ABSTRACT
Teaching practically anything involves operating within a set of constraints. Some of these will be external to an institution, e.g. exam syllabuses, modes of assessment and others internal to it – amount of teaching time, access to facilities like computers, staffing and so on. Effective teaching depends, in part at least, on recognising and taking account of these constraints when planning a learning programme. The first steps in getting to grips with GNVQ must, therefore, involve working out the constraints it imposes on you in terms of both what you teach and how you teach it. This is not an easy task since there are many factors you have to take into account. To simplify the task, and so get you started, this first section of the book only considers those constraints imposed by the mandatory vocational units: what the units mean and how they are assessed. Another set of constraints, core skills, will be introduced in the second section of the book, and the final set, to do with management of student learning, forms the final section.
