ITI Articles

At the end of 2009, Bethlehem Tertiary Institute (BTI) gained funding from the Ako Aotearoa National Project Fund to undertake research through 2010 and the first half of 2011 in collaboration with WINTEC and the New Zealand Tertiary College. 

The proposed project reflects the belief that conversations between supervisor and student that go beyond ‘what should be done and how’ to ‘why?’ questions of professional enquiry (enriched learning dialogue), are critical to effective field-based/work-based components of professional preparation.  

Currently a growing number of professional and vocational education programmes are reliant on field-based experiences to provide relevant, contextualised learning. However, research indicates that assumptions about the contribution of field-based experiences tend to be ill-founded unless specific strategic actions are undertaken. 

The BTI research project seeks to develop and evaluate intentional strategies that will initiate and foster ‘enriched learning dialogue’ within the field-based learning context, resulting in more effective professional preparation. The resultant resources that can be used in a broad range of programmes to improve field-based learning will be made available to other organisations.