Should Electrical Tutors at FE colleges in the UK be mandated to complete a minimum of 1 week per year working in industry?

Sergio Fernandez said:

Should Electrical Tutors at FE colleges in the UK

Why limit it to only some industry education provider models?

Sergio Fernandez said:

The work placement could be in Domestic/Commercial/Industrial and could also include specialisms like ATEX (ATmosphères EXplosibles)

The placement could be seen as a type of Enhanced CPD (Continuing Professional Development) so to speak

I think this is a good idea, but should not be mandated in place of other types of CPD ... for example, there are part-time tutors that have regular interface with industry and what's going on "on the ground" in their "usual" or "day" job.

I also think that, whilst a breadth of experience is good ... ensuring regular "refresh" of core experience is also worth considering, as standards and practices change over time, for example:

• 25 years ago, something as simple as terminals ... screwless terminals were an upcoming practice in the UK, now pretty much mainstream;
  
  
• somehow, termination of SWA armour has becoming an issue and some have the view you can't rely on the armour (could training be improved earlier in the career .... but for those who worry about its termination, ignoring the armour by use of an additional copper core as cpc, or separate cpc, won't change the fact that the armour is often an exposed-conductive-part, and therefore most often requires proper termination to prevent shock, etc., so getting it right is most important).
  
  
• The range of great (and relatively inexpensive) tools compared with even 10-15 years ago is huge ... but there's also a number of inventive products that some might think promote poor practice in the industry: not least impact driver ≠ torque screwdriver/wrench.

It's good to get out there and have a look, and take the feedback into the education and training environment.

gkenyon said:

I think this is a good idea, but should not be mandated in place of other types of CPD ... for example, there are part-time tutors that have regular interface with industry and what's going on "on the ground" in their "usual" or "day" job.

This would be additional CPD as I would hope the Tutors at an FE college would undertake their own and employer CPD

An interesting idea, and one that highlights a problem with scientific and technical education more generally; namely that a lot of teaching is approached as a stand-alone academic exercise, and the link to the real world is left for the student to make (not always successfully.) Having worked at a university, albeit in the last century, I often wondered how well it prepared students for the world they were about to meet, where real engineering problems don't turn up neatly packaged as pure mechanical problems on a Monday morning, pure maths on Tuesdays etc, but they are taught like, that by different people who never seem able to make their coverage of topics align.

Even at school it is rarely explained that the division between subjects is an arbitrary convenience for teaching and timetables- the muscles in the cat don't know or care if they are trigonometric, chemical or biological, but in reality to fully understand how one moves you need to stay awake in all 3 lessons. Similarly there are many events in history affected by geography, and the whole of physics is just there to describe the world/ universe, and the whole of maths is just there to predict it - you can't even sit in a chair without requiring Newtonian mechanics to work, even if you don't realise you are doing so.

I support the idea of getting those who teach, at all levels actually, to go and see how what they teach is really used. There are many ways to do this, not just by work experience, as it improves the quality of the essential similes and metaphors, as well as making it more relatable - 'you'll be able to use this knowledge to do XX' makes a lesson in  'XX' seem worth staying awake for.

Equally I can think of plenty of lecturers who I'd not want working on any real job, or at least not without some fairly close supervision.... I'm less sure about FE, but I suspect there is an element of the same. 

I'd certainly not limit the idea that 'getting out there is good'  just  to electron wrangling or indeed just to FE. Anyone who can say 'training and education' in one breath has probably not understood the distinction and there are often large gaps between them and then even wider gaps between either, and the world they are supposed to be describing.

Mike.

On the whole, I dislike mandating things. The best tutors will find a way of keeping up to date because of pride in their work.

I was taught mainly by tradesmen who would take 3 weeks (or one week) out of their normal business, but there were a couple of salaried tutors who had retreated to the warmth, security, and pension of the classroom.

Breaks were strictly observed, so there was plenty of opportunity for the tutors to cross-pollinate. I do not think that the salaried tutors were stale, but with a sample size of n = 1, I cannot generalize.

Sergio Fernandez said:

This would be additional CPD as I would hope the Tutors at an FE college would undertake their own and employer CPD

I'm not quite sure what you mean? Surely it doesn't matter whose CPD it is, so long as it happens? The point I was trying to make here, is that if the tutor already undertakes equivalent CPD by virtue of it being "on the job" in another way, then why should they have to have another planned week doing it?

