Teaching adults poster and visual resource project

This collaborative project undertaken by members of the Southern Educational Developers (SED) in South Island Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics (ITPs) arose from an identified lack of quality posters to support their adult teacher learning objectives.

The team set out to determine the core messages that educational developers agree underpin teaching and learning principles that should appear on posters and electronic resources specifically designed to support the teaching of adult educators in Aotearoa New Zealand. These messages were developed into posters with a distinctive New Zealand quality that will be useful to adult educators in any higher education environment in New Zealand.

The first phase of this project – development of draft posters - funded through Ako Aotearoa’s southern hub is now complete.

“Do any you know where I can lay my hands on some instructional / inspirational posters that I could use in our CAT (Certificate in Adult Teaching) courses for novice teachers?” I asked the half dozen Polytechnic teaching colleagues from around the South Island, as we sipped Ako Aotearoa’s coffee.

“No, but if you do find any we’d like copies!” came their reply.

Like so many things in life, the “Poster Project” arose from a chance comment at the second meeting of the newly formed Southern Educational Developers (SED) community of practice, held at the College of Education at the University of Canterbury in late 2008. A year later we finally produced a set of draft posters. Next step is to ‘field’ test them around the South Island.

The journey involved occasional assistance from those gathered, plenty of guidance and support from Ako Aotearoa’s Southern Hub Coordinator Bridget O’Regan, and a lot of grit from me.

The best aspects of this project to date are:

• being part of a collaborative undertaking.
  A key outcome for this proposal was the development of the SED, a community of practice amongst educational developers in South Island Polytechnics and Institutes of Technology. The task forced us to develop as a group and to share our perspectives of pedagogical issues, particularly when we had to choose the Top 10 messages from over 50 quotations. (In fact, we ended up with eleven).

• producing something original, sui generis, as far as we can tell.
  Nowhere in our web-based searches or literature search did we discover anything quite like a set of quotations that would help people who teach teachers. Primary and Secondary schools are well-served with posters and resources, but these are aimed at children. Our posters are for adults.

• preparing a tangible learning resource that should work online as well as face-to-face

The worst part of the project was that I carried the largest share of the workload. Various factors conspired to make this happen (e.g. maternity leave of a keen collaborator, the sheer busyness of the SED community). And the nature of the task was that it needed a champion.

What did we do? I prepared the proposal for Ako Aotearoa, got ethical approval from the CPIT Academic Research Committee, searched for suitable texts (there are hundreds out there), asked colleagues for suggestions, corresponded with Ako Aotearoa (including milestone reports) … phew! … and tried to communicate with everyone.

Then came the fun part: working with the designers to produce draft posters for others to provide feedback on.

The SED group met three times face to face, organised and hosted by Ako Atoearoa’s Southern Hub, and once more online in the last year. As chair of the meeting this involved additional work for me but when we get together it’s worth it. Personally speaking I walk away with new perspectives on what goes on in staff development in very busy ITPs.

The theory underpinning this project relates to building a community of practice (CoP). As Etienne Wenger says a CoP must include a shared domain of interest amongst practitioners who “develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, and ways of addressing recurring problems.” (Wenger, 1998)¹. Any worthwhile project needs a committed person but for it to succeed it also requires the ongoing, committed support of other members who desire to build up such a community. This project has helped to get a CoP started for SED members.

In future, I would try and identify ways to engage members better to encourage more collaboration.

The outputs from this project - at the end of Phase 1 – are 11 tangible learning resources (posters) ready for testing by teacher educators in tertiary settings.

Phase 2 comprises three parts:

1. researching the opinions of the end users (student teachers & their tutors) in face-to-face and online courses in teaching;

2. writing up their feedback;

3. improving the draft poster designs and producing final versions.

Finally, Phase 3 entails wider distribution of the final products.

1 Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice : learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.