Our Training Manifesto!
The Training Centre was started because having spent many years working in in outdoor education, in delivering first aid and rescue courses but also as a qualified teacher, I felt that knowledge of each of these industries could complement each other.
Outdoor education is by its very nature practical and is usually a form of experiential learning, where we learn by doing something. First aid courses offer information that can be quite literally lifesaving but can sometimes become too theoretical, too focused on imparting knowledge without offering the time or opportunity to ensure the learning becomes embedded in a theoretical sense, let alone confidence built in the physical skills needed to be a competent first aider. Working as a teacher can be intensely rewarding but can often be a case of teaching “facts” without the necessary time to allow students to place these facts in their wider context.
At The Training Centre we are constantly thinking about how we deliver our activities to mix the best of each of these three industries. We seek to find the right balance of providing crucial underpinning information that allows participants to make sense of the practical experiences we are providing them. We use active review and reflection techniques to encourage and enable participants to apply learning to the context in which it is most relevant to them.
As an illustration, if we are teaching someone how treat a significant bleed during a first aid course, we might first teach some basic facts about how the circulatory system works. This knowledge will help students understand not just how but also why they, for example, apply pressure to a bleeding wound. Having taught and practiced these skills in isolation we will then look at performing these skills in scenarios that are more likely given the working or leisure time interests of the individuals involved. Review and reflections would then focus how resources, both human and physical, might be best utilised in their environment to reduce the likelihood of these injuries and maximise the efficiency of the response to any future incidents.
At The Training Centre we offer a variety of experiences, with a variety of people, of a variety of ages, in a variety of environments. Clearly there is no one formula that will work with all of these variables. However we do believe that by carefully considering the learning goals of our participants we can design the delivery of knowledge, practical experience and reflection to provide the best possible chance of long term learning; whether that be about first aid, canoeing, risk assessment or environmental education.
.
