AARE blog

diverse group of new teachers

Scholarships for teaching students are great – but will they really diversify the profession now?

teacher workforce, , , , , , , ,

Australia is in the midst of a teacher shortage, and with 35% of teachers considering leaving the workforce before they reach retirement age, the problem may get worse before it gets better. This means we need to increase the number of teachers graduating from university teaching degrees. The full set of data for 2024 university applicants isn’t available yet, but UAC data suggests that applications to study teaching degrees at universities are trending downwards. 

One of the strategies to address the teacher shortage is the new Federal Government scholarships to encourage more people to undertake teaching degrees. While hoping to attract more people to teaching overall, the scholarships target groups under-represented in the profession, with scholarships available for First Nations peoples, people for whom English is an additional language/dialect, people with disabilities, people from regional, rural or remote locations, and people from low socio-economic backgrounds. Currently, the level of diversity in the student population in Australian schools far exceeds the diversity of the teachers, with the majority of teachers being from monolingual, White-Anglo and middle-class backgrounds, and more likely to be born in Australia than the general population.

Benefits of a diverse teacher workforce

Research also tells us that a diverse teaching population has a positive impact on student learning outcomes and engagement in schooling. Students perceive schools as more inclusive and welcoming environments when they see teachers who have similar racial and ethnic backgrounds. Based on teachers’ own experiences as culturally and linguistically diverse students, they can better understand their students’ cultural practices and beliefs and how they grow as learners. As insiders to the experiences of racism, they are valuable in the fight for educational and social justice. They make significant contributions to their school communities, due to their distinct experiences and their ability to offer students a different worldview, as well as becoming cross-cultural mentors for their mainstream colleagues.

But will these scholarships work to diversify the teaching profession?

There is no doubt that these scholarships will be attractive for some promising teacher candidates who would otherwise face greater challenges juggling study with their work, health needs and caring responsibilities. There is potential for the pool of students studying teaching to be widened because of the availability of such scholarships,  which would be a positive outcome.

However, financial support during their studies isn’t going to provide everything these students need to have a successful career in teaching. For example, our research has found that teachers from culturally, linguistically and racially diverse backgrounds (we use the acronym CLRD) experience higher levels of isolation, exclusion and racism in their workplaces. CLRD teachers can experience discrimination on the basis of skin colour, accent, dress and even food. Teachers have told us:

“At times, my faculty  would have lunch together in the staff room. It would have been nice to be told about this, even just to be polite, but it did make me feel very left out.”

“Teachers from Anglo background speak to you in a condescending way, belittle you, question your knowledge and qualifications, and there’s definitely a hierarchy where they consider themselves better than you.”

Forced to conceal their true identity

While there isn’t explicit evidence to connect these experiences to racism, every CLRD teacher who participated in our research shared a story like this. Teachers from CLRD backgrounds often feel forced to conceal their true identity to try and fit in, and it means that they’re less likely to stay in the profession and thrive in their careers.

In addition, most CLRD teachers described additional labour they were expected to undertake because of their race, language or cultural background. Some teachers were happy to do this work to help their students, but many commented that this was labour they did not see their white counterparts being asked to do.

Further, when it comes to scholarships, it’s vital that recipients successfully complete their ITE programs. Some teacher candidates from equity groups may require additional academic support from their university, and may not complete their programs without that help. Some universities do a great job of providing this support, but it takes extra resources. How students will be supported needs to be a part of the discussion.

So will these scholarships keep new teachers from leaving the profession?

The financial support may help teacher candidates from equity groups to take the leap into university studies, but it’s not a single solution to teacher retention.  Teachers on these scholarships are required to teach in public schools for a period equal to the length of their studies – two or four years. But to create a sustainable pipeline of teachers, we need them to stay longer than that, and based on our research there are other barriers that need to be addressed. Support from school leadership teams is essential, as is a united front on the part of the school, to reject racism and discrimination. Schools and leadership teams must genuinely see cultural and linguistic diversity as a positive attribute, rather than a deficit. Cash incentives during their studies isn’t going to be enough of a drawcard to stay in a harmful work environment.

From left to right: Dr Rachael Dwyer (she/her) is a Lecturer in Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Her scholarship is focused on creating social change, through decolonizing, arts-based approaches to teaching, advocacy and research, and sharing her scholarship in ways that impact policy and practice. Dr Rachael Jacobs (she/her) is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Arts Education at Western Sydney University and a former secondary school teacher. Her research interests include assessment in the arts, language acquisition through the arts and decolonised approaches to embodied learning. Professor Catherine Manathunga (she/her) is an historian who draws together expertise in historical, sociological and cultural studies research to bring an innovative perspective to educational research, particularly focusing on the higher education sector. She has worked for over 32 years in universities throughout Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Professor Daniel Harris (they/them) is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, and Co-Director of Creative Agency research lab: www.creativeresearchhub.com. They are an international expert in creativity studies, creative methods, affect theory and autoethnography. They are committed to the power of collaborative creative practice and social justice research to inform social change.  Dr Jing Qi (she/her) is Manager of Community Languages Teacher Education Program in the School of Global, Urban and Social Sciences at RMIT. Jing draws together experiences in multilingual, transcultural, and technological studies in her current educational research projects in the areas of teacher education, international education and teacher education. 

research security

Why isn’t Australia securing its critical research?

