The importance of teacher voice

27 November 2023

As Australia’s governments embark on reforms to improve VET’s responsiveness to workforce needs in the face of technological, geopolitical and climate change disruption, teachers’ voices need to be included if reform is to be effective for teaching and learning outcomes. Included in that is Minister for Skills and Training Brendan O’Connor’s VET Qualifications Reform Group, which is tasked to kick-start reform.

The VET Development Centre’s (VDC’s) Quality of Teaching project (Guthrie & Waters, 2022), found teachers’ practical experiences in the transformative nature of learning differs from theory in oftentimes small, but important ways.

The project found teachers are responsible for translating training package content into constructive and meaningful outcomes for students and employers. In discussions with teachers, they stated their role was not about ‘transferring’ skills and knowledge to students, but rather, taking students on a journey for work (and other destinations) and changing careers and lives.

Multiple dimensions of teaching and learning

Research tells us that teaching skills and knowledge for work is but one of many dimensions of teaching and learning in VET, albeit an important one. However, a key driver for teachers in delivering learning outcomes is the transformative nature of learning for many VET students, which can be small changes in what they know and can do or life changing. In some VET contexts, such as adult and community education (ACE) and community service training, changing students’ understanding of themselves and the world is a strong focus and a desired outcome.¹

In the Quality of Teaching project, we found transformative dimensions in many teachers’ accounts of their teaching across several industry disciplines and VET sectors. Other researchers found similarly. Jennifer Davids in 2008, for example, found TAFE teachers are highly motivated by the ‘feeling’ they help students to transform their lives in a positive way. This, she says, gives “meaning to their professional lives”.²

Steven Hodge in 2010 found teachers of VET youth work programs actively worked to change the values, outlooks and perspectives of their students, which they said, was essential to preparing them for youth work and was also what they did in their everyday professional work.¹

This transformative dimension of learning in VET also presented in our project’s research with specialised community service teachers. Their teaching sits at the pointy end of transformative learning in VET as they, like youth work teachers, actively set out to change their students’ attitudes and perspectives in preparation for work in this sector. This is a very different proposition to transferring technical skills and knowledge as it particularly shapes personal and professional identities and involves very different teaching and learning approaches.

Transformative learning in theory

To better understand these approaches, we looked to Jack Mezirow’s 1978 transformative learning theory and the work of Steven Hodge, who studied it in depth in VET contexts. The theory was developed by Mezirow in the late 1970s after he observed women returning to study in community colleges in the US experiencing deep changes in their attitudes, perceptions and sense of identity related to their learning. This, he said, was very different to the acquisition of skills.³

Mezirow suggested that learning is triggered when a person experiences a “disorientating dilemma” or “encounter with difference” (an event, story or difficult concept for example) that challenges their personal attitudes and beliefs. The dilemma becomes a catalyst for discussions among students that help them to process and make sense of the information, hear the views of others and critically reflect on what they are hearing, their own views and the assumptions underpinning them and what it means for them personally.

The degree of transformation they experience depends on how well their views fit with those being taught, how willing they are to engage in the experience and how safe they feel to share personal views and experiences. If students choose to (and some do not), they then formulate new perspectives on an issue, event or concept and, ideally, move towards a more inclusive, self-reflective and inquiring mindset. Once new perspectives are formed, students can plan and implement new practices and relationships based on them.

Transformative learning in practice

Community service teachers told us however, that transforming students’ mindsets is not this easy, ordered or sequential. Students can react in unpredictable and resistant ways when “pushed out of their comfort zone”. While their reactions offer rich opportunities for learning, teachers need great care and expertise to deal with negative and potentially unsafe situations and turn them into positive learning experiences.

The community service teachers we spoke to know how to do this because changing mindsets is integral to their professional work. They use a range of methods to engage students in transformative experiences, which are mostly conversational and action-orientated (role playing, simulations, problem-based learning, action research and work experience, for example), starting with a disorientating dilemma, to disrupt thinking and promote debate and reflection about the issue. Many utilise critical questions to expand the debate, maintain an acceptable degree of tension during it and deepen the learning. This requires trusting and supportive learning environments so that students trust the process and feel safe when going through uncomfortable learning experiences. It is the job of the teacher to guide and support them through these experiences.

Transformative ways of teaching are therefore about facilitating change,¹ and students’ capacity for change, as much as developing their skills and knowledge. We think they are more likely to encourage critical thinking, problem-solving and life-long learning than the surface and adaptive learning promoted in training packages. Surface learning is the passive acceptance of information without critical questioning and adaptive learning is obtaining basic skills to perform a task efficiently and reliably over time.⁴ Both perpetuate the status quo.

Conclusions

We are not saying that all VET teachers should be transforming the mindsets of students in the way some areas of community services training currently do. It takes exceptional levels of tenacity, resilience and professional expertise to do this work safely and effectively.

However, we heard from teachers in different areas of VET that transformative learning is occurring to some degree across the sector as they shape their students’ attitudes, mindsets and identities for an occupation, career and for life, although they do not name it as such. The way they do this depends on their industry expertise and ethos, teaching expertise, personal values and needs of students. This raises questions about the suitability of competency-based training (CBT), especially in some VET disciplines and its fitness-for-purpose for VET in the future.

We hope reforms to VET qualifications will consider the multiple dimensions of teaching and learning in VET, especially the transformative work teachers do and how their capacity and agency to do this important work can be strengthened. Nurturing a stronger teacher voice and active role in VET reform would be a positive step in this direction.

REFERENCES

1. Hodge, S. (2010), Trainers and transformation: Facilitating the ‘dark side’ of vocational learning. International Journal of Training Research, Vol 8, pps 53-62.

2. Davids, J. (2008), Have a Heart: challenges for lead vocational teachers in the changing VET landscape. Occasional paper, NCVER, Adelaide, p 16.

3. Mezirow, J. (1978), Education for perspective transformation: Women’s re-entry programs in Community Colleges. Center for Adult Education, Columbia University, New York.

4. Nilsen, P. and Ellstrom, P. (2012), Fostering Practice-Based Innovation Through Reflection At Work. In Melkas, H. and Harmaakorpi, V. (Eds) (2012). Practice-based Innovation: Insights, Applications and Policy Implications. Springer, pps. 155 - 172.

By Melinda Waters and Hugh Guthrie who are practitioners and researchers in the VET sector and writers for the VET Development Centre (VDC). VDC prides itself on delivering quality, professional learning and relevant programs for the vocational education workforce across Australia.

This article was originally published in The Australian TAFE Teacher, Spring 2023