Specialist Teacher (Vision Impairment)
What the work is
Promotes and supports equity, inclusion, learning and wellbeing of students who are blind or have low vision, deaf-blindness or multiple disability, by building teacher capacity and student strengths, and by promoting evidence-based practices across all aspects of the curriculum and learning environment.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Supports and promotes inclusion and equitable access, participation and engagement of vision impaired students in education and learning
- Works in a multidisciplinary team with students, parents and carers, teachers, school learning and support staff, eye health and allied health professionals, and other stakeholders
- Supports teachers to develop learning plans, and provides reasonable adjustments to the curriculum, teaching and learning strategies, assessment, educational materials and the learning environment for vision impaired students
- Supports student acquisition of vision-specific skills, including skills in compensatory access to information, communication and literacy, sensory efficiency, technology, orientation and mobility, independent living, social interaction, recreation and leisure, career education and self-determination
- Provides information and professional learning for school staff on evidence-based best practices in education for students with blindness and low vision
- Supports school staff in interpreting assessments and recommendations for clinical and functional eye health, literacy and learning media, and optical and assistive technology for learning
- Facilitates the timely provision of textbooks and instructional materials in alternative formats, including braille, large print and digital/audio
- Contributes to school documentation of vision impaired student information
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a support class inside a primary school, working with students who learn in different ways. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A student who has struggled to read for years reads a sentence aloud and looks up at you
- A strategy you built for one child gets picked up by the whole class
- A parent who has been worried for years sees their child join in at school
Hard days
- A day where every plan you made meets a child who needs something quite different
- Writing plans and reports that take hours away from the children
- A meeting where adults disagree about what is best for a student, and you are in the middle
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 251432, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.