The Academy Fellowships Model
The Academy Fellowships Model
The Academy Fellowships Model is a transformative approach to professional learning for teachers. It's designed to empower Victorian teachers as key agents of change, helping them to deepen their professional expertise and drive evidence-informed school improvement. This model is ideal for teachers seeking professional development and looking to lead impactful projects.
Key components of the Fellowship Model
To understand the teacher professional learning model, it's helpful to break it down into its core components.
The model is built on a foundation of ‘support levers’ and ‘domains of action’ that work together to create a powerful learning experience.
The Academy Fellowships Model transformative approach focuses on empowering teachers as agents of change by:
- deepening their professional expertise, and
- nurturing their capability to drive evidence-informed school improvement.
Support levers for success
The Teaching Impact Fellowship is made possible through shared contributions from the Academy, the teacher fellow, and their school. These contributions are the 'levers' that enable effective professional learning and impact. If you are a teacher searching for professional development programs that offer real support, this is a key feature.
- Engagement with experts and mentors: Fellows receive direct support from a dedicated fellowship advisor and engage in high-level professional learning with experts.
- Supportive school environments: Schools provide the relationships and structures needed to enable teacher agency and professional learning within the school context.
- Fellowship Learning Communities (FLCs): Teacher fellows collaborate within these communities to support their professional growth and share insights.
- Funding for scholarship: The Academy provides schools with crucial funding to support the fellows' learning, work, and influence. This is a significant benefit for teachers seeking funding for professional learning.
- Evidence-informed and self-directed learning: Fellows lead their own professional learning by executing an impact project embedded within their school. This is a crucial element for teachers wanting to lead school improvement projects.
Cultivating expertise: The Domains of Action
Through the fellowship, participants cultivate their agency and expertise by engaging in the following key domains of action. These are the core skills that teachers in the Victorian education system will develop.
- Vision: Fellows develop a clear vision for alternative futures in their practice, driven by a desire to improve the quality of teaching and learning for student outcomes.
- Innovation: Fellows explore, design, and implement new approaches or interventions to enhance teaching, learning, or student engagement. This is a core skill for teacher innovation and school change.
- Inquiry: The model emphasizes engaging in evidence-informed, practitioner-led inquiry to investigate professional challenges. This is vital for teacher research and solving real-world problems.
- Leadership: Fellows exercise leadership by building collaborative networks. This enhances professional expertise not only within their own school but across the wider Victorian education community.
