Questions and Conversations
2007 RPL Colloquium Overview
Norma Smith
Director, Harlequin Training Solutions.
Norma had a 35 year career in TAFE with service in metropolitan and country locations. Her last position, before retiring in 2004, was as College Director, North Sydney College and Associate Director of Business and IT for Northern Sydney Institute.
“We’ve been doing RPL for ages!” This was the consensus of the groups at the TAFE NSW RPL Colloquium 2007 on Thursday 7 June where over 90 participants gathered from across NSW for a day of questions and conversations.
Why have a colloquium?
It became apparent early in the day that everyone was looking for Recognition of Prior Learning Utopia – you know, something like a quick and simple process that’s valid; a well resourced system that is cost neutral; and a personalised and customised approach which suits everyone! And, practitioners and RPL candidates who ‘just know’ how is all works.
But reality is much more complex and messy as revealed by the keynote speakers and in the strategic conversations throughout the day. It also appears that there are a few myths and legends surrounding RPL and that perhaps it is indeed a well kept secret. But the day, as such days go, had more questions than answers, although the experiences shared throughout the colloquium provided many and varied possible answers, certainly interesting opportunities.
The RPL imperative
So the questions began. Pam Christie, Institute Director, Sydney Institute and Chair, RPL Steering Committee, in her welcome address posed the question: ‘Why so much interest in RPL?’ She painted the broad-picture imperatives including skills shortages, the need for upskilling the workforce, fast tracking skills training, focussing on mature-age workers, cost efficiency pressures and State targets. This is the reality for TAFE NSW. But importantly she also highlighted some great incentives – like 100% return on RPL ASH and $6.6m over 3 years for RPL initiatives. This certainly represents high level commitment from both the Commonwealth and State Governments.
Listen to Pam ’s podcast
Dr Pauline Hart, Associate Director, MECAT Curriculum Centre in her opening address presented an interesting Curriculum Centre RPL retrospective – she spoke of the volume of RPL undertaken by curriculum centres over the years, the strong industry networks they access and the professional development opportunities they provide to practitioners. In summary she concluded that TAFE NSW has the
- capacity and capability via its experienced and qualified staff;
- the culture via its customer focus; and
- the contacts through its industry and community networks
to further develop, manage, mainstream, and lead the way with RPL.
Listen to Pauline’s podcast
Now all this is a very reassuring background to begin a strategic conversation among the participants, who represented a cross section of TAFE practitioners. However, to assist the practitioners in their discussions, more reality was tabled with three challenges being made.
Challenge no 1 - what is a valid RPL process?
The first, under the heading ‘Pedagogy’, was issued by Anne Walsh, Teacher Education Coordinator, North Coast Institute, who questioned current educational and practitioner thinking around RPL practices and validity and asked how can new RPL opportunities be generated. Indeed, is an RPL process measuring what it intended to measure?
Listen to Anne Walsh's podcast
Challenge no 2 - How to implement a valid process (find the resources)
Useful resources Then Jill Albrecht, COAG RPL Professional Development Project, under the heading ‘Process’ walked the group through the myriad of impressive and somewhat overwhelming systems, policies, procedures, resources and local websites relating to RPL. She spoke of harnessing the power of all this information and, with the volume of information, might this not be an RPL project in itself? But the underlying question for the group was, given all this, how does one implement a valid RPL process?
Listen to Jill’s podcast
See Jill's Powerpoint presentation for links to useful websites
Challenge no 3 - why isn't it happening?
Finally, under the heading ‘Product’, Bernadette Ioannau, Project Manager, COAG RPL Professional Development Project, discussed working with industry and achieving RPL outcomes – what does a valid RPL process look like? She summarised the current situation with this final challenge: If industry supports RPL, if Government requires it, if the AQF includes it and if TAFE has the capacity, then why is it not being done?
Listen to Bernadette's podcast
Working through the challenge
The practitioners at the colloquium were all experienced, grounded people who had been ‘having a go’ at RPL for some time. Some were approaching these issues having previously participated in RPL initiatives, while others are currently involved in projects and both groups have already undertaken some experimentation with RPL practice in the workplace. But as they shared their stories and experiences, further questions arose about how RPL fits into day by day practice. How does a practitioner juggle the competing priorities of the day and still provide a top class service?
