Addressing the criteria in the AITSL Standards for Teachers is a critical component of a winning job application for Teaching jobs with the Education system in Australia. Your application for a teaching job, requires you to write a Cover Letter that comprehensively responds to how you and your experience meet the AITSL Standards for Teachers. Effectively this is similar to selection criteria questions that government jobs use. The AITSL standards are categorised into the three domains of teaching: Professional Knowledge, Professional Practice, and Professional Engagement and there is multiple subheadings under each of these teaching domains.

Did you know that The Department of Education guidelines state that a Cover Letter should be a maximum of 3 to 4 pages long? Be sure to stick to this, it is unlikely that a lengthy application of 5 to 10 pages or more would be read.

At Resume Templates Australia, we have some great practical tips – and professionally written templates – for you to help you write a winning response to the AITSL criteria.  

Tip 1 – Create a framework for your AITSL Cover Letter

Visit the Education Department website and get a current copy of the AITSL Standards. Copy the key headings and sub-headings into a WORD document. This will form the framework for your AITSL Cover Letter. Alternatively, simply download one of our AITSL Teacher cover letter templates and this will help you hit the ground running, saving you stacks of time and effort.

Tip 2 – Jot down key examples that demonstrate your teaching style or where you have had a positive impact on one or more students.

Go thru each heading and write down some practical examples of where your actions show that you can meet each criteria. At this stage do not worry about writing something under every heading. Just do a quick pass thru. You should be able to come up with at least 6 good quality examples of lessons or activities you have coordinated in the classroom with students. If you are struggling to think of good examples, the templates that we provide have some good ideas that may help guide you.

Tip 3 – Use the SAO or STAR approach for each AITSL standard where possible

Government job application expect candidates to take either a SAO or STAR approach to answering criteria. What is this? Well, SAO is an acronym for Situation, Action, Outcome. STAR is an acronym for Situation, Task, Action, Response.

Essentially for each example that you have provided to demonstrate how you meet a criteria, you also need to specifically outline a scenario/situation, what action you took and how this had a positive outcome as a result. Personally I stick to the SAO approach as the STAR approach can make your responses sound quite wooden and forced.

Tip 4 – Do You Know the content and how to teach it?

Addressing this question also delves into the subheading: Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area

To respond to this AITSL question you need to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the concepts, substance and structure of the content and teaching strategies of the teaching area. Think about  whether you have any good examples of teaching strategies that you have used? Perhaps an example where you have designed a particularly interesting lesson? E.g. collecting samples of leaves, drawing different shapes, a fictional shopping lesson to use money, etc… In other words, a fun practical lesson that all the kids enjoyed and learned from.

Have you used any techniques to turn boring lessons into something more interesting? E.g. teaching statistics by performing a class survey of who likes kit kats, mars bars, etc… then compiling the results into a table and graph.

Summary

Writing an AITSL Cover Letter takes a lot of work and time. The end result, if done well, will make the difference between getting short-listed for your next Teaching job or not. If you are finding that writing an AITSL letter is taking up too much of your time, and that you are struggling, visit our Teachers templates page and Download a pre-written AITSL Cover Letter.

View our list of Teacher’s Resume templates and Teacher’s AITSL Cover Letter templates by clicking here.