Introduction

The purpose of this report is to identify two Graduate Attributes and two degree specific  professional skills that I have developed over the last four years of my university degree. There are a number of experiences that have helped me to develop these professional skills including: university lectures, practical tasks, assessment items, group tasks and practicum in three different schools and three different year levels. For each of the professional skills, I will provide evidence of how I have used that skill within the last four years in either school or university. The two Graduate Attributes that I will discuss are team work and communication, while the two degree specific professional skills that will be discussed are curriculum, assessment and pedagogy and managing interpersonal interactions. Professional skills develop over time and are evolved through working in the field of practice (Purnell, Professional Skills, 2012). I believe that over the past four years, I have developed the skills that I need to succeed in the classroom and workplace.   

Eight Graduate Attributes

‘The term "Graduate Attributes" refers to the set of qualities and skills that a university defines as core outcomes for their students’ (CQUniversity, 2012). As the world progresses, technology advances and governments change, so do discipline-specific skills, therefore ‘many areas have only a short life...and "higher level" graduate attributes are seen as critically important’ (CQUniversity, 2012). CQUniversity graduate attributes that our graduates should possess upon graduation are:  

• Communication
• Problem solving
• Critical thinking
• Information literacy  
• Team work
• Information technology competence
• Cross cultural competence
• Ethical practice

These attributes help gradates to be ‘flexible, aware, and ethical individuals who are well prepared for the global job market’ (CQUniversity, 2012). I feel that throughout the four years of my degree, I have competently developed each of the attributes through my university and practical experiences.

Communication is critical within the field of teaching and I feel that I can confidently communicate well with students, teachers and parents. Team work is an attribute that helped me profusely throughout my internship when it came to assessment and learning experiences. I was often required to think ethically within the classroom as well as the playground and at the same time was often needed to problem solve. At the end of each day, I critically reflected on everything that had occurred, thought about what worked well and what didn’t, as well as how I could make it better next time around. I was required to analyse and interpret information, especially during my internship and my competence with technology has helped me to create engaging and informative learning experiences throughout my four years of practicum. Finally, I have had students over the past four years that have grown up in diverse home environments, so I have tried to ensure that the classroom became their familiar routine and that the students within the class were socially acceptable of every person within the class.

Research Literature

The quote by Aristotle, ‘the roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet’, can be said by many university graduates as they take the next step and start moving into the profession as a qualified teacher. To be a successful university graduate, you need to be equipped with a range of skills and sufficient knowledge to enter into the work place as an active participant. Professor Peter Freebody believes that the most important skill for a person to have is the understanding of their place in today’s globalised world (Rodley, 2008). 

Over the course of a university degree, graduates develop and acquire certain attributes and skills that relate to their chosen profession. The development of these attributes are important, as finishing a degree does not ensure that you will automatically receive a job. Employers look to see if new graduates have developed skills that will benefit the company or organisation. Employers look for skills such as; exploring and creating opportunities; decision-making; coping with uncertainty; focus on development; the transfer skills and self confidence (Knight & Yorke, 2005). In addition to these skills, employers also seek graduates that are willing to get involved within the company or organisation as well as having the willingness to continue learning and extending their knowledge.  

An attribute that is becoming necessary in today’s world is Lifelong learning. It is an aim as a learning manager to embed lifelong learning into each of their students and equips them with the skills and attitude to learn long after they have graduated (The University of Adelaide , 2005). Learning can happen within a variety of different contexts including, formal academia, informal academia and the community and family life, which can be called life wide learning. When becoming a Lifelong learner, you are equipping yourself with skills such as; planning your own learning, being an active learner, being able to learn from peers, teachers and mentors, and being able to use a range of different strategies for different situations. Due to the continual creation of new occupations and careers, and the transformation of current ones, it is important to become a Lifelong learner so that you do not get left behind in today’s quickly advancing society. Lifelong learning is also important for expanding educational needs of students; including those from culturally different backgrounds (The University of Adelaide , 2005). 

There are three different competencies that university graduates are equipped with that are relevant to their profession. These include; intellectual competencies, professional and academic competencies and practical competencies. When combined, these three competencies make up the university degree, however they have different roles. As cited by Junghagen, 2005, intellectual competencies underline the communication of complex issues while analysing and critiquing the issues systematically and independently, professional and academic competencies are expressed as the ability to evaluate independently the appropriateness of various methods of analysis and complex academic issues. Finally, practical competencies are defined as the ability, in addition to bachelor competencies, to make and justify decisions according to academic discipline. Even though these competencies where developed as a starting point for defining the qualifications for an economics and business administration program, they also align well with the Bachelor of Learning Management course. 

