Supporting the Workplace Learning of Vocational and Further Education Teachers

Mentoring and Beyond

Susanne Francisco

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000551457
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

Supporting the Workplace Learning of Vocational and Further Education Teachers is written to help people understand the arrangements in a workplace that enable and constrain teacher learning – and then to do something about it. It provides an accessible, research based, and practical guide to making changes in the workplace to enable teacher learning.

The book illustrates approaches to supporting workplace learning through the extensive use of vignettes from real teachers and real teaching workplaces. With a focus on mentoring as an important component of teacher learning, it introduces the concept of a trellis of practices together with approaches for developing arrangements in the workplace that support teacher learning. It also examines the spaces between the personal and the professional and how these can become Communicative Learning Spaces where professional learning occurs.

The strategies and ideas provided in this book can be implemented at a whole-of-organisation, teaching department, small team, or individual level. An essential resource for Vocational Education and Training (VET) and Further Education (FE) teachers and managers, as well as others who support teacher learning in the workplace, this book is written to help make a difference.

1Teacher learning in the workplace

DOI: 10.4324/9781003112624-1

I love teaching in VET. I’m doing it because I do love it and I feel like I’ve found my place.

Maria, Business teacher

I want to give the students as much as I can so they can go out confidently and do a great job and be fulfilled and happy. And for the employer, so they can be absolutely confident that, if they employ that person, they know what they are doing. I would have been a teacher for all my life if I’d known how nice and intellectually stimulating it is.

Michael, Horticulture teacher

The biggest emotion I feel in my teaching is the pride that I feel for the students. You know, when they physically create something practical, or when I set them tasks to deliberately challenge them, and they meet the challenge. So, a lot of pride there. I really enjoy it; I’m really happy doing it.

Ewan, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration teacher

I’m passionate about teaching…I love working out how to engage disengaged students, and to make a difference to their lives.

Tamsin, Foundation Studies teacher

The Vocational Education and Training (VET) and Further Education (FE) teachers who I have interacted with as a colleague, teacher, and researcher usually have one key thing in common – they are passionate about their work. Most have a passion for their teaching area, for teaching more broadly, and usually for both. A large majority are also eager to continue to learn and develop throughout their teaching career.

VET and FE teachers are a unique group of people. They are usually dual professionals who have already been successful in their first occupation – the one that they are teaching about. I have never met a VET or FE teacher, manager, or leader who didn’t have an interesting background. This background is one of the things that they draw on as teachers, managers, mentors, and leaders. These experiences also form the stepping off point for ongoing learning and development.

The VET and FE sectors are large, rapidly changing, and complex. These complexities are impacted by many factors, including high employer, student, and community expectations; ongoing changes due to globalisation and internationalisation requiring increasingly sophisticated approaches; a competitive training ‘market’; and ongoing changes to government policies that impact Vocational and Further Education both directly and indirectly.

VET and FE teachers face high expectations. They also work with a range of diverse student groups who have a broad range of abilities and needs. Students can range in age from 15 to more than 70. They can be full-time workers, casually employed workers, unemployed, or deliberately not engaging with paid employment. They can have a history of social and educational disadvantage or be from a privileged background. They can have a wide range of language, literacy, and numeracy skills, and they bring with them a range of learning skills and experiences. VET and FE teachers can be in sites (classrooms, worksites, workshops) where there is an overlap in these categories resulting in many diverse students in the same room (virtual and/or physical) at the same time. Sarah, a novice Business Administration teacher who participated in one of my research projects, characterised it as follows:

There is never one type of student, they are all individual. You can’t put them all in the same bucket; you could have 14 students and 14 buckets, they’re all unique. They all have their personalities, they all have their writing styles, they all have the way that they act or respond in class. There are the ones with the “Yes, I know” sort of responses. And the ones that won’t say a word all semester and you try desperately to [engage with] them. All students are different.

We expect much of VET and FE teachers, perhaps more than we expect of any other group of teachers. To be able to fulfil the many roles and expectations that we have for VET and FE teachers we need to support their learning. Undertaking formal education is one important way that teachers learn to develop their teaching, assessment, and student support practices. Learning in the teaching workplace is another. These are not either/or options; both are crucial. And both require deliberate attention to ensure teacher learning is well supported. As Kersh (2015) argues, “Making a workplace a learning space has been considered one of the challenges of contemporary workplace development” (p. 847). This book focusses on how to support teacher learning in the workplace.

Who is this book for and why is it needed?

