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The report Emerging Futures: Innovation in Teaching and Learning in VET (June 2003) provides a national review of good practice that is drawn from current provider activity and achievements. The report was funded by ANTA and project managed by Ian Gribble from OTTE.
The report is based on a literature review, a discussion paper, over sixty structured interviews and nine focus groups. During the project I took advice from Berwyn Clayton from Canberra Institute of Technology, Professor John Hedberg from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Nigel Paine from the BBC in London.
The focus of this report is innovation in the professional practice of VET staff who have direct responsibility for teaching and learning functions in VET organisations. Learners in VET and, innovation in the ways those learners go about their learning, are discussed throughout the report, but are not the major focus of this report.
For the purposes of this study, 'teaching practice' extends well beyond the conventional classroom-based instruction model. It includes a widening range of activities undertaken by teachers that influence learning, such as the preparation of resource-based learning materials, assessing in workplaces and using technology in the delivery of education. For many teachers in VET, teaching now involves working in a team, and often in collaboration with industry. These new roles for teachers are recognised in the report.
A scan of the literature did not provide a satisfactory definition of innovation in teaching and learning for VET and so we adapted a working model based on Williams (1999) and West (in King & Anderson 2002). Williams defines innovation as:
the implementation of new and improved knowledge, ideas, methods, processes, tools, equipment and machinery, which leads to new and better products, services, and processes (1999: 17 italics added).
Williams (1999) points out that the word innovation is derived from the Latin innovatio (renewal or renovation), based on novus (new) as in novelty. Note that innovation is about the implementation of not just new ideas and knowledge, but also of improved ideas and knowledge. Hence, many of the case studies and vignettes in the report are about the renewal or renovation or improvement of an existing educational service.
Of the fifteen case studies and vignettes, four are direct examples of flexible learning and are described briefly below. The four direct examples of flexible learning in the report are from Hunter Institute, Torrens Valley Institute, Open Training and Education Network and Open Learning Institute.
However, many more of the case studies and vignettes are about flexible learning if the following definition of flexible learning is used:
flexible learning is ultimately contributing to a customer-centric approach to the provision of VET. 'Flexibility' in flexible learning is primarily about providing extra value to students and other customers (Mitchell et al 2001: 9).
One example of providing extra value to students is demonstrated in the vignette from the East Gippsland Institute, whose staff is flexible in servicing the needs of students distributed around the region. The vignette on Caterpillar Institute (WA) describes flexible arrangements about time and place and learning resources, to suit the student cohort.
The TAFE NSW Hunter Institute vignette describes this organisation's wide-ranging research and development in providing different forms of online learning for different programs, taking into account learners' preferences for how they learn. Within the TAFE NSW Hunter Institute, innovation is driven by the interplay of the demands of the large Newcastle region and the ability of Hunter Institute's staff to find ways in which programs can be offered in more adaptive ways. Hunter Institute is now consolidating its organisational flexibility by building innovation across its teaching and learning activities. It is doing this by consciously and successfully seeking to make innovation the norm and not the exception in the way teaching programs are now developed and delivered.
Flexible learning, in the sense of providing students with options about when and how they learn, provides the educational framework for the innovation described in the Torrens Valley Institute case study: a case study about an assessment strategy that focuses on developing, assessing and certifying students' key competencies. This flexible approach to assisting learning in the Institute evolved over a ten-year period, with significant emphasis devoted to providing appropriate student support.
One of the emerging roles of the VET teacher is to create and nurture '…placebound and online environments that continuously support and develop students' (Rossett & Sheldon 2001:12). The vignette on the TAFE NSW Open Training and Education Network illustrates this new role. The vignette describes how an educational provider can be innovative by providing, electronically, a range of services to students, in addition to online learning. The vignette also shows that there is considerable scope for innovation in the design and use of information and communication technologies to provide extensive and customised services for distance students.
The Open Learning Institute in Queensland operates a distributed learning model of operation. This means that students never need to come onto campus. This mode of operation sets up challenges that require innovative solutions, as John Blakeley, OLI's Director of Educational Services and a former Flexible Learning Fellow, explains:
Distributed learning requires that the entire learning-teaching process is conceived before a student becomes involved. Distributed learning creates flexibility in some ways, but can be quite rigid in others: for example, the relative lack of real-time contact with a teacher or tutor.
The consequence of these sorts of factors is that there is an ongoing need for innovation because the distributed learning mode of operation quickly unpacks more traditional assumptions and relationships about teaching and learning. It demands more attention to innovative professional practice in order to make the whole mode of operation workable.
In passing, the report finds that there are boundless, new opportunities to be innovative in catering for flexible learning, for example by attaching e-learning to a broader e-business approach to delivering a suite of online services. This theme is explored in full in another report by the author: E-business and Online Learning: Opportunities and Connections for VET (NCVER 2003). The report also notes that VET is only at the beginning of the process of identifying opportunities for the versatile Internet platform. Many more opportunities lie ahead of us in the areas of innovation and flexible learning in VET.
