Who’s teaching our teachers?
Learning is an ongoing process in any profession, but even more so at Mcast, where what the teaching staff know, and how they get it across, has a direct impact on the career aspirations of thousands of students. It also determines the quality of the country’s labour force.
Prof. Maurice Grech, principal and CEO at Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology, explains how Mcast lecturers keep up-to-date through continuous professional development and ongoing quality assurance processes.
As young pupils, most of us may have looked up at our teachers as the source of all the answers. Today, we know this can never be the case. Lecturers don’t stop learning once they start teaching.
Learning is an ongoing process in any profession, but even more so at Mcast’s staff room, where what you know, and how you get it across, has a direct impact on the career aspirations and on the quality of life of thousands of students. It also determines the quality of the country’s labour force.
Mcast’s principal function is to provide vocational and professional education that meets the ever-changing demands of Malta’s economy. All the courses are in a constant state of change, as the college responds to the latest developments in various industries and professions.
In this regard, the college’s 600-plus lecturers need to keep their ears to the ground and understand the current and future practical and theoretical trends in the sectors their students will eventually be working in.
Until a few years ago, for example, few people would have considered a career in renewable energy solutions.
A few months ago, Mcast met representatives of this growing local industry and identified the main areas of study required for new courses aimed at preparing students for these green jobs.
As a result, Mcast’s Institute of Building and Construction Engineering will be opening new courses on renewable energy services this September.
In fact, it is already organising training for its staff in Germany before the latter start preparing teaching material for these courses.
Mcast lecturers have several continuous professional development opportunities to choose from. They have opportunities to obtain financial and logistical assistance to pursue a postgraduate course, up to Ph.D level, from local or international institutions.
Additionally, through a project co-funded by the EU’s European Social Fund, the college has partnered with Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, a world-renowned German research institution that employs over 15,000 scientists, university professors and engineers, to provide customised Masters degree programmes for graduate lecturers. Professors from Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and other partner institutions came to Malta to deliver the lectures. During the summer recess, Mcast’s lecturers will travel to the UK, Italy and Germany for a three- month research placement. In this way, the lecturers are not only gaining invaluable knowledge from Europe’s most advanced economies, but also establishing important contacts with international industry experts, with whom they exchange information which they will later pass on to their students.
Mcast’s Vocational Teacher Training Unit also coordinates various courses to provide lecturers with key knowledge, understanding and practical skills required for successful teaching.
Such courses develop several teaching skills, including the application of educational theories to practical and realistic classroom situations, the synthesis of a range of concepts, and the ability to research and investigate educational policies and practices.
In this regard, some 50 lecturers are following a BTEC Level 5 Certificate in Further Education.
On June 1, another group of 90 lecturers will be graduating with a postgraduate certificate in Vocational Education and Training funded by the same abovementioned ESF programme.
This course provides advanced training on the philosophical and psychological aspects of learning, assessment procedures, as well as innovative teaching methods, including e-learning.
In some cases, the college has to act fast and prepare its lecturers to meet an urgent demand by industry. When Lufthansa Technik announced the opening of a new aircraft maintenance plant that required hundreds of specially-trained technical employees, Mcast collaborated with the industry to develop new aircraft maintenance workshops and bring foreign experts to train Mcast lecturers.
Eventually, the European Aviation Safety Agency recognised Mcast as a certified training centre. Over 600 students have already completed aviation maintenance courses, providing the necessary human resources for this sector to grow even further.
In the meantime, during the past two years Mcast also launched its first degree programmes. This required a substantial investment in the college’s lecturing staff.
Initially, professors from Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and other international universities visited Malta to deliver lectures to Mcast students. College lecturers were assigned to ‘shadow’ their counterpart professor. These lecturers gradually took over the delivery of the course modules and now Mcast is offering these programmes under its own steam.
In September, as Mcast enters its third year of degree programmes, the number of degree courses will increase to 19, from the original seven, while the number of graduates is expected to treble, exceeding 300.
As the number of courses (over 140 full-time courses and 300 part-time courses) and students increase, it becomes even more important to ensure that a high quality of delivery is maintained.
