Future skills for educators

05 August 2024

Contemplating the future can be daunting when you’re flat out with day-to-day teaching, assessment, preparation, and admin.
In addition to keeping up with technological and organisational shifts in your field and finding time to master new ed-tech tools and teaching modalities, where and how do you find the time to delve into future skills?

The good news is you’re already using future skills.

“VET educators are practical and passionate, and just incredibly student-focused – this is why they do what they do,” says Alison Wall, chief of staff at the Future Skills Organisation (FSO), a Jobs and Skills Council funded by the Australian Government Department of Employment and Workplace Relations to help grow Australia’s talent pool in the finance, technology and business industries.

Wall praises the “bespoke delivery” she sees TAFE teachers offering their students. “Being student-centric means that you are being a ‘translator’ between what industry wants and creating the right condition for students to learn,” she says.

You’re versatile, too: “We quite often hear stories about educators adapting different delivery styles or different tools, because we know that in a classroom typically you have a complete range
of learners.”

So, how will tomorrow’s TAFE teachers navigate virtual and hybrid settings alongside face-to-face classrooms, workshops and studios? What capabilities should you prioritise in your professional development? And what are some resources to look for?

Cultivate evergreen skills

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Education 2030 project identifies three “transformative competencies” that future students will need: “creating new value”; “reconciling tensions and dilemmas” and “taking responsibility”. FSO’s research also shows “employers are looking for skills that complement the collaboration between human and technology,” says Wall.

These “evergreen skills” – sometimes called ‘soft skills’ – include time management, spoken communication, empathy, negotiation and problem-solving, self-direction, leadership and teamwork. For Wall, “contextualisation is the key,” because the same skills look different across different industries and in different contexts, meaning teachers can and should model them for their industry.

Another evergreen skill for educators “is the idea of resilience and being able to be flexible in change,” says education professional development consultant
Ren Everett.

A passionate advocate for inclusive and accessible learning, especially for historically marginalised people, Everett says by cultivating resilience, teachers can keep pace with “social changes that require people to reorganise their thinking processes rapidly and constantly.”

Universal design for learning

But if you do feel overwhelmed, Everett says, that’s likely because teaching imposes a heavy cognitive load, which is “all of the things that you’re carrying in your brain that are using up space in your working memory.”

VET students also struggle with cognitive load. They might be neurodivergent, from culturally marginalised backgrounds, juggling work and family, returning to study, or learning in an additional language. Everett says teachers can lighten everyone’s cognitive load by adopting universal design for learning (UDL).

“Universal design for learning is sometimes called ‘backwards by design’,” he explains. “It says, ‘This is what I want them to be able to do at the end,’ and then I work backwards through the steps.”

For example, using micro-learning principles for each step: a short burst of five to 10 minutes that doesn’t tax students’ executive function and is rewarding to complete. This builds momentum to keep learning, at each student’s own pace.

“My favourite metaphor at the moment is that a ramp is just lots of tiny little steps lined up against each other,” Everett says. “Somebody who uses a wheelchair can get up a ramp. Somebody who doesn’t need a wheelchair might get up there quicker, but it’s the same thing, right? So that’s what I’m talking about: building the tiny little steps for people to get there.”

Everett says UDL can be as simple as a Google or Word document where the steps are clearly laid out or multidirectional, hyperlinked ‘learning maps’ that empower students to choose their own learning pathways, activities and tasks.

The role of generative AI

Because TAFE has historically trained students to use tools of the trade, discussions on future-proofing teaching has focused on flashy new ed-tech – especially generative AI (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or Copilot.

“We would encourage educators to lean in to GenAI. It’s not going to go away,” says Wall. “Teachers should be allowing students to learn, use, and learn from their use with AI, because it’s going to be at the workplace.”

Wall recommends it as a “thought-starter” when beginning a task, as “it allows you to leapfrog faster into a concept or an idea.” Importantly, though, future-focused educators are “actually helping students to make good decisions about the information they’re being given,” says Wall. Encourage critical reflection: “What did you think about that? What does it mean?”

Assessment processes, too, must adapt to GenAI. Wall suggests that to validate a student’s understanding and evidence, “back up a piece of written work with some oral questioning: ‘Why do you think that? What would happen in a different scenario?’”

Everett’s priority is to “use technology to lift people up, not flatten them to fit in the same cookie-cutter as everyone else.” He suggests teachers can use AI to quickly and easily adapt activities and assignments to meet students’ diverse needs and interests, building a collection of ways to frame the same material.

“Every time I present an activity, I present it in more than one way,” he explains. AI can reduce teachers’ cognitive load by “having those options ready to go” for anyone struggling to
get started.

Bridging virtual and physical worlds

COVID forced education online; and asynchronous remote learning remains popular because students find it convenient and accessible. Virtual-reality tools, well designed and implemented, also let beginners safely learn dangerous techniques such as welding without wasting materials, or provide realistic simulated environments to practise workplace health and safety risk assessments.

But learners will always need expert supervisors to provide useful feedback. “The technology’s an augmentation; it’s not a replacement,” says Wall. For the best of both worlds, “the hybrid model is exactly where we need to go.”

Place-based education offers a source of immersive experiences that can spark active learning. Drones can map physical spaces; scavenger hunts can boost detail-perception and teamwork, among other ‘evergreen’, workplace-ready skills. So can local service projects including community cafés, clinics, plant nurseries, hair salons, repair workshops or digital literacy classes.

Digital personalised learning (DPL), meanwhile, combines the strengths of machine learning and human supervision into an adaptive learning management system (LMS) that responds dynamically to students’ interactions by offering them pathways that suit their learning styles.

By automating routine task instruction, deadline reminders and feedback on students’ strengths and weaknesses, DPL systems free up teachers to offer more socio-emotional support. Human educators notice real-world pressures on students that an AI can’t – work/life balance, physical and mental illness, or cultural safety issues.

The LMS can also show teachers things they might not have noticed about their students or their own teaching. DPL platforms often include analytics dashboards that visualise real-time data on which parts of the course are most used, and which students might need extra help – and with what.

Building communities of practice

Face-to-face teaching, however, remains crucial to help students learn from
each other.

“In great classrooms you’re seeing peer-to-peer learning, or the teacher and learner becomes reversed,” Wall says.

The diversity of TAFE students also means for example, that older learners can model for their younger peers those evergreen interpersonal skills “that young people won’t necessarily have had a chance to experience,” says Wall.

Teachers, too, learn from a community of practice. Which is why the Future Skills Organisation hosts an online community network connecting educators with industry stakeholders. “It allows VET educators to understand the changes that are coming, so they’ve got a little bit of a head start,” Wall explains.

The same principles that work for students also guide teachers’ professional development, Everett says: “You talk to each other, and that’s where learning tends to happen.”

By Mel Campbell

This article was originally published in The Australian TAFE Teacher, Winter 2024