Slaves to the Rhythm: An Approach to ITT Beyond Competence

Abstract

This, our first article for the Journal of Design and Technology Education, introduces our thoughts on assessment as being at the heart of the curriculum. We believe that too often trainees are encouraged to see coursework assessment as a series of hoop jumping exercises rather than an aid to understanding their own performance and thus improving on it.

We suggest that this might be so because, within the conflicting roles of assessment in both selection and diagnosis and remediation, selection so often wins out. Therefore, it is up to the tutor to seek out ways to reward the student for considering their own performance as a learner and importantly how to improve that performance.

We put forward some tentative approaches we have used with initial teacher training (ITT) trainees to encourage the understanding of their own learning processes and development of schemata. It is our belief that the development metacognitive activ