Report on ATTAIN Meeting, Mannheim Germany
The ATTAIN partners came together in Mannheim Germany for a management meeting and to consider the closing stages of the project from 4th to 6th October. Present in person were colleagues from PCE, Royal University of Bhutan, University of Roehampton, Evalag in Germany and University College Leuven Limburg who joined us for two sessions online.
A key focus of the meeting was to speak with our international external experts, who had reviewed the proposals for the new programme for teacher assistants and to respond to their questions and suggestions for the programme. The experts working with the ATTAIN partners were:
- Yeshey Choeki, SEN Coordinator, Mongar Middle Secondary School, Bhutan
- Thomas Gregory D’Souza, Managing Director, Commission for the Enhancement of University Teaching at Universities of Applied Sciences in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany
- Sunita Singh, Professional Consultant, Disability Special & Inclusive Education, India
These colleagues are experts in the area of special educational needs and disability and programme design. They considered the programme according to the following 6 criteria namely – programme profile, curriculum, assessment, organization of the study programme, resources and quality assurance.
At the end of the review process, the experts agreed that the programme is well-designed and provides an excellent opportunity for the development of teacher assistants across Bhutan. It gives scope for continued international collaboration and could act as a blueprint for similar programmes elsewhere.
The partners also spent time considering the dissemination of the outcomes of the ATTAIN project. ATTAIN members will speak about the project at the International Conference: Special and Inclusive Education (5 – 7 November 2023) to be held at Paro College. There will also be a number of journal articles written collaboratively by the team. These will include papers on:
- ‘The challenges of collaboration in Covid: knowledge-sharing and capacity building’
- ‘Consensual curriculum design’
- ‘Who do we think we are? Working across cultures and contexts’
- ‘The importance of stakeholder engagement in academic and professional programme development’
- The development of TA Standards
- ‘Reflections on international peer review of a new taught programme’
The Mannheim meeting was a great success in terms of progressing the project further and ended with a celebratory dinner, at which we were joined by our former Evalag colleague, Georg Seppmann.
