Thank you Ben and Tom, I read some of John O'Neill's work 10 yrs ago and it seemed to describe another aspect of this:
"The discourse seeks to portray the public sector as ‘ineffective, unresponsive, sloppy, risk-averse and innovation-resistant’ yet at the same time it promotes celebration of public sector 'heroes' of reform and new kinds of public sector 'excellence'. Relatedly, Mintrom (2000) has written persuasively in the American context, of the way in which ‘policy entrepreneurs’ position themselves politically to champion, shape and benefit from school reform discourses."
Don't get me started on this insane neoliberal belief that public sector = bad, private sector = good. The private sector is great at taking risks because when it fails spectacularly the government steps in to save the day (e.g. the GFC). And how is the experience of seeing a public organisation, the US Federal Government, being run by a crony-capitalist? Not great.
One of our daughters is a doctor. Her graduation was a great day. After graduating she was now entitled to use the title 'Dr' before her name. But she couldn't do much by herself. First, she had to complete two years as an intern where she was closely supervised. Then two years as a resident where she was able to treat relatively straightforward conditions. And so it went.
No one seems to be calling out for medical schools to produce 'patient-ready' doctors. Such a concept would be laughable.
The same general scenario applies to engineers, architects, lawyers, and software engineers amongst many other professions.
Then we could look at trades. To be qualified the potential tradesperson has to complete a four-year apprenticeship. The vast majority of the training is done 'on the job' where maybe one day per week is spent at 'school'.
There are a few instances where teachers come out of ITE 'classroom-ready' but they are indeed few. Some prospective teachers just seem to have 'the gift' but most don't.
Instead of calling for ITE to produce 'classroom-ready' teachers we need to radically rethink how we prepare candidates to become fully independent teachers.
The concept of throwing them into the classroom in their first year is clearly a remnant from days gone by that needs to be discarded completely.
Love this analogy so much! Teachers are supposed to have a graduate year with a lower load and lots of mentor support but anecdotally, that just isn't the case (it certainly wasn't for me).
WIth the throwing them in the deep end... another good point. I wonder whether if it wasn't such an issue in days gone by because there wasn't a laser focus obsession about teacher quality in the early years. The scrutiny on teachers, teaching and schools is out of control.
Great comments here Chris, appreciate you sharing the story of your daughter. When certain groups (think SoL) like to use medicine as an analogy for how education should look (although I see problems with this in general), it is interesting that these kinds of contrasts are omitted.
Like we say here, mandating brain science is not going to solve the problem if the problem is that teachers are expected to be “classroom ready” by the time they finish their course.
Something more akin to your daughters experience in medicine might prove to be much more valuable in achieving such an aim.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Tom. It's nudged me to think that classroom ready is policy under stealth to make out-of-field teaching as well as one's in-field load the norm. I'm not hearing in the phrase 'classroom ready' that teaching graduates are content experts and have expertise in the pedagogy to teach that content (and the rest of the TPACK diagram). But yes, that whole idea of being an expert once you flind your mortar board to the sky is crazy.
such an excellent point about teaching out of field! A huge percentage of Australian classrooms are in this situation. I myself was denied the opportunity to do an elective subject in my teaching degree that would've helped me to teach literacy – because I had never done literature at university. and then I spent a lot of time teaching literacy " out of field".
What do you think of an apprenticeship model for teacher training?
Indeed, I find this especially in the maths and science disciplines. There is this weird assumption that teachers is specific fields can/want to/care about teaching in others.
Thank you Margaret for sharing your thoughts here, I believe that you might be closer to the truth than you think. I’m thinking especially in mathematics teaching, where in Victoria we’re seeing increasing moves towards standardisation, slide decks, and technician-type pedagogies. Rather than considering the policy decisions leading to the place we currently find ourselves, we’re placing hope in mandating specific pedagogy to save teaching.
We here in Aotearoa New Zealand also have the same "trends" of crisis narratives being fostered & spread about our education. It does NOT help when those who are most receptive to starkly written headlines don't bother reading the article. 🤦♀️
I just looked up PISA rankings; in 2022, Auzzy's overall Ranking was No11 in the world while NZ's was No13.
Not bad! always room for improvement I've course, but hardly a crisis.
PISA is one of the most over-interpreted and inappropriately used pieces of large scale assessment data around. I'd also wager it hasn't been used to improve education. How could you even prove such a thing. Looking at the changes from 2018-2022 there's no obvious trend...
Singapore: +10
China: -131 (this entire inclusion is nonsense because it is just large metropolitan areas on the east coast)
Japan: +39
Taiwan: N/A
South Korea: +11
Hong Kong: N/A
Estonia: -32
Canada: -31
Ireland: -2
Switzerland: 0
Australia: -5
Finland: -64
----
Factor in the studying culture of e.g. Singapore and Japan... Are Australian families willing to put their kids through what they do in SE Asia, to hopefully prop up PISA scores so our Education Minister can brag?
“I'd also wager it hasn't been used to improve education”
I find the most frustrating comment about such measure are comments like “if we didn’t have the measure we wouldn’t know”, even if there is little evidence for the value of such measures.
Thank you Ben and Tom, I read some of John O'Neill's work 10 yrs ago and it seemed to describe another aspect of this:
"The discourse seeks to portray the public sector as ‘ineffective, unresponsive, sloppy, risk-averse and innovation-resistant’ yet at the same time it promotes celebration of public sector 'heroes' of reform and new kinds of public sector 'excellence'. Relatedly, Mintrom (2000) has written persuasively in the American context, of the way in which ‘policy entrepreneurs’ position themselves politically to champion, shape and benefit from school reform discourses."
