Disrupting Australia's vicious VET circle: Sustaining an ITE-qualified VET schoolteacher workforce

Karen O'Reilly-Briggs
Box Hill Institute, Australia
Jacolyn Weller and Rochelle Fogelgarn
La Trobe University, Australia

An extreme shortage of initial teacher education (ITE) qualified VET schoolteachers impacts the equitable opportunity for young people to become well-educated, vocationally prepared school graduates. This article reports on an international applied research Fellowship designed to discover how Norway and Finland upskill mid-career industry experts to become VET schoolteachers. These countries produce a sustainable VET schoolteacher workforce with approximately half of all upper-secondary students studying VET. In contrast, approximately one-quarter of Australian school students choose VET pathways, at a time when the nation is experiencing a significant skills shortage. We present research findings that illustrate how Norway and Finland produce a sustainable supply of VET secondary schoolteachers. As Australia has yet to develop suitable ITE programs to prepare qualified VET teachers for schools, we argue that Australia would do well to heed Finnish and Norwegian practices that improve the quality of VET in schools, support mid-career industry experts to become VET schoolteachers, and enhance the status of VET in education and society.
[ PDF full text for this article ]

Authors: Dr Karen O'Reilly-Briggs (corresponding author), Box Hill Institute, Melbourne, Australia is an experienced metal fabrication and pressure vessel welder whose PhD investigated the impact of national training reform on the pedagogy of engineering trades in Victoria. Her research interests include VET, the teaching and learning of craft trades and apprenticeships, and the status of VET in society. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6445-4664 Email: k.oreilly-briggs@boxhill.edu.au Dr Jacolyn Weller is a senior STEM initial teacher education lecturer at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. She is a mid-career researcher with over 20 years secondary-school teaching experience and a philosophy of experiential teaching. Her research focuses on teacher sustainability through innovative STEM-teaching, professional development, partnerships including professional experience and VET, and design technology teacher shortages. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3403-8157 Email: j.weller@latrobe.edu.au Dr Rochelle Fogelgarn is a lecturer in teacher education at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include responsive classroom management; relational teacher and student wellbeing; transformative pedagogy; teacher-targeted bullying and harassment; VET and design technology teacher shortages; raising the status of vocational education in schools and sustainable, quality teaching practice. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6485-0408 Email: r.fogelgarn@latrobe.edu.au Please cite as: O'Reilly-Briggs, K., Weller, J. & Fogelgarn, R. (2025). Disrupting Australia's vicious VET circle: Sustaining an ITE-qualified VET schoolteacher workforce. Issues in Educational Research, 35(2), 716-737. http://www.iier.org.au/iier35/oreilly-briggs.pdf