Continuous training is complemented by a constant quality assurance process.
In this regard, twice a year Mcast welcomes external verifiers from Edexcel, the UK’s largest awarding body offering academic and vocational qualifications and testing to schools, and other places of learning.
These verifiers monitor various stages of the Mcast courses, and indicate areas where further training or resources are required.
At the same time, the college is currently also in the process of completing a skills gap analysis, to obtain a full picture of areas where further investment in academic and other staff is needed.
The college will soon be conducting appraisal procedures as part of its quality assurance process. This exercise includes class visits and other measures to ensure that the college’s quality benchmarks are being reached.
The quality assurance effort is not only about making sure students are receiving the best education possible. It is not simply about assessing teachers’ performance.
It is also meant to give Mcast regular updates on the resources required by the staff to enhance the classroom experience, to increase the effectiveness of tuition, as well as to identify weaknesses at an early stage and swiftly implement solutions.
Have your say
If you wish to contribute an article or would like a particular subject tackled in the Education section, call Davinia Hamilton on 2559 4513 or e-mail dhamilton@timesofmalta.com.
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Maurice Grech
May 23rd 2011, 16:54
Dear Prof Pule, whilst thanking you for your kind comment I acknowledge your contribution not only in the organisation of the Teachers of Technology course but also in egineering in general.
Maurice Grech
Mr N. Agius
May 29th 2011, 14:28
Dear Profs. Pule', what do you think about the consultation document which came out last week regarding science teaching. It is being proposed that Physics should not remain compulsory in state schools and if they want, students can choose it either withChemistry or Biology. If they do not go for at least TWO separate sciences, they will have just a simplified core science course up to form 5. The document can be found here: https://secure2.gov.mt/meef/MediaCenter/Docs/1_Book%205%20Eng.pdf
Mr Carmel Pule'
May 22nd 2011, 14:07
When Michael Falzon was Minister of Education, I went to his office with plans for MCAST. He liked the idea and asked me to go and see what could be done. I found that we did not have enough formally educated TECHINICAL TEACHERS. It was so surprising that at the old Teacher's Traing College, St Michael and also a the Faculty of Education , there was never a single course for the training of TEACHERS OF TECHNOLOGY.
I approached the Faculty of Education and some said that " it was not their cup of tea to produce such teachers whom I had intended to man MCAST.
Eventually I commenced a course myself to produce " Teachers of Technology" to prepare for the introduction of MCAST but after ten years due to administrative difficulties I decided to call it a day to proceed to produce such teachers .
I wish that when I pass away and die, my epitaph will read as follows. " Here rests Professor Carmel Pule' who was the first man in Malta, since the Phoenicians or the knights of St John came to Malta, to organise a teaching course for TEACHERS OF TECHNOLOGY" It is so unfortunate that these teachers were disbanded and demoralised due to political interventions and all my work fell on barren grounds where MCAST had to start its life with difficulties in finding good teachers. Professor Maurice Grech must be congratulated for his present efforts at MCAST to pick up the pieces that others left behind.
Jesmond Micallef
May 23rd 2011, 13:55
Good one, I enjoyed reading this Professor Pule'. Are there good "Teachers of Politics" in Malta ? Guess there is. Has your daughter Sarah, come up with some new innovative ways in the teaching of Electronics ?
Anyway, best regards to you, Profs . Pule'.
Mr Carmel Pule'
May 23rd 2011, 17:14
Yes indeed she has. She found that many students do not understand the Resistance and Capacitor circuits and have no idea "What is a capacitor" Many students do not know how a capacitor works and when used with a resistance, all they say is " It charges up. They compare a capacitor to a jar filling up with liquid and most students have no idea that this comparison is absolutely wrong, as a capacitor does not fill up, where liquid current enters one end only. This analogy does not explain that current goes through a capacitor, that is it goes in at one end and the same amount of current comes out through the other end/plate. In a capacitor there is no accumulation of current, and in fact the same current goes around a circuit. The Jar analogy is depicted by many books and many teachers but this is absolutely wrong.
