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FACULTY FOCUS
that using such a test to decide who is able
to become a teacher was simply not fair,
or valid.
In the UK, they had a similar test, but
recently decided to explore other ways to
assess these skills. Therefore, I’m unsure
why Australia has pushed on with this, but I
do think it’s a little bit about the investment
they’ve already put into the test.
So, can it be easily fixed? As a solution,
however, I think that literacy and numeracy
skills can and should be developed
through university programs. Their key
business in a teacher education program
is to develop teachers for the profession,
so they are best suited to actually ensure
teacher quality.
I know that at Monash there are a range
of free courses for students to help them
develop further their literacy and numeracy
skills. As one of the participants in my study
argued, if teacher education programs
have a teacher candidate for four years and
they leave without the needed literacy and
numeracy skills to be a successful teacher
in the classroom, there’s something wrong
with the program, not necessarily with
the student.
I think another concern about the
LANTITE is who profits most from this,
because it’s definitely not the teacher
candidate. I have major concerns that a
third party company, ACER, is ultimately
making final decisions on who can be
a teacher.
An article in the Sydney Morning Herald
stated that ACER received about a
$1 billion tender to develop the test,
and they are receiving up to $3.7
million a year in revenue. This all comes
from students paying for the test. In
addition to this, a market has emerged.
There’s tutoring, there’s textbooks, and
so on, all of which teacher candidates
must pay for.
One thing that Monash said early on was
that all education students must take the
LANTITE in their first year. Unfortunately,
however, there are some universities that
are taking the tuition and the teacher
candidates are unable to graduate
due to the LANTITE. This raises major
ethical concerns.
The solution to this is to put the teacher
candidates first. If we want to ensure
teacher and teaching quality in schools,
we might try to invest in developing
and supporting our teacher candidates
in teacher education programs, rather
than just looking at them as ways to
make money.
Ultimately, I think it should be teacher
education programs that are accountable
for producing students who have strong
literacy and numeracy skills. I think
they should be effectively managing
the minimum entry requirements, and
developing courses that really and truly
support their development to being
quality teachers.
The LANTITE is a quick and easy
solution, but the real solution lies within
ensuring that teacher education programs
are of high quality. I think we are so lucky to
have some excellent programs in Australia,
but I don’t necessarily think that this is true
across the board.
One of the key issues with the test is the fact
that you seem to get no feedback. Isn’t this
diametrically opposed to good teaching
practice?
The interesting thing is it uses a kind of
modelling that’s not based on which
questions you get right. It’s a much
more complicated system and therefore
they actually don’t find out what they’ve
missed: they get some kind of feedback,
but not really intense feedback. It’s
interesting that we’re actually trying to
measure teacher quality in terms that we
would never do for our own students,
that we would rely so heavily on such a
summative test.
One of the arguments that the Facebook
LANTITE group makes is that the
government is implicitly calling more
experienced teachers inept, because
they needed to introduce this measure to
create “quality” teachers. Do you think that
implication can be made?
I’m not quite sure. I think it’s actually
much more simplified than that. I think
they just wanted a policy solution, and
LANTITE was a quick and easy way to
do that. Particularly because they relied
on this third-party external view to
develop the test.
Obviously, we don’t know what the
government really intended, but I’m not
sure if they were looking at it from a
holistic idea of both teacher education
programs and teachers within the field.
But I do think that because they’ve used
this policy solution, it leaves a lot of
systematic issues or concerns surrounding
teacher education.
I think it should be teacher
education programs that are
accountable for producing
students who have strong
literacy and numeracy skills.
When we look at results like NAPLAN and
PISA in recent years, the LANTITE doesn’t
seem to have fulfilled its intention. Would
you agree or disagree with that?
Well, the thing is we don’t actually really
know. I think some of the numbers
coming out were that 95 per cent were
passing the test, which raises the question,
‘Well, why have it?’ And if the 5 per cent,
aren’t, what are the reasons why they’re
not passing?
LANTITE is about literacy and numeracy
skills, and ultimately they want to make a
connection between improving students’
literacy and numeracy skills. But I think
that’s quite a simple way to look at it. I don’t
think that that relationship will be very easy
to argue.
I think that LANTITE could be a very
good diagnostic tool, but I honestly think
that if we want to develop teachers that
can help students achieve it’s much more
complicated than just focusing on literacy
and numeracy skills.
If we think about the [recent disruptions
to education] we relied heavily on
having educators that were flexible
and willing to learn a range of online
systems. So, the question is, should we be
testing those skills? And if so, how? Do we
test it by another standardised test? I just
think that there are so many attributes
of teacher quality. How do we decide
which ones are tested and which are
more important?
It’s very simplified to say if our teachers
have these particular literacy and numeracy
skills, then our students will have strong
skills as displayed in NAPLAN and PISA.
It’ll be really interesting to see if we have
any of that data. But my assumption is
that there won’t be a relationship. I think
that we’re going to have to look beyond
just literacy and numeracy skills. And I
think that honestly, teacher education
programs should be at the forefront
of this and really thinking about, ‘Well,
what is a quality teacher, and how do
we develop them?’ ■
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