Australian Research Council, research funding in Australia, research security, research work, ,

Just before Christmas last year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States announced aims to establish a network which would enable the funders of university research to share information about applications, applicants and programs of national security concern. 

That same news story mentioned that the NSF had already established a dialogue with the main funding body for the United Kingdom (UK), Research and Innovation, as well as Canada’s Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council. Talks have also been planned with The Netherlands government, home of the National Contact Point for Knowledge Security. 

What was interesting – and somewhat chilling – about the announcement was the obvious omission of Australia and its principal funding body, the Australian Research Council (ARC). 

This apparent lack of engagement with Australia over securing research seems a little at-odds with the United States’ other foreign policy measures, such as the AUKUS Agreement under which Australia will become just the seventh country with nuclear-powered submarines. And submarines are just the tip of the AUKUS iceberg. Australia, its universities, and academics will be responsible for leading research into defence-aligned fields under AUKUS like cybersecurity, robotics, advanced hypersonics, and teaching the next generations of experts in those fields. 

So why has Australia been left out in the cold?

Well, one possible reason is that Australia has one of the weakest research security frameworks in the developed world. We don’t even recognize the term “research security” or the closely aligned “knowledge security” – the former term focuses on securing the products and outcomes of academic research, the latter on the actual researchers and research process itself.

The Commonwealth Government doesn’t have an articulated public policy position on research security, beyond their Guidelines to counter foreign interference in the Australian university sector (which haven’t been updated since 2021). The ARC – which administers around 30% of Government investment in university research through the National Competitive Grants Program –  also doesn’t articulate a research security strategy. Their Countering Foreign Interference Framework leaves most of the heavy lifting in monitoring national security risk to individual universities.

Of course, the ARC Framework also only applies when universities seek funding from the ARC, so it doesn’t cover research which universities fund themselves. Up to 70% of university research is self-funded – which in turn is tied directly to international student enrolments – meaning that funding took a massive hit as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This lack of a proper research funding base in Australia was called out as a “national security risk” by ANU Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt.

Our university research system is also subject to hugely fluctuating externalities, like tying promotions and advancement to “research impact” (a measure of how widely published materials like journal articles are being read or cited). Yet our ability to recognize, respect, and reward the hard work of research academics and staff in Australia is so bad it led Chief Scientist Cathy Foley to recently label the system “not fit for purpose”.

And the threats faced by our researchers aren’t ephemeral – in October at the Five Eyes intelligence summit in Palo Alto, ASIO’s Director-General Mike Burgess detailed a plot involving a Chinese professor who had been recruited by the Ministry of State Security. That professor was given “money and a shopping list of intelligence requirements” before he was intercepted by ASIO and removed from the country. The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has also highlighted AUKUS technologies as a specific target for hacking and cyberespionage groups from China, Iran and North Korea.

So, what can Australia do about this deplorable situation?

Firstly, the Commonwealth Government needs to articulate a position on research and knowledge security in Australia. It would be auspicious timing to do so. The Universities Accord – the body established to “drive a visionary plan for Australia’s universities and higher education sector” – handed its final report to Education Minister Jason Clare on 28 December. The Government could use that report as the catalyst to establish a national policy on research and knowledge security.

Secondly, the Government needs to get itself on the same page as its AUKUS partners on the matter of research security. Given Australian cybersecurity has already been called the “weakest link” in the AUKUS triad, we have our work cut out for us. But the dangers of not doing so – including potential proliferation of nuclear materials to rogue states – is too terrifying to contemplate.

Thirdly, the Government – including intelligence agencies ASIO and ASD – and our universities need to find a way to work more closely and harmoniously. At Senate Estimates in May 2023, Burgess acknowledged that ASIO officers were “embedded in the AUKUS team in Defence that actually help Defence with their security posture”. 

Yet there hasn’t been a rush to embed ASIO officials inside universities – quite the opposite. In February 2023, ASIO rejected a recommendation by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to publish their activities involving higher education institutions. Then ASIO quietly published a resource for universities who at times seemed to be struggling with their security obligations: the “Collaborate with Care: Protect Your Research” booklet. Whilst that resource is helpful, it doesn’t go nearly far enough to uplifting the security awareness and maturity of academics in Australia.

Lastly, as a society Australia needs a more open dialogue about what the research we need to protect, and what we don’t. Revelations of anti-Semitism in US universities has already claimed the jobs of two Ivy League presidents, following claims that those universities were sheltering and even encouraging extremist opinions. Closer to home, last year a professor at RMIT was allegedly sacked for exercising his academic freedom when he pointed out “what he believed was a sex-based double standard” on Twitter. Given the highly polemic and politicized debate around the AUKUS Agreement and our universities, we need to be abundantly clear about how we intend to protect national security, not prevent our academics from contributing to healthy and crucial public debate.

Dr Brendan Walker-Munro is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Queensland’s Law School. His research focus is on aspects of national security law, particularly on the implications of national security risks on higher education research and teaching. He may be contacted on LinkedIn at Dr Brendan Walker-Munro | LinkedIn or via the UQ website: Dr Brendan Walker-Munro – UQ Researchers

What you should know about our 2023 top ten

21st century teaching, Artificial Intelligence in schools, Teacher Education Expert Panel (TEEP)

Hello and happy new year. We are back for 2024 and looking forward to your contributions. Here’s what you need to know about writing posts for EduResearch Matters.

