MoE.2 – 1st National Mantle of the Expert Training Conference
Stansted – 3rd October 2007
The challenge for the next year will be to support schools keeping up the momentum for embedding Mantle of the Expert approaches in learning. The conference workshops were therefore all practical and focussed on the key tools of the system i.e. ‘Enquiry based’ learning and inductive teaching, ‘Drama for Learning’ and the ‘System Tools’ for Mantle of the Expert itself. The national team of trainers lead by the inventor-professor Dorothy Heathcoat were Eileen Pennington, Jane Holden and Kathy White Webster from Newcastle, Tim Taylor from Norfolk and Essex, Iona Towler Evans from Birmingham and Luke Abbott currently leading the national project from Essex. Duncan Bathgate and B. Varley – although members of the team were not able to attend-but will work on other conferences planned for the future.
Mentee trainers from Suffolk, (Julia Walshaw) Essex (Gemma Handley) and Birmingham (Dae Allen) were able to attend to help facilitate at future conferences.
The focus of the address by Dr Heathcote (and available from the website) was on the effects of the system in raising standards rapidly-and the power of the system to teach the breadth of the curriculum. (The examples were taken from a teaching week in the US summer 07.) However-Dr Heathcote went to great lengths to explain that the system requires long term investments in learning by teachers-and of course in their training. Alongside the new ways and choices the system offers teachers -Dr Heathcote reminded the conference the quote of an Inuit teacher seeing mantle of the expert work under construction with a class of students whereby the equivalent Inuit concept of ‘Inuktitut’ was present-an atmosphere generated whereby ‘wisdom reveals itself’.
The research on standards quoted in the address puts MoE systems at the forefront of the agenda for taking the system very seriously-as much of the cutting edge understanding in learning theories are so significant to the way the system is wielded in classes. The references to the research will be published on the website as soon as it is published by Creative Partnerships in Derby.
Opening the session in the afternoon-Alison Willmott from the QCA invited delegates from the conference to take part in Co-development work with QCA. This will be coordinated by Luke’s team for the region and details will be publicised shortly to all conference attendees and on the website.
Feedback from delegates and evaluations were outstanding in ninety six percent of replies:
‘This clarified so much for my practice-thank you Eileen.’
‘Now I understand how the three circles interweave. I will go back and work on it.’
‘How do we get this work taken seriously by ministers?’
‘One of the best practical sessions I have ever attended-shame we had to travel so far though.’
Clearly delegates found that the conference challenged their thinking-and those very new to the work found the conference a little hard going. This has raised questions again about the need to maintain initial training and conferences along the lines of MoE one experiences.
‘We have all learnt from the conference-and learning takes time.’ (Dorothy Heathcote)
The conference ended on a high note with many leadership teams excited and inspired to trial initial steps into the work and use the infrastructure Essex has developed across the eastern counties to take the work forwards. Praise was given to the admin team for their efforts-although many expressed their regret that the programme went out so late.
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