Published 02 May 2023
Professional learning for casual relief teachers (CRTs)
Casual relief teachers (CRTs) are teachers who work in a casual, relief or emergency basis.
The CRT workforce plays an important role within the teaching profession by covering staff illness, personal leave, professional development and extracurricular programs for full-time and part-time teachers and early childhood teachers.
The VIT recognises the value in supporting CRTs throughout their career to provide continuity and stability of learning for Victorian children and young people.
Registration requirements for fully registered CRTs
If you are a fully registered teacher, you will need to undertake at least 20 hours of professional learning activities referenced to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) each year to maintain your registration.
The VIT does not have a definitive list of required professional learning activities for renewal of registration. You are encouraged to consider the needs of your learners, your individual professional learning needs in relation to your teaching context and the priorities of your learning environment or education sector.
Select appropriate professional learning activities to keep your knowledge and practice updated and discover what can be considered professional learning for the purposes of renewal of registration.
High Impact Teaching Strategies
Approximately 71% of casual relief and emergency teachers work predominantly in government schools or services. As a CRT in government workplaces or schools, it can be useful to be aware of the strategies used by other teachers in that workplace.
The Department of Education (DE) has developed 10 High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS) to support teacher practice. To see how you can use the HITS in your context as a CRT, VIT has developed some example strategy reflections.
Professional viewing: setting goals
Effective teachers set and communicate clear lesson goals to help learners understand the success criteria, commit to the learning, and provide the appropriate mix of success and challenge.
As a CRT, the usual classroom teacher may have already made these goals explicit for you, or you may need to determine what these goals are and clearly communicate them to your learners.
Feedback can be provided to learners formally or informally and can be oral, written, formative or summative. Take the time to think about the strategies you can use as a CRT to give effective feedback to your learners, and to the usual teacher to support the learning of those you teach.
Suggested videos on setting goals
The time you spend watching the above videos and reflecting on this topic can count towards your professional learning hours for renewal of registration. This content is particularly relevant when addressing the Professional Practice domain (Standards 3-5) of the APST.
Writing a reflection is especially important when recording your professional learning. A reflection can be a summary of how the activity added to your professional knowledge and informed your practice.
Make sure you reference the book or article you are reading from, including the web source if relevant. You should also keep an estimate of the time taken for the activity.
Questions to guide your reflection
- what have you learnt from this PD activity and how does it link to the relevant APST you have selected?
- how will you apply your learning from this PD activity to your practice to improve learning outcomes?
