As part of the Comet Bay College commitment to developing excellence in Teaching and Learning, we offer teachers the opportunity to participate in the Advanced Instructional Intelligence Program; our flagship in-house Professional Learning course.
The aims of the program are:
- To assist teachers to become increasingly skilled at differentiating learning opportunities for all students by integrating knowledge of learning processes and content knowledge with a repertoire of instructional strategies, tactics and skills to create meaningful learning experiences.
- To embed the principles and practice of Instructional Intelligence as articulated by Barrie Bennett, with a focus on cooperative and collaborative learning
- To build the capacity of teachers to become consciously competent and develop a meta language about the judicious selection of content, instructional strategies and tactics, instructional skills and classroom management to enable teachers to describe and reflect on their teaching practice
- To support teachers to develop the skills to share their expertise in instruction with their colleagues
- To enhance student learning, engagement and connection to the College, to ensure high quality teaching and learning at all times in the classroom
- To support aspirants: Level 3 Classroom Teachers and those wanting to work at the Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher career progression of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL)
All participants in the program are Instructional Advocates and on graduation are known as Instructional Mentors.
Advocates take part in 7 days intensive learning over the course of 12 months. In between workshops Advocates are supported by GROWTH Coaching to assist them with setting and achieving goals around improving their instructional capacity.
Mentors also provide ongoing support to Advocates and are a sounding board for the testing of new ideas and classroom practices. Advocates also complete tasks between workshops to consolidate their learning, prepare for the next session and to implement what they have learned.
Instructional Mentors provide ongoing support in their learning areas for all teachers. They model lessons for colleagues, discuss examples and help others to choose instructional strategies for use in the classroom.
The Advanced Instructional Intelligence Program will directly help the College achieve the following two targets from the 2018-2020 Business Plan:
- A minimum of 65 teaching staff to be trained in the Advanced Instructional Intelligence program
- Increase the number of Level 3 Classroom Teachers to 10 or more.
This year we have the third cohort of Advocates, with 15 high performing teachers and Deans participating. The program was launched in 2016 with an initial cohort of 12 teachers; the second cohort of 24 graduated at the end of 2017.
The work on display in the foyer has been completed by the 2017 Cohort of Advocates. On the final day we celebrate their learning journey. A major task for Advocates is to develop a Mind Map showing the connection between the learning themes on each day.
Here you can see the immense pride and passion our teachers have taken in their professional learning. You can see the complexity of thinking and understanding that goes into preparing high quality learning experiences.
Every teacher who participates in this program has demonstrated growth in their professional knowledge and professional practice.