Examining the development of the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning and its implications for schools and teacher education in Australia

The Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) is a very successful senior secondary school qualification introduced in the Australian state of Victoria in 2002. Applied learning in the VCAL engages senior students in a combination of work-based learning, service-learning, and project-based learning and aims to provide them with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes to make informed choices regarding pathways to work and further education. The program has enjoyed rapid growth and its system-wide adoption by Victorian secondary schools, Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions, Registered Training Organizations (RTOs), and Adult and Community Education (ACE) providers has broadened significantly the range of senior schooling pathway options for young people. This paper will examine reasons for developing an applied learning senior secondary certificate and its rapid growth in Victoria since 2002. The authors draw on a number of case studies to profile the unique nature of applied learning in the VCAL, including its dimensions of service learning, work-based learning, and project-based learning. These case studies are also used to discuss a number of implications that have emerged from the use of applied learning in the VCAL, including approaches to teaching and assessment that will support applied learning and the development of new partnerships between VCAL providers and community partners. Finally, the paper considers significant implications the VCAL has created for teacher education in Victoria by discussing the new Graduate Diploma of Education (Applied Learning) developed by Deakin University.

I haven't changed bigots but … : reflections on the impact of teacher professional learning in sexuality education

This paper reports on aspects of an Australian study into the factors and conditions that make it possible for secondary school health education teachers to include and affirm gender and sexual diversity in their teaching. The study examined the impact of a two-day intervention designed to prepare teachers to use a major new government-funded teaching and learning resource called Talking Sexual Health. The study found that whilst there was a range of personal and structural barriers inhibiting change, professional development and access to teaching and learning resources could indeed impact positively on teachers' willingness and ability to include and affirm diverse sexualities in their health education programs.

Teaching and learning about force with a representational focus : pedagogy and teacher change

A large body of research in the conceptual change tradition has shown the difficulty of learning fundamental science concepts, yet conceptual change schemes have failed to convincingly demonstrate improvements in supporting significant student learning. Recent work in cognitive science has challenged this purely conceptual view of learning, emphasising the role of language, and the importance of personal and contextual aspects of understanding science. The research described in this paper is designed around the notion that learning involves the recognition and development of students’ representational resources. In particular, we argue that conceptual difficulties with the concept of force are fundamentally representational in nature. This paper describes a classroom sequence in force that focuses on representations and their negotiation, and reports on the effectiveness of this perspective in guiding teaching, and in providing insight into student learning. Classroom sequences involving three teachers were videotaped using a combined focus on the teacher and groups of students. Video analysis software was used to capture the variety of representations used, and sequences of representational negotiation. Stimulated recall interviews were conducted with teachers and students. The paper reports on the nature of the pedagogies developed as part of this representational focus, its effectiveness in supporting student learning, and on the pedagogical and epistemological challenges negotiated by teachers in implementing this approach.

Teacher change in exploring representational approaches to learning science

The researcher worked closely with two biology-trained teachers to plan three teaching sequences in the topics of forces, substances and astronomy that were subsequently taught to Year 7 students. The sequences sought to develop a model of classroom practice that foregrounds students’ negotiation of conceptual representations.

The difficulties encountered by individuals in learning science point to the need for a very strong emphasis of the role of representations in learning. There is a need for learners to use their own representational, cultural and cognitive resources to engage with the subject-specific representational practices of science. Researchers who have undertaken classroom studies whereby students have constructed and used their own representations have pointed to several principles in the planning, execution and assessment of student learning (diSessa, 2004; Greeno & Hall, 1997). A key principle is that teachers need to identify big ideas, key concepts, of the topic at the planning stage in order to guide refinement of representational work. These researchers also point out the need for students to engage with multiple representations in different modes that are both teacher and student generated. A representation can only partially explain a particular phenomenon or process and has both positive and negative attributes to the target that it represents. The issue of the partial nature of representations needs to be a component of classroom practice (Greeno & Hall, 1997) in terms of students critiquing representations for their limitations and affordances and explicitly linking multiple representations to construct a fuller understanding of the phenomenon or process under study. The classroom practice should also provide opportunities for students to manipulate representations as reasoning tools (Cox, 1999) in constructing the scientifically acceptable ideas and communicating them.

