This mini-series will provide time and space for you to meet fellow registrants, to share your registration journey and reflect on the importance of being recognised as a teaching professional.

Session 1 - 28th April

This session will be led by Dr Lou Mycroft, an Honorary Lecturer in Education at the University of Stirling. Lou works with a range of people across further education to enact new, values-led possibilities, with a focus on teacher identity, agency, autonomy, and potentia (joyful changemaking power). 

Lou’s session will focus on professional identity and autonomy and will explore what it could feel like to play an active part in a self-regulating profession. It will also provide an opportunity for members to reflect on the importance of their autonomous professional identity, and the professional values they hold which they would like to see embedded within FE. 

With GTCS registration becoming embedded across the college sector, teacher autonomy has never been more important. This session will explore lecturers’ deep knowledge of their subject and the skills they possess to teach it well. 

Join Lou Mycroft and the EIS on Monday, 28th April, to explore new possibilities in professional identity.

Register: www.eis.org.uk/content/courseregistration/954

Session 2 - 12th May

This session will be jointly led by Anne Keenan, the EIS’s Assistant General Secretary for Education and Equalities, and Mandy Loftus, Lecturer in Social Sciences and Early Education at Borders College. Mandy is the EIS-FELA Branch Secretary, Equalities Rep, and Union Learning Rep for Borders College. Mandy has played a pivotal role in shaping the provision of Professional Learning within her establishment, and has delivered several training sessions to her colleagues in the sector, on a wide range of member-led issues.  

This session will focus on what professional learning is for college lecturers, the role it plays in shaping professionalism and in building capacity, confidence and expertise whilst providing the agency which lecturers need to lead learning in their classes.

Register: www.eis.org.uk/content/courseregistration/955

Session 3 - 2nd June

This session will explain the purpose of Professional Update (PU) and how the process has developed since it came into being across Scotland in 2014. It will dispel the myths around the completion of PU, touch on the many different elements of the process that come together to support professional learning and to contribute to improving the quality of teaching and learning; with a key focus on the link to the Professional Standards. This session will be delivered by Jim Moore, who is currently working with the GTCS as a Teaching Standards Education Officer. 

Jim worked for 28 years as a Spanish and German teacher at Clydebank High School in West Dunbartonshire. In 2009, he qualified as an EIS Learning Rep for his school and did that for four years before doing the wider qualification and taking on the role across the local authority in 2013. During that time, he enjoyed helping colleagues across the local authority with their professional learning. In 2018, Jim secured a new role of Development Officer with the GTCS. In 2023, his role changed and since then he has been working as a Teaching Standards Education Officer with GTC Scotland with one of his main remits being Professional Update. 

Register: www.eis.org.uk/content/courseregistration/956