Assignment 3: Evan Houghton

Professional Practice: 2nd Year VET Furniture-Making Class

Implications for change or learning in your professional practice

Introduction:

Stephen Kemmis (2019) describes practices and practice architectures like a flowing river whose body reshapes as its banks and beds erode. A practice’s sayings, doings, and relating can determine formative and transformative changes. Additionally, cultural discursive, material economic and social-political arrangements can either enable or constrain the practice, often warranting the practice's underlying objectives and learning within.

This document aims to present the argument for the importance of utilising theoretical frameworks and theories when analysing a practice, bringing these opportunities for change to the surface. In doing so, three consequential claims can be made after observing and analysing the professional practice through the theoretical lens of practice architecture.

The practice under revision is the delivery of a 2nd Year, practical-based Vocational Education and Training (VET) class in the field of Furniture-Making.

Consequential Claims:

1. Improving student engagement and integrated learning is worthy of discussion.

While this practice’s sayings, doings and relating may enable learning to a certain extent, these arrangements also constrain and limit the student's ability to reconstruct such learning into different learning contexts and occupational environments.

2. Current safety requirements and policies required for VET furniture-making practices must also be revised to enhance the learning and teaching practice. I claim these underlying arrangements constrain the practice, undermining the students' learning and professional development.

3. The dual identity VET teachers must demonstrate or portray due to these theoretical arrangements limiting the reproduction and growth of VET courses.

While these dual identities seem part of the job, the social and political arrangements can also constrain the practice from continuing.

I will discuss these consequential claims in more detail in the following chapter.

Implications:

By analysing the practice through the theoretical lens of practice architectures, implications can be drawn that match student engagement and learning integration, workshop safety, and future teaching practices within the intersubjective spaces of the vocational education and training practice.

Student engagement and learning integration:

According to the national VET data, the lowest completion rate by level of education in Australia is Certificate III (47.5%), with Victoria having the lowest projected completion rate compared to other Australian states and offshore delivery. This aligns with the observed Certificate III VET furniture-making practice, predicting that eight out of the sixteen students enrolled will fail to complete it.

One social-political arrangement constraining this practice is the organisation's scheduling and course timetabling. According to the Australian Qualifications Framework website, Certificate III's nominal hours of delivery (including supervised and unsupervised ones) are between twelve hundred and twenty-four hundred hours. When we compare this data to our organisational, scheduled class timetable, roughly two hundred hours of face-to-face delivery are allocated. Ultimately, this qualification will be left as self-directed learning.

The coined teaching and training metalanguages used throughout the practice are the cultural discursive arrangements constraining students' engagement and integrated learning. To paraphrase, one should refer to a VET practitioner as a teacher and trainer. In doing so, we adhere to the teacher's organisational requirements of student attendance, organisational policies and course requirements like assessments while acknowledging the trainer's direct industry experience and modern occupational relativeness (Santoro, 2001). To support this statement, Santoro’s (2001) case studies demonstrate the tensions and contradictions created by both terminologies. On the one hand, the trainer believes he needs to maximise the student's employment opportunities, further described as “extending beyond the sanctioned course curriculum” or “guided by the curriculum” (Santoro, 2001, p.8). According to Santoro’s case study, the trainer incorporates more learner-centred approaches, requiring students to take more responsibility for their learning (2001). On the other hand, the teachers have constructed themselves as “educators of a particular type, fuelled by past practices, contexts, experiences or ideals” (Santoro, 2001, p.10). According to Santoro’s case study, the teacher decides what will be learnt, reinforcing a teacher's power imbalance or superiority over the student (2001).

The material economic arrangements of the classroom space, whilst accommodating the student's learning in the vocational education and training practice, also constrain student

engagement and integrated learning to an extent. For example, the study tables and chairs in the building space encourage students to sit down to do their theory work, hoping to transfer one skill across the board. Instead, theory and acquired knowledge can be included in the practice space without separating the two. To achieve this, digital televisions, writing spaces, and other work areas could be set up, better simulating an external worksite practice.

In summary, the social-political, cultural discursive and material economic arrangements described above support the claim that these practice architectures can constrain or limit student engagement and learning integration.

Current safety requirements and policies:

While I stress the importance of creating and delivering safe machine operating procedures in a high school environment, current safety requirements and policies constrain the learning opportunities that VET practices must provide.

Material economic arrangements like installing internal braking systems, multiple emergency stops, and over-the-top guarding, in these cases, have ultimately deemed certain practices as too unsafe or impractical. A recent example of this claim is the performance criteria of tool sharpening required for the unit of competency MSFFM2013 – Use furniture-making hand and power tools (training.gov.au website). This learning opportunity is now impossible as our machine range does not meet the required three-second breaking speed limit according to the Victorian government plant and equipment policies (education.vic.gov.au website). Unless financial management can budget modernised machinery for the program.

VET practice's social-political arrangement of safety requirements and policies highly constrains the student's self-directed learning ability. The hierarchical power the teacher has,

as they are the only key bearer in this practice, can pre-determine if or when a machine is unlocked to be used. This also creates a power of authority for the teacher, which, in some circumstances, can hinder the opportunity for students to ask or question the potential learning experience.

