Breakout session - The Responsive Practitioner: Why One Research Question Could Transform PTE Teaching — and What Gets in the Way

Think about the last time you changed something in your teaching because of what you observed — not because policy told you to, but because you noticed something was not working and you decided to find out why. That instinct — to look, to question, and to act on what you find — is the most underused resource in the PTE sector. Every teacher has it. Very few are supported to develop it systematically. And yet it is exactly what the Tertiary Education Strategy, NZQA quality frameworks, and every equity obligation we carry are implicitly asking for: educators who are not just delivering content, but genuinely responding to the learners in front of them. This session makes a simple but important argument: responsiveness is not a policy compliance activity. It is a practitioner habit. And we cannot build responsive organisations out of educators who have never been invited to ask a systematic question about their own teaching. Drawing on her experience as a Senior Lecturer, Programme Leader, and Doctor of Professional Practice candidate at Otago Polytechnic, Dr. Sadia Farzana shares what happened when she started asking that question seriously — how it changed her assessment design, her relationship with her learners, and her understanding of what quality teaching actually requires. More importantly, she will make a call as it is about having a habit. And with this strategy every PTE educator will be able to improve the delivery model, curriculum and to meet the learners` need.