Open Universiteit trains supervisors social trainees

In November and December the Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies trains two groups of teachers of secondary education Limburg to supervise the social traineeships of their pupils. The training is organised at the request of the boards of the Limburg schools for secondary education as an initiative of the foundation Stichting Voortgezet Onderwijs Parkstad Limburg (SVOPL).

Social traineeship
As of 2010-2011 all pupils in secondary education have to do a social traineeship. This means they have to do volunteer work for a number of hours. The aim of the social traineeship is to give the pupils the opportunity to become more involved in society by doing volunteer work for other people. Whereas teachers have experience in supervising professional traineeships, a social traineeship is something new. A social traineeship is very different from a professional traineeship, because it is not aimed at developing specific professional competencies, but at developing more general insights and competencies.

New role
Supervising a social traineeship demands a different role from the supervisor. The supervisor should be a coach. He has to coach pupils in gaining insights in his own knowledge and competencies and coach them in developing these competencies. This is a new task and a new role. Therefore the Limburg school boards have requested CELSTEC to develop a training to help supervisors to become aware of this different role and to learn them how to fulfil this new role.

Workshops
The training consists of three workshops of 3,5 hours. Apart from awareness of the new situation and the new role, the workshop focus on conducting coaching sessions and counseling conversations. Attention is given to content of these conversations as well as conversation techniques.

The first two groups have started in November. The attendees are a mixed group coming from all levels of secondary education (from vmbo till gymnasium). Early 2010 at least two more groups will start their training..