and after the 2003 University of Bristol admissions row which converned alleged biases in favour of the state sector.

HEFCE is pursuing this policy through a number of measures, including the payment of financial incentives to universities and by funding the Aimhigher programme.

This policy is linked to the Labour government's target of increasing participation in higher education to 50% by 2010, and is part of a wider drive to achieve social justice.

Action on Access is the National Co-ordination Team for HEFCE's Widening Participation Activities. Based at Edge Hill University in the North West of England, Action on Access provides an invaluable resource for widening participation practitioners in Higher Education Institutions and partnerships.

See also

 

External links

 

 

Build Skills Employers Value

 

Training and Development Agency for Schools

Key Skills

 

Qualifications

Introduction to qualifications

 

Higher Education

 

The Key Skills Qualification is a frequently required component of 16-19 education in the England, Northern Ireland and Wales.

It is generally available in schools (alongside A-levels or other qualifications), FE colleges (alongside NVQ or other equivalent vocational or academic courses) and other places of learning (sometimes alongside other qualifications and sometimes independently). The qualifications can be taken at levels 1-4

The Department for Education and Skills defines Key Skills as "a range of essential skills that underpin success in education, employment, lifelong learning and personal development". The DfES website states that the Key Skills Qualification is offered as a response to concern from employers about lack of essential skills in young recruits and as part of the response to the 1996 Dearing Report.

Subjects

Levels

Scotland

Wales

External links

 

 

Numeracy is a contraction (or portmanteau word) of "numerical literacy", and refers to an ability to handle numbers and other mathematical concepts. In the United States, it is somewhat better known as Quantitative Literacy, and is familiar to math educators and intellectuals but not in the common usage. Innumeracy is the absence of numeracy.

The UK's Department for Education and Skills defines numeracy in their National Strategy documents as follows:

Numeracy is a proficiency which is developed mainly in mathematics but also in other subjects. It is more than an ability to do basic arithmetic. It involves developing confidence and competence with numbers and measures. It requires understanding of the number system, a repertoire of mathematical techniques, and an inclination and ability to solve quantitative or spatial problems in a range of contexts. Numeracy also demands understanding of the ways in which data are gathered by counting and measuring, and presented in graphs, diagrams, charts and tables.

Numeracy in childhood

Numeracy and employment

Innumeracy

See also

 

Notes
Maths

 

External links

Communication is the process of sending information to oneself or another entity, usually via a language. Specialized fields focus on various aspects of communication, and include Mass Communication, Communication Studies, Organizational Communication, Sociolinguistics, Conversation Analysis, Cognitive Linguistics, Linguistics, Pragmatics, Semiotics, and Discourse Analysis.

Communication In the future: people will communicate more than ever. The rise of cellphones is a tribute to this growing importance of communication in our daily lives. As we move forward, we are going to be increasingly dependant on communication with objects, entertainment, other people, and information.

 

Aristotle's Model of Communication People communicating with other people People communicating with Information People communicating with objects... People communicating with entertainment IBM Research

 

See also

 

 

Communication: Interpersonal and Intercultural

 

See also

 

External Links

1. A list of resources on conflict style inventories and
a culturally sensitive tool for assessing styles of interpersonal conflict management.

2. The Seven Challenges: A Workbook and Reader
About Communicating More Cooperatively

3. The Geometry of Dialogue: A visual way of understanding interpersonal communication and human development

 

Interpersonal Communication refers to communication with another person. This kind of communication is subdivided into dyadic communication, public communication, and small-group communication.

The Johari Window model focuses on the balance of interpersonal communication.

Interpersonal communication encompasses:

 

Initiating: Declaring one's conversational intent and inviting consent from one's prospective conversation partner

Turn-taking: Managing the flow of information back and forth between partners in a conversation by alternating roles of speaker and listener

Having good interpersonal communication skills support such processes as:

 

Interpersonal communication is the subject of a number of disciplines in the field of psychology, notably Transactional analysis.

It can be affected by a communication disorder or by arrogance, shyness, etc.

 

Speech can be described as an act of producing voice through the use of the vocal cords and vocal apparatus or other means, such as sign language, to create linguistic acts in the form of language that communicate information from an initiator to a recipient.

In more colloquial terms, speech can be described in several different ways:

1. A linguistic act designed to convey information.

2. Various types of linguistic acts where the audience consists of more than one individual, including public speaking, oration, and quotation.

3. The physical act of speaking, primarily through the use of vocal cords to produce voice. See phonology and linguistics for more detailed information on the physical act of speaking.

 

However, speech can also take place inside one's head, known as intrapersonal communication, for example, when one thinks or utters sounds of approval or disapproval. At a deeper level, one could even consider subconscious processes, including dreams where aspects of oneself communicate with each other (see Sigmund Freud), as part of intrapersonal communication, even though most human beings do not seem to have direct access to such communication.
Speaking and Presentation Skills

 

Problems

Speech as a Form of Expression

Animal Speech

See also

 

External links

 

Active Listening

Active Listening is an intent "listening for meaning" in which the listener checks with the speaker to see that a statement has been correctly heard and understood. The goal of active listening is to improve mutual understanding.