Also many students do not realise that a capacitor can have one of its plates working above and below the voltage of a power supply. Many students do not understand why a capacitor cannnot change its voltage very quickly. I shall not talk about an Inductor either self inductance or mutual inducatance as more than 90% of the students do not understand an inductor.
Having said that, may I add that more than 50% of the students do not understand that the voltage across a capacitor depends whether it is being fed from a voltage or a currrent source. I better stop here for many students learning electronics do not know the characteristic of a voltage or a current source and thier effects when these are connected to practical networks.
I shall end by saying that many students are confused about feeding a transistor from a voltage source when it sould be a current source. You feed a transistor from a current source as if you feed it from a voltage source , one would burn the emmitter base junction because of the high currents that will result. Very few people seem to know that it is because of the transistor practical imperfections that one may get away in feeding the base of a transistor with an imperfect voltage source and then one must llimit the voltage to .7 volts. I am afraid the teaching of electronics is not done in depth and many students do not really understand what they are doing, apart from repeating what they learnt at tutorial classes. Even books are wrong on many occasssions and perhaps students can be escused for following what they read in books. Unfortunately many books are written by academics and not practical people who could be better at looking at the details of a practical capacitor rather than many academics who refer to the conventional curve of an R/C network as "exponential" without describing the fact that a charge or a discharge can take place while potentials are going in the negative directions rather than always dealing with a positice going exponential. I am beginning to look upon the teaching of electronics as one buying a Rolls Royce car, where one now learns to drive it but not to design it. I believe most people who handle electronics these days are becomming like house wives who go and buy a washing machine, learn to use it but not to design it or to repair it. Perhaps I am wrong in teaching the fundamentals as I diid in the past. As now everything is disposable we it seems that all we need to do these days is to become operators of sophisticated machines and not their designers. Also most of us are proud to be the owners of electonic machines and not thier designers. The trouble with engineering is that we make it so simple for others to use our ware, that they have not the slightest idea of the diffficulties during their design.
In the past as I said before, Malta has never offered a formal teaching course to TEACHERS OF TECHNOLOGY. In fact it was a case of the Ministry of Education going to Industry and asking skilled people to assist in teaching at the trade schools. These people were not accepted as teachers but were called INSTRUCTORS. It was The Honourable UGO MIFSUD BONNICI who after realising what the history of teachers of technology went through , he decided to elevate INSTRUCTORS to TEACHERS . It is quite funny really for most teachers of yesteryears had a couple of O level GCE and became a TEACHER while an INSTRUCTOR could have owned a Six Year Dockyard apprenticeship including practical and an advanced Scientific course at the Dockyard school and in the eyes of the local education system a TEACHER WAS better respected than an INSRTUCTOR. When it came to technology in the past , it was a real farce. I hope that I contribited to clear this anomaly in my life but I tell you dealing with stuborn drugged educational management personnel in Malta was the most difficult experience I have ever had in all my life.
Jesmond Micallef
May 23rd 2011, 20:21
I relate your comment here to a Capacitive Discharge circuit used in ignition systems, Profs. ;-)
You have reminded me of a news item which I read here on a previous occasion about a device the Malta Police use in order to detect drugs and explosives. It looks like a sort of magic wand with a black box and an aerial connected to it which shifts in direction just like dosing for water using a tree branch. Have you ever wondered how that actually works ? Some people in the UK related the device to an elementary tuned RL circuit which is commonly found on anti-theft tags found on merchandise in department stores. I understand how that works but not in relation to explosives and drugs !!
I only have a basic and traditional understanding of electrics and electronics. I understand that a circuit is that which is usually made up of levels of potential split up across a voltage of say 0 volts to + 12 volts DC, for example. Series or Parallel connection, whether its current or voltage the priority. The effects of resistive, capacitive and inductive elements within the circuit, transistors and diodes, foward and reverse bias. As strange as it may seem, I think AC theory helped me understand better electrics/elecronics as it includes both postive and negative, ie opposite directions. For example the typical simple AC/DC rectifier diode bridge comes to mind here.
I can appreciate why there are infinite applications to electronic circuitry. Its potential use is endless, literally.