Discourse of changed teaching practices

This increase in VET teacher support constituted a major change in teaching practice. Participants’ narratives revealed a number of other significant changes due to reform. Given that their combined experience in the LLN field spanned from three to 27 years, their narratives revealed a broad range of repertoires that could be drawn out for analysis. The emerging themes have been subdivided into five categories: increased focus on vocational outcomes in curriculum design and delivery; increased paperwork; increased student numbers in classes; reduced time for delivering LLN classes; and increased emphasis on funding and compliance-related professional discussions.

4.2.2.1 Achieving employment outcomes

As discussed in Section 4.1, a number of significant changes in LLN curricula resulted in shifts in learning content, from social–personal development to vocationally specific LLN skill development linked to employment outcomes. This was very different to what some participants experienced earlier in their LLN careers. Explaining this, Gayle stated:

Within the VET or TAFE sector we’ve moved away ... When I first started I think the literacy and numeracy in a broad sense was very much about personal development and improving personal life skills to enable you to do other things and that could be just in the community or to get a job or study. But it was based on the person. Now I think the VET sector it’s much more specific: literacy and numeracy is about an employment outcome.

There was broad agreement that this changed focus in curriculum owed much to employment bodies’ having a greater voice. Joanne, for example, commented that there was no ‘funding and pressure for people to be employed and so they’re [the VET institutions] getting pressure from the JSA’s [Job Seeker Agencies]’.7 Belinda endorsed this view, claiming that ‘ old fashioned reading and writing … we still do, but it has to be the focus of what Centrelink are looking for or the new push the government are putting through’. Kym also commented on the increased linkages between LLN and employment outcomes, resulting in changed delivery practices: she believed there had been ‘a move away from the use of pure literacy and numeracy to a far more vocationalised context

delivery. There’s been consistent discussion of the merging of vocational and LLN delivery’.

4.2.2.2 Increased administrative practices

The previous section showed the emergence of the discourse of compliance in the language repertoires of the participants at a macro-level. As part of this discussion, it was established that audits and the assessment driven nature of LLN classes had created imposts on teacher’s professional roles, realised in part through a major increase in paperwork. Exploring this notion further, Kym explained that:

There’s a huge increase in the administrative role that teachers need to play with their reporting and management of programs ... they are almost like account managers for that course and for their class of students. They have to manage their data entry on the student management system and keep tabs on student attendance and all kind of stuff.

I could be wrong because I’ve only been in the system for a relatively short time compared to some others but it seems to me that the role in recent years has really turned into a high admin role as well.

Kym was not suggesting that administration was a new aspect of the teaching role just that it has changed. Paperwork was always a regular feature of teachers’ work; however, whereas previously it was centred on class planning and preparation to cater for diverse and individual learners’ needs, now it had a different focus. Describing this change in practice, Drew, an LLN manager employed at a rural TAFE, lamented that ‘we spend most of the time satisfying compliance issues rather than teaching’. Eve expressed similar concerns:

The time to properly plan classes has been whittled away. What I mean by properly planning classes is that it includes things like being able to do research online, practices, being able to network with people to talk about what they are doing ... So often teachers are running with what they have used before because they haven’t had time to develop something new … It just means there isn’t the spontaneity that there used to be that the students enjoyed.

Some participants held the view that increased compliance and assessment was having a detrimental effect on the learning experience. Due, in large part, to the need to provide supporting evidence to validate learning outcomes, the content of classes had become centred on the completion of assessments rather than the development of skills. Other administrative burdens, such as filling in feedback forms, were placed on learners during class to demonstrate compliance, as Anne commented: ‘I find often the time is taken up

getting students to sign this and put this date on, and can you give me some feedback? They just want to get on and finish their course’.

4.2.2.3 Increased class sizes

Another changed teaching practices theme that emerged from participants’ narratives centred on increases in class sizes due to reductions in funding. Colleen stated that ‘you have to have 20 people in your class or you can’t run a class’. According to Karen, ‘the big difference of having 15 in a class to the necessity of having 20 in the class has put tremendous pressures on teachers’ abilities to provide individual attention to the students’. Like many other participants, Joanne worried about the viability of LLN classes with low numbers. She commented:

For those classes to survive when there are lower numbers has really diminished just in the last 10 years that I’ve been around the traps. Classes used to survive with lower numbers. Now it’s just not viable for them to survive so I see RTOs closing the door on adult literacy courses. It’s really tragic.

4.2.2.4 Reduced time with learners

Many participants believed that reductions in funding had resulted in less time for teaching. Eve’s suggestion, that ‘hours are being squeezed’, was echoed by numerous participants in the study. Also common was the understanding that fewer teaching hours resulted in shortened timeframes for learning. Illustrating this concern, Linda commented that:

First you might have had a whole year to teach a certificate, and then it went down to six months. It just got tighter and tighter, which I see is a funding thing. Now you have to push students because the requirements are getting so high now that they have to achieve so much in six months. It’s just the pressure has increased.

Some respondents drew a link between the decline in funding and a greater turnover in learners, resulting in less stability within class groups. Linda, for example, claimed that ‘you may as well be teaching from ground zero to Year 10 in one classroom. Because of the funding, the turnover, it’s continuous enrolments’. As soon as vacancies in LLN classes arose, there was pressure for them to be filled. This limited teachers’ abilities to develop the skills of learner cohorts over sustained periods of time. Among participants, there was the perception that this detrimentally affected teachers’ relationships with their students, as Kym stated: ‘Teachers don’t have the connection with their students that they

once had. There is less opportunity to cater for individual needs and you’ve got more students in your classroom’.

4.2.2.5 Changed professional discussions

The final theme that emerged from the narratives was that of changes to professional discussions. In general, most participants believed that policy reform had compelled LLN teachers into becoming more involved in business discussions that had previously been confined to management circles within VET institutions.

Highlighting her direct involvement in finance-related discussions within her institution, Belinda stated that ‘it’s more money focused than when I first came in. We didn’t talk about money; we didn’t know what we were paid for the students per hour. But now it’s very important.’ Airing the view that traditional pedagogical discussions centred on learning and teaching were being overlooked in meetings, Anne claimed:

In all of our meetings ... everything has gone back to dollars, finance everything. We don’t talk about student satisfaction much; we don’t have meetings on teaching styles or anything like that. It’s always numbers, students, compliance, resulting so that we can get the funding.

The changed teaching practices identified by participants were all directly related to government policy reform. Some were positive, such as the belief that LLN teachers’ profiles within VET institutions had increased, as demonstrated by the value that VET teachers placed on LLN teachers’ expertise. However, there were also a range of negative effects stemming from policy reform, including changes to teaching practices both inside and outside the classroom due to increased class sizes and reductions in teaching time. The data also showed that, due to a change in focus towards employment-driven outcomes and increased compliance measures, teachers were feeling pressured to balance the outcomes required by government with meaningful outcomes for learners. This section has illuminated the downward trend whereby policy reform (macro) has affected the roles of LLN teachers within their institutions (meso). To understand how policy reform and institute directives have been internalised by teachers with respect to their ideological beliefs and core understandings, the following section concentrates the analysis at a micro-level.

4.3 Micro-Layer Influence: LLN Teachers’ Ideological Viewpoints on