We publish an annual list of our top ten most read blogs – and this year, there was one post which recorded huge interest from the outset. It reflected the zeitgeist – the national concern about what’s happening in our schools. Research on why teachers were leaving the profession by Alyson Simpson, Ellen Larsen, Jason Clare, Richard Sallis, Robyn Brandenburg struck a chord.

Number one: Teachers now – why I left and where I’ve gone

Trauma in all our classrooms: Here’s how to respond

Number two: Judith Howard on the growing movement in trauma-aware education in Australia and her new book, “Trauma-aware education: Essential information and guidance for educators, education sites and education systems”.

If not now, then when is the right time to re-envisage what schools could be?

Number three: Pasi Sahlberg and Sharon Goldfeld on what schools could be: “We believe a whole-child and whole-school approach optimises the opportunities for all children to grow up as the individuals they want to become.”

The way teachers work must change now. The Scott report doesn’t even try to fix the real challenge

Number four: Donna Pendergast on what was wrong with the Report of the Teacher Education Expert Panel.

How this oppressive test is killing the magic of childhood

Number five: Pauline Roberts on NAPLAN taking the fun out of early childhood learning.

What we want to say right now to Sahlberg and Goldfeld

Number six: Nathaniel Swain, Pamela Snow, Tanya Serry, Tessa Weadman and Eamon Charles respond to Pasi Sahlberg and Sharon Goldfeld on what schools could be.

A new sheriff is coming to the wild ChatGPT west

Number seven: Teachers continue to be bombarded with a dazzling array of possibilities, seemingly without limit – the great plains and prairies of the AI “wild west”! One estimate recently made the claim “that around 2000 new AI tools were launched in March” alone! Paul Kidson, Sarah Jefferson and Leon Furze have some advice.

It’s a No-Brainer: Beginning Teachers Should Learn About the Brain

Number eight: Andrew Martin on why teaching about the brain matters: “When they understand and teach to the human memory system, gone is the false dichotomy of positivism (e.g., explicit instruction) and constructivism (e.g., discovery learning) that has plagued initial teacher education for decades: as far as the human memory system is concerned, the success of one instructional approach is inextricably tied to the success of the other.” 

Screen panic: how much time is too much?

Number nine: John Fischetti, Simon Vaughan and Kylie Shaw on why we “can’t ‘ban’ our way to the future as smart tools get smarter; we should trust that our young people, with our informed guidance, will make good choices. The importance of vigilance in using smart tools is crucial, but most of our participants are doing fine in their juggling act in and out of cyberspace.” 

Proactive and preventative: Why this new fix could save reading (and more)

Number ten: Kate de Bruin, Eugénie Kestel, Mariko Francis, Helen Forgasz and Rachelle Fries on how to get the classroom right.  

Lean over PISA. Make way for a better future for schools

National School Reform Agreement, PISA, , ,

As the year grinds to a close, we celebrate the end-of school results of our Year 12 students. It’s an annual ritual, the festive season is always accompanied by school league tables and predictable stories about school and student success – somewhat in contrast to the seeming failure of other schools and students. 

But something extra happened this year. The results festival was preceded by the release of the most recent PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) scores and analysis . . . hotly followed by the quite separate release of proposals for Australia’s next National Schools Reform Agreement (NSRA). When seen alongside our end-of-school results, these two events point to a sorry past and present, but one gives us a glimpse of a better future.  

Let’s start with PISA

Each PISA report usually sparks a moral panic about our schools – not so much this year because there seems a bit of good news: Australia’s student achievement picked up a tad. We have actually climbed the international rankings … alas, only because others have slipped backwards. 

But a different story lies behind the headlines. PISA shows that the achievement gaps between high socio-economic status (SES) and disadvantaged students have continued to widen in reading, mathematics and science since 2006. For those at the bottom, this now amounts to years of lost learning time and opportunity. 

Even where progress seems evident, variations within Australia reveal problems. NSW students have improved most in maths and reading . . . but NSW has the widest range of scores between the top and bottom students, results usually found in the Northern Territory. It’s a bit unsettling: in terms of the school achievement gaps, NSW ranks alongside the poorest parts of Australia.

End of year results

Of course, not everyone wants to dig into PISA scores to get a handle on such gaps. So why not see how it plays out in those end-of-school results that get us excited every December? We know that the HSC and Victoria’s VCE, as two examples, tell something about student achievement, school by school. But the changing distribution of high-level scores reveals much more.

There has always been a gap between the highest and lowest SES schools; those near the top creep up, those at the bottom just keep struggling. So what has happened to those just above and below the middle – the schools which enrol most students? Back in 2006 the schools above the middle increased their share of the most valued students and, in the case of NSW, their equally valued distinguished achiever awards. But the schools below the middle saw their share of such students cut in half. The pattern in Victoria is similar, with fewer extremes. 

Put bluntly, large swathes of rural and low SES schools, even if they can attract teachers, struggle hard enough to offer a rounded senior school curriculum, let alone boast many, if any, high-level achievers. The latter have gone, and they took their high scores with them.     