When interacting, people often are not listening attentively to one another. They may be distracted, thinking about other things, or thinking about what they are going to say next, (the latter case is particularly true in conflict situations or disagreements).

Active listening is a structured way of listening and responding. It focuses attention on the speaker. Suspending one’s own frame of reference and suspending judgement, are important in order to fully attend to the speaker. It is also important to observe the other person's behaviour and body language. Having heard, the listener may then paraphrase the speaker’s words. It is important to note that the listener is not necessarily agreeing with the speaker—simply stating what was said. In emotionally charged communications, the listener may listen for feelings. Thus, rather than merely repeating what the speaker has said, the active listener might describe the underlying emotion (“you seem to feel angry” or “you seem to feel frustrated, is that because…?”).

Individuals in conflict often contradict one another. This has the effect of denying the validity of the other person’s position. This can make one defensive, and they may either lash out, or withdraw. On the other hand, if one finds that the other partly understands, an atmosphere of cooperation can be created. This increases the possibility of collaborating and resolving the conflict.

 

Active listening is used in a wide variety of situations, including interviews in employment, counseling and journalistic settings. In groups it may aid in reaching consensus. It may also be used in casual conversation to build understanding.

The benefits of active listening include getting people to open up, avoiding misunderstandings, resolving conflict and building trust.

External links

 

 

Nonverbal Communication (NVC) is usually understood as the process of sending and receiving wordless messages. Such messages can be communicated through gesture; body language or posture; facial expression and eye gaze; object communication such as clothing, hairstyles or even architecture; symbols and infographics; prosodic features of speech such as intonation and stress and other paralinguistic features of speech such as voice quality, emotion and speaking style.

Scholars in this field ususally use a strict sense of the term "verbal", meaning "of or concerned with words," and do not use "verbal communication" as a synonym for oral or spoken communication. Thus, sign languages and writing are generally understood as forms of verbal communication, as both make use of words — although like speech, both may contain paralinguistic elements and often occur alongside nonverbal messages. Nonverbal communication can occur through any sensory channel — sight, sound, smell, touch or taste. Nonverbal communication is also distinguished from unconscious communication, which may be verbal or non-verbal.

 

 Mastering Communication

 

See also

 

External links

 

Literacy Rich Classroom

The traditional definition of Literacy is the ability to use language, i.e. to read, write, listen and speak. In modern contexts, the word means reading and writing in a level adequate for written communication and generally a level that enables one to successfully function at certain levels of a society if that society is one in which literacy plays a role in providing access to power.

The standards for what level constitutes "literacy" vary among societies. Other skills such as computer skills or basic numeracy may also be included, as there are many people who cannot read letters but can read numbers, and even learn to use a computer (in a limited way) while remaining unable to read text. These and the increasing inclusion of sound, still and moving images and graphical elements in digitally based communication call for an even broader concept of literacy. (see: Literacy in the Information Age: Final Report of the International Adult Literacy Survey, OECD 2000. PDF). In Scotland for example, literacy has been defined as: "The ability to read and write and use numeracy, to handle information, to express ideas and opinions, to make decisions and solve problems, as family members, workers, citizens and lifelong learners." This definition embraces the Social Practice approach to literacies education and its impact on the "four areas of life" - personal life, family life, work life, community life and engages the "five core skills" - communication, numeracy, problem solving, working with others and ICT (Information and Communications Technology). Recently the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association have added "visually representing" to the list of communicative competences that are considered to constitute literacy.

 

Many policy analysts consider literacy rates a crucial measure of a region's human capital. This claim is made on the grounds that literate people can be trained less expensively than illiterate people. Policy makers also argue that literacy increases job opportunities and access to higher education. In Kerala, India, for example, female and child mortality rates declined dramatically in the 1960s, when girls schooled to literacy in the education reforms after 1948 began to raise families. Recent researchers, however, argue that correlations such as the one listed above may have more to do with the effects of schooling rather than literacy in general.

 

Illiteracy

 

Literacy in the 21st century

 

See also

 

External links

 

Bibliography

 

Reading is the process of retrieving and comprehending some form of stored information or ideas. These ideas are usually some sort of representation of language, such as symbols to be examined by sight, or by touch (for example Braille). Other types of reading may not be language-based, such as music notation or pictograms. By analogy, in computer science, reading is acquiring of data from some sort of computer storage.

 
Reading

See also

 

References

External links

 

 

General Writing Tips

Writing may refer to two activities: the inscribing of characters on a medium, with the intention of forming words and other constructs that represent language or record information, and the creation of material to be conveyed through written language. (There are some exceptions; for example, the use of a typewriter to record language is generally called typing, rather than writing.) Writing refers to both activities equally, and both activities may often occur simultaneously.

Means for recording information

 

Writing in historical cultures

 

See also

 

 

Further reading

 

Conflict Management refers to the long-term management of intractable conflicts. It is the label for the variety of ways by which people handle grievances - standing up for what they consider to be right and against what they consider to be wrong. Those ways include such diverse phenomena as gossip, ridicule, lynching, terrorism, warfare, feuding, genocide, law, mediation, and avoidance. Which forms of conflict management will be used in any given situation can be somewhat predicted and explained by the social structure -- or social geometry - of the case.

