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Follow my Lead in Career Development
The 'Follow My Lead' project, developed by the Career Development Association of Australia, aims to improve the recruitment and retention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers. The initiative focuses on addressing barriers to choosing teaching as a career and includes 16 workshops across multiple states with a target of 150 attendees, ultimately attracting 177 participants. Feedback indicates high satisfaction with the program, especially among private school attendees, and a significant appreciation for the role model leaders involved.
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Follow my Lead in Career Development
- 1. / ourmobteach Follow myLead Role models in Career Development *Teaching, a Career of Choice Follow my Lead is a project developed and delivered by the Career Development Association of Australia as part of the More Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers Initiative (MATSITI)
- 2. Teaching a careerof choice? LET’S EXPLORE Why isn’t teaching chosen as a career? What are the barriers to completion? What might stop them advancing or staying?
- 3. Project Content MATSITIContext Diversity Role Models The Career Conversation Self Assessment & Development Plan Pathways to Teaching
- 4. Targets & Outcomes Target - 16 workshops QLD (5) , SA (5), NSW (5) & WA (1) Target - 150 attendees 177 attendees 143 evaluations
- 5. Achievements Workshop contentvalued Role Model Leaders highly regarded 87% of respondents indicated they would encourage others to attend a workshop
- 6. Anecdotes Private Schoolparticipants generally more positive to the program than Public School peers Experiential nature of Workshops – highly regarded Exploring biases – single most referenced item/activity
- 7. In Closing Proudof our partnership with UniSA Follow my Lead - the MATSITI initiative Handbook resource
- 8. Any other Questions? Wherewill you leave your footprint?
Editor's Notes
- #2 Greg Parker National Manager - Michele Whall Project Officer The Career Development Association of Australia (CDAA) is Australia’s largest and only cross-sectoral association of career development professionals, with membership represented amongst education bodies, private practitioners, academia, government and general industry. Career development practitioners provide services that help people manage their careers, make occupational and study decisions, plan career transitions and find career information. Members of CDAA are committed to, and abide by, the Professional Standards for Australian Career Development Practitioners – and the Association has been pleased with the opportunity to be involved with MATSITI in delivering this project. MATSITI is the acronym for More aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers Initiative. Every project MATSITI funded had the underlying aim to increase the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers in Australia. Each project partner was selected for their ability to approach the desired goal in a different way. For CDAA a central feature of the Follow my Lead workshop was about developing the skills and knowledge of career practitioners and teachers as role models Can I see a raise of hands - How many of you had a single person who was the influencer for the career path you followed? For how many of you was it a teacher who influenced your career decision? How many of you can remember what it was that they did or said that still resonates with you today? Anyone want to share what it was? Great thanks Before I show you a short film clip put together from several workshops I will give you a quick overview of the content covered in the full day workshop: Each a range of statistics were shared along with research outcomes to help attendees to understand MATSITI’S context, activities were undertaken with outcomes discussed around the “Systems Theory Framework”, “Cultural Dimensions” and “Unconscious Bias”, there was much discussion around the position of influence attendees have as daily “Role Models” It’s a fact that everyday we have the potential to excite or deter someone to consider a career doing the same job as us, Finally a range of approaches for appropriate Career Conversations were discussed including motivational interviewing and guiding circles, It was during these moments of sharing, discussing and exploring that the workshop content became richer as the attendees shared their own experiences Click on video link
- #4 In a project of approximately 12 months, CDAA couldn’t run a program that saw increases in Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander teacher numbers during the term of the project. So we set about identifying how we could positively influence future outcomes – starting now - and contributing to the aim of an equitable ratio of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander teachers to Indigenous students. Targeted counsellors, advisers, student support roles, teachers and career practitioners both inside the education system, and those that have some interaction with the education system. We know that over 94% of participants were in the target group – it may well have been a higher proportion, but 8 respondents exercised their right to not provide a response to that survey question. Why did we target this group? Because other than family, they have the most immediate impact on influencing people at developmental stages of life and career directions, within the education and advice system. And we recognise that the whole idea of telling people to become teachers runs counter to helping or leading people to their own choices in career determination, but our project development helped identify (via MATSITI focus group research from 2011/12) that high amongst the desire of Aboriginal people was to ‘give something back’ and to ‘make a difference’ to their communities and act as role models. This desire is a primary attribute consistent with teaching – so whilst we recognised that you can’t and shouldn’t attempt to push someone into teaching, we could equally be confident that this desire is inherent in many Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people, and therefore encouraging or influencing teaching as a choice is a natural outcome for participants in our Role Model program. Role Modelling is not a new concept within the broader MATSITI context. In fact one Role Model definition is a “person” with whom an individual identifies in some way to gain inspiration & motivation, and/or emulate certain attributes of the role model. This “person” can be historical, cultural, celebrity, fictional (which is why “the term “person” is used loosely), personal (eg family or peers) or professional. But deeper understanding of diversity, culture and biases can only enhance the ability of a Role Model to influence outcomes – and our program, through Workshops, delved deeply into these areas.