It’s almost as if the lower half decided not to try harder. Certainly, that’s often implied by the commentariat, and by legislators who should know better. And of course there is no shortage of reasons offered up for such poor performance. Take your pick from some recent ones: too many devices, an inadequate science syllabus, impact of COVID, misbehaving kids, not enough phonics, the list goes on.

Reasons for optimism

But there is reason for optimism, and this is where we get to the third big event, alas the one with the smallest headlines: the panel set up to inform the upcoming National School Reform Agreement (NSRA) has now reported. As expected, and as it should, it wants full Schools Resourcing Funding for all schools, closing the funding gaps sooner.

There is much more. By any standards, the report Improving outcomes for all developed by this remarkable panel and its supporting team has potentially broken new ground. 

It clearly states that “the current system entrenches educational disadvantage and makes it less likely that other reforms will realise Australia’s longstanding ambition of equity and excellence.” They won’t and shouldn’t walk away from authentic and proven reform, but they are effectively saying: let’s stop fluffing around here with peripheral (and appealing) reform and reduce the segregation of student enrolments which is increasingly widening achievement gaps and contributing to poor overall performance. 

Markedly different obligations

It effectively confirms a fundamental and sadly unique feature of Australia’s public/private framework of schools, its hierarchical nature. Schools operate on a very unlevel playing field, with often similar funding . . . but markedly different obligations. In the inevitable competition between schools, those with choice – and that includes both families and schools – do well, those without risk falling behind. 

Who they enrol and where they come from

The hierarchy is everywhere. Anyone can compare, for schools in their local area, this year’s HSC or VCE results alongside My School’s measure of school socio-educational advantage. It is the work of schools which should contribute most to ‘school’ results; instead, the school-by-school differences are more determined by who they enrol and where they come from.

Given that this crazy framework of schools is rusted into our psyche and functioning as families and schools, it was arguably brave of Education Minister Jason Clare to set up any review, especially one entitled a Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System. Then, it was a very forward looking panel to deliver recommendations which, if implemented, will begin to change our system for the better.

The panel has directly addressed the need to increase socio-economic diversity in school enrolments and to do it soon, by “reviewing existing policy settings by the end of 2027 and implementing new policy levers to increase socio‑economic diversity in schools and lift student outcomes” and, even earlier, to set in place the reporting of the SES diversity of schools and systems. To serve this and other purposes it recommends substantial improvement in data collection and use at all levels.

Those on the panel and in the supporting reference group could see the problem. The Productivity Commission has stated that peer effects and less experienced teachers in schools with high concentrations of disadvantage were drivers of poorer student outcomes – and that students from priority equity cohorts demonstrate, on average, less learning growth if they attend a school with a high concentration of disadvantage. Parents know this and arguably have for decades, it substantially drives their search for schools up the SES ladder. It matters to them who their kids sit with – and the evidence, even going back to the Gonski Review, backs up their concerns. It has left Australia with a profoundly wicked problem.  

What next?

Where to from here? The recommendations have gone to Australia’s education ministers and will be worked into Commonwealth legislation for the next School Reform Agreement.    Our leaders and legislators need to be firmly convinced that what are relatively mild recommendations should remain and be even strengthened and implemented in full. And that’s just the easy part. It then has to navigate a perilous path among politicians who will need to fully understand all the issues and possible solutions – and cast their lot in with those who really do want a better and fairer education system.

Chris Bonnor AM is a former teacher and secondary school principal and was a previous head of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council. He has co-authored a number of books, most recently Choice and Fairness: a common framework for all Australian schools and is co-author with Tom Greenwell of Waiting for Gonski, how Australia failed its schools. NSW Press, 2022. He regularly contributes to a range of publications and media.

Prehistoric cave paintings over 3,000 – 5,000 years Tham Pee Hua To, Ao Luek Krabi THAILAND

Honest history: we need both the lions and the hunters

teaching history, , ,

Yaw Ofosu-Asare won the 2023 AARE Conference People’s Choice Award for his poster: Redefining design education boundaries in Africa.

In the lingering afterglow of the AARE 2023 Conference, I find myself adrift in a sea of half-remembered conversations, keynote speeches that echo faintly in my mind, and ideas that seemed so clear just days ago. This struggle to recollect, to weave coherent narratives from the scattered threads of memory, leads me to ponder a deeper, more profound question: how much of what we call history is truly accurate? There’s an old African proverb that says, “Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero.” This simple line unravels a complex truth about the stories we’ve been told. History, as it reaches us, is often a tale spun by the victors, the dominant, the ‘hunters.’ It makes me wonder, as I sift through my own cloudy memories of the conference, how many stories have we lost? How many lions have remained silent?

Our history, especially in the West, is a patchwork of narratives, stitched together from memories and records that have survived the test of time. We’ve built our understanding of the world on these narratives, drawing from the well of Greek philosophy, the Renaissance’s bloom, and the moral frameworks of Christianity. But in this grand design, where do the voices that were never heard fit in? What about the philosophies and wisdoms that didn’t find their way into our textbooks?

