Liz Fleming - Clothing & Textiles

Liz spoke about the transition the Clothing & Textiles team has been through over the past 5 years to implement the National Training Package. Through that implementation process, a major shift in the way teaching and learning is managed in their area has been made.

In planning for this change, there were 3 main questions they asked themselves:
A) how would we assess this unit in the workplace?
B) can we do this in a simulated environment?
C) what units can be combined?

The team developed assessment tools before the delivery strategies.
Staff now focus on the students' planning and organising skills rather than providing information - which was a huge mindshift for some teachers and very challenging.

Team work - at some qualification levels, team work is structured into the activities - eg at Cert 2 students are organised into workteams that have production quotas to meet and must self organise to achieve this. At Diploma level, there is much more independent work. The teachers recognise that malfunctioning teams are part of the reality of organising learning in this way, and will intervene in much the same way as a workplace supervisor. One of the hardest things for the teachers to do has been to 'hold back'. The result of these approaches has been students with much better planning skills at the end of their study.

Resource development is shared on a statewide basis, with teachers taking on areas of responsibility.

Each student now has an individual training plan - which the students and teachers negotiate. It was a response to needing a way to manage the great variety of what students where doing and when they were doing it. It has the added benefit of keeping the students on track with their timelines.

After Liz's presentation we were given a tour of the workshop - students told us that the approach was not what they expected when they enrolled - and that it really suited them. They talked about the pressures and interdependence within the workteams as being something they could manage and see benefit in - this from a Cert 2 student. Cert 4 students were working on their workplan - they were now onto their second collection as a team and explained that their workplan for this collection was a lot more detailed and included more info about documentation they would need - this need was identified by them as an outcome from their first collection.

Students can request skills sessions, which teachers then organise - training on demand. Liz and Gaye also talked about the trust and honesty that students display to each other - hundreds of resources in form of magazines, pattern blocks, toiles, cds with files are freely available, and the team no longer has trouble with theft.

Key competencies and business/workplace skills are embedded within most activities - some workbooks are used, but the emphasis is on the application of these skills to achieve the primary work - design and production of clothing and textile products.