Course description
Content
The course is part of the School's programme for Initial Teacher Training. Units studied are:
-Enabling Learning
-Meeting Curriculum Challenges
-Becoming a Teacher
These units are studied in both the school and the University-based parts of the course, the work on each site being complementary.
The course is designed to help you develop an awareness of the purposes and possibilities of different approaches to art and design in the school curriculum. It aims to enable you to develop pupils' ability in the visual and tactile elements of art, including the development of young people's skills to research and use evidence to generate ideas, and to interpret such ideas in practice. You will learn how to achieve this in accordance with Health and Safety requirements. The course will help you to develop this teaching competence in contexts involving a range of media, in two and three dimensions, and using IT, drawing on the richness of art from different cultures and periods of history.
During the course, consideration will be given to the National Curriculum GCSE and to post-16 courses including AS, A-level, and to the rapidly expanding vocational area of the art and design curriculum. Learning to teach involves a wide range of other skills including the development of young people's ability to communicate and justify their ideas and decisions in art and design, and more generally to develop their language across the curriculum as a whole. It also involves learning how to assess, report on and record young people's progress and how to recognise under-achievement and exceptional performance in the classroom or art studio. You will have opportunities in both university and school environments to develop these skills as well as those that relate to managing pupil behaviour in order to secure effective learning, both in the classroom and in schools more generally.
Whilst at the University, you will have access to the studio and workshop facilities of the art and design department in the School of Education. These include studio and workshop space for a wide range of 2D and 3D activities. There are two large painting and drawing studios, a black and white darkroom, a printmaking workshop for silkscreen; relief; lithography and etching; ceramics hand building studio; electric wheels; indoor gas and electric kilns. There is the opportunity for development of existing skills and areas of interest, together with the facility for expanding their current portfolio of skills through practical curriculum workshops, assisted by the studio staff.
Placements
24 weeks are spent on placement: a total of eight weeks in one placement during the autumn term and 16 weeks in a second placement during the spring and summer.
As well as teaching, the programme includes contact time with a Senior Professional Tutor and a Subject Mentor, directed study time and personal study time.
There is an opportunity to spend time in a primary school and some students may also visit other institutions, such as special schools or colleges of further education.
Assessment
In order to pass the course, you are required to pass each unit. You are assessed on a number of written assignments and also on classroom practice against the standards specified by the Secretary of State for the award of QTS. Before the end of the course it is recommended that trainees take the computer-based QTS skills tests in Numeracy, Literacy and ICT which are set by the Training and Development Agency (TDA)