With these basic questions on the table and the gauntlets thrown down, participants began their strategic conversations, guided by more questions, around the tensions and issues of RPL. These included quality, and valid assessment and the economic imperative; RPL as an educational diagnostic tool versus a ‘must do’ policy; customisation and economies of scale; the teacher’s role and the student’s role and capacity; the nature of professional judgement and accountability requirements.
Resource: Colleagues overseas are also inventing their particular RPL wheel. Quite a comprehensive and insightful web address is www.recognitionforlearning.ca which has information, case studies and current research to help the practitioner and candidate alike in understanding and using RPL.
A helicopter view
Graham Brophy, Quality Assurance Co-ordinator, DET, said that the ultimate challenges for RPL were its integration into normal teaching practice; managing and delivering follow up gap training; and, mainstreaming both as part of TAFE’s service strategy. He commented that whilst this was happening, the level of consistency was still not complete across NSW.
Graeme put an interesting comparative twist on the recognition process by pointing out that normal teaching practice was to deliver then assess. The RPL process however was the reverse – assess then deliver. Listening to Graham’s comparison - for the practitioner - it’s rather like suddenly having to drive on the right hand side of the road!
Graham acknowledged that there was also a need for mechanisms for candidates to access information (and there is lots of information) so that they could ‘self prepare’ for RPL - a significant challenge given the range of candidates within TAFE and in industry. But these mechanisms would allow TAFE practitioners and the candidates to ‘meet each other half way’ so to speak, within the RPL process. Listen to Graham's podcast
So is RPL a well kept secret ?
Melanie O’Connor, Guest Speaker, NSW TAFE Commission Board, commented that it seemed so and highlighted that only 5.3% of TAFE NSW students were taking it up. Given the current trend in TAFE of moving from pure training to industry development, then RPL is a key strategy in this development process. Listen to Melanie's podcast
We think we can... we know we can
Kim Fillingham, General Manager, TAFE NSW Business, rounded off the discussions with praise for the efforts currently being made in establishing and promoting RPL best practice in the field. He referred to the competence and creativity of TAFE practitioners, supported by technology and systems out of which would evolve an RPL process which had integrity and which was indeed no longer a secret! (click here to listen to Kim)
The difficulty of networking days such as this is that, when the practitioner returns to the workplace, the day to day ‘reality’ sometimes takes over. So some concluding comments should come from the group in terms of ‘where to from here.’ Quick-takes at the end of the strategic conversations such as, “Do it yourself and you’ll learn”, “Take up the options – try it!”, and “TAFE needs to speak to TAFE” – demonstrated significant practitioner commitment. However, there must be follow up - particularly at the local level - to sustain and reinforce the work and successes already achieved and thus increase the momentum.
As Cliff Trood, TAFE NSW ICVET explained, this is where the “intentional” networks are so important to build and maintain. Don’t lose touch – if you’re involved in RPL, then tell someone or email them*. Find a critical friend or bunch of friends and slowly the knowledge and expertise will spread; and you will have peer support, grow in confidence and significantly influenced your particular corner of TAFE.
Among other things, the day was an affirmation of the corporate intelligence and expertise which TAFE NSW has in its workforce. But from the discussions, a more subtle, underlying issue emerged – practitioner confidence. The RPL process will be complex; implementation will continue to present tensions and differences; and outcomes will always be open to challenge. Therefore, practitioners must have confidence – not only in the system and their work environment, but also, more importantly, in themselves - to keep seeking the balance among the competing priorities. And this confidence needs to be nurtured and further developed at the local level, thus growing the expertise in RPL
Go to the Colloquium page for:
References
*Nardi, Bonnie A, Whittaker, S and Schwarz, H. Its not what you know, its who you know: work in the information age, first Monday.org – peer reviewed article:http://www.firstmonday.org/Issues/issue5_5/nardi/
http://www.recognitionforlearning.ca