Extend Teaching Skills for IT Profession

The SFIA Foundation has invited suggestions for enhancements to the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA). I suggest defining learning and teaching skills at levels 3 and perhaps also at level 2.

As part of my Master of Education studies I did a quick analysis of education skills for IT professionals. SFIA was very useful for this, providing a concise set of IT teaching skills:

SFIA Category Skills and ACS Membership Level

Subcategory	Skill	Code	Levels
* SFIA Version 6 definitions from ACS (2015)
Skill management	Learning and development management	ETMG	--34567
	Learning assessment and evaluation	LEDA	--3456-
	Learning design and development	TMCR	---456-
	Learning delivery	ETDL	--3456-
	Teaching and subject formation	TEAC	----56-
People management	Professional development	PDSV	---456-

However, some skills are only defined at higher levels.  ETMG, LEDA and ETDL start at level 3, but TMCR and PDSV start at 4 and TEAC at 5.

The entry level vocational qualification for the IT profession in Australia is "Diploma" in the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF Level 5). The Australian Computer Society has identified this as being SFIA Level 3. It would therefore be useful to have the SFIA learning/teaching skills defined at SFIA Level 3.

The entry level qualification for those conducting training in Australia is a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment at AQF Level 4. So it may be useful to also have the training skills defined at SFIA Level 2.

It should be noted that the qualifications required for those teaching in Australia are inversely related to the level at which they teach: the higher the level of the teaching, the lower the qualification required. School teachers are required to have a degree (soon to be masters), vocational teachers only a certificate and university lecturing requires no teaching qualification at all.

ps: The SFIA Foundation are one of the more responsive standards setting bodies. In 2008 I was commissioned by the ACS to design a course in Green IT. There were no SFIA skills defined for this at the time, so I sent my draft course to the SFIA Foundation. Skills in sustainability were subsequently added to SFIA and matched my course syllabus reasonably well. I later changed the course descriptions to reference SFIA. The course is currently offered by Athabasca University (Canada).