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Developing staff and learner awareness tools for increasing engagement with citizenship - Fareport Training Organisation
Ruth Cole, Citizenship Coordinator at Fareport Training Organisation has been working on developing two citizenship staff development tools that could be adapted for use with staff and learners at Fareport and in other organisations. Ruth’s aim was to develop and trial two inexpensive tools that will increase engagement with citizenship among staff and develop their thinking about how to encourage learners to take ownership of citizenship activities.
Citizenship awareness wheel
The first tool was the Citizenship Awareness Wheel. This was based on a similar idea from a Standard Units resource. The segments of the wheel were given to staff with a sheet explaining the citizenship awareness wheel task. This tool is primarily for staff to gain awareness about how involved a learner can be in the organisation of citizenship activities, and how the learner could be moved forward to increase their involvement. The ‘wheel’ had segments with a general term about citizenship engagement such as ‘not bothered’, or ‘I want to make a change’. Outside the ‘wheel’ the staff had to position ‘learner statements’ such as ‘I am a member of the learner committee’, where they felt they would be on the wheel, thus indicating the level of understanding/engagement the learner has within citizenship. The learning objectives were:
- To discuss learner involvement in planning and running citizenship activities
- To plan how to increase learners’ involvement and move them forward
- To gain awareness that learners are at different stages of engagement
The wheel and statements were produced as a template on an A4 piece of paper. To use the tool it is simply laminated and cut into the relevant segments.
Some of the learner statements were purposely ambiguous to encourage discussion amongst staff. The cost was very minimal and the statements and wheel headings could be changed simply to suit situation.
Citizenship card sort activity
The second tool was a citizenship card sort activity, which encouraged a lot of discussion. The main learning objective of this tool was to demonstrate the variety of active teaching methods that could be linked to general citizenship headings and the vast opportunities for accreditation using functional skills e.g. entry level and key skills. Once again this tool was low cost to produce as it could be a template on A4 paper, which could be laminated.
Citizenship card sort activity aims to:
- Explore the many citizenship topics that can be delivered in a practical and fun way
- Demonstrate that the learners can plan and run the activities themselves with support from staff
- Consider that staff should not miss opportunities for assessment and can accredit the work via Key Skills and Entry level qualifications giving the programme added value for both learner and organisation
Staff were given a sheet explaining the citizenship card sort task. The task was to create a horizontal line of cards which would plan an active citizenship activity and an accredited outcome. The first instruction asked the staff to put the blue ‘subject cards’ in a vertical line. These were subjects such as ‘Fair Trade’, ‘Diversity’, ‘Europe’ and ‘The Environment’. Obviously these cards could be adapted to any citizenship topic. The next instruction asked the staff to place some of the green ‘activity cards’ next to the ‘subject cards’, thus starting to create horizontal lines across. The ‘activity’ cards gave many examples such as ‘write and act out a play’, ‘hold a coffee morning’, ‘write to your MP’, ‘contact the local press’, ‘create a speaking wall’ and many others. Most of the activities could be used for many of the subjects so the activity card caused many discussions. There were duplicates to allow for an activity to be planned with more than one subject heading
Next staff were asked to place the purple ‘qualifications cards’, which gave example qualifications that could be gained from the activity, e.g. ‘Working With Others’, ‘Literacy E1’, Application of Number’, next to the subject and activity cards. Again there were duplicates of these cards so that they could be linked with more than one activity. Again this caused many discussions between the staff.
Finally staff were asked to place a red ‘power card’ on top of activity cards where the staff felt their learners could take responsibility for the planning and running of the activities. This caused discussion around at what point and to what degree learners could take ownership and become active with staff acting as facilitators for this.
At the end of the activity the staff recorded the outcomes of the card sort activity so that they took away a number of planning ideas for practical citizenship activities.
Where the tools were trialled
The materials were trialled with a number of audiences. The first one was the participants which joined Ruth’s workshop at a national post-16 citizenship event in London. The workshop group was made up of participants from various providers including training providers, colleges and schools. Ruth took verbal feedback on both tools and then trialled the materials during a staff training event at Fareport Training Organisation. These were all staff who work within e2e and had delivered citizenship for a reasonable amount of time. The tools were also trialled during the South East Post-16 Citizenship regional network meeting where written feedback was gathered. Waverly Training were also given a set of each resource for them to trial with their staff. New staff at Fareport also took part in trials.
Evaluation
Evaluations of the tools indicated that both the tools had value but the card sort appeared to be the most favoured. The card sort could be used by both staff during training and by learners who were taking the lead on a citizenship activity. See below a summary of responses to each of the evaluation questions:
- Which training tool do you think gave you the most information?
The card sort was most popular. Comments indicated that the card sort would give assessors good ideas to deliver active citizenship programmes. Comments included ‘The card sort gave me good ideas of activities that learners can actively deliver to the group and participate in.’
- Would either of the tools help you plan your citizenship programme, and how?
Again, the most popular was the card sort. Comments indicated that it inspired ideas and encouraged discussion about the programme content, how it could be learner-led with support from staff and how evidence could be linked to qualifications.
- Would you use either tool within your organisation?
The results showed that the majority would use both but again the card sort had many positive comments written about it.
- What improvements or changes would you make to either tool to make it work within your organisation?
Suggestions for changes included:
- A recording
documents to accompany both resources
- Laminate the sort card
- Create a computer version that would allow wording to be changes to suit the setting and a computerised recording document.
Further developments could include a recording document to capture the thoughts of the staff/learners at the end of the activity.
Lead organisation: Fareport Training Organisation Ltd
Lead contact: Ruth Cole
Email: Ruth.cole@fareport.co.uk
Telephone: 01329 825805