- #5 As with all contracts there are required targets and outcomes CDAA recruited 2 professional and 1 fellow member to be trained as our role model leaders, responsible for the deliver of 16 workshops. We targeted delivery to 150 participants, pleasingly we over achieved with 177 people attending Those attendees came from the following sectors Secondary Education – Public (53) Private (25) Further Education or Training (43 University (16) or private sector employees (12) ie case managers, rehabilitation consultants etc The rest were a mix of self employed career practitioners (7) , parents and carer givers (5). Attendees were asked to evaluate each section of the workshop and to date we have 143 evaluations received (received to 28/9/15) with 2 workshops still to be collated The trend clearly indicates that attendees found the workshops valuable.
- #6 While the Workshops themselves received very positive feedback. The Association has assessed that our Role Model Leaders or facilitators were highly regarded. 88% of respondents rated Knowledge of Topic high; 87% rated Ability to Convey the Content with Confidence high; 91% rated Ability to Actively Encourage & Achieve Group Participation high; and 89% rated Ability to Teach in a way that Supported Learning high. Adding to this, 87% of respondents indicated they would recommend & encourage people to participate in the CDAA workshops – we take these surveyed results as a significant endorsement of both the program itself, and the delivery of content being of particular value to participants.
- #7 At the risk of offending people – which is not my intention – we’ve captured some anecdotal observations generated from our workshop presenters. The first of these is perhaps the most controversial – but I stress is an anecdotal observation, and a generalisation. But on balance, when comparing participants from with the school system, those from private schools generally participated on a more engaged basis than public school counterparts. We have no conclusion from that observation, but it was apparent nonetheless. Our Workshops carried a significant volume of content that focused on experiences – both from an activity basis and with the opportunity for participants to share experiences. Observed involvement of participants throughout activities was exceptional. The preparedness of people to get involved, and share with others, was extremely gratifying, and if our participants are representative of the wider counselling, adviser or practitioner world, then the eventual success of MATSITI objectives would appear to be highly likely. I want to spend a little bit of time on Exploring Biases – and particularly the concept of unconscious bias. We had one participant in a workshop, adamant that he carried no unconscious bias. During the same workshop, this same person talked about the hopeless nature of a number of the cohort he worked with, suggesting it was the people who were hopeless (not the environment they faced). The presenter in this case used effective questioning particularly well to help this person explore how he might delve deeper and help someone who presented to him with this position, and indeed understand that the very nature of unconscious bias is exactly that – unconscious. I venture to suggest this attention on unconscious bias brought a considerable moment of awareness to most participants. It’s actually a fact that we all carry unconscious bias. The term itself refers to subliminal content. Neuroscience research has found that unconscious bias is hardwired into the very structure of our brain. We receive up to 11 million pieces of information at any one time – and only 40-50 pieces of that information actually get absorbed, but not always consciously. Our brain uses a range of subliminal categories and evaluations to filter content, and that in turn is used to determine our responses and behaviours. And whilst we can’t always explain what might seem perfectly reasonable responses and behaviours – to us, they are seen or observed by others, in turn often producing “what were you thinking” views in the observer. I’m not a qualified psychologist, but clearly this area of our workshop generated much interest, and is particularly pertinent in Role Model activity. Why else would a well known soft drink manufacturer have placed single from shots of its product into movies immediately before “intermission”, only to see sales volumes increase significantly? People attending these movies reported not “seeing” the product ad, yet purchased the product during the break. This behaviour actually led to regulation with regard to subliminal advertising.
- #8 In closing CDAA are very proud to have been involved in the MATSIT initiative, and pleased with the outcomes of our specific project While the effects are not likely to result in immediate outcomes of more aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers we know that Follow my Lead project has Reminded every attendee how important it is to demonstrate passion for their jobs, to ensure they are positive role models Provided a series of tools and group activities which challenge; an individuals bias, and improve competency in working with diversity. You have all been provided a copy of the handbook that was used throughout the full day workshop delivery. We are confident that within that handbook the personal and group activities, along with the links to resources provided at the back will be of significant benefit to you. On behalf of the Association. Greg and myself we thank you for listening to our session.