'Dr Alison Hardman and students share an overview of the PGCE Non-QTS at the University of Derby' video transcript

Dr Alison Hardman, Head of Discipline of Secondary and FE Initial Teacher Education, is filmed in an office with a bookcase full of academic textbooks behind her. 

Dr Alison Hardman: If you're an accredited provider of ITT and you recommend beginning teachers for qualified teacher status then the University of Derby can offer you our Level 7 Postgraduate Certificate in Education. Your bespoke contract with us means that we're able to ensure the module content tessellates purposefully with your taught curriculum. Each module as well has it's own distinctive assessments and these are aligned and determined by your workload across the year, so your beginning teachers find it manageable and relevant.

Alex Gwilt, Level 7 Postgraduate Certificate in Education student is filmed in a bright and modern breakout study space.

Alex: You get told a lot of the way that things are in schools but you don't really understand why it's happening whereas learning about all of the different behavioural theories and some of the origins of them they help explain why things happen and they also force you to think about what you think yourself and it's been really interesting for me to see my opinions change over the course of the year.

Simon Holland, Level 7 Postgraduate Certificate in Education student is filmed in a modern cafe seating area with some wooden slats and fake foliage behind him.

Simon: So, when you do the PGCE it gives you the theoretical understanding of what is a school trying to achieve why do they have a behaviour policy and it also teaches you about yourself and how you view education and what your kind of preconceptions are. Once you understand yourself and you understand where the school's coming from, it also teaches you all the other different opinions and viewpoints so that when you have a problem in the class, you've got some theoretical knowledge that you can use to look at things from different perspectives. If you're not doing the PGCE, you don't really have an understanding of what the different perspectives are, so it's hard to know how else you might have tackled that situation.

Alison: The module content is impactful and benefits from research findings and indeed the programme team themselves are; published in their field, highly experienced and highly qualified practitioners. Each SCITT has it's own designated lead for the year which enables us to communicate with you swiftly and respond to any queries you have. The programme itself can be delivered to suit your business needs and that can be face-to-face, remote synchronous or asynchronous, even a combination of all three. Here at the University of Derby we are proud to be an Outstanding provider of ITE (according to Ofsted 2024) in every age phase we deliver.

Alex: The last assignment that we had to do, was about planning your own scheme of work for a curriculum and that's been really helpful, applying the theories that you learnt at the beginning of the year but actually putting it into practice. You might know exactly what you want to teach to a student but what the assignment itself and the PGCE made me do was think about why am I teaching that to them and why am I teaching in that way. Another aspect about it that I really liked was thinking more about the politics of education as in, what you're being told by the national curriculum to do. It also gave you the opportunity to use my own creativity, so I was able to put into practice one of the theories that I believe in which was social constructivism. Students are constructing their own understanding through their own involvement and their interaction with each other. It was a really great opportunity to put into practice the theories that we had been taught over the course of the year into something ambitious for the students.

Simon: It's looking at things from a higher level, at different perspectives and understanding all the different stakeholders, what the government has in mind when they're setting up curriculums and what the schools are trying to do with their behaviour policies and what I want to do with education and figuring out how much can I put into this? From my own perspective and my own voice how much can I do that whilst staying within the framework given to me by the school and by the curriculum and it's made me consider going on and doing a Masters in Education which I would have never considered before. I actually enjoyed the PGCE a lot more than I thought I would. It was one of the most enjoyable parts of the course

Alison: If this sounds like something that your SCITT would benefit from or you are interested in pursuing an alternative provider to that which you already have, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me directly.

'Dr Alison Hardman and students share an overview of the PGCE Non-QTS at the University of Derby' video

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