ITPNZ Foundation tutors Forum - 3rd June

Presented a version of the ‘perspectives of new trades tutors’ Ako Aotearoa Southern Hub funded project at the ITPNZ Foundation Educators’Forum at the Wellington city campus of Whitireia Polytechnic yesterday. The title of the presentation was “ITP communities of practice: Their contribution to the induction of new trades tutors.” I used a comparison of various activity theory nodes (subject, tools, object, communities of practice, rules, division of labour, mediating artefacts) to compare the socio-cultural spheres of new tutors who come into ITP teaching careers with a workplace /trades orientation and the needs of ITPs which are focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning. This, along with the concept of vocational identity boundary crossing, presented at the ITF conference in March, provide for a metaphor to explain and assist the transition of trades people into trades teachers.