NTLT 2014 - day 3

Wet day with strong, cold southerlies accompanied by hail and sleet and potential for snow! Last day of a busy conference with good opportunity to network with educators and staff educators / educational developers. The morning begins with a keynote from Donna Bowman, SIT hairdressing tutor awarded last year's hairdressing ITO tutor of the year award. Donna shares her teaching with 'keeping it real'. Couched her presentation around her story from leaving school to teaching hairdressing. Authentic learning formed basis for her own learning the hairdressing trade and her teaching practice. How to share and pass own passion for craft and trade to learners requires helping learners to develop empathy for clients. How learning from literacy and numeracy contributed to new learning about teaching and learning. Shared strategies used to assist reluctant learners to learn crucial trade skills involving literacy and numeracy and life skills required to cope with challenging work environments.

After morning tea, one round of parallel sessions and I catch Dr. Peter Coolbear's (director of Ako Aotearoa) session updating on the work in progress in developing the NZ Adult and Tertiary teacher education qualifications as outcome of the NZQA MRoQ (mandatory review of qualifications) process. A dual professional model frames the development of these qualifications. Landscape of qualifications in draft and in process of discussions with NZQA on process for development of the actual qualifications. Base qualification is a level 5 qualification Certificate in Adult and Tertiary teaching and on to level 6 for specialist qualifications. The new landscape reduces 84 qualifications and reduced to 24. Discussed trade-offs, constraints and opportunities provided by the new proposal. Level 4 Certificates 40 credits for trainers and community educators. Level 5 60 credits minimum teaching qualification for ITP tutors. Level 6 120 credits for leaders in tertiary teaching. Specialisations at level 6 are 60 credits in quality assurance, learning design, educational technology, pasifika teaching and assessment or educators taking on leadership roles in these areas.

Keynote from Peter follows. Peter covers 'making effective use of student feedback on innovative practice to improve educational outcomes'. How does finding out learner's progress fits into the increasingly complex policy environment. We are now into 3rd age of education. 1st age where education was only for the elite and the aristocracy. 2nd age from 1950s onwards marks the massificaion of educaiton. Presently, 3rd age is a transactional era - governments are unable to fund demand for higher / tertiary ed. and now requires evidence of 'outcomes' to substantiate public spending. Presented Ako Aotearoa work on evidence garnered so far and influences, impact and future prospects. Selection of measure is important - see publication - gathering evidence of learner benefit - and need to convert data to applicable intervention or relevant to substantiate submissions, reporting and proposals. Provided examples (good and not so good). Examples included using critical incident methodologies to find out factors enhancing success for Maori learners in the health sciences; excellence in tertiary teaching award examples; dedicated educational units nursing; good practice grants by Michael Mintrom and Caro McCaw.  Discussed challenges of process. Recommends 'unlocking the impact of tertiary teachers' perceptions of student evaluations of teaching' .

Conference closes just after noon. I join a few other tutors on a bus trip to Bluff before catching the plane home in the early evening.