News & Events
Rejuvenating the art of teaching and learning
By Francesca Beddie
TAFE Teacher
17 July 2009
In 2007 Jim Lecinski, a senior executive at Google, came up with nine ideas on innovation. The first was ‘Innovation, not instant perfection’. Lecinski explained that ‘Google believes in launching new products and ideas early and often, rather than trying to perfect those ideas behind closed doors before releasing them to the public.’
VET teachers around Australia drew a similar conclusion after participating during March 2009 in a series of workshops around the country on innovation in teaching and learning. They wanted to know how they might work differently with their clients and how to get on with things. As one participant said, ‘having an innovative idea is 1 per cent of the task; effective implementation is the other 99 per cent’.
The workshops, co-hosted by NCVER and a variety of organisations concerned with VET teaching and learning, were initiated to make sure that two pieces of research we had commissioned on innovative VET practice reached the right people.
The word ‘innovation’ comes from the Latin word ‘innovatus’, meaning ‘to renew’ and it was in this sense that practitioners talked about their work, both during the research phase and at the workshop.
Indeed, in the Australian study, Regenerating the Australian landscape of professional VET practice: Practitioner-driven changes to teaching and learning, Jane Figgis found that boredom was a motivator for innovation or renewal. She quotes one interviewee:
We wanted the pre-apprentices to be able to find employment and the way we were teaching, the stragglers especially, were not getting that. We also acknowledged that we were bored. And if we were bored, what about the students?
Out of her discussions with practitioners, Figgis identified six trends in the changing practice of teaching and learning: assigning authentic tasks, peer learning, using e-technologies, work-based learning, personalising learning, and the devolution of expertise within Registered Training Organisations in support of fresh practice. She found that in the hands of responsive practitioners, these trends lead to improved learning.
In her report, Innovation in teaching and learning in vocational education and training: International perspectives Yvonne Hillier brought two different perspectives to the subject matter: that of a policy analyst and a European. She distinguishes four categories that describe innovative practices being undertaken abroad: closer employer engagement in work-based learning, new technology facilitating learning, networks, centres of excellence and resource banks and networks in professional practice.
So despite their different approaches, these two researchers distilled many of the same themes. On the topic of work-based teaching and learning, Figgis says that innovative practice requires using people's active engagement in their work as the main purpose of credentialed learning. This means that the learning tasks are focussed on work and take place at work. Both she and Hillier see the need for trainers to move beyond training solutions to actually working with employers on workforce development.
Exploiting new technology to facilitate learning is another common element in the reports. Figgis notes that practitioners are exploring how virtual worlds like Second Life can be harnessed as a learning environment. Hillier also found that virtual learning environments are prevalent across the UK and Europe. For example, the University of Brighton has a simulated court room in which a bench of actual magistrates participate to introduce the proceedings of a court to students of law, policing and journalism.
A development taking place in Australia and Europe, with some resonance to simulation, is the assignment of authentic learning tasks that mimic the way in which skills would be used in the real world. These tasks can take days, weeks, even months to complete and convey a real sense of working under pressure of time or customer needs. While authentic tasks do motivate learners, using this approach is no mean feat. Practitioners report that it often takes some time before this method of teaching works really well.
Hillier and Figgis stress the role of networks in underpinning innovative teaching both among practitioners and between practitioners and employers. This was a finding endorsed by the participants in the March workshops, who went away thinking about how to take the plunge and start innovating.
Regenerating the Australian landscape of professional VET practice: Practitioner-driven changes to teaching and learning by Jane Figgis: http://www.ncver.edu.au/publications/2136.html
A research overview of this report is also available: http://www.ncver.edu.au/publications/2133.html
Innovation in teaching and learning in vocational education and training: International perspectives by Yvonne Hillier: http://www.ncver.edu.au/publications/2137.html.
A research overview of this report is also available: http://www.ncver.edu.au/publications/2134.html
Jane Figgis is writing a paper that considers how the responses to the research presented, and to the exercises undertaken, in the workshops extended the researchers’ initial understanding of innovation. Subscribe to NCVER News (www.ncver.edu.au/newsevents/subscribe.html) to be alerted when this publication is available in coming months.
Francesca Beddie is the General Manager of Research at NCVER
