Can teachers' Emotional Literacy boost results?

ei2 We are delighted to hear that the Applied Centre for Emotional Literacy, Leadership and Research, which Professor Majors founded in 2008, has been awarded £240,000 for a 2-year project to look at whether improving teachers' emotional literacy can help to boost their pupils' academic performance. Excellent news! Gathering data on EI is much needed.

VisionWorks is working with Professor Richard Majors to promote emotional literacy in the curriculum in an academy in Wolverhampton and also designing a module for teacher training courses such as PGCE. Our emotional literacy programme for teacher training comprises 4 x four-hour modules and will provide an excellent grounding in the relevance and application of emotional literacy in education. This has been a gap in teacher training and we expect it to be popular. To be pioneered this month at Innsbruck University, and soon to be included in teacher training in the UK.

Inspiration

At this stage in the year, with the short days, the endless marking and the countdown to Christmas, it's easy to feel caught up in the daily grind. We lose sight of the bigger picture, education as a whole, and simply drag ourselves from one lesson to an ken other.

So, for those of you who like inspiration, see Ken Robinson's excellent talk 'Changing Education Paradigms' (click here).

In a matter of minutes, with clarity and humour, he turns our education system upside down and makes us feel passionate about it all over again.

If you haven't heard of Sir Ken Robinson, there is plenty about him on Google. Born in 1950, Wikipedia describes him as an "author, speaker and international advisor on education in the arts to the government, non-profits, education and arts bodies."

It's also worth looking at his talk on TED.

SEAL evaluation - the small print

In the national press recently, some of you will have seen the outcome of research into the effectiveness of teaching SEAL. At Manchester University, a team reported their findings - teaching SEAL in schools doesn't make any difference. Or at least, that's what the media would have us believe. Closer reading of the report reveals that the teaching of Emotional Literacy is as dependent on the school and the teachers as it is on the content.

Antidote tells us, "Humphrey says that several of the schools examined took 'a somewhat superficial approach to implementation' and that an initial spike of 'energy, enthusiasm and activity' was often followed by a gradual drop-off in activity... ' The result was, he says, that SEAL was 'essentially what individual schools made of it rather than being a single, consistently definable entity. He says that US evidence from programmes such as PATHS and Second Step argues that 'programme fidelity is crucial in determining the success and impact of interventions' and suggests basically that schools need to adopt 'a coherent, structured and explicit model to follow from the outset' rather than continuing to use SEAL."

In our experience this is true; we have seen that no programme is going to work unless committed, trained teachers use it consistently. We know that when this happens, when it "becomes part of the-way-we-do-things-around-here" VisionWorks really does make a difference.

Third edition of It's OK Being Me

iobm cover    Now hot off the press, this latest edition of our KS3 programme is
   available. If you have bought a previous edition and wish to update
   it free of charge, please send us a message on
   info@vision-works.net

   It's OK Being Me is one of our most popular programmes, "A high
   percentage of students report that doing VisionWorks has helped them
   with their behaviour. Staff like the programme because they can pick it
   up and go with it.

VisionWorks is part of a whole package which schools can use to improve behaviour and learning." Mairi Murray, PSHRE co-ordinator

Register with VisionWorks

If you haven't already registered you're missing out on a host of downloadable resources, assembly ideas and sample modules from our programmes. Register at www.vision-works.net

If you'd like to find out how VisionWorks could work for you call Sue Allen or Ruthie Alexander Morgan on 01249 409001, email sue@vision-works net or ruthie@vision-works.net or visit our website www.vision-works.net