(Yes, I agree, they might also need, and hopefully will already be doing, other CPD too if that's the case ...)

I like the idea in principle, but I'm not sure sufficient placements would be available. From an employer point of view a week would be too short to get any practical benefit from the exercise (half the time would go on "induction|" and "orientation" - e.g.. becoming familiar with the companies specific H&S policies and getting used to what exactly that company is about).  Even teenage work experience usually lasts several weeks at a go and that's more about them seeing what's happening rather than actually doing anything useful. The old idea of a sabbatical - i.e. one year in seven - going off and doing something more practical might be better in that respect (and I understand encouraged by some academic institutions in AUS/NZ).

   - Andy. 

That raises a problem of money - folk are presumably wanting to continue be paid at some level while doing this, after all they have mortgages to pay and meals to eat, and the institution they are leaving will need  to find and fund a short contract replacement for them. Equally there won't be that many potential hosts who can meaningfully employ  someone for a limited period only.

The sabbatical idea, at least at UK Universities, which I know most about,  is financially complex - the person may be on full pay, or part pay or even no pay, at the discretion of the department they have temporarily left.

For example in some cases when they are on loan to another department elsewhere, perhaps a dept in another country,  then they are normally paid either in part or fully, by that place instead.

Equally someone who is on sabbatical to say write a text  book or publish a series of papers or to do original research,  probably remains 100% supported by their home institution.
 I'm not sure that any of this would translate well into what we are considering here.

I'm of the idea that shorter periods are in order and even day visits to look and see would be of some benefit, rather than actual employment, and then the money is less of an issue.
Mike

Valid point Andy,  Maybe it should be several weeks a year rather than 1 week a year.

Kudos to academic institutions in AUS/NZ). 1 year work experience in 7 years of teaching sounds like the progressive thinking that is needed.

mapj1 said:

the institution they are leaving will need  to find and fund a short contract replacement for them

Not if the electrical company were to send somebody the other way - i.e. a short-term job swap.

It is an interesting idea, but I think too messy in practice, which may explain why it has not happened already.

That was an absolutely superb post by MapJ. After almost 35 years as a part-time tutor, it expertly summed up my views on that disconnect between the classroom and the coal face.

With respect to the original question, there was a scheme for FE colleges in NI called “Lecturers into industry”. It was funded by the department of education. On the face of it, it seemed an excellent idea. Lecturers could seek a paid or unpaid position in local industry and apply for leave. Full salary continued to be paid, irrespective of income from whatever position was taken up.

As a part-timer, I often covered for those who took advantage of the opportunity. Many full-time lecturers saw it as an escape rather than an opportunity to broaden their horizons and strengthen their front of class delivery.

When I was a young man out on cold sites in the middle of winter, I thought it would be fantastic to be a lecturer in a warm, clean, classroom in an FE college, not to mention the long holidays and the opportunity to wear a shirt and tie.

When the opportunity arose to enter that world, I did so with alacrity. All was good for several years and I put my heart and soul into every class I took, sometimes at the expense of my own business (I still do, by the way).

I cant pinpoint a definite time, but I started to notice that the full-time guys had lost all their mojo. They seemed demoralised and unwilling to do anything that was in any way construed to be beyond their contract.

Perhaps it was pay, it could certainly have been the ponderous weight of multi-layers of ineffectual managerial oversight, or it could have been the cut-backs that left practical classes with half a length of steel conduit per candidate per year. Or it could have been the iniquitous system of output related funding where lecturers were expected, by whatever means, to force totally unsuitable candidates through assessments so that claims for funding could be made. Then again, it could have been the lack of robust disciplinary procedures where management utterly failed to provide support for the lecturers dealing with difficult lads. Of course, it could also have been that disconnect that Mike alluded to. Lads who had left school to take up a trade as an installation electrician because of an anathema for all things academic only to find themselves trying to get to grips with the induced emf of a 4-pole lap wound DC generator.

Likely it was a combination of things. In any event, several excellent lecturers took advantage of the scheme. One even secured funding to leave and concentrate on his own business. He, like many others, never came back!

Ask any Electrical Installation Department in any FE college here and they will tell you about the difficulties of recruiting and retaining good lecturers. When you have a 4^th year apprentice getting 1500 Euros a week for erecting miles of galvanized tray in a data centre in Dublin, it wont be the pay that will attract a good tradesman to pack up for the world described above. Similarly, it might be a gamble to release existing lecturers into industry.....they might never come back!