Shifting Mindsets

This report by Roger Harris, Michele Simons, Berwyn Clayton is available online from NCVER.

Reading this report, many of the challenges felt familiar to comments I have heard in the VET sector. The challenges foreseen by VET practitioners who were interviewed haven't changed dramatically, but the importance of them in the 'urgency' scales has shifted. Predictions about the role of the VET practitioner in 1995 by Lepani (p12) sounded very familiar - talk of facilitation, consultant to enterprises and assessment specialists a few of those listed.

The report brings together a range of information sources, and one area of focus is the effect of change on work roles and relationships. One of the challenges is the dual roles of VET practitioners who 'are both subject to ... and being expected to support and facilitate" the dramatic change in Australian workplaces. (Waterhouse, Wilson and Ewer cited on p 17). A blurring of roles between that of educator and human resource development professionals is taking place (p18&22).

Change was felt to be coming from external sources such as government policy (p27) rather than being internally driven. Staff also feel a requirement to be outward looking (p66). Increasing the amount of administration, and the associated introduction of computer based systems was not seen to have been supported (p35).

Relationships with students, industry and each other have changed. Where students previously accepted what was offered, now teachers are expected to negotiate and 'please and accomodate' their students (p38). Some teachers felt a focus on facilitation was risking student's achievement in learning.

Communication with other teachers was seen to be difficult in finding times to meet and so on (p39), but also interestingly, they also found that there is greater interaction between teachers (p40). I wonder if the informal 'round the water cooler' conversations are less frequent, but ideas such as team teaching and collaborating with other subject areas to meet the needs of a business explain this apparent contradiction?

Links with industry are changing, with more emphasis being placed on these links (p43). Processes for industry validation and work placements, it was suggested in the report, are now more formalised and integrated into teaching practice. Also the links may now be more with specific enterprises than industry associations. And the conversations with enterprises was more likely to include issues previously the domain of the educator such as 'assessment, recognition of prior learning and qualifications' (p45). Links are also perceived to be stronger where service guarantees and performance levels are agreed.

Responses to Change
The overall attitude towards change was positive (61%), but rather worryingly all of the people who responded negatively were from public providers (p55). When asked to predict foreseen challenges, all were related directly to compliance with changes already in the workplace. In order to cope with the challenges, VET Practitioners nominated professional development about technology, and flexible learning as top priority (p58)

"Teachers and trainers can only act as change agents insofar as the working environments, management structures, policy settings are attentive to both the personal and process aspects of change and view change as an intensely individual process rather than as a depersonlised event that just 'happens' to teachers and trainers" (p72) Nothing ground breaking there, but combined with the perception that change comes from external forces, making change personal to each VET practitioner must be the greatest challenge.