Learning managers graduating with a Bachelor of Learning Management from CQUniversity adopt a significantly different perspective, knowledge-base and skill-set than graduates of other teacher education programs (CQ University, 2012). CQUniversity fosters a set of skills that can be broken down into professional knowledge, networks and partnerships, futures domains and pedagogy. These skills align with the Ten Professional Standards from the Queensland College of Teachers. They describe the abilities, knowledge, understandings and professional values that teachers in Queensland schools demonstrate in the classroom, school and community (Queensland College of Teachers, 2012).

Graduate Attributes

Team work

Teamwork can be defined as a group of people that make a cooperative effort to work together within a team in the interest of a common goal. It can also be said that teamwork is a group of people giving their own individual opinions to form one opinion (The Times Higher Education, 2011). Teamwork is a skill that is developed over time and working with others is not easily acquired by everyone, but can be taught slowly.  People may find that they work well within some teams and not within others, as teamwork is most effective when all members are working harmoniously towards a common goal. Within the classroom, teamwork can also be called collaborative learning and should be incorporated as part of a classroom routine.  

My experience with teamwork and collaborative learning within a university context, has taught me the importance of working harmoniously with all members of a group. When the members of a team are unable to constructively work together, a task cannot be successfully completed.  On the other hand, I have discovered that when groups do work well together, the results can be both positive and rewarding. Throughout my university degree, I have received the opportunity to work in a number of different groups for assessment tasks and these have helped to scaffold my ability to work as a professional in teams at school. In addition to teamwork at university, working within sports teams in my personal life has also helped me to develop certain attributes that help me to be a cooperative and organised member of a team, which I can then work with in a school context. 

My mentor teacher, as well as other members of staff, have on numerous occasions commented on my friendly attitude and ability to get along with everyone. I feel that these traits help me to be a team member that is easy to work with, values other opinions, and yet contributes my own views as well. My mentor teacher stated that ‘other teachers have commented on Ashleigh’s personable approach to all activities undertaken be the Year 6 team’. My goal is to be a valuable member of each team that I work in and to bring great ideas and a positive attitude.

Communication

Communication occurs when someone conveys information to another in some form. As Davies (2009) states, the communication process is complete when the receiver understands the meaning of the communicator. In today’s society, there are many different ways to communicate which can be broken down into three categories, verbal, non verbal and written communication. Aspects of verbal communication include directly speaking to someone or talking to someone on the telephone. Non verbal communication, which is also known as body language, includes facial expressions, posture, positioning of the body such as proximity, hand gestures and eye contact. These factors help others to realise how a person is feeling or what they are trying to communicate. Finally, written communication has advanced along with technology. While once, the main form of written communication was a letter, these days you are more likely to receive a text message or an email.

Communication is a skill that I developed at a young age. At the age of fourteen, I got my first job as a learn to swim teacher and communicating with children and parents became the norm for me. As I started university, the skill developed and while I still get nervous speaking in front of my peers or when I’m being assessed, due to my good communication skills, I am able to speak clearly and loudly. I have been told throughout my life that I am very easy to talk to and that I am very good at explaining information to people in a way that they understand. People often tell me that I will be a great teacher due to my ability to communicate difficult concepts, as I break it down and explain each aspect explicitly until they understand. While my mentor teacher stated that at the start of the year I occasionally said things that are grammatically incorrect, I have been consciously making an effort to think while I am speaking. Towards the end of my internship, she commented on my ability to utilise her suggestions and that grammatically, I now speak much better. The principal of the school said that I ‘communicate beautifully with the students and that as a result, they respect me, listen and are engaged’.

Professional Skills

Curriculum, Assessment and Pedagogy

The curriculum has just undergone a significant change through its transformation into the Australian Curriculum. While the changing of curriculum has been hard for all schools, it is necessary that education evolves with the waves of societal change. Due to the curriculum being determined by the education department and government, change is inevitable, however teachers have the opportunity to utilise the new curriculum descriptors to develop new and exciting learning experiences for their students. 

