Explain the ways in which you would establish ground rules with your learners, and which underpin behaviour and respect for others.
Ground rules should be developed early on in a course, as it develops a boundary for which everyone can work within. Making ground rules applies as much to adult learners as younger people, taking into account the importance of how everyone is respected, (including the tutor!) and the age range of your learners. With some younger groups of learners, they may have just left school so establishing ground rules could play an important factor as to keeping some behavioural respect within the group to reinforce that, for example the course starts at a certain time and so they need to be on time and not just turn up when they want to.
Ground rules can be set by either the organisation that you work for, or let the group set them which may be a good example as you can always refer them back to the ground rules which they made!, Sometimes though there may not be enough time if it is a short course so it might be easier if they are set by the tutor.
Setting the rules can be used as a group activity, where everyone can suggest an idea that could be used.
These could be suggestions such as:
• Turning mobile phones off
• Arriving on time/finishing times, which are important to those learners with family commitments.
• Being respectful when people are talking
Once the rules have been established, you then have to decide upon whether they need to be displayed at each teaching session. This depends on the types of learners you have, for example young learners that have just left school have different learning needs compared to adult learners who have maybe paid to be on this particular course, who don’t need to be reminded of the ground rules every session.
I think that ground rules are important to establish within a group but stay mindful of the type of group you are teaching as to how often you reinforce the rules.