This book has been written for VET and FE teachers,¹ for those who support the learning of VET and FE teachers, and for others who support adult learning.

Much of the learning that people who support adult learning do takes place in the teaching workplace (Francisco, 2020a). This doesn’t deny the important learning that takes place through education courses. Instead, it acknowledges that:

• many teachers begin teaching without a teaching qualification
• learning as a result of undertaking a teacher education qualification is enhanced through applying the learning in the workplace
• there are some things that can only be learnt in the workplace, including what is expected, in this place, at this time.

In research that Billett et al. (2014) undertook across four different industries, the researchers found that “the manager’s view of assistance for learning is largely comprising training programs” (p. 22). This single focus on attending training programs to support worker learning is despite decades of research that has highlighted the crucial value of learning in the workplace (see, for instance, Billett, 2001; Fuller & Unwin, 2004; Lave & Wenger, 1991). It shows that Eraut’s (2004) argument that there is a lack of understanding “about how much learning does (and how much more learning might) take place on the job” (p. 271) continues to hold. It is timely to have a book that focusses explicitly on supporting the workplace learning of teachers.

This book addresses questions such as:

• What do VET and FE teachers learn in the workplace?
• What arrangements in the workplace support teacher learning?
• How can mentoring support teacher learning?
• How can you support your own workplace learning?
• How can you support the workplace learning of teachers?

Learning in the workplace

People learn through formal education courses before entering an occupation or a profession, formal education courses while working in an occupation or profession, as well as other forms of continuing professional learning. Nonetheless, a large proportion of worker learning happens in the workplace (Billett, 2001; Eraut 2004, 2007; Francisco, 2020b).

The environment within a workplace has a profound effect on what happens there. What is done, what is said, and the relationships between people are significantly impacted by different aspects of the teaching workplaces in which VET/FE teachers operate. This includes the languages and specialist discourses that shape people’s understanding and thinking, the material environment that shapes what they can do and what resources and facilities will be available to them, and the social environment that shapes the roles and relationships between people in the workplace.

For some time, the workplace has been identified as an important place for learning, and for most VET and FE teachers the workplace forms a crucial part of their learning about being a teacher. Much of what VET and FE teachers learn about their role as a teacher takes place after they begin in that role. For some, the workplace is the only place for learning about their teaching role. And, yet, the workplace is not always set up in such a way that it supports learning. Hobson et al. (2015) note:

There is evidence that in some FE settings the workplace learning of teachers is limited due to the workplace culture, organisational systems and processes and the allocation and structuring of work. In addition, some staff are isolated from support due to the location of their work, part-time working and/or being the only subject expert in their team.

(p. 23)

I found similar issues in my research (Francisco 2017, 2020b).

Simply being in the workplace and doing the job does not necessarily result in learning (Billett, 2001). Sometimes the workplace can even be set up in such a way that it constrains teacher learning. Drawing on studies by Lucas and Unwin (2009), Maxwell (2010, 2014), Orr (2012), and Orr and Simmons (2010), Hobson et al. (2015) argue “Reports and peer reviewed papers draw attention to the ways in which FE and Skills sector workplaces often impede the learning of both beginner and experienced teachers” (p. 10). With high expectations and high demands on VET/FE teachers, and decades of research showing the value of well-supported workplace learning, it is incumbent on organisations to create arrangements in the workplace that enable rather than constrain teacher learning.

Research (and if you have been working in VET or FE for a while, probably your own experience) reveals that the roles and practices that VET/FE teachers undertake vary considerably. Some of the variations are revealed in the vignettes developed throughout this book. Perhaps more than any other field of education, VET and FE are changing rapidly. This rapid change has been ongoing for some years, even decades, and even experienced teachers need to continually develop their practices.

Brennan Kemmis and Green (2013, p. 104) outline what they refer to as “a snapshot of the role” of a VET teacher:

• equip individuals with broad-based skills and knowledge;
• prepare diverse learners for the modern labour force, and to adopt new and valued approaches to skill development;
• demonstrate industry currency and develop close partnerships with industry, so education and training are closely linked to industry needs;
• more effectively l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Endorsements Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Teacher learning in the workplace
• 2 Vocational and Further Education teacher vignettes
• 3 Teachers learning how to go on
• 4 Workplace arrangements that enable and constrain teacher learning
• 5 A trellis of practices that support learning: More than mentoring
• 6 Mentoring
• 7 Learning in in-between spaces: Creating communicative learning spaces
• 8 Leading learning: Building a trellis of practices to support professional learning
• 9 So what, now what: Where to from here?
• Index