campusreview. com. au
FACULTY FOCUS keep enrolling droves of students at ACU. The university’ s annual reports show that student enrolments in its teacher education faculty grew from 9543 in 2009, to 12,312 last year.
Meanwhile, professor Field Rickards, dean of the University of Melbourne’ s Melbourne Graduate School of Education, says higher standards could increase demand.
“ It’ s a clear message from the government that quality is important,” Rickards says.“ When governments make clear statements about the importance of education, the importance of teaching, the demand increases and the demand comes from more able applicants.”
Rickards sits down with Campus Review to discuss the proposed reforms and their likely ramifications.
CR: Speaking broadly, what are your thoughts on these reforms in Victoria?
FR: Having seen the initial media release about them, I concur with all of them. This is a government that’ s saying education is important, and so is the initial training of teachers. I can see that it’ s just one part of the whole lot of reforms that will be required to reverse the downward trend we have been observing over the last 12 to 15 years in the performance of Australian students on the international stage, but that’ s a separate story.
It’ s time, and in some ways this follows on from the ministerial advisory group that then-education minister [ Christopher ] Pyne set up a couple of years ago, and his report was about preparing quality teachers for the workforce.
A big part of the reforms is an ATAR cut-off of 70 from 2019. Do you think ATAR thresholds will attract the highest-quality students suited to teacher education, or just those who get a good ATAR? Two things. Firstly, it’ s necessary; it aligns us with the sorts of cohorts that come into teacher education in Singapore, Finland and other countries that perform well on the international stage in terms of student outcomes. Secondly, it sends a clear message from the government that quality is important. When governments make clear statements about the importance of education and teaching, the demand, in fact, increases and comes from more able applicants.
In our case, we’ re a graduate entry program. It’ s quite sensitive to the rhetoric and policies of governments, because if you already have a degree, you’ re already in a profession, you’ re less likely to change profession from what you’ re in to teaching if you don’ t believe you’ re going to get high-level support from the highest levels of government, at a national level or a state level. There is no doubt in my mind putting this signal out will say to highly able people:‘ We need you.’
Among the reforms is a new test for would-be teachers that assesses their personality. Would you support this step? I’ m 100 per cent behind it because at the University of Melbourne, we’ ve been doing it for four years. We have developed a test we call the Teacher Capability Assessment Test. We’ re interested in teachers’ capabilities, both cognitive and non-cognitive. By non-cognitive, I’ m talking about things like resilience, collaboration and communication, positive outlooks, ethical positions, positions on issues of equity and so on. You might be the brightest person in the world, but if you can’ t interface with the people you’ re teaching and for whom you are enhancing learning, then the message won’ t get across.
This is what I call a clinical profession, it deals with the wellbeing of individuals. In our case, it’ s not fixing a problem, it’ s enhancing development, understanding, knowledge and so on.
It’ s an essential test, and of course other professions do it. Law does it and medicine does it for the same sorts of reasons I just outlined for teaching. We want people who are both highly intelligent and have the right personal attributes to inspire and promote learning in young students.
Greg Craven from the Australian Catholic University has said these reforms will lead to teacher workforce shortages. What do you think of that? I don’ t agree with [ such comments ] because we’ ve already got an over-supply. We’ re training so many more teachers than what the demand is at the moment. That’ s the first thing.
The second thing goes back to my initial argument that if governments say this is important and take some real steps, I believe it will increase demand. Looking back, for example, before Kevin Rudd became prime minister, when he was in opposition, he talked about an education revolution. And the spike, or the increase in demand for our graduate programs was dramatic. That’ s just one indicator and it’ s not pure science to say there’ s a cause and effect there, but I’ ve seen those trends, those fluctuations, and even now there have been such discussion about low ATARs over the last year or two or three, and you see the drop in demand because highly able people say:‘ Why would I get into a profession where you don’ t need to be a highly abled person to get into it?’
A recent report from professor Peter Shergold and the Higher Education Standards Panel, which looked into ATAR, concluded that scores are linked to your postcode and that people from lower socioeconomic areas often get lower ATARs. Do you think these reforms could hinder smart and bright students from such areas who could potentially be good teachers? The first thing I’ ll say is people from disadvantaged backgrounds usually, when they’ re coming to an undergraduate program, particularly at this university, get a weighting that recognises that.
The second thing is we still need bright people coming into teaching, and I recognise the challenges there are in rural and regional areas but in this set of reforms, there are two areas that address the issue.
The first is providing scholarships to students from regional areas so they can come into Victorian universities. Those scholarships will be based on both cognitive and non-cognitive abilities without being tested that way. The second thing is they are establishing a new rural teaching academy for professional practice in Gippsland to improve teacher quality by giving student teachers in regional backgrounds hands-on professional development.
So recognising the complexity there, and in fact our own graduate school has just entered into a major partnership with the Catholic education office in the eastern parts of Victoria to build the capabilities of existing teachers. We have 90 new teachers next year being enrolled in a program to enhance their capabilities. There are other ways of developing the capabilities of teachers in rural areas than just to say:‘ Well let’ s take kids from low ATARs in regional areas so they can go back to regional areas.’ It seems to me we would continue recycling the disadvantage. We want to break that cycle. ■
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