Facilitated by Martin Griffin

Venue C3.30, Ellen Wilkinson Building

Refreshments and a chance to network with colleagues and current trainees from 4 p.m. (Session from 4.30-6.00)

To book a place on the session: http://tinyurl.com/UoM-MindsetCPD-3May16 (maximum 40 places)

Good character education is good education. Recent findings show that effective character education supports and enhances the academic goals of schools: good character education promotes learning… we need to take character education as seriously as we take academic education.” Berkowitz and Bier (2005)Too often teachers ascribe disappointing pupil progress to cognition, describing young learners as ‘weak’, or diagnosing their current level of performance in terms of their intelligence; ‘they aren’t capable of this work’, ‘they’re not bright enough to grasp this’. But there is a growing body of research that suggests something very different; that successful students approach their studies with the a specific set of behaviours, skills and attitudes and that despite not differing cognitively from their peers, can significantly outperform them. Academic success can be as much about character as it is about intelligence.

Martin Griffin has spent eight years as a Deputy Head and Director of Sixth Form working with thousands of students to explore how these behaviours and characteristics contribute to academic success. He and his colleagues have defined five character traits which accelerate learning, and designed a series of coaching tools and strategies which promote the development of these characteristics.

The session covers:

Recent research in character education

• Implications for classroom teachers and tutors
• The VESPA model and ‘A Level Mindset’
• Tools and activities to promote student development

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