Some learners will have different support requirements than others. But before we look at this in more detail, we need to get something straight. The word "support" is sometimes taken to mean burden. Some trainers view the whole idea of learner support as an inconvenience and an unnecessary trouble that they would prefer to do without. This is a problematic sort of view, because it does two things.
1. it makes people who have more obvious support needs out to be somehow less worthy of individual attention to their needs
2. it makes people who do not have more obvious support needs to be somehow less worthy of individual attention to their needs
You see, the word support just means to assist. So, if we are involved in any sort of training, then we are assisting someone to learn new things. How we assist someone to learn new things depends on what they can already do and what they already know, and what they are wanting to know and do. As trainers, we need to recognise that all people have a need for support. It is not just the people
who have certain 'cultural' or 'disability' or 'intellectual' or other needs ‐ everyone we are involved in training is deserving of the assistance that is needed to get them to bridge the gap between what they can do and what they want to do.
You may recall that the AQTF2010 has standards for Registered Training Organisations.
Standard2:TheRegisteredTrainingOrganisationadherestoprinciplesofaccessandequity andmaximisesoutcomesforitsclients.
These policies and approaches ensure that vocational education and training is responsive to the diverse needs of all clients. Through the implementation of the policies and approaches, the benefits of participating in vocational education and training are available to everyone on an equitable basis, including: women where under‐represented; people with disabilities; people from non‐English speaking backgrounds; Indigenous Australians and rural and remote learners.
Learners can have many different support needs and you must correctly identify these needs before you can plan effective support mechanisms. Equity or additional support needs may include:
English language, literacy and numeracy support disability support
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) support ethnic support services
interpreting services counselling services community support.
We can use both formal and informal ways to find out what the particular support requirements of our learner/s might be. These include looking at:
the information provided on the enrolment forms talking with other trainers or supervising staff
referrals from other agencies (eg, Commonwealth Rehabilitation Services (http://www.crsaustralia.gov.au/)
talking with the learners observing the learners.
Let's think about this last one. A common misunderstanding here is that when you get the enrolment form, you need to go around to the person's place of work and watch them. This is not true (although with permission ‐ and if you had the time ‐ it may provide useful information). What it really is means is that once we start training, we need to observe how our trainees respond to the things that we do. If they have difficulty reading lots of words, but respond really well to hands‐on types of tasks, then we can reduce the written tasks and add more hands‐on activities.
In an workplace setting, there are a few different people that we can speak with to gain a better understanding of our learners and the sorts of support that we could provide to better assist their learning. These commonly include:
Position Type of Information
Human Resource section
If the organisation has a separate division, the personnel in this section will be responsible for overseeing the training level of all employees in the organisation. Their processes may identify:
‐ specific training requirements ‐general training requirements ‐support requirements.
Workplace managers and supervisors
They may be aware of problems and support issues from their own experience their observation or feedback from others
Your own supervisor
Whether you are internal to the organisation or working with an external consultancy, you can get an objective viewpoint from your own:
a) supervisor b) coach c) mentor
d) other training personnel, Employees
Employees can let you know if they have any support requirements. Do not ask other employees for information on the support needs of another learner, unless you are given permission to do so from the learner.
WHS representatives
Either directly, or as a committee
** May offer specific guidance on specialist knowledge areas where they believe improvements need to be made.
Outside the workplace, there are many specialist support services that can help us to further understand ‐ and meet ‐ the needs of our learner/s. These include:
specialist staff in government and non‐government agencies care workers and case workers
advocacy groups professional agencies
We do often find that we do not need to know all of these. This is because quite often a learner may already have support systems in place, and know of people who we can call upon to assist us.
THEORY INTO PRACTICE