FE and HE settings
Using the Framework in Further and Higher Education
NB: For Initial Teacher Training please see the section on Teacher Training for more tailored information. For guidance on how to introduce the Framework to colleagues or other professionals, see The Training Manual: available to download here.
Using the Framework as an individual in Further and Higher Education
The Framework is a ‘road map’ of the skills and knowledge required for teaching/lecturing those who struggle with literacy and/or have Dyslexia. You can use it in three ways:
- As a self-assessment tool to identify areas for professional development and build up a Portfolio of Professional Development Certificates in Literacy and Dyslexia-SpLD
- As a resource base that can suggest materials most relevant to you or your educational setting.
- To help you to structure in-departmental professional development including Action Research.
Downloading the Certificate of Professional Development:
Framework Users who take a self-assessment strand will receive a personalised print out with recommended professional development resources, including videos, in-departmental professional development activities and online materials. After using these resources to support learning, retake the strand to measure your improvement in knowledge of how to support learners with Literacy difficulties and Dyslexia-SpLD. This will entitle the Framework User to download a Certificate of Professional Development showing increase in professional knowledge.
Self Assessment Tool:
There are six strands for self-assessment shown on the Home Page:
- Language and Literacy
- Theories of Dyslexia
- Identification and Assessment
- Teaching and Learning
- Working and Communicating with Others
- Professional Development.
You can take each strand separately, which will give you a personalised report based on your responses and a list of recommended resources.
You can use the Framework to:
- assess yourself and your own knowledge and skills
- mentor a colleague or NQT
- appraise a whole department’s capacity to support those struggling with literacy
- evaluate a department in respect of provision for the Dyslexic learner
For examples of how some educational institutions have used the Framework, click here.
For a step-by-step video of how to do a self assessment, click here
Designing a Staff Development Session
- Identifying areas of need:
The Framework can be used by all members of staff to benchmark their current skills and knowledge in teaching those with literacy difficulties or Dyslexia. Each assessment will result in a personalised report, summarising the results of the self-assessment for each of the six key strands of knowledge. The Professional Development Lead can use these reports to identify specific gaps in knowledge, so that training can be tailored to the needs of the individual educational setting.
Each report also includes a list of recommended resources, based on the responses to the self assessment. These resources can be used to inform a training presentation and to structure workplace activities.
- Using filtered resources:
You may decide to filter the resources without taking the self assessment activity (see below). You can select a strand, such as ‘Theories of Dyslexia’ or ‘Language and Literacy’, and choose all types of resource. You could also select a type of resource, such as online only, or workplace activities.
Once you have chosen the most appropriate resources, these can structure an staff development session. A Power-Point presentation developed from the Framework is available as an example, below:
Using the Framework for Personalised CPD: Introduction to theories of Dyslexia
This presentation provides further information about the Framework. It includes examples of resources recommended when the user takes the strand ‘Theories of Dyslexia’.
For more detailed ways of using the Framework, see ‘The Framework User’s Guide’ and ‘Teacher Training’.