PREPARING STUDENTS FOR LEARNING, LIFE AND WORK:
INNOVATION IN PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Motivation
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The OECD Skills Strategy 2019 emphasised how the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector, because of its traditionally strong links with industry, is able to pivot quickly to changes within the workplace. It notes that when “properly designed, VET systems can offer high levels of employability and access to high-quality jobs, including emerging sectors such as the digital economy”. With advances in digitisation and globalisation, there is a need to address the skills gap of graduating VET students and those competences needed to help them thrive in learning, work and life, now and in the future.
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There is a need to create an environment where transferable skills are an integral part of vocational qualifications. This reflects the dynamic needs associated with career flux, where “a job for life” is no longer the norm (OECD, 2010). The role of the VET lecturer is changing, with more emphasis on providing a dynamic learning environment that challenges and stimulates learners to create engagement and a culture of adaptability and resilience amongst learners.
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Problem Definition
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Changes in the nature of work have created demands for new transferable skills. A growing body of research highlights the gap between the skills learnt at school and those transferrable skills needed for learning, life and work in the 21st Century. The Northern Ireland Skills Barometer (2019) highlights a lack of non-technical, ‘soft’ or ‘transversal’ skills, such as communication, teamwork and problem-solving, amongst graduates. Businesses need graduates with these skills to help drive growth and innovation. The concept of learning in the 21st century is life-long and life-wide, extending beyond school, college, and university. In order to keep pace with transformation in the economic and social landscape, transversal skills need to become part of the core curriculum to ensure that students have the knowledge, attitudes, skills and behaviours to thrive in learning, life and work.
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Education reform and change programs often come to nothing because they disregard the human factor of any planned change. There is a need for us as VET educators, to lead change rather than simply manage it, becoming facilitators, rethinking the pedagogical approaches, and teaching strategies in this new context to develop learner’s transferable skills. Models such as Project Based Learning help develop these transferable skills, helping students become work ready. To be successful they need to be embedded effectively into professional practice, rather than considered as an additionality.
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Approach: PBL and T-skills
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Growing skills of critical thinking and problem solving, requires a distinct approach to learning and teaching. The capacity for students and teachers, to learn, unlearn and relearn in new contexts necessitates a range of transversal skills, which can be developed through engagement with real world projects. To enable students to thrive in the workplace, transversal skills need to be well developed and the projects learners engage with, clearly linked to industry and the skills needed for that sector. Developing and maintaining links with stakeholders, will help identify authentic, real-life projects. Thus helping students to connect their emerging skills, knowledge and behaviours within the context of the industry they plan to enter. Appreciating that there may be more than one solution to any problem enables learners to be creative, collaborate, take risks, innovate and develop their critical thinking. The role of the VET sector is central to upskilling the current and future workforce, meeting the needs of the economy by growing the skills of graduates, and developing the entrepreneurial and enterprising mindset. VET educators, given time and space, have the opportunity to create stimulating, multidisciplinary, collaborative projects which develop students’ transversal skills. Working collaboratively, staff within their department and across vocational areas, can feel empowered to drive change within an organisation. Effective leadership is central in communicating, inspiring and encouraging ownership from staff to buy into the vision. By communicating the importance and rationale for change, leaders, encourage ownership, inspiring each person to play their part in delivering high quality, industry focused, interdisciplinary projects which develop the transversal skills of learners.
Equipping Students with the skills for learning, life and work
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To equip students with the skills needed to thrive in learning, work and life, SERC has developed a Project Based Learning (PBL) approach (Figure 1). Transversal skills (T-Skills) (Figure 2), identified by the NI Skills Barometer, and vocational competencies, are developed via multidisciplinary, collaborative projects, created by staff and informed by industry stakeholders. Real world problems, originating from industry, are used to develop learner’s vocational skills, whilst simultaneously integrating the development of non-technical, T-skills. The focus on PBL and T-Skills helps create graduates prepared for the workplace, with skills that will transfer with them as they move in their career.
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Continuous Professional Development
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High quality Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is essential to realise the potential of every VET educator. Much teacher training occurs in the initial stages of a teacher’s career and is simply “topped up” annually in generic CPD. But with the transformation of industry, teachers, particularly within the VET sector, need to evolve a wider set of skills in line with these changes. Phase II of the OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 project explores the types of teacher competencies and profiles that are needed to help learners realise their full potential. SERC have encouraged innovative approaches to learning and teaching through a range of CPD strategies, encouraging staff to move towards a PBL and integrated T-skills model. SERC’s pedagogy mentors, work alongside staff, to provide timely, high quality, professional development support, encouraging staff to adopt and adapt to the new pedagogical approaches, applying these within their professional practice. This creates a dynamic environment for staff that reflects industry needs. The use of peer mentoring enables the individualisation of training and identification and sharing of good practice across the organisation. Lecturers feel empowered to take risks and innovate, modelling the skills they want to develop in their learners. To further support the embedding of T-skills, PBL is used as the vehicle for curriculum delivery. This is further complimented by the use of e-portfolios to formally assess students and the progress tracker, which identifies the skills radar for each learner.
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Learning Ecosystem: Promoting partnership and collaboration with stakeholders
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In contemporary society, learning is no longer regarded as something that occurs only in a formal educational setting. Boundaries between home, work and college are becoming blurred, particularly in the current pandemic. There is greater flexibility of learning opportunities, making us rethink educational experiences with a growing realisation that education can be co-constructed between learner and lecturer (PBL), as well as with the employers and professional bodies. Providing space, opportunity, and time for all these parties to engage will support a new learning cycle, one which highlights all parties as agents of change, providing learners with the opportunity to successfully navigate change and what OECD (2001) refers to as a ‘stick-shift’ society. Project Based Learning has the potential to be driven by the curiosity and interests of the learner, in line with the needs of employers and the economy. With individualised support, such as peer mentoring, educators are able to access individualised learning to fully support this process, modelling the habits they want to encourage amongst their students: “it is hard to see how teachers can inculcate good lifelong learning habits in their students unless they, too, are lifelong learners” OECD (2021).
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Conclusion/Recommendations
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To address the skills gap by developing the skills required for students to thrive in learning, work and life, new approaches to learning and teaching are required. PBL and the integration of T-skills, necessitates an unlearning for VET educators as well as for learners who may be used to a more traditional classroom. The importance of CPD in this process for educators, cannot be underestimated, staff must be supported and encouraged to embrace new models of pedagogy through tailored training and individualised support.
Bibliography
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Ackermann, E., (2015) Give me a place to stand and I will move the world! Life-long Learning in the digital age, Journal for the Study of Education and Development, Vol,38, No.4, 689-717.
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Medel-Anonuevo, C., Ohsako, T., & Mauch, W., (2001) Revisiting Lifelong Learning for the 21st Century, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, Hamberg, Institute for Education.
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OECD. (2000) Motivating Students for Lifelong Learning, Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development. Publishing for Educational Research and Innovation Centre.
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OECD. (2010) Reviews of Vocational Education and Training
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OECD (2019) Future of Education and Skills 2030 OECD Learning Compass 2030 A Series of Concept Notes
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Schleicher, A. (2018) World Class: How to Build a 21st-Century School System, Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264300002-en.
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