#APConnect

Coming to the end of its third year, the ETF funded #APConnect programme is a professional learning space for FE’s advanced practitioners (APs), defined as educators with an interest in supporting the development of quality improvement in various ways, notably through the support and encouragement of colleagues. Each year brings innovations and none more so than in these pandemic times. Year 3 came to a close with an effervescent national conference in which APs presented not what they did, but what and how they had learned during the year.

The shift was clear; a move away from ‘sheep dip’ CPD to the opening up of facilitated spaces where people learned together, including focused #FestivalFridays workshops, Ideas Rooms, Thinking Environment (pp105-8) spaces around wellbeing and social purpose education, a Dare to Lead Reading Room, Equalities Mentoring, AP-led networks, ATS support,endless articles, podcasts, blogs and radio shows and a co-evaluation project looking at the developing role of the AP.

We realised for sure this year that our ‘constellations’ were only part of a wider ecology of practice, much of it spotlighted in this blog series. Funded, but not owned, part of a much bigger #FETapestry, led from the grassroots.