Where to next? (Professional Context Statement)

Where I am now?

With nearing the completion of my Masters learning experience, my concerns for education in Australia and the impact on future generations has deepened but my excitement for learning opportunities has heightened. Constantly grappling with the inefficiencies of the educational framework in Australia, the motivation to improve, challenge and change current learning practices is at an all-time high. Exploring the structure of other international educational systems, evaluating current local learning practices, taking risks with entrepreneurial projects, challenging industry standards throughout this time has reinforced the importance for contemporary, informal, effective, collaborative, project based and practical learning.

I have always questioned the conservative, rigid, conforming and post-industrial nature of education in Australia and I have recently grappled with the decision to explore other professional contexts such as consultancy, entrepreneurship, innovation and corporate L&D. Subsequently, in order to facilitate a change to my professional context I have embarked on innovative projects which aim to challenge current educational and learning practices. From developing a program, “Digital Pathways for Girls”, which empowers female students and the exploration of non-traditional pathways to advising educational start-ups on contemporary curriculum design.

Frustrations do come with challenging the status quo and I am constantly told by many that “you will never change how things work”. My patience is constantly tested with change occurring way to slow in secondary education. The thought of change not happening at all does dampen my enthusiasm at times. But comments like “you’re dreaming” and “don’t waste your time” inspires me to prove people and the experts wrong. Reflecting on what impact I have on the young people and the positive reinforcement from parents keeps the motivation going. Lack of collaboration and thirst for change from colleagues, management and experts tends to challenge and dampen my progress.

Objectives that I have set within my professional context is underpinned by the idea that if we as learning facilitators don’t take a risk by creating contemporary and effective learning, young people will not be afforded opportunities to navigate effectively through an unpredictable future.

My long term objectives change on a daily basis, but currently the crux of my professional context statement is to “enact change to ensure that there is a thirst for learning and that learning is relevant”, no matter what context I may find myself in.

Where I was?

Even before embarking on my Masters learning experience, I have always been excited by the innovative and entrepreneurial nature of life, with the real belief that there is plenty to experience outside of the classroom and learning. Although, safe by nature, I have always wanted to learn more and take risks to find effective/efficient ways of doing things. My patience with the conservative, closed minded and the wasteful runs thin. Since a child I have been predominantly a visual and tactile learner who is inspired by people, experiences and everything that surrounds us.

In essence, I would rather do something about it, learn from the process, modify mistakes as opposed to talk about it and procrastinate about the outcome. Important learnings that have transpired over the past few years, is the understanding of how to deal with resistance to change. At times, play the game when you need to, strategically build alliances and be able to influence people in order to enact change.

Many within the teaching profession are uninspired/uninspiring and students suffer from this state of flux with the structure of education in Australia not working to its full potential and is generally unimaginative in nature.

Reflection of my subject wraps have led to?

Following the subject wraps the reflections were realised:

Launching Learning:

In exploring the different educational theories and models, my keen interest in informal learning outside of the classroom was reinforced. I have developed a keen interest in researching contemporary case studies and pedagogies that bring life experiences and learnings into the classroom.

Learning in the Digital Age:

Working with other learning and development specialists who haven't got a good grasp of technology, I came to realise that there are large proportions of the population that are not versed in creating efficiencies and conducive environments for contemporary learning. My question is, how do we hope to educate young people about responsible, effective and efficient use of technology and embed innovations into our every day learning if our educators aren’t up to date with their knowledge and skills?

Professional Learning and Practice:

After hearing people’s experiences within their own practices, I was surprised at the low incidents of organisations actually reflecting on their actual core practice to make meaningful improvements to existing processes. I was inspired by Nick Hopwood’s studies and his ability to reflect on the mundane and the actual happenings of a particular workplace. I think to myself many a times that “am I the only one that sees the inefficiencies or lack of relevance within our practice”. Upon reflection, if one can share and inform others about these particular insights, structural change may evolve.

Navigating Policies:

Discussing policy was a major source of frustration and angst. The idiotic/slow nature of policy making made me think about other professions to pursue. The rigid, conservative, slow and agenda ridden nature of Educational policy in Australia is reflected in the conservative, post industrial nature of educational institutions. People want to enforce change but spend a lot of money talking about it rather than doing something about it. A perfect example of this is the Gonski report. Surely, the amount of money spent of figuring out where the funding should go would be better spent on investing in teachers who can tell you from their experience what to spend the money on. Educational Policy also doesn’t drive and facilitate an entrepreneurial, problem solving or think for yourself attitude within the system. If anything, thinking about educational policy in Australia inspires me more to challenge the institutional and archaic nature of the status quo.

Research Practices:

I didn’t get how research is not meant to provide us with solutions. I find this bizarre coming from a corporate background where research is to aid solutions and not merely be conducted. I am a big believer in concurrent, real time feedback and place an importance to finding out what people think to guide my decisions. Good, sound research is not necessarily academic research but is research which informs.

Leading Learning:

So much is written about leadership, how to, when to and what qualities you need to be a leader. Simply put, good leadership to me is leading by example to create change and influence people. Too many people think that being a leader gives you more status and a possible promotion within an organisation. They tend to forget the responsibility that comes with being a leader and why we need true leaders with in our community and not just people who hold leadership positions. In the case of learning, to lead learning is to do more than administrator education in which most educators aspire to. Educational bodies promote excellent learning specialists into tick boxing administrators. The learning pathways for students within the Australian system tends to follow suit as a result of the post industrial concept of "meeting a set of outcomes".

Mentoring in the Workplace:

As an act of facilitating learning the concept of mentoring in the workplace is a very important aspect to any professional context. Unfortunately, there are many learning institutions that don’t do it well. Many programs have the best intentions but the execution is very poor due to the lack of time, mentoring being optional, the lack of effective curriculum and mentoring programs seen as a nice to have rather than compulsory. Most successful learners that I have met tend to have a mentor in their lives. The relationship can be informal or formal but generally the mentoring is accessible, tailored and honest. The fast pace of contemporary society is not conducive to workplace mentoring but we need to find a way to collaborate and initiate mentoring earlier in one learners life.

Within My Context...

In 2017, we initiated a social enterprise program within my professional context. The outcomes exceeded expectations and industry type experiences were added to the students learning experience. The aim this year is to embed such learnings as an integral part of any project which I engage in.

With this momentum, we have developed and piloted a program called Digital Pathways for Girls. A successful pilot with many learnings for all involved resulting in a grant from the Parent Body to develop cross curricular resources necessary to create opportunities or pathways for girls in innovation and technology. With the hope that we reposition innovation and technology not only within STEM or STEAM but also align more with enterprise and everyday life.

Personally...

Upon reflection, I have been exploring learning projects outside of secondary education. Long term goal is to still develop ShareOnesLearning, an online platform which connects students with industry. There are many crucial projects I will need to undertake before solely focusing on such projects.

Collaborating with startups such as Atomi and Loot play a pivotal part in developing my understanding of idea creation, pitching and influencing people. The aim is now to work with or within larger corporations and enterprise to understand what learnings there are from working in larger teams and dealing with larger scale projects.

Even if nothing transpires by enacting in this process, the learnings behind networking, career planning, strategic mapping and design, mentoring and coaching would put me in good stead for future challenges. Maybe a change outside of secondary education or education itself?