Mark Tyler and Darryl Dymock from Griffith University have been looking at how VET practitioners get recruited and what keeps them in the role.
This presentation at the recent No frills conference gives us some of the preliminary findings from a report that will hopefully be released later this year.
The short answer is that getting ‘em and keeping ‘em ain’t that easy!
Using a small number of interviews (n=27) and an online survey with over 300 responses Mark and Darryl’s presentation at the recent No Frills conference looked at why people go into VET teaching, but also found that there were issues in retaining them once they had joined.
When new practitioners go into teaching the sorts of things they think about before ‘signing on’ are getting off the tools, a motivation to give back to industry, the working conditions as well as the life style they want (sometimes associated with their stage of life or career point), remuneration and the requirements to get the Cert IV TAE.
While they may be positively motivated to go into VET teaching because they have a passion for VET and teaching, there can be barriers. Remuneration is one, with pay levels for some discipline areas being lower than those available in industry. This can be overcome and sometimes providers have discretion to pay over the odds, and others will do it because they have to in order to have staff. Alternatively, they may use other incentives rather than money to try to compensate – such as working hours.
The TAE is another stumbling block to recruitment. The presentation noted that a respondent said that “The TAE does not teach anyone how to be a trainer. It teaches them how to be a pen pusher, a bureaucrat for evidence.” Another noted that compliance requirements were like “climbing Mount Everest backwards.” Industry currency can be an issue too, with someone pointing out that:
“[the] notion of being a dual professional or dual practitioner I think in some cases … the individual who came from industry didn’t realise … how much work there was around the quality and compliance aspect.”
In short, it’s hard to find someone “with necessary industry qualification, experience AND currency.” It’s “an ongoing campaign for RTOs.” The continual upgrading of the TAE has also been seen as a burden and, maybe, skill sets could be used more effectively.
It can be hard to keep staff too. Another quote from Mark and Darryl’s points out that:
“Everyone joins, really enthusiastic, love it to start with and then … they start to see the cracks … after about nine months, it becomes a pivotal point where they sort of become very upset, throw the dummy out of the pram. …. They either accept where they are … or they say, “Stuff this,” and they go back to industry.”
I concur with this. In work I am doing at present, one interviewee describes a similar circumstance with teachers at their institution “losing the will to live.” Compliance requirements and levels of administrivia has a lot to do with this.
So, how do you keep ‘em? Mark and Darryl found that keeping practitioners means that RTOs need to consciously provide a supportive culture, offer structured mentoring and provide, or otherwise support, professional development.