In my experience with the new Australian Curriculum, the resource has enabled me to provide real life, purposeful learning experiences that are engaging and informative for the students. While for most of the year, I generally followed the Curriculum 2 Classroom lesson plans and resources, as I got into my internship, I thoroughly enjoyed turning the C2C into a resource and creating my own lessons that the students found more interactive and engaging. After one particular Maths lesson, I was told by a teacher aide that my Maths games were fantastic ideas and that the students were really engaged. She was shocked when I told her that I had used one of the C2C resources as inspiration and changed into my own resource. I feel very fortunate that I was able to experience the introduction of the Australian Curriculum in my final year of practicum as I believe that if it had been thrown upon me next year as it was this year for all of the teaching community, I would have found it difficult to use. Now however, I believe that I am a lot more confident with the new curriculum and have learnt how to utilise it and use it to my advantage rather than hate it. 

Assessment comes in many forms, with Authentic Assessment, arguable being the most beneficial for students. “An authentic learning context provides students with a lens to conduct the task through” (Davis & Dargusch, sighted in Lynch & Knight, 2010). Authentic Assessment occurs when a learning manager provides their students with real life activities that assess students whilst have meaning within the real world. To develop authentic assessment teachers must measure student’s learning, achievement, motivation and attitudes toward school (Marzano & Pickering, 2009). 

Throughout my four years at university, I have completed courses that encourage the use of Authentic Assessment. In Ensuring Student Success, I worked within a group to research and create a script and role play that focussed on the benefits of Authentic Assessment. This task in particular helped to scaffold my understanding of how, as learning managers, we can assess students in other ways than the usual test. Authentic Assessment is also a strategy to help with differentiation as it helps to assess those students that are significantly lower than the rest of the class in a way that they can relate to in the real world. Throughout my internship, I was required to use regular assessment tasks to assess students’ knowledge; however I did use some Authentic Assessment tasks for my own personal formative assessment. 

Applying appropriate pedagogy in the curriculum and assessment is paramount to the success to students learning (Whitby, 2007). There are a number of frameworks that have been created to help learning managers use good pedagogy within is often referred to as the art and science to teaching and learning (Sanguinetti, Waterhouse, & Maunders, 2004). Pedagogy is made up of nine instructional strategies that include; identifying similarities and differences, cues and advanced organisers, cooperative learning, summarising and note taking, reinforcing effort and providing recognition, homework and practice, non-linguistic representations, generating and testing hypotheses and questions and finally, setting objectives and providing feedback. 

Throughout the past four years, I have developed and used each of the nine strategies both at university - during lectures and assessment tasks, and during my school placements. Examples of how I have used some of the strategies include summarising and note taking within lectures to ensure that I have gained all of the important information, identifying similarities and differences within a university and school context and finally, setting objectives within the classroom and providing appropriate feedback to my students. 

Managing interpersonal interactions

Throughout their career, learning managers will be involved with a variety of different stakeholders such as parents, peers and members of the community. A good relationship with all these stakeholders is important in order to fully benefit the learners and increase their knowledge. Families in the school bestow different forms of capital upon their children providing different experiences and lifestyles (Bourdieu, 1986). Therefore a learning manager needs to develop an understanding of the backgrounds of each individual child within the cohort so that they are able individualise learning experiences that will benefit each child. This will ensure that students are not marginalised and regardless of their economic, cultural or social capital, are able to gain understanding and knowledge.

Having worked as a learn to swim teacher for five years, in hospitality for two and retail for five, I believe that I have excellent interpersonal skills. I have learnt the importance of building good relationships with others and feel that this is the same within the school community. Throughout the three years that I have completed practicum at schools, I have worked hard to develop good relationships with the staff, children and parents. In my second year at Matthew Flinders, I found the staff slightly intimidating and found the task more difficult, however this year I have tried hard to make connections with everyone. My mentor teacher has told me that numerous numbers of staff have approached her and commented on my ability to build relationships with them. My mentor teacher mentioned that the support staff were also impressed with my friendly approach and that I make an effort to build a relationship with them. 

Within the classroom, I am a strong believer of building good relationships with every child within the room. I understand that some students are very likeable and this task is easy, while others are less likeable and the task can be quite difficult. As a graduate, my goal is to not only love the likeable but also love the unlikeable, as Jo mentioned on our final day of university. This quote by Henry Adams; a teacher affects eternity, he can never tell where his influence stops, is a true statement of the influence teachers have on their students and I will take this quote with me into my first year of teaching. Finally, as a teacher may never know how much they affect their students and in what ways, they need to continually act with integrity and professionalism within the classroom and out, whilst displaying exceptional interpersonal skills to every stakeholder that they encounter.