This reflection takes on greater significance in a country like Australia, steeped in the ethos of multiculturalism, where each culture contributes its unique history and heritage. How do we educate in such a society, acknowledging the full spectrum of human experience, not just the parts that have been traditionally highlighted? It’s a challenging thought, especially when considering that much of non-Western history is passed down orally, often dismissed by those who favour written records.

The stories we’ve leaned on, like those of Aristotle and Plato, were themselves cloaked in narrative and allegory, yet they’ve shaped our understanding of existence, our politics, our very way of life. Today, with social media, we’re witnessing a new chapter where previously unheard voices are finding a platform. African stories, Australian Indigenous narratives, and countless others are finally being shared, challenging our perceptions and inviting us to reconsider the foundations of our knowledge. In this realisation lies a profound question: what happens when we acknowledge that our view of history has been narrow, biased towards a certain type of memory, a particular way of recording events? What if we start valuing stories and oral histories as much as we do scientific evidence and written records?

As I reflect on my time at the conference, the murkiness of memory seems less like a hindrance and more like an invitation—an invitation to acknowledge the complexity and diversity of human experience. It’s an invitation to embrace a more holistic view of history, one that includes the voices of the lions as well as the hunters. In doing so, we might just find a richer, more inclusive narrative that resonates with the true spirit of a multicultural society like Australia. Perhaps then, we can start to redefine what it means to be Australian, not as a singular identity, but as a symphony of voices, each contributing its unique note to the melody of our shared history.

Now, let us turn the lens towards the realms of academia and education. In recent times, there’s been a surge in the use of buzzwords – ‘disruptive,’ ‘transformative,’ ‘inclusive,’ and the like. These terms, while signalling progressive intentions, often raise the question: are they merely a veneer, a fashionable cloak draped over the status quo to appease the ‘woke’ crowd? Or do they genuinely signal a shift in how we approach education and knowledge?

The world of educational research is not immune to trends and fads. The allure of catchy phrases can sometimes overshadow the need for deep, meaningful exploration of issues. It’s crucial to ask ourselves – when we speak of being ‘disruptive’ or ‘transformative,’ are we truly embodying these ideals, or are we just echoing hollow terms? This brings us back to the crux of our reflection on history and memory. If our understanding of the past is limited, skewed by dominant narratives, then how can we hope to build an educational system that is truly inclusive and representative of all voices? The challenge lies not just in acknowledging the gaps and silences in our historical narrative but in actively seeking to fill them.

We live in a world where diversity of thought and experience is richer than ever before. Our classrooms are microcosms of this world, brimming with stories and perspectives waiting to be heard. To educate in a way that honours this diversity means going beyond tokenistic inclusion. It involves a fundamental rethinking of what we teach, how we teach it, and whose voices are amplified in the process. In Australia, this task is particularly vital. As a nation grappling with its identity – torn between its colonial past and its multicultural present – the way we approach education can either reinforce old divides or bridge them. Teachers, educators, and policymakers have the power to shape a narrative of Australia that is inclusive, that celebrates its Indigenous heritage alongside its myriad immigrant stories, and that prepares its youth for a world where being ‘Australian’ is synonymous with being part of a global, interconnected community.

So, as I conclude these reflections – intentionally pushing beyond the 800-word limit to 994, as a small act of ‘disruption’ – I leave you with this thought: in our quest to make education truly transformative, let’s ensure that the change we seek is not just in words, but in actions. Let’s strive to make our classrooms places where history is not just taught, but questioned; where stories are not just heard, but honoured; and where learning is not just about acquiring knowledge, but about understanding the diversity of human experience. Only then can we hope to educate in a way that is truly reflective of the world we live in.

Yaw Ofosu-Asare has a PhD from Southern Cross University, where his research has been instrumental in exploring and challenging the biases and power dynamics within indigenous and decolonizing systems, focusing particularly on culture, knowledge creation, perception, and engagement. He is an associate research fellow at the Sustainability, Environment, and the Arts in Education section within the Faculty of Education at Southern Cross University. He Apart from his research pursuits, Dr. Ofosu-Asare is also passionate about teaching, user interface and experience design, art, digital marketing, and creativity. He is dedicated to influencing individuals and communities positively through the transformative power of education.

Header image is neither from Africa nor from the West. It does, however, apparently have lions and hunters in it.

The future of teaching: what we must find out

21st century teaching, quality teaching, talking about teaching, teaching, Uncategorized, ,

What will it mean to be a teacher – and teach – in the future? What should be the relationships between schools and communities, young people and school systems? How can we overcome the challenges currently faced by teachers and by schools to imagine new futures for teachers and teaching?

The Wednesday evening of the AARE conference week in Melbourne saw the launch of the Monash Faculty of Education’s Inquiry into the Future of the Teaching Profession. The Inquiry will put Australian teachers and teacher educators’ work into a broader international context and actively seek to create resources for local public debate – new ideas, new language, and new practical options for moving constructively to reimagine teaching, teacher education and schooling. It will be an opportunity to shape a new, hopeful and future-oriented discourse about education in society.

Chaired by Marie Brennan, Professorial Fellow in the Monash Faculty and eminent Australian educationist, the Inquiry panel will comprise James Desmond, Head of Humanities and an early career teacher at the Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School in Melbourne; Meredith Peace, Victorian President of the Australian Education Union; Professor Jay Phillips, Head of the School of Australian Indigenous Studies at Charles Sturt University; and David Robinson, Executive Director (Workforce Policy and Strategy) in the Department of Education in Victoria. You can find out more about the Inquiry itself here .

