Project purpose
There are many factors that VET teachers, trainers and assessors must consider in the delivery of quality vocational education and training (VET). Teacher capability to address these factors is influenced by many considerations, including their educational and other qualifications, the professional development they undertake, and the environment in which they are delivering VET. How to ensure teachers are supported and can access opportunities to develop their capability, is an important consideration.
The VET teaching environment is complex in many ways. Stakeholder consultations that informed the development of the VET Workforce Blueprint suggested that teachers can feel unprepared to support leaners for a variety of reasons, including the workload involved, a lack of specific training, and insufficient professional development. Some noted a recent increase in the numbers of learners needing support, compounding the challenges. There has been little research on the psychosocial impact that these increased, and sometimes multiple, barriers have in the VET teaching and learning environment.
This project has two streams of work that will investigate:
1. How teacher capability is developed through initial teacher training and ongoing professional development
2. Understanding psychosocial factors in VET delivery contexts, and how to best support both teachers and learners.
VET teacher development
The aims of this research stream are to understand:
- how different qualification pathways are preparing VET teachers with effective teaching practices for a diverse range of learning contexts
- how professional development needs or priorities are identified and addressed by RTOs and/or individual teachers.
Methodology
This research stream will be conducted in three stages.
- A literature review will be conducted to explore the existing research on the complexity of teaching and the VET educator workforce, effective teaching in VET (from competence to excellence) and teacher training (from initial qualifications to professional development). Additional desktop research will also be conducted to examine teacher capability frameworks and self-assessment professional development tools.
- Consultations:
- interviews with relevant RTO staff (such as RTO managers and teacher education/development staff)
- interviews and/or focus groups with VET teachers across diverse contexts.
- In-person workshops/roundtables will be used to further explore interview findings and to test potential tools/products/outputs from the project.
Psychosocial impacts in VET
The aims of this research stream are to understand:
- what psychosocial factors VET teachers observe during delivery, and how they impact their ability to deliver training and/or student learning
- what the appropriate teaching practices/approaches might be to support both students and teachers.
Methodology
This research stream will be conducted in three stages.
- A literature review will be conducted to explore what is known about the presence, type and impact of psychosocial factors in the VET delivery environment, how students can be supported to manage learning barriers due to psychosocial factors, and how psychosocial factors can impact teachers and their ability to teach effectively.
- Survey of VET teachers to examine teacher observations of psychosocial impacts in the delivery environment.
- In-person workshops and online interviews with VET teachers to explore issues raised in the survey in more depth and to test potential resources.