Building a trellis of practices to support the workplace learning of vocational education and training teachers

Much of the learning that Vocational Education and Training (VET) teachers do to become a teacher is undertaken in the workplace. Earlier research found that in sites where there was a trellis of practices that support learning, novice teachers more quickly learnt to undertake their teaching role. Such a trellis might include (but is not limited to) mentoring; team teaching; co-development of teaching resources, teaching approaches and assessment tasks; and a regularly scheduled shared morning tea. This paper discuses initial findings from a research project investigating a number of instances where a trellis of practices to support the learning of VET teachers was deliberately established. The theory of practice architectures is used to analyse the arrangements in place in each site that enabled and constrained the development of a trellis of practices that support learning.