Teaching teams partnering to support employability

The session will explore the experiences of a teaching team, within the Master of Teaching (Secondary), developing a whole of program responses to the call for employability outcomes for graduates based on student data. Graduate employability is defined by Yorke (2006, p. 8) as ‘a set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes – that makes graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy.’ Master of Teaching (Secondary) students have completed an undergraduate program and are seeking a career change either directly from their undergraduate study or following experience in other professions. Many of these teachers who enter the profession leave within the first five years. This exodus has an impact on the supply of quality teachers in the community. These circumstances have resulted in increasing pressure on teacher education providers to offer evidence of the quality of their programs and engagement of students during their program with career planning and how this supports longterm employment (Australian Government, 2015; Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), 2015a, 2015b, 2017). Our partnership with the Master of Teaching team involved participants in a workshop to explore the Work Skills Development framework (Bandaranaike & Willison, 2015) and adapt this model based on data collected that connects directly with the teacher education cohort at the University of the Sunshine Coast. The adapted model provides a whole of program response to support both the cognitive and affective aspect of work skills for graduate initial teacher education students. Throughout their coursework students explore the six employability facets: embark and clarify; find and generate; reflect and learn; plan and manage, problem-solve and communicate and collaborate as they relate specifically to the teaching profession. An important innovation in this context is the provision of specific data based on USC student responses to surveys that provide a context of student development of their teacher identity