 

Innovations in Integrated Conflict Management System: Dispute Resolution Models

 

Conflict management is not the same as "conflict resolution." The latter -- conflict resolution -- refers to resolving the dispute to the approval of one or both parties, whereas the former - conflict management -- concerns an ongoing process that may never have a resolution. For example, gossip and feuds are very common methods of conflict management, but neither entails resolution.

The scientific study of conflict management (also known as social control) owes its foundations to Donald Black, who typologized its elementary forms and used his strategy of pure sociology to explain several aspects of its variation. Research and theory on conflict management has been further developed by Allan Horwitz, Calvin Morill, James Tucker, Mark Cooney, M.P. Baumgartner, Roberta Senechal de la Roche, Marian Borg, Ellis Godard, Scott Phillips, and Bradley Campbell.

See also

 

External links

 

 

Public Speaking is speaking to a group of people in a structured, deliberate manner intended to inform, influence, or entertain the listeners. In public speaking, as in any form of communication, there are five basic elements, often expressed as "who is saying what to whom utilizing what medium with what effects?"

 

Self Development Plan

10 Biggest Public Speaking Mistakes

The purpose of public speaking can range from simply transmitting information, to motivating people to act, to simply telling a story. A good orator should be able to change the emotions of their listener, not just inform them.

 

See also

 

External links

 

Problem Solving forms part of thinking. Considered the most complex of all intellectual functions, problem solving has been defined as higher-order cognitive process that requires the modulation and control of more routine or fundamental skills (McCarthy & Worthington, 1990). It occurs if an organism or an artificial intelligence system does not know how to proceed from a given state to a desired goal state. It is part of the larger problem process that includes problem finding and problem shaping.

Problem Solving with Tony Buzan's Mind Mapping

 

See also

 

External links

 

References

 

Problem Soving Techniques

Tool Maps: Collections of Math Problem Solving Tools

 

 

Interpreting the Fuzzy Inference Diagram

Logic, from Classical Greek λόγος (logos), originally meaning the word, or what is spoken, (but coming to mean thought or reason) is most often said to be the study of criteria for the evaluation of arguments, although the exact definition of logic is a matter of controversy among philosophers. However the subject is grounded, the task of the logician is the same: to advance an account of valid and fallacious inference to allow one to distinguish logical from flawed arguments.

Traditionally, logic is studied as a branch of philosophy. Since the mid-nineteenth century logic has been commonly studied in mathematics and law. More recently logic is applied in computer science and artificial intelligence. As a formal science, logic investigates and classifies the structure of statements and arguments, both through the study of formal systems of inference and through the study of arguments in natural language. The scope of logic can therefore be very large, ranging from core topics such as the study of fallacies and paradoxes, to specialist analyses of reasoning such as probably correct reasoning and arguments involving causality. Logic is also commonly used today in argumentation theory.

 

Nature of logic

 

History of logic

Topics in logic

 

Controversies in logic

 

References

See also

 

External links

 

 

Critical Thinking consists of a mental process of analyzing or evaluating information, particularly statements or propositions that people have offered as true. It forms a process of reflecting upon the meaning of statements, examining the offered evidence and reasoning, and forming judgments about the facts.

Critical thinkers can gather such information from observation, experience, reasoning, and/or communication. Critical thinking has its basis in intellectual values that go beyond subject-matter divisions and which include: clarity, accuracy, precision, evidence, thoroughness and fairness.
Model of Critical Thinking & Its Modification

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External links

 

 

Qualified Teacher Status Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) is required in England and Wales to become, and continue being, a teacher in the state and special education sectors. Similar statuses exist in the rest of the United Kingdom (Scotland and Northern Ireland), but under different names.

 

 

External links

 

 

The Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) is a one-year course in England, Wales and Northern Ireland for undergraduate degree holders that allows them to train to be a teacher.

In addition to the PGCE qualification itself, those taking the course in England or Wales are granted either English or Welsh Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), which is required to teach in maintained schools in that Home Nation. Those passing PGCEs in Northern Ireland are granted 'eligibility to teach' in Northern Ireland (equivalent to QTS). Though the QTS/eligibility to teach only applies in the Home Nation it was awarded in, applying for QTS/eligibility to teach in either of the other two Nations is a formality and is nearly always awarded to PGCE holders. Furthermore, the PGCE is also widely-recognised in Scotland and the rest of world, allowing holders to easily register as teachers there.

 PGCE

 

The PGCE was previously also offered in Scotland, but has since been renamed the Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE). It is identical in content to the previous PGCE. Like the PGCE, the PGDE is widely recognised throughout the rest of the United Kingdom and the rest of the world.

Applications for admission to PGCE (and PGDE) courses are handled by a national clearing house, the Graduate Teacher Training Registry (GTTR).

 

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Teaching Ideas

Reading:

 

Writing:

 

Speaking and Listening

Numeracy

 

ICT