government policy | A Journey Through Learning

Develop a Presentation about HWB research; carry out a self-assessment of your work (3 hrs).

Working with a critical friend (peer), each person present five slides (must be pictures) that can be used to summarise a piece of research or a policy focus in the wider area of HWB. The pair should decide and identify the assessment criteria that have to be used. This should be displayed in your e-portfolio. Write up a self-assessment of your presentation before you present it to your critical friend. Present your presentation to your critical friend and collect detailed feedback from your peer.

Think about – are you meeting the agreed assessment criteria, have you practised your presentation, does it have impact, are you getting across the key points.

Evidence: A copy of your PowerPoint presentation. In addition, you should add your self-assessment feedback based on the assessment criteria. A copy of assessment criteria should be added.

Personal Thoughts:

This activity was quite time consuming to do. Thinking of the wider aspect of HWB, I wanted to focus on a policy/research document which hadn’t been considered in class. This led to the presentation focusing on the policy document ‘Achieving Our Potential’ which aims to tackle poverty and income inequality. The issue of poverty is something which we did look at in class however this was more based around the context of the attainment gap. Throughout the presentation, my aim was to:

discuss what poverty is, the causes, how it’s measured whilst giving statistics in relation to Scotland and also consider child poverty
discuss income inequality and its effects, also the notion of ‘working poverty’
discuss the government policy and it’s aims
consider the policy in relation to others, eg. Early Years Framework; early intervention etc.
emphasise there are many strategies/initiatives being implemented to tackle these issues in order for Scotland to become a fairer, healthier, more prosperous place to live – increasing the overall wellbeing of all those living in the nation; one alone will not achieve anything

Before carrying out the presentation, we decided on a criteria which we would self/peer assess against. Looking back, I believe we could have made this more specific however at the time of creating it we were unsure of what we should have. This may have helped develop the presentation further. In terms of practising the presentation, I feel this was something we lacked. Although we felt we knew our topics quite well and given the environment which it was presented (library) in, less reliance on notes may have improved the overall quality. I feel the chosen images, on each slide, were relevant to the current area being discussed – the audience recognised how they related to the topic.

By the end of the presentation, it was made clear that I had given clear and relevant information – focusing on key points – which is what I hoped I would do, enabling the audience to (potentially) learn something new, as I did with theirs. I found it challenging to be critical in my feedback however do feel I gave some constructive criticism to my peer.

The presentation can be viewed as a PowerPoint document –

HWB presentation

A copy of the self/peer assessment feedback sheet has been included –

Design a poster (3 hrs)

Design a poster on closing the attainment gap and how HWB can contribute to this. This poster should be of a high quality with typed print and pictures on A 3 sized paper. Posters will be shared with the class. For the portfolio, take a picture of the poster and include a bibliography.

Evidence: A photograph of your poster and a completed reference list.

Personal Thoughts:

For this task it required some background reading to be undertaken to inform ourselves about the attainment gap in Scotland. We then discussed what we had found out and how we think we should complete the task. We deliberated a variety of ideas and had a few plans however we soon realised that we had so many ideas about what is being done to close the gap, this would be what we displayed. After discussing how we felt HWB contributed, we acknowledged that it is like an umbrella; everything done is in relation to HWB. With HWB being a responsibility of all, closing the attainment gap is also viewed in this way. For the gap to close, everyone must work together to achieve the ambition of the government. The introduction of Policy is a major influence in closing the gap however, for it to be successful, teachers and schools need to be informed about ways in which they can implement effective strategies into their practice.

On reflection of the final product, I feel it could have been more engaging; with more colour and images & being less wordy. However due to working as a small group time was an issue for some. I do feel I could have potentially been more persistent in suggesting using my own resources (printer etc.) to enable this to be achieved however I recognise that working in a group, compromises have to made.

This was an enjoyable activity as it is an area of great interest to myself. I found that those I worked with had little/no knowledge of what the attainment gap is and what is being done to reduce it; this was therefore beneficial in allowing an opportunity to discuss the issue whilst informing others at the same time.

References:

The attached document is a reference list which was used in the initial research of ‘Closing the Attainment Gap’ before producing the poster –

Poster References