Ben Beaumont, Head of English Language Teacher Strategy & Publishing, has seen his role evolve and develop since joining Trinity in 2015.
You’ve been with Trinity College London since 2015 – can you tell us a bit about your journey and how your role has evolved over the years?
Interestingly, I was a part-time Trinity International ESOL examiner from 2004, assessing learners and helping run assessor training events, and then became a full-time member of staff as TESOL Qualifications Manager in June 2015. So even at the start of my full-time role, there’d already been an evolution of sorts.
Since starting full-time there have been continual changes in my role, reflecting the changing structures and nature of what Trinity does to support teachers in English language and other subjects. Whether manager or head of teacher qualifications, working on Trinity’s teacher support strategy or heading up Trinity’s new English language publications offer, the constant has been that my work involves supporting teachers. And this is perhaps reflected in role I’m transitioning into, as Head of teacher Education and Pedagogy - identifying what works for learners and helping teachers support their learners for educational and exam success.
What initially attracted you to Trinity, and what has kept you engaged for over a decade?
My involvement with Trinity goes even further back than when I started examining in 2004. We need to go back to 2000, which is when I completed my Trinity CertTESOL, the initial teaching qualification for English language teachers. When choosing my initial teaching qualification, I chose Trinity’s over others because of the explicit focus Trinity’s English qualifications have on phonology, that is, the sound systems of speech and how we can support learners in this often-under-taught area. Trinity’s teaching qualifications include this as an explicit, assessed component, and this is what first attracted me to Trinity.
I then became interested in Trinity’s GESE exams because of the really positive impact they have on learners, as well as for my own benefit and interest, as examining for GESE took me around Europe and further afield, taking me to educational contexts and showing me learner experiences beyond those I’d ever previously had. And then the full-time role overseeing Trinity’s English language teaching qualifications came with its own challenges and points of interest.
At heart, I’m an educator who wants to support effective learning, and my roles at Trinity have enabled me to have positive impact in this area. And just as our learners’ needs change, so do teachers’ needs, which then means that the work I do also has to change, so that we can continue to provide effective and meaningful support for teachers. So, it’s this meaningful action and impact linked to my educational interests over time that has kept me engaged with Trinity for over a quarter of a century!
In your role as Head of English Language Teacher Strategy & Publishing, what does a typical day look like – if there is such a thing?
The only thing I can guarantee about a typical day is that it involves emails and meetings, and that the content of those emails and meetings is in some way linked to learning and teaching and maintaining educational standards associated with this. A lot of the work involves reacting to the needs of Trinity’s Teaching centres, market colleagues, project initiatives and the winds that are associated with ensuring regulatory alignment. When time allows, I can also be quite proactive, working with senior moderators and examiners to create training resources and programmes, helping colleagues plan and deliver presentations, and also planning broader pedagogic strategy developments, from qualification reviews to the creation of assessment frameworks.
Although I plan ahead as much as I can, I never really know what the day ahead will look like until I turn on my computer in the morning. I just know that there will be a huge variety of things to attend to and that although I’ll be busy, I won’t be bored.
How do you collaborate with other teams across Trinity, and what impact does your work have on teachers and learners worldwide?
There is a huge range of collaboration within and across teams. This might be working with the product team on new digital innovations and products, such as AI lesson planning or diagnostic assessment tools, or working with the Quality and Standards team on regularity detail or supporting training for examiners to help ensure accurate assessments. There’s interaction with in-country teams, assisting with teacher support, and also on projects like Trinity’s Future of English Language Teaching conference (FoELT), helping with pedagogic appropriacy and academic standards. Then there’s the collaboration with all the various support teams that enable these things to happen, from Content and finance to Operations and IT; the range and type of collaboration goes on and on. The one constant is that it’s all, in some way, linked back to teachers and helping support teachers.
And this takes me to the second part of your question about impact: One of the great things about the role is how the work I’m involved with has the possibility of helping teachers and learners worldwide. Research clearly shows us that, beyond home life, the greatest impact on a learner’s development is the teacher. And teacher educators help the teachers with that impact. At Trinity, we do our best to support both teachers and teacher educators, be it through our teaching qualifications, resources, or development opportunities, like the FoELT conference. What we do as an international awarding organisation has huge impact (both wash back and spin off) in individual’s lives around the world, and I think it was my experience examining for Trinity that helped make me really appreciate how much this is the case.
One teacher education example of this impact is the Certificate for Practising Teachers (CertPT), a qualification for teachers we launched in 2020. Since launch, thousands of teachers have taken this qualification worldwide and, having completed a longitudinal study on the effect of the qualification, we have research evidence to show how beneficial the qualification has been in shaping teachers pedagogic skills for the better and in giving them the confidence to make decisions in class based on the needs of the learners in front of them.
There are thousands of teachers that take Trinity’s teaching qualifications every year, and to be involved in positively shaping those qualifications and assessments is a huge privilege and, ultimately, we hope results in better teaching and learning in the classroom, or wherever the site of learning.
What are some of the most rewarding projects or milestones you’ve been part of during your time here?
There have been so many! From being the youngest [at the time!] International ESOL examiner back in 2004 to enabling teacher development, I could go on for hours! However, I think if I had to choose my favourite, it would be the creation of the CertPT, an idea proposed in 2016 and which came to fruition in 2020. Not only is this innovative in how it contextualises teachers’ assessment and also allows for multilingual assessment, reflecting how language is used in real-life situations, but we’re now seeing the very real impact of how this qualification is helping making teachers better as supporting their learners, and therefore helping raise educational quality more widely.
There are other great milestones like launching Trinity’s first online course for teachers, the Trinity Teach English Online course and associated CertOT qualification, born out of the pandemic to help teachers learn how to be effective educators in an online learning space. There’s also the ongoing and growing support offer for teachers globally, a key plank of this being the FoELT conference, now in its 10th year. Having been fortunate enough to be involved in this project from its first year, it’s great to see its development from a small, in-person event to it now being a global CPD opportunity with hundreds of teachers applying to speak annually and over 4,000 delegate registrations last year.
And I also need to mention the launch of Trinity’s first ever English language publications, a key part of my role in Trinity College London Press. Within two years, we’ll have launched three series of books covering ISE Digital support, English language coursebooks and young-learner-focused GESE activity books. These will perhaps give a flavour of the projects I’m fortunate enough to be involved with
What advice would you give to someone considering a career at Trinity College London, especially in the academic or publishing fields?
One of the most important things you can do in both Academic and Press areas is to gain experience in different educational settings. Knowledge is a fundamental core, but it’s not enough. You can get a master’s degree or doctorate, but without practical application there is limited relevance to the work we do in Trinity. Universities are a place of knowledge creation; Awarding Organisations, like Trinity, are places of knowledge application. And this involves the judicious evaluation of what knowledge is relevant in different educational contexts. The ability to do this well is usually based on experiential learning, actually in the fields of teaching and assessment. Desk-based knowledge alone is rarely enough.
And alongside that, because of the qualifications and standards role, anyone working in Academic or Press needs a great eye for detail, as well as having the ability to multi-task and work to deadlines - incredibly important skills to develop. One final piece of advice would be to enjoy what you do: we’re able to work with some amazing people and do some truly wonderful things, and enjoying the day-to-day is all part of what makes the organisation a success.
“There are thousands of teachers that take Trinity’s teaching qualifications every year, and to be involved in positively shaping those qualifications and assessments is a huge privilege.”