Evidence Statement

Created: 02/10/2020
By: Lewanna Hampel

Focus:
Standard 7.4, Graduate Level:
Understanding the role of external professionals and community representatives in
broadening teachers’ professional knowledge and practice.

If accessed and embraced, external professionals and community representatives provide abundant
opportunities for teachers to broaden their professional knowledge and practice.

External professionals possess expert knowledge in their fields, such as a horticulturalist is an expert
in garden cultivation and management. For teachers who do not possess this expert knowledge,
engaging with an external professional may broaden their knoweldge and support them to implement
increasingly successful and engaging experiences to students. For example, a Year 6 teacher may be
required to implement a Biological Science unit for students to explore how the growth and survival
of living things are affected by the physical conditions of their environment. If this teacher does not
know a lot about plants and what affects their growth, they may find this topic difficult to plan and
implement successfully. However, this teacher could seek advice from a horticulturalist to increase
their knoweldge and the success of their unit. This interaction with external professionals may also
introduce teachers to new practices, such as an experiment students could participate in.

By engaging with community representatives, educators may broaden their knowledge of the local
community, including community groups that their students belong to. This knowledge can have
several positive impacts in the classroom, including increasing educators’ understanding of their
students and developing stronger relationships with students and parents/carers. Educators may
engage with community representatives in many ways, such as engaging in conversations, seeking
opinions from community members or inviting community members into the classroom to share their
knowledge/experiences. Embracing community representatives in the educative process like this is
also beneficial as it may improve educators’ practice by supporting them to connect concepts to real-
life concepts. Additional ways educators may engage in communities to broaden their knowledge and
practice may include participating in professional development programs, subscribing to teaching and
learning journals and joining teaching associations. Teaching associations in particular will provide
educators with the opportunity to not only develop their knowledge and practice through interaction,
but also support other professionals to develop through the sharing of their knowledge.