Building Capacity for Assessment in VT
Introduction
A collaborative project to accompany a VT department’s learning journey to better understand evaluating performance.
How to use this website
This website was created to house the templates and applied examples of this project. It is accompanied by a guidebook, accessible through this link, that can be printed, modified and used for non-commercial purposes. It has been written to assist a centre’s vocational training teachers with connecting current trade skill expectations with assessment for sanction purposes. It is intended as an assistive framework to help a team analyse, design, develop, facilitate and evaluate professional development activities. It has multiple parts, including:
project background information and an analysis of the goals
organisational project management documents
a worked example to use as inspiration
templates that can be customised to a centre’s specific environment
Included are 4 professional development activities that target different aspects of assessment principles in VT.
Industry symposium: Discussing workforce performance expectations of entry-level skills
Workshop: Describe performance expectations of core trade skills
The activities range in length from 2 - 6 hours, and can be facilitated in order as part of a larger professional development campaign, or they can be broken apart and used individually. As each trade has its own specificities, these activities would need to be adapted to the program of study in question. By clicking on the link above, each activity is presented briefly with a more detailed explanation and organisational documents found in the annexes.
This document is structured for consultation in a linear manner, but it can be consulted in a different order as the user sees fit. It is strongly advised to consult the Project Administrative Information to familiarise yourself with the background, performance expectations, and means to achieve to better situate the activities in the project context. To get a brief overview of the guiding principles of this project, read the Key Takeaways section on the next page.
The centre can use this document and adapt it to their reality and conduct the workshops themselves, or assistance is available from PROCEDE by contacting the Provincial VT Education Consultant, Robin Long, at robin@procede.ca.
On that note, happy reading!
📱👩🍳 Robin
Acknowledgements
If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
- African proverb
This project owes its success to the willingness of all participants to contribute to the iterative process and believe in the collaborative nature of development. It started as a request for support, but it quickly turned into a project with a holistic vision of professional development for adult workers, incorporating fundamental principles of andragogy, inclusivity, equity and diversity.
By the end of the school year, the initial goal was not obtained but the teachers were embracing the learning they needed to do with willingness and enthusiasm, often applying the concepts learned directly into their teaching and reaching out for support from people not in their department. It would not have been possible without the amazing support of all the people involved:
The Automated Systems in Electromechanics (Electromechanics) department teachers for their willingness to explore professional development as a path that everyone contributes to, not just a stop on the road. Thanks to all of you for being such great teachers to collaborate with!
Max, Guy, Liz, Delon, Mabruk, Martin, Nikolai, Robert and Remoun
The Electromechanics curriculum coordinator, Joseph Rainone, and the Assistant Centre Director, Réal Heppelle. Their openness to try something new and embark on turning the simple request into a project development journey was the fulcrum of a successful collaboration!
The EMSB pedagogical consultants, Frank Furfaro and Tania Bozzo, willingly jumped into the project head first and participated in activity development and facilitation, and helped develop trusting professional relationships with the teachers.