Brave New Blog

Laurie and I have considered the role and purpose of the LTE blog over the last year. There are many excellent education blogs where an individual shares their thoughts and experiences however an LTE blog seems to require a different structure and many different voices.

Laurie and I developed LTE together and have led the subsequent training but the programme, from the very beginning, was informed by a network of teachers. While working on the early development of the KS3 lessons, we were supported by teachers who attended our meetings at King’s. They would trial lessons and provide feedback, offer ideas for exploration and share their practice through lesson observations, transcripts and videos. In LTE we emphasise Vygotsky’s social constructivist theory and the role community plays in “making meaning”; our LTE community of teachers have supported us in “making meaning”.

Teacher input still underpins the programme today with our LTE Networks at King’s and other geographical hubs still guiding and shaping the programme. It is one of the testimonies of the LTE programme that once teachers and schools have completed their initial training programme they opt to join the Networks seeing not just the need for ongoing professional development but also a supportive community of teachers. LTE training doesn’t offer quick wins but rather a process through which teachers, together, develop their understanding of teaching and learning through the prism of developing their students’ reasoning. At present we have: 121 schools in our Networks.

As such, we felt the blog should reflect the experiences of our teachers. Going forward the blog will share articles by LTE teachers in different settings with different levels of experiences sharing their thoughts upon the programme. We hope the blog will serve as a testimony to both the programme and the teachers who make the programme a success.

Michael Walsh.