Additionally, the report uncovers eighteen different findings that provide a start on building a sophisticated conceptual framework for innovation in VET teaching and learning. These findings suggest where more effort is required within VET, if the scope of innovation in teaching and learning is to be expanded and the pace increased.
The eighteen findings will not sit comfortably with those who seek simple, back-of-the-envelope formulae to explain innovation. Nor will technocrats or faddists enjoy the findings. For instance, a number of the findings suggest there is no magic-bullet approach to innovation; and no one piece of technology or management-in-sixty-seconds will deliver sustained innovation. Examples of such findings include the following: innovation can be significantly enhanced by a deep knowledge of learners, learning styles, teaching strategies and learning sites and contexts; and innovation can be significantly enhanced by a deep understanding of assessment.
Other findings will challenge those who think that innovation can be easily shaped and moulded. Such findings include the following: innovation can't be forced upon VET practitioners; and innovation can occur despite the lack of ideal support or pre-conditions or documented market demand. Related findings stress the complex origins of innovation: innovation can be affected by the interplay of disparate factors; and innovation can be driven by multiple factors.
There is an important role for managers in supporting innovation, but it needs to be performed carefully. The study finds that innovation can be assisted by judicious management interventions or initiatives, provided, firstly, that the manager knows the staff involved and knows how to frame and time an intervention. And secondly, in influencing innovation, managers need to also take into account the many types of personal, organisational and external factors discussed throughout report.
The study finds that innovation can be supported by certain styles of leadership. The case studies and vignettes in this report support the view that 'participative, visionary and/or transformational leadership' (King and Anderson 2002: 126) is an antecedent to innovation. More specifically, many of the case studies and vignettes show that leadership by the senior managers is less significant in implementing an innovation than the leadership provided at the level of Head Teacher, Principal Lecturer, Head Trainer or similar level. The case studies and vignettes also show that several persons, acting concurrently, or sequentially, might well exhibit leadership.
What needs to happen with all this research? The research for this project finds that, given the importance of innovation to VET, there is a case for a dedicated 'mechanism' to support practitioners in VET. What is meant by the metaphor of 'mechanism' is a nationally-sponsored arrangement that can assist grassroots teachers and trainers - in conjunction with other stakeholders such as educational managers - to better inform themselves about useful ideas and practices, about innovation in teaching, that offer improved results and outcomes for VET students and clients.
The purpose of this proposed national mechanism is to support the dissemination of useful and practical knowledge, techniques and ideas for application - about innovation in teaching and learning - elsewhere in VET. The mechanism is intended to facilitate action and provide better results for VET clients, VET practitioners and VET organisations. A proposal for this mechanism is the subject of a second paper produced by this project and is currently with ANTA for consideration.
Professional development personnel need to read the report carefully. While the report focuses mostly on the positive messages given by the VET practitioners, the case studies and vignettes contain many candid remarks and anecdotes that make it clear that many of the innovators met resistance and struggled to bring their new work to fruition. Behind these stories of successful improvisation and experimentation there were unexpected difficulties, contradictions, ongoing uncertainties and, sometimes, lucky breakthroughs. The cases studies and vignettes are a reminder of the complexities of innovation and the challenges of implementing and managing the processes necessary to bring on the future. Those VET personnel who design professional development programs need to be mindful of these complexities.
Some future professional development around innovation in VET could include focus on language, including the definition of innovation, as the study finds that the concept of innovation is not deeply interrogated within VET and many VET practitioners remain unclear about the possibilities of innovation as an internal work process within their reach and capability. In particular, many appeared confused about the processes - especially at the group or organisational level - that are involved in putting new ideas to work. In fact, the term innovation was reportedly somewhat alien for practical people who want to get on with action and build their knowledge and expertise through experience and results.
The research also sends messages to VET policy makers, as participants in the study were clear that public policy support and idealised rhetoric for more innovation in teaching and learning in VET, is far more common than the tangible support necessary for it to occur. The participants also reported that, although innovation is positively regarded and supported by many different stakeholders across the VET sector - from teachers, to managers, students, employers, unions and industry training bodies - the support is sometimes only in small pockets or areas of VET. Innovation needs more high-level policy support.
In response to the above findings, the framework of eighteen findings about innovation was identified to assist wider recognition and understanding of innovation in teaching and learning arrangements in VET, and for better supporting and sustaining local forms of innovation. To thrive in the future and to be sustained, innovation in VET teaching needs to be underpinned by a rigorous conceptual framework, supported by policy initiatives and guided by informed professional development programs. There is no quick fix.
*.pdf copies are available for downloading from http://reframingthefuture.net and hard copies can be ordered from the same site.
Reference List
King, N. & Anderson, N. 2002, Managing Innovation and Change, Thomson, Australia.
Mitchell, J.G. Latchem, C. Bates, A. & Smith, P. 2001, Critical Issues in Flexible learning for VET Managers, TAFE frontiers, Melbourne.
Rossett, A & Sheldon, K. 2001, Beyond the Podium, Delivering Training and Performance to a Digital World, Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer, San Francisco.
Williams, A. 1999, Creativity, Invention and Innovation, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
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