VC’ s corner
Please be advised
The upcoming taskforce on preparing educators aims for a practical approach to getting results. By Greg Craven
One of the things that strikes me as I get older is that answers seem to be fewer and fewer and questions seem to become more abundant. One of the perennial questions is about what we can do to improve the quality of the much-beleaguered teaching profession. The search for an answer seems to have sustained public policy discussion and a good number of journalists’ careers over the last few years.
Universities have a range of faculties, of which education is usually just one small part. At Australian Catholic University, however, education is central to our mission as a Catholic institution and, given our history, the very reason for our existence. As the vice-chancellor of one of the largest producers of teaching graduates in Australia – if not the largest – I am particularly committed to a system that produces teachers of the highest quality.
In February, I was appointed head of the government’ s review of teacher education. This was the latest development in the most recent round of debates on teacher education, which began in July 2012 with the release of NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli’ s paper Great Teaching, Inspired Learning.
As debate has raged and blame has been assigned over the past couple of years, ACU has argued strongly on three main points in relation to teacher education and workforce needs.
The first is that policymakers need to focus their attention on the output of universities, rather than the input. Too much of the debate about teacher quality focuses on input measures like ATARs rather than the role universities play in adding value to a student’ s knowledge. The ATAR does not measure knowledge, skills, aptitude or intellect. It is merely a rank, and when applied to university courses, a measure of supply and demand.
Perhaps even more troubling, a number does not measure passion, commitment, communication skills, compassion, enthusiasm, ethics or social disadvantage – to name a few attributes that could help or hinder a student or a teacher in the wider world.
Furthermore, our experience is that once in university, high- and low-entry students perform similarly; and in many instances students with lower entry scores perform as well as, if not better than, students who entered on higher grades.
It may surprise some to learn that I was not always of this view. I spent most of my teaching career in the law school at the University of Melbourne, which I myself had attended, and where I was faced by nothing but students with elite scores, drawn mainly from elite schools and elite suburbs. Into my mid-30s, subsisting in this privileged bubble, I could not imagine quality students who would become quality lawyers without stellar Year 12 scores.
Sadly, experience has a habit of undermining youthful confidence. My later university teaching
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