FACULTY FOCUS
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is so much more information about schools
and teaching available in the public domain.
Some of this information is not based on
sound research, yet it can be quite influential
in shaping opinions about what teachers
should or should not be doing in classrooms.
Everyone knows of, or has a personal
story of, the teacher that is not doing their
job; sadly, this is often conflated to mean all
teachers – or particularly new teachers, when
this is clearly not the case.
I think the other factor is that schooling
– its outcomes for children and young
people – is seen so much more as a ‘high
stakes’ activity. Teachers play a pivotal role in
achieving education outcomes. But teaching
workforces are large and complex. I think
there is an attractive simplicity in the idea that
if we get the new teachers ‘right’, we can fix
the profession overall.
While this might sound like a good solution
to a difficult problem, it is not the most
strategic or practicable way of looking at the
problem – particularly when you realise that
new teachers make up only a small fraction
of the overall teaching workforce. New
teachers work in schools with colleagues
who are at all stages of their careers – and
all of them deserve and need support to
ensure that all young people can learn in an
education system that works for them.
Your book also argues that politicians have
played a part in stirring up the hysteria
over a broken system to put a check on
progressive education.
It’s perhaps more accurate to say that policy
changes – driven by politicians and key
stakeholders – have created conditions that
have had intended and unintended outcomes
which we are only learning about over time.
In our book, a number of Australian and
international authors raise this problem of a
‘manufactured crisis’ in our schools and the
potentially damaging impacts this ‘politics of
derision’ can have on the way people view
schools and the teaching profession.
This is not to say that our schools and
teachers are perfect – there’s always
room for improvement. However, this
improvement is more likely to be realised if
we start from the premise of what is great
about our schools and the work of teachers
and build on this foundation.
Education as a key policy area for
governments has always been a contested
space, and when there are differences of
opinion about the causes of the problem
(e.g. the nature of the curriculum offered
in schools), people will cast around for
individuals and places to lay blame and
for targets to remedy the problem as they
perceive it.
What is sometimes absent from these
debates is a critical understanding of the
problem in all its complexity, a willingness
to look for quality evidence from a range of
sources to understand and point to potential
solutions, and then a willingness to give time
to facilitate genuine attempts at change.
One of the book’s contributors, Barbara
Preston, proposes that we need to disrupt the
traditional career pathway for teachers if we
want them to stick around. Can you provide a
brief overview of her argument?
Many new graduates begin their working
lives as casual or replacement teachers.
Barbara argues that rather than relying on
new graduates to undertake what is often
complex, challenging work, we need to
‘professionalise’ this work. By that she
means creating forms of permanent casual
employment that are more attractive to the
more senior experienced teachers (e.g. as
part of the strategy to extend the careers of
teachers as they gradually transition from full-
time employment into retirement), who by
virtue of their experience are better equipped
to meet the demands of working across
schools and years of schooling.
What Barbara is also arguing for is the
consideration of strategies like this in a
context where we also work to improve
workforce planning for the profession,
establish clearer understandings of what a
graduate teacher (as opposed to a teacher
who is deemed to be at the proficient career
stage) might be employed to do, and take a
critical look at the mix of different forms of
employment needed by schools.
The Grattan Institute’s Orange Book from
April this year calls for a minimum ATAR
of 80 for teacher education degrees. It also
proposes that there should be penalties
for universities that produce low-quality
teachers. How would you respond?
Taking the last point first, it’s been recognised
for a long time now that the challenge of
preparing teachers for the profession is a
shared responsibility between the profession
and universities. All universities are required
under the terms of the accreditation of their
teacher education programs to work in
partnership with schools to ensure that their
graduates meet the standards required to
work as a graduate teacher.
Partnerships with school and schooling
systems are vital to ensure that the
professional experience components of
teacher education programs (there are
compulsory numbers of days that must be
spent working in schools during a teaching
degree) are of the highest quality.
The ATAR on its own has not been
designed to contribute specific information
about a candidate’s motivation or capacity
to be a teacher. This is why reforms under
the direction of the Australian Institute
for Teaching and School Leadership now
require providers of Initial Teacher Education
degrees to include an assessment of
the non-academic capabilities as part of
the application process for prospective
applicants for teaching degrees. In addition,
graduating teachers also need to complete
an assessment demonstrating their capacities
to meet the graduate teacher standards and
that their personal literacy and numeracy
capabilities are within the top 30 per cent of
the adult population.
Reforms such as these have been
implemented over the past few years and we
are now only beginning to see the outcomes
from this work. I would argue that along
with other reforms at state and territory
levels, universities, in partnership with the
profession, are graduating teachers who
have demonstrated their abilities to meet the
standards to work as graduate teachers in
ways that we have not seen in the past.
We should be celebrating the achievements
of these graduates.
When early career teachers are sent to teach
in rural or remote schools, this is often
viewed as: ‘Do your time in the backwater
and one day you’ll be able to teach in a fancy
metropolitan school’. How do we change this
discriminatory narrative?
As Simone White argues in our book, one of
the key ways to changing this narrative is to
challenge the idea that schools in rural and
remote areas are the ‘poor second cousins’
of their city-based counterparts.
Schools in rural and remote areas can offer
rich sites for the development of teachers
across their careers. As workplaces, their size
and location can afford opportunities that
may not be available in the city.
For example, schools in rural and remote
areas often have smaller staff complements;
this means that teachers may have access
to leadership roles and opportunities to
undertake work that would not necessarily
be available to them in city-based schools. ■
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