The National Graduate Attributes Project - Institute for Teaching and ...

Final Report – The National GAPAUSTRALIAN LEARNING AND TEACHING COUNCILThe second issue concerns the complexity of graduate attributes – both as aconcept and in terms of policy implementation. Despite the enormous amount ofactivity in this area identified during the GAP project, effective implementation,particularly on a scale beyond the individual subject/course or program remainselusive. A key outcome of this project, a suite of National GAP Issues papers,helps explain both the conceptual and implementation complexity, while at thesame time providing a resource to support institutions’ practical implementationefforts.Finally, the GAP project has identified fruitful avenues for future graduateattributes activity including investigations of the student graduate attributesexperience: the relationship between graduate attributes and the ‘standards’movement: and, the possibility of synergies between standards movements inAustralia and similar developments in other parts of the world (Tuning, Europeand Latin America: QAA, UK: Lumina foundation, USA). The national andinternational collaborations generated through interactions with the ScottishQuality Assurance Agency hold particular potential. The GAP team’s interactionswith the project’s international reference group, with the participants at thenational symposia and at conference presentations have provided not only strongdirections for future work in the area but also identified those who are willing tocarry this work forward.One of the key challenges for curriculum renewal to achieve graduate attributes isthe systemic and significant, cultural, attitudinal and practical shifts required in theapproach taken by individual staff to designing curriculum and teaching. At the heartof this remains the well recognised and researched challenge of changing staffconceptions and understandings of what graduate attributes are and how they aredeveloped, however it also involves supporting academic communities in changingtheir focus from the highly-specialised and research-based areas that define thecourses that they teach, to the program as an integrated whole experience thatstudents engage in and through which their student learning of graduate attributes isscaffolded. This problem requires a systemic approach to create the institutionalenvironments in which such fundamental shifts are possible.The graduate attributes agenda is unusual in that it traverses taken-for-grantedboundaries that define our practices; for instance crossing disciplines, courses,programs, teachers, the academy and industry. It is also unusual in that it touches onthe intentions and contributions of many different members of the universitycommunity; students and teachers, managers, support and liaison staff, industryaffiliates and professional bodies. It is an agenda that also involves the manystructures that support or enable teaching and learning; the state, universitygovernance, schools/departments, and individual academic roles. This complexitydemands a collaborative and intellectual engagement in the graduate attributesendeavour, not the least because it is, at its heart, about the quality of studentlearning.The National Graduate Attributes Project: Integration and assessment of graduate attributes in curriculum 41