Research question: What impact was there on the participating teacher’s practice through the adoption of a representational focus to teaching science?

Data collection included video sequences of classroom practice and student responses, student work, field notes, tape records of meetings and discussions, and student and teacher interviews based in some cases on video stimulated recall. Video analysis software was used to capture the variety of representations used, and sequences of representational negotiation.

The teachers in this study reported substantial shifts in their classroom practices, and in the quality of classroom discussions, arising from adopting a representational focus. The shifts were reported by them as a three-fold challenge. First, there was an epistemological challenge as they came to terms with the culturally produced nature of representations in the topics of force, substance and astronomy and their flexibility and power as tools for analysis and communication, as opposed to their previous assumption that this was given knowledge to be learnt as an end point. The second challenge was pedagogical, in that this approach was acknowledged to place much greater agency in the hands of students, and this brought a need to learn to run longer and more structured discussions around conceptual problems. The third challenge related to content coverage. The teachers sacrificed coverage for the greater depth offered by this approach, and were unanimous in their judgment that this had been a change that had paid dividends in terms of student learning.

S(t)imulating learning : pedagogy, subjectivity and teacher education in online environments

Australian higher education increasingly relies on flexible modes of delivery as a means of attracting and retaining students in a highly competitive global education market. While education is among those disciplines that have been most actively involved in the shift from face-to-face to online learning and teaching, the transition for many teacher educators is fraught with tensions and contradictions. For some, teaching online is seen as primarily a cost-cutting exercise on the part of universities, and has little to do with improving the quality of student learning. For others, the online environment offers multiple pedagogic possibilities that have yet to be fully explored. Yet others consider online environments as problematic, posing challenges to pedagogic and peer relationships that are generally seen as integral to 'good' teaching. This paper draws on an empirical study of teacher education faculties in five Australian universities, and analyses excerpts from interviews about learning and teaching with teacher educators, educational designers and faculty management. We argue that understanding how teacher educators constitute learner and teacher subjectivities through their beliefs about and approaches to pedagogy is crucial to the future of online tertiary education. In particular, we consider how teacher educators' attitudes toward and approaches to online learning and teaching are predicated on their perceived subject positions as either 'stimulating' or 'simulating' particular kinds of learning interactions.

Early career teaching : learning to be a teacher and staying in the job

This article provides insights into the ways that teacher education programs might equip early career teachers beginning their professional identity. Situated in Melbourne (Australia), it discusses tertiary music education preparation for the profession and recognises the value and importance of having critical friends and mentors as a beginner teacher. By using narrative reflection both lecturer and graduate allow their voices to be heard as they make a contribution to understand the challenges new teachers face when building their professional identity and ‘staying in the job’. The discussion provided by the graduate, outlines her experience and engagement regarding the ‘positives’ and ‘negatives’ as she establishes her professional identity. Concerns and issues raised may be similar to those experienced by others. The lecturer contends that ongoing research with graduates is necessary when preparing pre-service students as they begin developing their teacher identity and remain within the profession after graduation.

The national mapping of teacher professional learning project : a multi-dimensional space?

This essay focuses on the National Mapping of Teacher Professional Learning (2008), a report that we co-authored along with a number of other researchers on the basis of extensive surveys and interviews relating to the policies and practices of teacher professional learning in Australia. The report is an update of an earlier survey conducted by David McRae and others, entitled PD 2000, and it registers significant changes in attitudes and practices relating to professional learning across Australia in the intervening period. Perhaps the most significant development is the way professional learning is now recognized as an important vehicle for education reform by systems, schools and by teachers themselves, most notably the standards-based reforms that have such a decisive effect on the policy landscape here in Australia and in other countries. The work of the AATE in developing the Standards for Teachers of English Language and Literacy (STELLA) is mentioned in the report. It was acknowledged that STELLA provides a generative framework for professional learning, sometimes in contradiction to more managerial approaches. The question remains, however, of how English teachers as a professional community might locate themselves within the policy landscape described in this report. This essay is an attempt to promote this kind of discussion and to argue the distinctive nature of the standpoint that English teachers might bring to thinking about and planning for professional learning and practitioner inquiry.

