The Trinity College London Level 6 Certificate for Practising Teachers
If you have been following my recent articles and blogs, you will have read about the current focus on current thinking in TESOL teacher development. With the expansion and development of the global English language teaching industry, the focus of teacher education has shifted away from English-speaking countries, and is working more in line with the diverse contexts where English is taught around the world. This has led to the development of a contextually-informed teacher development qualification from the prestigious qualifications provider Trinity College London.
The new Level 6 Certificate for Practising Teachers is designed to help any teacher working in any context worldwide to develop their classroom or online teaching skills in the specific setting where they work. The Trinity CertPT is founded on several key contextual factors, informed by common language education settings which exist in the world today:
Most English teachers are not ‘native speakers’
As I wrote recently, there are currently no qualifications accredited to a high international standard which are open to second-language speakers of English under the level of CEFR C1 / IELTS 7. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of English teachers in the world have CEFR B1-B2 proficiency in English.
The Trinity CertPT can be taken in English by teachers with a B2 / IELTS 6 level of English, or can even be studied in participant teachers’ first language. This shows due respect to those teachers who may be very highly qualified and excellent professionals, but whose English level is not high enough to access other training courses such as the Cambridge CELTA.
Bringing down the level of English required for entry onto training courses makes quality training available to those who would otherwise be unable to access it.
A huge number of teachers teach purely online
With the development of educational technology, and now the global Coronavirus pandemic, more and more teachers are working online, or having to make the switch to online learning for the first time. Effective e-learning provision requires training - it is not as simple as just doing what you do in the classroom, but over Skype or Zoom.
The range of resources, apps and platforms designed for online learning require a knowledge of effective e-pedagogy and resource management. This is the focus of one of the versions of the CertPT offered by Language Point - a course specifically designed for online educators.
Classroom resources and materials vary widely in different countries
Every classroom is different, and the diversity of learning environments in countries as far apart as China, Italy, Algeria, Vietnam and Russia is huge. The amounts and quality of materials and resources differs in every institution, and teachers experienced in their specific setting know how to work best with the resources they have available.
This is why the Trinity CertPT is designed to focus on the specific groups of learners that participant teachers work with, and the environment where they teach. The course is intended as a support resource for teachers as they do their job, and can be integrated into classroom work in an online, in-service mode of training. Studying as you teach saves valuable time and money, and allows teachers to put what they learn into practice as they study.
Teachers don’t have time to attend lengthy training events
Teachers are busy people, and need to be able to develop their classroom skills without taking time out of work, or being distracted from the ongoing curricula that they teach. An in-service qualification which can be taken in as little as 8 hours per week can be studied at the same time as teachers do what they do best, and improve along the way. The Trinity CertPT offered by Language Point is delivered entirely online, with 5-week and 10-week course modes, which allow teachers to choose how many hours per week they devote to their study.
Most language education is based on published and teacher-designed teaching materials
The final focus point of the qualification is materials and resources. Assessment on the Trinity CertPT is built around four course units, which focus on evaluation of published or online materials, adaptation of existing resources, design of original teaching materials and classroom delivery of teachers’ own tasks, materials and lesson plans. This focus on resources enables teachers to build a toolkit of what works for them and their students, targeting the needs of the learners in the specific setting where they are studying, and to achieve the goals that they have in their academic study.
The new Trinity College Certificate for Practising teachers is accredited at level 6 on the UK Government’s Ofqual framework, making it equal in level to the final year of a bachelors degree, and enabling successful candidates to claim course credit on other degree programmes at universities and other institutions which operate a credit transfer system for internationally accredited training.
Tom Garside is Director of Language Point Teacher Education. Language Point delivers the internationally recognised RQF level 5 Trinity CertTESOL in a totally online mode of study, and the RQF level 6 Trinity College Certificate for Practising Teachers, a contextually-informed teacher development qualification with specific courses which focus on online language education or online methodology.
If you are interested to know more about these qualifications, or you want take your teaching to a new level with our teacher education courses, contact us or visit our CertTESOL FAQ and CertPT FAQ pages for details.