Speaking at the launch event, Marie Brennan was joined by Senator Penny Allman-Payne, Australian Greens spokesperson for schools and a former secondary school teacher, as well as Desmond and Robinson. The conversation among speakers and a large audience both in-person at the Monash Conference Centre in Collins Street and online via YouTube acknowledged the current challenges and issues facing Australia and many other countries globally but moved on to address both the general future directions of policy and practice as well as debating the focus for the work of the Inquiry panel over the first half of 2024. A recording of the launch event is available on YouTube. 

A 2016 UNESCO report estimated that the world would need almost 69 million more teachers by 2030 to achieve the fourth Sustainable Development Goal – universal basic education. Current trends see that estimate increasing. Countries like Australia will experience the consequences of these trends – and will do so differentially, with often the poorest and least well-served and marginalised communities struggling to recruit and retain teachers. This year, 2023, the UN established a high-level panel on the teaching profession and just a few months ago more than 100 countries met and committed to fully funding public education for their countries. Yet many economically developed countries fail to do so, Australia being one of them.

For Senator Allman-Payne, fully funding public education in Australia was fundamental to addressing all aspects of the challenges going forward and inextricably linked to all future possibilities. Describing the shortfall in funding as the ‘elephant in the room’, Allman-Payne argued  that a fully funded public education system was essential not only for a quality education but for a ‘cohesive society and a strong and robust democracy’. Marie Brennan picked up on the importance of public education in societal terms in referring to the outcome of the recent referendum on an Indigenous Voice in parliament, describing it as, in part, a failure of education that was linked to the broader politics of education in Australia, as well as other issues.  For James Desmond, the key issue was ‘inequality – of funding, of opportunities, and of outcomes. Your postcode should not dictate the quality of and access to education you receive.’

David Robinson drew attention to the community respect and support afforded to teachers in successful education systems worldwide. For too long, he argued, the public discourse around education had been predominantly negative and failed to recognize the achievements and ‘everyday successes’ of teachers in classrooms. Marie Brennan extended this point by emphasising the necessity for schools as institutions as well as individual teachers engaging with their communities, understanding and learning from them, and regarding schools as in and of their communities rather than being separate from them. For Marie, teachers need the time and space to ‘build the relationships on which good teaching depends’ – and the relationship-building does not stop at the classroom door.

The kind of work that teachers are expected to do was also a focus of the discussion with Senator Allman-Payne and Marie Brennan both commented on the importance of teachers’ agency. For Senator Allman-Payne, teaching as a career is at its most rewarding when it empowers teachers to be agentic professionals. For Marie Brennan, given that education and the work of educators is ‘always future-oriented’, it is critically important that education policy also becomes future-oriented and resists reverting to trying to ‘standardise’ teaching and teachers’ work on a vision of the past. For David Robinson, as a public servant tasked with teaching workforce development, a future-orientation filled with hope is also a practical concern when it comes to both teacher recruitment and, crucially, retention.

For the evening’s panelists as well as the Inquiry panel more broadly, it is now time to focus on working towards a positive future for teaching, the profession and schools rather than reinventing the past. And while most work on educational futures has tended either to extrapolate on current trends or to imagine idealized, utopian institutions, different futures now need to be constructed in practice to move forward from the current situation.

This is a challenge that cannot be answered with yet another political review or academic critique. As James Desmond noted: ‘Ultimately the Inquiry is about looking forward, rather than analysing the past; to better understand the challenges of the future; and to make teaching a sustainable and attractive vocation for years to come.’The Inquiry will involve further public activities and events across Australia, in-person as well as virtually, along with commissioned briefing papers, and culminating in a final report in mid-2024. We hope you join us along the way.

Viv Ellis is Dean of the Faculty of Education at Monash University. His latest book (with Lauren Gatti and Warwick Mansell), The New Political Economy of Teacher Education: The Enterprise Narrative and the Shadow State, will be published by Policy Press early next year.

Image in header: Prof Marie Brennan, Chair of the Inquiry into the Future of the Teaching Profession, Professorial Fellow, Faculty of Education, Monash University; David Robinson, Executive Director (Teaching Workforce), Department of Education, Victoria; James Desmond, Head of Humanities and early career teacher, MacRobertson High School, Melbourne  On the screen: Senator Penny Allman-Payne (Senator for Queensland, Green Party spokesperson on schools)

Behaviour: Senators ignored the research

classroom behaviour management, Managing student behaviour, , ,

Schools are workplaces as well as places of learning. All those who work in them have the right to feel safe. Clearly, not all teachers feel safe. The interim report of the Senate Education and Employment References Committee: The issue of increasing disruption in Australian school classrooms and the submissions to it provide evidence for this. The interim report refers to surveys conducted by the Australian Catholic University (ACU), Monash University and the Victorian Branch of the Australian Education Union, all documenting the unacceptably high levels of fear which some teachers operate under as a result of perceived and real threat. While the levels are disturbing, we want to stress that any level is too high.