Don't get me started on this insane neoliberal belief that public sector = bad, private sector = good. The private sector is great at taking risks because when it fails spectacularly the government steps in to save the day (e.g. the GFC). And how is the experience of seeing a public organisation, the US Federal Government, being run by a crony-capitalist? Not great.
It seems that somehow John O’Neill travelled to the future to see what ABC and the SMH were publishing! 😮
Spot on.
I think about other professions/trades.
One of our daughters is a doctor. Her graduation was a great day. After graduating she was now entitled to use the title 'Dr' before her name. But she couldn't do much by herself. First, she had to complete two years as an intern where she was closely supervised. Then two years as a resident where she was able to treat relatively straightforward conditions. And so it went.
No one seems to be calling out for medical schools to produce 'patient-ready' doctors. Such a concept would be laughable.
The same general scenario applies to engineers, architects, lawyers, and software engineers amongst many other professions.
Then we could look at trades. To be qualified the potential tradesperson has to complete a four-year apprenticeship. The vast majority of the training is done 'on the job' where maybe one day per week is spent at 'school'.
There are a few instances where teachers come out of ITE 'classroom-ready' but they are indeed few. Some prospective teachers just seem to have 'the gift' but most don't.
Instead of calling for ITE to produce 'classroom-ready' teachers we need to radically rethink how we prepare candidates to become fully independent teachers.
The concept of throwing them into the classroom in their first year is clearly a remnant from days gone by that needs to be discarded completely.
Love this analogy so much! Teachers are supposed to have a graduate year with a lower load and lots of mentor support but anecdotally, that just isn't the case (it certainly wasn't for me).
WIth the throwing them in the deep end... another good point. I wonder whether if it wasn't such an issue in days gone by because there wasn't a laser focus obsession about teacher quality in the early years. The scrutiny on teachers, teaching and schools is out of control.
Great comments here Chris, appreciate you sharing the story of your daughter. When certain groups (think SoL) like to use medicine as an analogy for how education should look (although I see problems with this in general), it is interesting that these kinds of contrasts are omitted.
Like we say here, mandating brain science is not going to solve the problem if the problem is that teachers are expected to be “classroom ready” by the time they finish their course.
Something more akin to your daughters experience in medicine might prove to be much more valuable in achieving such an aim.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Tom. It's nudged me to think that classroom ready is policy under stealth to make out-of-field teaching as well as one's in-field load the norm. I'm not hearing in the phrase 'classroom ready' that teaching graduates are content experts and have expertise in the pedagogy to teach that content (and the rest of the TPACK diagram). But yes, that whole idea of being an expert once you flind your mortar board to the sky is crazy.
such an excellent point about teaching out of field! A huge percentage of Australian classrooms are in this situation. I myself was denied the opportunity to do an elective subject in my teaching degree that would've helped me to teach literacy – because I had never done literature at university. and then I spent a lot of time teaching literacy " out of field".
What do you think of an apprenticeship model for teacher training?
Indeed, I find this especially in the maths and science disciplines. There is this weird assumption that teachers is specific fields can/want to/care about teaching in others.
Thank you Margaret for sharing your thoughts here, I believe that you might be closer to the truth than you think. I’m thinking especially in mathematics teaching, where in Victoria we’re seeing increasing moves towards standardisation, slide decks, and technician-type pedagogies. Rather than considering the policy decisions leading to the place we currently find ourselves, we’re placing hope in mandating specific pedagogy to save teaching.
We here in Aotearoa New Zealand also have the same "trends" of crisis narratives being fostered & spread about our education. It does NOT help when those who are most receptive to starkly written headlines don't bother reading the article. 🤦♀️
I just looked up PISA rankings; in 2022, Auzzy's overall Ranking was No11 in the world while NZ's was No13.
Not bad! always room for improvement I've course, but hardly a crisis.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scores-by-country
PISA is one of the most over-interpreted and inappropriately used pieces of large scale assessment data around. I'd also wager it hasn't been used to improve education. How could you even prove such a thing. Looking at the changes from 2018-2022 there's no obvious trend...
Singapore: +10
China: -131 (this entire inclusion is nonsense because it is just large metropolitan areas on the east coast)
Japan: +39
Taiwan: N/A
South Korea: +11
Hong Kong: N/A
Estonia: -32
Canada: -31
Ireland: -2
Switzerland: 0
Australia: -5
Finland: -64
----
Factor in the studying culture of e.g. Singapore and Japan... Are Australian families willing to put their kids through what they do in SE Asia, to hopefully prop up PISA scores so our Education Minister can brag?
“I'd also wager it hasn't been used to improve education”
I find the most frustrating comment about such measure are comments like “if we didn’t have the measure we wouldn’t know”, even if there is little evidence for the value of such measures.
Yeag good point. Those countries are even worse than us when it comes to metal health for youth, but that's a whole can of worms.
I really appreciated this article, Mate 🙏
Indeed. The assumption that we should do what other countries do because it gets good PISA results is incredibly flawed.
We need to interrogate these from cultural and value positions before making such decisions.
Nah we just need to keep doing the Steven Bradbury technique... worked in 2022... worsen other countries' education results so our look better XD