Hearing you @HelloKitty1981 🙂🙌🏻
It’s hard, no doubt, when we know what we need but have no choice but to go through theoretical stuff that seems far from associating with what we will do in a workplace, indeed 🌺
I wanna give you the inside deets on TAFE for a second, as a former TAFE teacher 👌🏻😉
The courses are adherent to the Australian Qualifications Framework which dictates what must be included in content and assessment to ‘fit’ the course into the framework…the framework is how every course fits together across an industry, which contains many areas of practice (for instance, allied health courses all have stuff included for all allied health doesn’t matter what specificity they have: physiotherapist, occupational therapist, exercise physiologist, etc, and so some of it is not relevant for the specific area, but they need to do it regardless), and the reason for this is because all courses have to include foundational content that is expected, so we can communicate with each other across the specialties/areas of practice, with a very high degree of comprehension of each others’ area. It’s also there to ensure that if we cross-qualify (moving into a different area of practice), we can save time and not undertake course material that has been already embedded into stuff we have already done. It’s also also designed to translate into international qualifications in some instances (pertaining to standards of practice), and for insurance purposes there is an expected knowledge of all staff 🙂🌺.
Having said that, as a former teacher when there was updates to the qualification based on new knowledge, I would be tasked with designing new modules to include this new knowledge as well as the most appropriate assessment task methods - this is particularly tricky, and this is where the relevance to students must be kept in mind: what is taught and assessed must be included in a flexible way to make it relevant to what people need to know in their future jobs! 🤔🌺
I do understand what you’re going through, and I am not sure but I don’t think there’s a lot of student input to the development of new modules in terms of specific relevance to a cohort/area of practice… I used to ask my students what they wanted in terms of new content: how best can I bring this theoretical stuff to life when designing your new learning units/modules? 🙂
so, I know this isn’t essentially anything of practical use, however I hope it gives you insight into how sometimes units can ‘miss the mark’ so to speak when it comes to being directly related to what a person is wanting to learn in their role/tasks, and shows why these tedious learnings are there 😉🙌🏻🌺
