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Taking my learning further
1 What have I learned?
We hope you found Supporting children’s development interesting and informative.
You may remember answering a few questions at the start of the course about your learning motivations. Now you’ve completed all or part of the course we’d like to ask you to reflect on your experience by completing one last short activity.
Activity 1
Questionnaire about your learning (2)
If you would like to review your responses to the first questionnaire at the start of the course you can do so by revisiting the Questionnaire about your learning (1).
Consider where you were when you first started this course.
- How did studying this course fit within your general everyday routine? Did you make or were you given dedicated time to work on it?
- Were there any particular challenges you faced? How did you overcome them?
- Have you learned anything that you will be able to take forwards in the future? How might this influence how you do things in the future?
By studying this course you should now:
- have gained an insight into the varying perspectives of children from early years through to secondary school
- be able to reflect on personal experience and practice, identify strengths and weaknesses, and apply this to your practice issues
- understand how some theories attempt to explain children’s development
- be reflecting on the value of the work of teaching assistants, the support skills involved, and thinking about your future role.
2 Badges and statement of participation
We hope that you now feel a sense of achievement collecting the badges for Supporting children’s development. For a reminder on how to obtain your badges after completing a section, please see How do I access my badge?
For a reminder on how to obtain your statement of participation after achieving all of your badges, please see How do I access my statement of participation?
If you haven’t yet collected the full set of four badges for Supporting children’s development, you still have the opportunity to return to the course and attempt other sections. When you have collected all four badges you will be able to download a statement of participation. It shows that you have successfully completed the whole course and you can take it to your employer to demonstrate self-directed learning and support for personal development.
When you have successfully completed a section and passed the associated quiz assessment, you will receive your Supporting children’s development badge for that section. You will receive email notification that your badge has been awarded and it will appear in your My badges area in your OpenLearn Works profile. Please note it can take up to 24 hours for a badge to be issued.
You will be notified by email if you have received a statement of participation. Once it is available (as a PDF file), you will be able to see and download it from your OpenLearn Works profile.
It may take up to 24 hours for the statement of participation to be issued after you have completed the course.
3 Where next?
We hope you enjoyed Supporting children’s development, and we hope the course has inspired you to continue your learning journey. Below are some key links to where you might like to go next.
Progressing your career
These links from the TES and National Careers Service discuss the role of teaching assistant, the transferable skills required and give you an insight into the different levels of entry into the profession:
- TES: How to become a teaching assistant
- National Careers Service job profiles: Teaching assistant
- Skills for schools: A variety of resources relating to the various roles within schools.
Volunteering
You may like to consider volunteering to extend and enhance your skills and knowledge. These websites may help you to think about your options:
Best Practice Network
The Best Practice Network has over 10 years’ experience in delivering courses and training for support staff.
Trade Unions
The resource you have just studied has been produced jointly by The Open University and ATL – the Education Union. To find out more about ATL’s CPD (continuing professional development) programme for education professionals, please visit their website.
More free, informal courses
Supporting children’s development is one of a suite of six courses. You may like to study one of the other five.
The Open University also provides further online introductory courses and skills for study courses, all of which are free and online.
FutureLearn also has a wide range of online courses that you may like to consider.
The Open University
You may like to consider one of The Open University’s Access courses to prepare you for successful study towards a nationally recognised higher education qualification.
The OU offers a range of qualifications that you might want to consider.
Education, childhood and youth qualifications
If you would like to take a more in-depth look at childhood studies then you can find out more at The Open University’s Education, Childhood and Youth qualifications website.
The PEARL website
Part-time Education for Adults Returning to Learn (PEARL) is a useful website for adults looking for part-time study opportunities, including all types of provision from free, non-accredited courses through to higher-level learning.
Other
You may recall that Katie was very happy with her role as a Higher Level Teaching Assistant, but some of you may be interested in building up experience as a teaching assistant before becoming a teacher or embarking on a teaching qualification. We recommend contacting your local PGCE (postgraduate certificate in education) provider to find out their specific requirements with regards to the national curriculum content they require in a degree. You will also be required to have GCSEs in Maths, English and Science or an equivalent qualification before you become a teacher.
4 Feedback
Finally, please take our short end-of-course survey.
We’re really interested in hearing from you and completing this survey should take no more than 10 minutes.
Acknowledgements
This free course was written by Isobel Shelton and Sue McKeogh (staff tutors at The Open University). Contributions were made by Katie Harrison (teacher and member of the ATL Union).
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.
The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:
Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.