In the first part of this blog, we looked at some tips on how to make your teaching resume stand out from the crowd. In this part, we will look more closely at the teaching standards and how to address them properly. The Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership AITSL standards are the benchmarks of what constitutes teaching quality in Australia. They have been developed and honed over many years to give emerging and experienced educators the explicit tools for high-quality, effective teaching in 21st-Century schools that will improve educational outcomes for students.
As we showed in the first part of this blog, the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers comprise seven Standards that chart what teachers should know and be able to do. The Standards are all unified, mutually dependent and overlapping. They are grouped into three pivotal domains of teaching:
- Professional Knowledge
- Professional Practice
- Professional Engagement
In practice, teaching should draw on aspects of all three domains. Within each Standard, focus areas then provide further illustration of teaching knowledge, practice and professional engagement. These are then separated into Descriptors at four professional career stages: Graduate, Proficient, Highly Accomplished and Lead.
When you are applying for a role, it is highly recommended to you refer to the standards and correlate what is expected of you commensurate with the role you are targeting. This not only increases your chances of being shortlisted for an interview but crucially will focus your mind on precisely the level of work that is expected of you. You can download the Standards here.
For candidates who are targeting teacher principal roles, there is a specific Principal Standard that provides a framework for what you should know, understand and do to succeed as a principal or school leader.
The Principal Standard is designed to help principals school leaders succeed in their work. It looks at the three core Leadership Requirements and five Professional Practices you need to improve your impact as a current or future school leader. There is also The Leadership Profiles (the Profiles), which are a set of statements that describe the Principal Standard in more detail. These are based upon real insights from practising school leaders and illustrate how effective principals act as they progress professionally. As a school leader, you can use the Profiles as a guide to becoming a better leader.
You can download the Principal Standard of the Leadership Profile here.
When you are addressing any of these standards for a key selection criteria document or cover letter statement, it is strongly advised that you adhere to the STAR system in order to enable you to format your responses in a clear and compelling manner. What is STAR? Situation, Task, Action, Result – it’s a simple acronym that unlocks the key to a successful document. Using the STAR system helps you synergise your experience against the specific AITSL standards that relate to the question asked. In almost every case, the key selection criteria questions you will face will either explicitly or implicitly relate to the AITSL standards.
The SITUATION is your work environment – your department or classroom, and the work you do, and will then focus on a particular aspect of your role – the TASK – you were faced with that has congruency with the role you are applying for. The ACTION is the sequence of duties you undertook to meet the requirements of the task, and the RESULT is the tangible, measurable result of the actions – student engagement, curriculum improvement, learning outcomes achieved.
If you feel this is too difficult a task – and many do – at Teaching Resumes our professional writers are experienced in writing teaching STAR examples for an extremely wide variety of role levels and situations. We know what the schools and universities are looking for, and we will help you find those perfect examples and convert them into winning prose that will give you your best opportunity to get shortlisted for an interview.