Due to these safety requirements and policies, cultural discursive arrangements limit and constrain the students' professional development. For example, students are expected to fill out safe operating procedures (SOPs), safe work procedures (SWPs), safe data sheets (SDSs), and material safety data sheets (MSDSs) prior to any power tool or machine operation. The abbreviations and language used in this VET teaching space may not directly align with the industry practice. In contrast, occupational work sites would have an in-house occupational health and safety officer, whose job is to see you adhere to these policies rather than document them. Usually, job safety requirements are openly discussed in daily or weekly toolbox meetings, including formal and informal training, historical backgrounds and generation, generic machine operating and maintenance checklists, and other staff members' backgrounds and knowledge. They define a different cultural language from that of a high school.

While reinstating the current safety requirements and policies is essential, they also directly constrain VET courses' learning opportunities and future development.

If safety requirements and policies keep updating, newer safety specifications must be enforced, constraining the learning opportunities of some of our already limited and traditional manufacturing techniques like furniture-making.

Dual identity of VET teachers:

Grootenboer's (et al., 2017, p.157) article identifies two known, underlying theoretical tensions of the role of a VET teacher as being “internal to the reproduction of occupational practices and as a practice external to the occupational practices being taught. By analysing the VET furniture-making class through the theoretical lens of practice architecture, these underlying tensions can be argued to constrain the learning of this practice.

The cultural discursive language used to measure student success, RTO, and auditing requirements differs from that used in the occupational work site or practice. For example, VET teachers deem students “competent or not competent” by examining the classroom practice's verbal, written and physical demonstrations or assessments. In contrast, external occupational practices discuss skills, quality control, finishes and allowable time fractions for a competitive advantage (Grootenboer et al., 2017). This distinct language difference outlines the dual identity between a teacher and an occupational worker. On the one hand, the VET teacher needs to adhere to the RTO and organisational requirements using internal discursive language, whilst, on the other hand, external occupational languages and competitive business requirements are required.

The internal material economic arrangements differ vastly from the same occupation's external arrangements. For example, the internal VET furniture-making practice incorporates teaching practices like paper labelling of tools, whiteboards, projection screens, and safe operating procedures evident on walls and machinery throughout the classroom. Whilst this practice is an organisational and safety requirement, this practice would not be as evident in the external occupational space. Another key difference is the physical layout of the VET furniture-making space. Unfortunately, the combination of a lecture or theory space and a workshop suggests to students that an external occupational practice could look like this. These different material economic arrangements prove a teacher's pedagogical approach to

student learning rather than an external occupational approach to the practice. Tool naming and safe working procedures are expected to be common knowledge among external staff members and workers. Instead, tool location, working locations, workshop processing, and environment are all part of its competitive environment.

To summarise, the theoretical arrangements discussed above raise an opportunity to observe, analyse and articulate consequential claims to view or change the perspective of a practice. According to Grootenboer et al. (2017), the current approach to vocational education and training needs to be recognised as a continuing profession and receive more theoretical attention from practice theorists as we move towards the 21st century.

Reflection:

After viewing my project through the theory of practice architecture and its importance in understanding learning, I have been able to reflect and build on my professional practice. I would describe learning as a diamond whose unique, infinite molecular structure represents the three-dimensional connections and space these theories occupy.

In my own practice, I can apply the theory of practice architecture to discuss and present new ideas regarding student engagement and learning in the field of VET Engineering. To begin, I could mind map the evident arrangements which constrain or enable this practice. Then gather supporting evidence and document potential changes. For example, the arrangements of the VET engineering’s study tables. Whilst in some circumstance can enable students self-directed or private learning (side by side / gapped), may constrain collaborative and group learning (facing / together). See picture below.

(Houghton, 2024, Engineering Workshop_Study Arrangements)

My understandings of learning has change since being introduced to the theory of practice architecture. I have broaden my perspective in terms of the social, physical, cultural and political conditions which influence learning. Learning takes place on so many different

levels, sometimes observable, sometimes not. I view practices as the location site that accommodates the complex web of human development and activity.

The theory of practice architectures shows us a unique way to view, predict and explain the phenomenon “learning”. As Kemmis describes learning as “coming to know to go on, coming to be able to go and coming to participate differently or simply coming to practise differently (Kemmis, 2021)”.

Reference List

Grootenboer, Peter., Edwards-Groves, Christine., & Choy, Sarojni. (2017). Practice Theory Perspectives on Pedagogy and Education : Praxis, Diversity and Contestation (1st ed. 2017.). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3130-4

Kemmis, S. (2021). A practice theory perspective on learning: beyond a “standard” view. Studies in Continuing Education, 43(3), 280–295. https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2021.1920384

Kemmis, S. (2019). A Practice Sensibility : An Invitation to the Theory of Practice Architectures (1st ed. 2019.). Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9539-1

Santoro, N. (2001). Teacher or trainer? : the shaping of teacher identity in adult education contexts. AARE 2001 Conference Papers. Aeipt.119741. https://search-informit-org.ezproxy.lib.uts.edu.au/doi/10.3316/aeipt.119741

https://www.asqa.gov.au/course-accreditation/users-guide-standards-vet-accredited-courses/standards/standard-105-australian-qualifications-framework-levels

https://www.ncver.edu.au/news-and-events/media-releases/vet-qualification-completion-rates-increase