"Classroom ready" ideology.

The solution to the great myth.

Cri·​sis

[ˈkrī-səs] noun

An unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending.

---

Photo by Irina Iriser on Unsplash

---

The great myth.

Australian educational discourse is plagued with “crisis” rhetoric.

There have been fears surrounding a writing crisis, literacy crisis, reading crisis, maths crisis, and even more recently a civics crisis (note that we do currently acknowledge the reality of a teacher workforce crisis).

Who isn’t sick of this word already?

The public have been led to believe that Australian education is at a tipping point, with NAPLAN and PISA data often cited in disingenuous ways to support the narrative of a failing education system. Data is cherry-picked, ignoring the contradictory evidence from other sources (e.g., TIMMS and creative thinking measures in PISA 2022).

We are told, over and over again, that our schools, and consequently our teachers, are doing our children and society a disservice.

This is one of the greatest current myths in education.

What is rarely acknowledged is that Australia’s academic performance has been relatively stable over the past sixteen years, yet the crisis rhetoric remains. This is arguably due to the effectiveness of crisis rhetoric in legitimising governmental reform upon education, which conveniently presents itself as a solution following the construction of an educational crisis. We see the analogy between this “crisis needs an extreme solution” rhetoric, similar to Naomi Klein’s ‘Shock Doctrine’. In her book, Klein outlines how agents use the existence of a crisis to introduce new and often highly ideological measures, which have been sitting in the waiting room, ready to be implemented when people have their guard down.

The scapegoat.

Although we challenge the very reality of an educational crisis as presented by politicians, prominent think tanks and the media, there are plenty who believe it.

For those who believe then, who is to blame for such an atrocity?

Historically in Australia, we blame teachers. We note that in many other non-PISA obsessed countries, when faced with similar or worse scores, no media attack on educators is present.

Should it be of any wonder that teachers and school leaders in Australia are experiencing increasing hostility from the community? Or that our teacher shortage is in large part to do with disrespect from not just the country at large, but parents in particular.

Whether it’s “faddish” teaching practices or teachers favouring ideology over “science”, teachers are constantly framed in the media as deficient or ideologically bankrupt.

Is this blame game not getting a little tired?

The focus has now moved from teachers (to some degree) to the teachers of teachers (also known as teacher educators), who are responsible for delivering initial teacher education (ITE) programs.

For what reason might you ask?

Apparently, universities aren’t doing a good enough job of constructing “classroom ready” teachers.

The solution? Further impositions upon ITE through a “science” of education, which ironically, is not very scientific.

When you hear ‘the science is settled’, be concerned.

Although there are many angles with which to critique the current mandates upon ITE programs, we will take some time here to problematise the ideological positioning of ITE as being tasked with creating the “classroom ready” teacher as a solution to Australia’s apparent educational crisis.

“Classroom ready” ideology.

An increasingly common ideological framing of ITE courses is to see their purpose as taking pre-service teachers (the raw material to be transformed) and processing them into “classroom ready” teachers (the finished product).

This framing is often coupled with cherry-picked anecdotal experiences of graduate teachers not feeling adequately prepared for the realities of teaching in Australian schools, to support the claim that ITE courses are not fulfilling their core purpose (to create “classroom ready” teachers).

Although there exists peer-review research that challenges the notion that Australian teachers are not preparing their pre-service teachers adequately enough, there is no denying that the challenges of teaching come as a shock to many once they first enter the classroom.

Certainly, teacher trainees should be concerned if their training does not adequately prepare teachers for day one of classes in their graduate year.

But we ask - could anything?

A one-year Master of Teaching is often as little as 8 hours per week x 36 weeks = 288 hours of classes (under the wild assumption students attend all their classes) and perhaps another 40 days of placements, which typically results in about 70 hours of total teaching. Under these circumstances should we expect people to be at the level of an experienced teacher on day one?

Graduates might well complain: “I didn’t know I had to be an expert at my second rodeo.”

We know and expect graduates to be the unfinished product, and yet we sometimes see schools giving first year teachers the hardest classes to teach.

Is anyone including that fact in their estimation of graduate teachers’ lack of preparedness?

More to the point, do graduates in other comparable industries feel the same way?

Could it be that in cognitively complex environments, short bursts of tertiary training can never fully prepare trainees for their first day on the job?

It certainly seems that in Australia and Aotearoa/NZ, nurses, lawyers, doctors, and IT workers all report feeling underprepared.

Have you ever heard of government imposition into the field of medicine or law in the same way that we have seen in education?

Teacher education is not without its issues, but to push reform upon the problematic notion that ITE courses must produce the “classroom ready” teacher is misguided and harmful.

Moreso, the belief that more government impositions upon ITE (such as the recent mandates of brain science) will improve teacher readiness is more likely contributing to the problems it wishes to address. Research has found that there is often a peak of efficacy early in a teacher’s career. Therefore, teacher training should be understood as an ongoing process, supporting teacher effectiveness throughout a practitioner’s career.

Teacher educators are not the enemy of education.

Teaching is a highly complex, context-dependent endeavour. A single year of training is unlikely to fully prepare anyone to do it. Criticising teacher educators for this is like criticising a doctor for the existence of disease - both are trying to improve a situation, they are not the cause of it.

Constantly obsessing over single-issue complaints as the silver bullet that explains all problems in K-12 education is wrongheaded. As with many things, a multifactorial explanation demands consideration.

There are broader issues at play for graduate teachers that extend far beyond the scope and control of ITE programs, which no level of brain science knowledge will help them with.

If there is a crisis to be solved, surely it involves discussion of educational segregation (in our unique tripartite system), teacher shortages, disengaged students, parent hostility, inadequate and unequal funding, and indeed questions over the very nature and purpose of education.

These are systemic and cultural issues that impact on the project of education.

If we simply seek to create “classroom ready” teachers, firstly, we will most likely fail. Secondly, we stand complicit in the perpetuation of the issues listed above that already exist within Australian education.

Our newest teachers are not just a product to be transformed. They are intelligent, professional actors with a stake in not just how teaching is currently done, but how it could be done even better.

By not considering the broader problems of education, we might be keeping the fire controlled, but it’s not going out.

Till next time,