In our view, the recommendations by this Committee to address such behaviours miss the mark.

Within the report there is yet again, and something that those working in teacher education are becoming very familiar with, a critique of initial teacher education. Inadequate ‘teacher training’ alongside a lack of classroom management skills is foregrounded as one of the major contributors to poor behaviour. Included are also the structures of classrooms, especially for students with disability, socioeconomic factors, bullying and family trauma. The recommendations thus focus on fast tracking reforms outlined in the TEEP Report.

Where’s the evidence?

The report makes frequent reference to the need for ‘evidence-based approaches’ as if ITE programs across the country are not already providing them. A scan of such programs will reveal plenty of courses that aim to explain the root causes of schooling disengagement that lie at the heart of ‘disruptive classrooms’; indeed, the report notes many examples provided in diverse submissions from many social and educational bodies – typically, low SES, disability, undiagnosed neurodiversity, childhood trauma and just the challenges posed by adolescence. Many approaches are suggested but the Senate Committee appears to favour suggestions that coincide with practices from the past that may have been suitable in a non-global industrial era rather than approaches that are responsive to the needs of young people today who come to school with vastly different attitudes and digital skills than, say, the “boomer” generation.

The report makes much of the need for “explicit instruction”, including explicit behavioural instruction; it favours “traditional” classrooms and “Positive Behaviour for Learning”. The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) claims to have “the most rigorous and relevant research” and the Senate Committee appears not to question that despite many other contributing research organisations who present very different views that situate challenging student behaviours within broader socio-economic and social factors and the roles played by community and parents/caregivers. Reverting to what seems to translate into “training-for-good-behaviour” will not solve the problem and will stifle engagement even more.

What needs to be fixed first

Schooling engagement and associated behaviours have several dimensions – cognitive and emotional as well as “behavioural”. The first two factors have to be addressed before “better behaviour” will occur. Students have to be intellectually stimulated to engage cognitively; for teachers to do this they must be confident in their subject matter and enthusiastically creative in their delivery. Learning should be an enjoyable journey for students; it should be meaningful and provide them with opportunities to problem-solve and work in teams; these are the skills required for future economic and social structures for which “explicit instruction” will have no place.

Students need to feel respected and have a sense of belonging; to feel supported and safe at school. Whilst acknowledging the external impacts of poverty, the report does not address it. Young people who experience homelessness, hunger and family violence will remain “disruptive” regardless of what happens to ITE programs. This is a shameful problem that we share as a society: the fact that some young people are so neglected, sad and angry that often their response is to turn against their teachers cannot be solved by educators alone.

While we support Recommendation 3 that calls for investment in professional learning for teachers, we rigorously challenge the conclusion evident in Recommendation 4 with its sole focus on promoting ‘explicit instruction; formative assessment; mastery learning; and spacing and retrieval to manage ‘disruptive behaviour in classrooms and provides the best possible learning conditions, to be implemented’. We need rich forms of professional development that recognise, value and enhance the professionalism of teachers. 

No one-size-fits-all

Within academic research and also evident in the submissions to the committee, is a clear need for a diversity of responses to student behaviour, depending on the reasons for the behaviour: there is no quick fix, no “one-size-fits-all”. Additionally, the conclusion evident in Recommendation 4 appears to ignore the complexities of the lives of adolescents living in the 21st century and the skills that they will need for future economies and their self-efficacy and well-being.

We support Recommendations 5 and 6 that call for greater support for young people and teachers in managing neurodiverse students. Whilst we agree that a national approach to classroom management might lead to the sharing of useful research, we are alarmed by Recommendation 9 seeking to ‘fast-track the implementation of the National Unique Student Identifier for school students’. 

This proposal is Orwellian in its intent to “track” students who may have experienced challenges at school. Wherever they go to school in Australia, their past will follow them and label them as “trouble-makers”. How can young people start with a clean slate at a new school and prove themselves. The suggestion of a National Unique Student Identifier is an egregious assault on their human rights. Historically, young people have been labelled as “good” vs “bad” but we argue that such simplistic generalisations have no place in 21st century education systems.

Alarm bells

The silences in the report also raise alarm bells. There are references to violence without any mention of gender. There is no consideration here about who the students are who are threatening violence against teachers. We know that there is a strong relationship between dominant forms of masculinity and violence. The threats posed to teachers, and others, as a consequence of toxic forms of masculinity performed by some boys need to be challenged. This violence can also contain a sexual element to it. We know that female teachers can be sexually harassed by male students and made to feel uncomfortable and threated by innuendo and verbal abuse.

Much of the report often implies that it is schools located in lower socioeconomic areas where teachers are likely to be most threatened. However, we know that gender-based violence towards female teachers can be present in some of the ‘best of schools’. Similar silences exist in the report about other forms of discrimination and the ways in which teachers can, for example, be the subject of racial vilification or transphobic abuse from students. Addressing these issues will require, alongside broader societal approaches, school programs and curricula that address consent, valuing difference, human rights and social justice. There is nothing in this report that encourages such approaches.  

Unfortunately, the Senate Committee’s recommendations are largely based upon one view which disempowers teachers and students and is backward looking rather than aspiring towards the future worlds in which our young people will live. Many submissions pointed to relational and pastoral approaches of working with young people within contexts of support and early intervention. It is our view that this is confirmed by a breadth and depth of peer-reviewed educational research.