(Dis)ordering teacher education : from problem students to problem-based learning

This paper takes issue with the 'disabling' of students enrolled in teacher education courses, perpetrated by definitions of students' learning disorders and by the structures and pedagogies engaged by teacher educators. Focusing on one case, but with relevance for similarly affected systems, the paper begins by outlining the changed student entry credentials of Australian universities and their faculties of education. These are seen as induced by a shift from elite to mass provision of higher education and the particular effect on teacher education providers (especially those located in regional institutions) of the politics of government funding and the continuing demand for teachers by education systems. While these changed conditions are often used to argue an increased university population of students with learning disorders, the paper suggests that such arguments often have more to do with how student problems are defined by institutions and how these definitions serve to secure additional government funding. More pertinently, the paper argues that such definition tends to locate the problem in individual students, deferring considerations of teacher educators' pedagogy and the learning arrangements of their institutions. The paper concludes that the place to begin addressing these issues of difficulty would seem to be with a different conception of knowledge production.

Digital oral feedback written assignments as professional learning for teacher educators : a collaborative self-study.

Allan Luke (2008) uses a “pedagogical economy where literacy education is taken as a cultural gift”. This paper reports on the digital oral feedback provided to pre-service teachers in a literacy unit and explores the pedagogical gift this feedback is to the teacher educators marking this work. Rather than mark their written work as individual lecturers, we collaboratively read the assignment and recorded the sound file of the conversation around each assignment. We then participated in another conversation with a critical friend, which enabled us to explore the impact of this form of assessment on our professional identities as teacher educators. We found these conversations provided a rich context for our professional learning about ourselves as teacher educators, as well as specific content knowledge we both brought to the teaching of this unit. We found we were working as a team to provide more in-depth feedback of the assessment criteria for each assignment than we did with written feedback. Through this dialogical feedback we were able to construct the pre-service teachers' assignments as an important textual gift in our collaborative professional learning about assessment, and in exploring our beliefs and practices as teacher educators.

Using professional atandards : assessing work integrated learning in initial teacher education

All Australian teacher education programs must include practical experience--the practicum. It is a critical part of learning to become a teacher.  One of the major challenges in initial teacher education is to provide good quality assessment of the practicum.  Assessing the practicum is filled with tension for both the individual supervisor as well as the pre-service teacher. In 2011 the Australian National Professional Standards for Teachers were established.  On completion of teacher education programs, graduate teachers will have gained the knowledge and practice to meet the seven national standards.  For teacher preparation programs, the successful implementation of the standards will rely on the opportunities for preservice teachers to gather evidence of achieving the standards. This project focussed specifically on evidence of achievements of these standards through assessment practices during practicum.
The overall aim of this project was to enhance the academic and school-based teacher educators' and preservice teachers' capacities and understandings of assessing the practicum.  To achieve this aim, four outcomes were developed to provide professional leaning for improving the assessment practices of the practicum: a website resource, a collaborative partnership process, a professional learning model (PLM) and a developmental 'inventory' of evidence of achievement of the first five national standards.  The website resource provides materials and activities for staff involved in the design of professional experience in initial teacher education programs, to work with partner schools and preservice teachers to facilitate high quality supervision and assessment in practicum sites.  The collaborateive partnership process used for achieving these soutcomes -- communities of reflective practitioners--is integral to the professional learning focus of the project.  It guides the use of the resource in future teacher education sites of practice.  The professional learning model and website materials emphasise the critical role that evidence-informed judgements play at school sites in learning and assessment of future teachers.