Teacher Educator

We hope that the EASiER Toolkit will be useful for school-based mentors and university tutors involved in supporting student teachers and early career teachers.

A teacher using a whiteboard in front of a class

You might find it useful to signpost resources within the toolkit to students/mentees depending on their development needs. 

We have structured the resources so that students can work through them bit-by-bit by engaging with a serious of mini course units at their own pace. They can either work through all the units in sequence or just dip into the ones that are of most interest/relevance to them.

As will be explained in detail when you enter the toolkit, the units are grouped into five layers (the 5S model):

  • Self
  • School
  • Social
  • System
  • Social

If you are involved in supporting student teachers completing a BA or PGCE programme you might want to embed resources from the toolkit into your teaching and/or signpost students to the toolkit for self-study.

Below we have provided example self-study schedules which could be adapted for students enrolled in BA and PGCE teacher education programmes.  However, the toolkit is designed to be used flexibly depending on students’ needs and interests.

Example schedule for a BA student on a three-year programme

Year 1Explore the ‘Self’ units within the toolkit to consider individual-level strategies that you can apply to prepare for your school placements.
Year 2Explore the ‘School’ and ‘Social’ units to consider how the school environment shapes the resilience process and to reflect on the social resources you can draw upon to support you in your career.
Year 3Explore the ‘System’ and ‘Society’ units to consider how the education system and society more broadly influence the way that teachers feel about their working lives

Example schedule for a PGCE schedule on a one-year programme

Before you start the programmeExplore the ‘Self’ units within the toolkit to consider individual-level strategies that you can apply to prepare for your school placements.
Semester 1Explore the ‘School’ and ‘Social’ units to consider how the school environment shapes the resilience process and to reflect on the social resources you can draw upon to support you in your career.
Semester 2Explore the ‘System’ and ‘Society’ units to consider how the education system and society more broadly influence the way that teachers feel about their working lives

If you are a school-based mentor, you might want to use specific resources from the toolkit as a reflection/professional development tool when supporting students and early career teachers with particular areas of their practice. 

The EASiER toolkit is free to use. When you enter the main body of the toolkit at the bottom of this page, you will be asked to enter your name and email address. This is so that we can gain a sense of how the toolkit is being used. We will contact you occasionally to provide updates on new content and to ask for feedback to further develop the toolkit. See here for our privacy notice [LINK TO BE ADDED] which details how we will use and store your contact details.

If you have any questions about the toolkit or the research that informed it, please get in touch with Dr Steph Ainsworth on s.ainsworth@mmu.ac.uk or Dr Jez Oldfield on j.oldfield@mmu.ac.uk. We hope you find the toolkit useful!

Click on the link below to see the menu of units available within the toolkit and to find out more about the 5S model which we have used to structure the resources.