Gaslighting teachers.
Concerning policy parallels in New Zealand and Australia.
Telling people what to do in education isn’t an exercise in power; it is an exercise in futility - Adrian Piccoli
Changes in the educational policy landscape in Australia indicate a movement away from a respect and trust in teacher agency and professional judgment towards mandating standardised approaches by “experts” in an effort to secure teacher “quality”.
It can be very easy to become concerned with these moves in your own backyard - so to speak - totally unaware of the parallel experiences of other teachers and educators around the world.
After connecting earlier this year through Substack (Sarah writes CuriosityCreator), we found a common experience in relation to what we felt was happening in educational policy and discourse in our two contexts.
The purpose of this collaborative post (which may lead to a series of posts) is to highlight some concerning parallels between current educational discourse and policy reform in New Zealand and Australia.
What has become clear to us - as critical observers of educational discourse in our respective countries - is the fundamentally ideological nature of such discourse and reforms that prioritise measurable outcomes, standardisation and a narrow conception of education.
Let’s begin.
Australia.
Politicians and policymakers in Australia seem to be becoming increasingly deaf to the important voices of teachers and educators across the country.
As a recent example, the Victoria Department of Education has marketed a purportedly “shared” vision developed by “Victorian students, families, teachers and school leaders”, yet how this vision has been co-created is opaque at best.
Curriculum reform in New South Wales has been accused of “gaslighting” teacher expertise in favour of pre-packaged curriculum materials, even if such materials are an ineffective way of “addressing the real issues behind current education challenges” (Cairns, Weinmann and McKnight, 2024, p. 11).
The newly elected Northern Territory government has ignored an alarming decline of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander teachers in 2024 and chosen to instead introduce expensive Student Attendance Officers (SAOs) with the power to issue fines of $370 to parents who fail to send their children to school. These measures will disproportionately impact on indigenous students, who make up more than 40% of students in Northern Territory schools and fly in the face of what teachers require to support their indigenous communities.
We have also seen in response to issues of challenging behaviour in Australian schools, rather than acknowledge the invaluable experience of teachers “on the ground” and asking what they need, outsider “gurus” are flown in to provide advice that we already know.
New Zealand.
In New Zealand, similar patterns have emerged, particularly with the rollout of mandated literacy and numeracy programs.
Despite a clear message from teachers about what they need to do their job effectively, teacher expertise is being sidelined by government-led "structured" pedagogies, especially in literacy and numeracy.
Minister Erica Stanford’s recent comments reflect this as she aligns her policies with structured learning approaches, despite the teachers’ call for more autonomy.
The frustration among teachers is evident in interviews and opinion pieces critiquing the one-size-fits-all approach.
Why is this a problem?
Whilst Australia and New Zealand both continue to wrestle with the real problem of teacher shortages, the ideological response by politicians has been to ignore the important voices of teachers and impose more policy control upon teacher practice by mandating specific pedagogical approaches.
This is worrying, considering recent research that highlights that the number one factor impacting on teacher retention and wellbeing is related to teacher agency.
These national policy agendas in education arguably follow what England has implemented over the past decade and how are teachers going over there?
There is another way to improve education, but it won’t come from gaslighting teachers.
Till next time,
References
Cairns, R., Weinmann, M., & McKnight, L. (2024). ‘Solving’ the curriculum resource ‘problem’? A critical policy analysis. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2024.2398648
 | A guest post by
|