Session 5 - Validation

Session objectives

• To help TAs get the best out of the learners that they work with.
• To help TAs better understand how to conduct effective validations and ensure consistency.

Great for…

• Getting your TAs together to discuss issues.
• Getting your TAs to think about the responsibilities of their role.
• Getting TAs to think about how they conduct validations.
• Reminding TAs of the importance of ensuring that learners have understood the learning that they have completed.
• Support TA(manager and supporters) in validation requirements.

Resources

• Learner packs – you will need to create enough of these for small groups to have one pack each (you may need to create different packs for the different roles that your TAs work with - for example, if you have specific TAs that work with managers in Scouting). See the additional support material for this session for details of sample learner packs that you can put together for this task.
• Validation Processes and Guidelines can be used as a hand out if required.

Time

This will depend on the number of participants that you have in attendance, but will be between an hour and an hour and a half.

Method

Ask your TAs to get in to small groups. Give each group a learner pack and explain that in their packs they will find some information on their learner, a list of modules that the learner still needs to validate, a list of modules that the learner is planning to validate today, and some evidence that the learner has presented to them, as the learner’s TA, to validate these modules. They will also find some background information on their learner to put the situation in to context. Advise groups to imagine that the learner detailed in their pack is their learner and that they are planning to validate the highlighted modules today. Advise that the learner has presented the evidence contained in the pack to them today. Highlight that as a TA it is important to ensure that learners have understood that learning that they have undertaken, which is why validation is always essential.

Ask groups to: #SkillsForLife 15

• Look at the modules that the learner is planning to validate today and work out which evidence could go towards validating which module.
• Think about what further questions, evidence or discussion they would need to have
  in order to satisfactorily validate these modules.

Trainer note

The evidence presented alone will not be enough to validate the modules and TAs should feel that further questions, evidence or discussion will be required in order to fully validate the module. TAs may get side tracked on the fact that the evidence is not sufficient and that it cannot be used to validate the module. If this is the case, acknowledge this and ensure that groups do think about what further questions they would ask the learner to check their understanding and ascertain that they have completed the required validation criteria.

Remind groups of the background information they have on their learner. It will be useful to bear this in mind as their learner could have some skills, knowledge or experience from outside of Scouting that will help them with their validations.

The factsheet Validation Processes and Guidelines contains some validation best practice. This could be summarised as part of the feedback element of this session, or used as a hand out for participants. When ready, ask groups to feed back their ideas. You may need to ask them to summarise their case study to the rest of the group if you are using several different learner packs.
As an alternative method, and to make this session more realistic, you could run it with members of the training team playing the learners. This would allow them to show their level of knowledge and understanding to the TAs and will allow the TAs to pose questions to them and discuss what they have learnt.