Our Work

Surrey Centre for Excellence in Professional Training and Education (SCEPTrE)

Description

The aims of SCEPTrE were to collaborate and co-operate - working in partnership with teachers, placement tutors, students and the Surrey Students Union, administrators, university central service providers, employers, other CETLs and a range of public and private sector organisations

Contact: Diane Whitelock

Email: sceptre@surrey.ac.uk

Telephone: 01483 68 4920

SCEPTrE’s primary aims were:

• To advance understanding and improve student experiences of learning in professional workplace settings.
• To encourage and support the continuing development and expertise of placement tutors and administrators so that students are better prepared for learning in a complex world.
• A defining characteristic of the Centre was a commitment to developing understanding of the way enquiry is used in professional learning and communicating this knowledge to help students develop their own capabilities for enquiry.
• SCEPTrE's view of excellence in learning and teaching was that it embodies a process of intentional and purposeful enquiry – to create something that is better than that which already exists. Working towards excellence involves the use of imagination, questioning, discussion, investigation, experimentation, adaptation and evaluation. Excellence is therefore a process of becoming, rather than an end result and SCEPTrE as a means of helping people to develop excellence in the teaching and learning contexts that are relevant to SCEPTrE’s mission.

Specifics were to:

• Build relationships - work with colleagues, students and employers to enhance professional learning in a fast-changing world.
• Use professional enquiry to develop new knowledge about how students are prepared for and supported in the workplace during their professional training experience.
• Provide a stimulating, supportive and enabling environment for experimentation, conversation, dialogue and cooperative professional learning.
• Promote and support a Fellowship scheme to reward and expand the influence of excellent practices in learning and the invention of new approaches to learning.
• Encourage tutors and students to experiment with new forms of mobile and communication technology to facilitate cooperative enquiry and network learning.
• Explore how skilled facilitation allows ideas and practices to be shared and exchanged between colleagues, students and others.
• Form alliances with other Centres for Excellence, organisations and networks whose aims are consistent with our own commitment to professional learning for a complex world.

First year Objectives, January 2006-December 2006

All objectives were underpinned by the need for SCEPTrE to communicate to and engage with the members of the university:

1. Establish a credible, useful, accessible and well managed Centre.
2. Develop and initiate a well conceived research and evaluation strategy.
3. Develop and implement a programme of work aimed at identifying excellence in professional training and education, providing opportunities for staff to develop their expertise and enhance students’ experiences.
4. Develop and implement a programme of work aimed at advancing understanding of 'enquiry as learning' in different disciplinary and transdisciplinary contexts, providing opportunities for staff to develop their expertise as facilitators and students to develop their skills as critical and creative enquirers.
5. To develop a community of scholars and promote scholarly activity that is relevant to the SCEPTrE enterprise.
6. To build strong and productive alliances and partnerships with Schools, academic and administrative staff, students, employers of Surrey students, people, organisations and networks outside the university, that will be benefit the university and the wider higher education community, and help SCEPTrE achieve its ambitions.

Projects:

• A baselining study of how professional training is supported and implemented by different schools and departments at Surrey.
• Research into enquiry-based learning of professionals, looking at the relationship between creativity, enquiry and problem-working.
• Technology-focused enquiry to determine the most appropriate tools and systems for SCEPTrE’s learning and teaching spaces. A research student will be appointed to work on this project.
• Nine Fellows from a range of disciplines will work with ther CETL over the coming year on a range of projects broadly focused on enhancing the professional training year and students’ experience of learning from the workplace.

What was being offered to the wider teaching/subject community:

SCEPTrE formed two working alliances with other CETLs. The more established alliance (with Sheffield, Manchester and Reading) iinvolves sharing practice and resources with a specific focus on enquiry-based learning. A new partnership with Westminster (with the potential to expand to include other CETLs) was planned to share expertise, events and resources around professional learning in and from the workplace.

Both these alliances worked across subject boundaries, engaging with the many disciplines that provide professional training or placements as part of the student educational experience. The experience of working in a broader group outwith institutional boundaries lead to events, conference presentations, web-based information and activities (including a blog that encourages feedback and conversation) that informed and engaged others in the CETLs work.

Surrey Centre for Excellence in Professional Training and Education Seminar Programme Summer 2009
Following an early April conference on the theme of Learning to be Professional through a Life-Wide curriculum the CETL continued to examine the idea and practice. These seminars were filmed and streamed live to the internet.

May 12th 2009 12.30-13.45 
Dr Jenny Willis, University of Surrey and SCEPTrE Fellow
Defining Professionalism
Live Streaming 

June 9th 2009 12.30-13.45 
Professor Michael Eraut, University of Sussex and SCEPTrE Research Consultant
Improving the Quality of Learning through Work Placements

July 9th 2009 12.30-13.45 
Professor Len Cairns Monash University
Capability in the Lifespace in the 21st Century

Various videos of previous seminars are also available:

• The will to be a professional: how a life-wide curriculum might encourage important features of will, Professor Ron Barnett.
• Improving the quality of work placements, Professor Michael Eraut.
• Reflection: a key personal agency for learning to be a professional?, Professor Ursula Lucas.
• Career development learning through a life-wide curriculum, Phillip McCash
• Seven Principles for Putting Knowledge to Work: exploring their potential for the 'sandwich placement model' of work integrated learning, Professor Karen Evans

Student Voices:

• Sarah Campbell
• Andrea Ilie   

Teacher Voices:

• Russ Law 
  Personal experience of Learning to be Professional
  Compilation of Participants’ Stories
• Jenny Willis
  Presentation analysing participants’ stories of Learning to be Professional 
• Julian Burton
  Julian Burton creates pictures from conversations. Here he talks about his visualisations on the theme of learning to be professional.
• Kai Jansen
  Kai Jansen writes and sing songs. Here is the song he produced for and sang at the conference suitably called ‘Professionally Challenged. 

Other Resources:

• Anthony Wailey and Susana Sambade
  Constructing a Professional Story 
  London College of Communication University of the Arts London

Creative Academy 
Creative Academy was designed to help educators transfer and adapt creative thinking and facilitation techniques used in the design world to other disciplinary teaching and learning contexts in the world of higher education. It comprised a one or two day training and professional development process aimed at helping higher education teachers develop their ability to think like a designer and to facilitate students' creative thinking when they are working in groups.

Organisations / Institutions

University of Surrey

Related documents/URLs

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