How can you remain employable overseas?

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kyoushi
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Jul 25, 2017 11:12 am

How can you remain employable overseas?

Post by kyoushi »

Hello colleagues,

Does anyone have any advice on what teachers can do when working at an international school to ensure they are still attractive to schools back in the UK? Perhaps some sort of online course? Any advice is welcome! :-)
mamava
Posts: 320
Joined: Sat May 11, 2013 7:56 am

Re: How can you remain employable overseas?

Post by mamava »

A couple of things I've done to stay abreast with the US schools, so you could probably do the same for the UK:

*Belong to professional organizations in your "home country." I read their publications regularly so I'm aware of the trends and changes (I'm in special education). It helps me think about my experiences overseas and how I would frame responses to questions about areas where I might not have experience because I've been overseas.

*I try to get some PD every couple years directly from the US, again to keep up with changes and trends. It does also help me bring newer ideas and information back to my own work.

I don't intend to ever teach back in the US, but if I did I would work to make sure I understood what's happening and work to frame my experiences in a way that would convince prospective employers that what I might be missing is easily made up for by what I bring.
PsyGuy
Posts: 10789
Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:51 am
Location: Northern Europe

Discussion

Post by PsyGuy »

@mamava

While those would all appear to be excellent suggestions, its a US model that doesnt translate well to the UK.

First, "associations" in the UK are more on the ends of a continuum, they are either more like a union, or they are more like academic/classical societies. The union options have really high fees compared to membership in a professional association. The societies are mostly means for academics to present and publish. In addition no head would care what line items you have on a resume in regard to memberships, not do they provide very much that would be relevant to a UK IT. They dont really review the seminal or the SOTA. They are either in the business of trade protection or they are niche areas of academia. Anything and everything that is relevant essentially comes out through the DoE or the TCL.

Second, in terms of PD, as above, its two extremes on a continuum. On one end are the courses, etc, that the Unis and the rest of tertiary education have a monopoly on, or on the other end its internal institution PD, where a head or HOD does some form of presentation in a meeting format. UK ITs/DTs do not need to renew QTS, so there are no quality standards outside of courses earned from a Uni, and those appear on a transcript.

Third, the improvement cycle in the UK is much, much longer than it is in the US. Edu in the UK is likely to leave curriculum alone until, and unless a lot of noise gets created about it. For many of classics and humanities nothing has been updated or changed in decades. Their are still perfectly valid course guides from decades ago, that are being taught the way they were half a century ago. Meds/peds is still very classical, its either the Socratic method or the Pragmatic method. Get through the standards on these competencies and domains, and do it again. this is one of the reasons why DTs can teach 6 different courses in a day without a lot of PD, very, very little has changed and requires re-visitation.
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