Australian Education Review Building quality in teaching and AER Number: 61 teacher education Building quality in teaching and teacher education Nan Bahr with Suzanne Mellor Australian Council for Educational Research Australian Education Review Building quality in teaching and teacher education Nan Bahr with Suzanne Mellor Australian Council for Educational Research First published 2016 by ACER Press Australian Council for Educational Research 19 Prospect Hill Road, Camberwell, Victoria, 3124 Copyright © 2016 Australian Council for Educational Research All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Copyright Act 1968 of Australia and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers. Series Editor: Suzanne Mellor Copy edited by Margaret Trudgeon Typeset by ACER Creative Services Printed by BPA Print Group National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Creator: Bahr, Nanette Margaret author. Title: Building quality in teaching and teacher education / Nan Bahr, Suzanne Mellor. ISBN: 9781742864068 (paperback) Series: Australian education review ; 61. Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Subjects: Teachers —Training of—Australia. Teachers—Attitudes—Australia. Teacher effectiveness—Australia—Evaluation. Effective teaching—Australia—Evaluation. Other Creators/Contributors: Mellor, Suzanne, author. Australian Council for Educational Research, issuing body. Dewey Number: 370.71194 Visit our website: www.acer.edu.au/aer Acknowledgements for contribution to cover image: Joy Reynolds Foreword In the midst of rapidly-changing work environments that are driven by innovation, workers in Australia are expected to continually adapt and keep up with new information and practices. Workers within the teaching profession are no different. Teaching is a profession that is beset by changes due to a constant re-conceptualisation and restructuring of education, based oft times on political whim or positioning, placing demands on teachers and teacher educators to develop new knowledge and skills in being responsive to such expectations. Additionally, teachers’ work today is multifaceted as they undertake matters associated with curriculum, students, parents, the school community, economic and societal crises as well as government initiatives. ‘These are tough times to be a teacher’ (Smylie, 1999, p59). The publication of this AER is timely as it contemplates and reviews this whole landscape, positions itself most firmly in relation to the issues, and indicates a need for more attention be paid to the ways that can lead to the making of quality teachers. Clearly, the professions of teaching and teacher educators are coming under increasing critique from all sectors of the community. Not much of this critique is evidence based and yet the question about the quality of teachers in Australia continues to permeate the political landscape. Ministers of Education across Australia are continually raising anecdotal cases of students who fail as a result of seemingly poor or inappropriate teaching. Parents continuously demand more of schools to compensate for the inadequacies of families and social agencies in meeting the demands of children in crisis. The media is flooded with alarming stories of children who are ‘out of control’. On reflection, teachers and teacher educators are called on more and more to enact new ways of engagement to ‘save our society’ from our children (Aspland, 2011). On examination it is easy to see that teaching has become a difficult profession, both nationally and internationally in western civilisations. As a consequence, the challenges for teacher educators are seriously complex. Like other domains within industry, education is no longer sure and certain. Ways of understanding and being in the world of teaching and education are continually shifting, and teachers are learning to live with uncertainty and complexity. It is vastly different from when many teachers were prepared to enter the profession some thirty or forty years ago and yet, it could be argued that the education system has not really undergone serious structural change during the same period of time. It is true that many innovations have been implemented at the micro levels of schooling and teacher development. However, at the macro level of reform, education systems and teacher education institutions do not reflect the changing dynamics of other sectors such as business or industry. In fact in response to such uncertainty, governments in Australia have increased levels of regulation iii in both schools and universities, ostensibly in the interests of enhancing teacher quality. The correlation between regulation of the profession and enhanced quality outcomes for students is highly contestable. With fruitful economic reform in Australia, school graduates are well placed to engage in education that promises a successful career pathway and employment opportunities. However, the world ahead of them is fraught with diverse and differentiated career pathways, with many Australians undertaking up to five career changes in a lifetime. It is significant at this point to ask the question as to whether schools are facilitating learning pathways that compliment this diversity. Further, are teacher education programs preparing teachers for such a challenge? It is evident that the new work order is demanding a very different type of worker: one that is self-initiated and collaborative; responsive and reactive; is able to interface with technology and communicate and is capable of creating new social identities. Has the school curriculum undergone a process of differentiation in such a way as is necessary to develop these qualities in our school leavers? Has teacher education been responsive to such a shift in teacher preparation? It can be argued that instead of opening up the space for innovative thinking about the future roles of teachers, governments have done the reverse. With the introduction of national set professional standards for teachers, teachers’ roles have been constrained into a set of competency-like behaviors that dictate the knowledge and capacities required to become a teacher. How this reductionist approach to dictating the quality of teachers is likely to enhance the education of young people is a debate that is currently underway in Australia. This review paper engages constructively with many aspects of this ‘debate’. Learning within the institutions of schools and universities can be problematic for both students and teachers, as they are challenged by far ranging agendas that intersect with curriculum content, pedagogy and assessment. While some students in classrooms may feel totally at ease with their teaching and learning interactions in traditional educational settings, many experience a bifurcated world while attending school. This bifurcation can be lived out in many ways. Some school students may comply and live out the expectations of their teachers and school administrators, despite them being incongruent with their own ideals in relation to learning. Other students, as we know, live out the incongruences through disruptions, non-compliance, disrespectful engagement and disconnection. It is clear to most practicing teachers and principals that the econo-scape, the edu-scape and the reality of schooling is fraught with tensions, uncertainty and incongruencies that are leaving many stakeholders – teachers, students and parents – feeling disengaged, demoralized and trivialized within education. The confluence of educational regulation, marketisation, newly-invigorated testing regimes, and declining investments in education clearly exacerbate the situation in the context of Australia. In this context teachers and teacher educators are privy to multiple change agendas. These include the following: • New forms of knowledge through an emerging national curriculum • New forms of pedagogies that call on more active engagement of students in learning that is connected to the real world • New forms of assessment that call for the centrality of learning and yet at the same time subject students to national testing • New forms of learning engagement that demand the centrality of student interaction with technology and collaborative or networked learning • New forms of quality assurance and the active monitoring of teacher quality; surveillance based on a lack of public confidence in the profession. Concurrently, it could be argued that teachers and teacher educators are becoming more critically conscious of what is involved in the complex business of teaching and learning. Further, teachers are experiencing pedagogic identity crises themselves, where personal identities are confronted and challenged by the changing clientele and systemic demands. iv Teacher educators may or may not be addressing all of these forces, as they too, are undergoing a professional crisis, as higher education institutions become more regulated on a number of fronts. Teacher educators are searching to find a balance, between compliance with regulatory matters of governance and the innovation required to cater for the changing nature of teachers’ work, that is central to teacher preparation. The newly-formulated national program standards for the accreditation of initial teacher education, introduced in 2011, exacerbates the situation