Glenda McGregor is associate professor and deputy head of the School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University. Martin Mills is a research professor in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership, QUT. He was awarded an honorary life membership of AARE in 2023 for services to educational research and the Association.

Does the new AI Framework serve schools or edtech?

artificial intelligence, Artificial Intelligence in schools, , , , ,

On 30 November, 2023, the Australian federal government released its Australian Framework for Generative AI in Schools. This is an important step forward. It provides much-needed advice for schools following the November 2022 release of ChatGPT, a technological product capable of creating human-like text and other content. This Framework has undergone several rounds of consultation across the education sector. The Framework does important work in acknowledging opportunities while also foregrounding the importance of human wellbeing, privacy, security and safety.

Out of date already? 

However, in this fast-moving space, the policy may already be out of date. Following early enthusiasm (despite a ban in many schools), the hype around generative AI in education is shifting. As experts in generative AI in education,researching it for some years now, we have moved to a much more cautious stance. A recent UNESCO article stated that “AI must be kept in check in schools”. The challenges in using generative AI safely and ethically, for human flourishing, are increasingly becoming apparent.

Some questions and suggestions

In this article, we suggest some of the ways that the policy already needs to be updated and improved to better reflect emerging understandings of generative AI’s threats and limitations. With a 12-month review cycle, teachers may find the Framework provides less policy support than hoped. We also wonder to what extent the educational technology industry’s influence has affected the tone of this policy work.

What is the Framework?

The Framework addresses six “core principles” of generative AI in education: Teaching and Learning; Human and Social Wellbeing; Transparency; Fairness, Accountability; and Privacy, Security and Safety. It provides guiding statements under each concept. However, some of these concepts are much less straightforward than the Framework suggests.

Problems with generative AI

Over time, users have become increasingly aware that generative AI does not provide reliable information. It is inherently biased, through the biased material it has “read” in its training. It is prone to data leaks and malfunctions. Its workings cannot be readily perceived or understood by its own makers and vendors; it is therefore not transparent. It is the subject of global claims of copyright infringement in its development and use. It is vulnerable to power and broadband outages, suggesting the dangers of developing reliance on it for composing content.

Impossible expectations

The Framework may therefore have expectations of schools and teachers that are impossible to fulfil. It suggests schools and teachers can use tools that are inherently flawed, biased, mysterious and insecure, in ways that are sound, un-biased, transparent and ethical. If teachers feel their heads are spinning on reading the Framework, it is not surprising! Creators of the Framework need to interrogate their own assumptions, for example that “safe” and “high quality” generative AI exists, and who these assumptions serve.

As a policy document, the Framework also puts an extraordinary onus on schools and teachers to do high-stakes work for which they may not be qualified (such as conducting risk assessments of algorithms), or that they do not have time or funding to complete. The latter include designing appropriate learning experiences, revising assessments, consulting with communities, learning about and applying intellectual property rights and copyright law and becoming expert in the use of generative AI. It is not clear how this can possibly be achieved within existing workloads, and when the nature and ethics of generative AI are complex and contested.

What needs to change in the next iteration?

  1. A better definition: At the outset, the definition of generative AI needs to acknowledge that it is, in most cases, a proprietary tool that may involve the extraction of school and student data. 
  2. A more honest stance on generative AI: As a tool, generative AI is deeply flawed. As computer scientist Deborah Raji says, experts need to stop talking about it “as if it works”. The Framework misunderstands that generative AI is always biased, in that it is trained on limited datasets and with motivated “guardrails” created largely by white, male and United States-based developers. For example, a current version of ChatGPT does not speak in or use Australian First Nations words, for valid reasons related to the integrity of cultural knowledges. However, this indicates the whiteness of its “voice” and the problems inherent in requiring students to use or rely on this “voice”. The “potential” bias mentioned in the Framework would be better framed as “inevitable”. Policy also needs to acknowledge that generative AI is already creating profound harms, for example to children, to students, and to climate through its unsustainable environmental impacts.
  3. A more honest stance on edtech and the digital divide: A recent UNESCO report has confirmed there is little evidence of any improvement to learning from the use of digital technology in classrooms over decades. The use of technology does not automatically improve teaching and learning. This honest stance also needs to acknowledge that there is an existing digital divide related to basic technological access (to hardware, software and connectivity) that means that students will not have equitable experiences of generative AI from the outset.
  4. Evidence: Education is meant to be evidence-informed. Given there is little research that demonstrates the benefits of generative AI use in education, but research does show the harms of algorithms, policymakers and educators should proceed with caution. Schools need support to develop processes and procedures to monitor and evaluate the use of generative AI by both staff and students. This should not be a form of surveillance, but rather take the form of teacher-led action research, to provide future high-quality and deeply contextual evidence. 
  5. Locating policy in existing research: This policy has missed an opportunity to connect to extensive policy, theory, research and practice around digital literacies since the 1990s, especially in English and literacy education, so that all disciplines could benefit from this. The policy has similarly missed an opportunity to foreground how digital AI-literacies need to be embedded across the curriculum, supported by relevant existing Frameworks, such as the Literacy in 3D model (developed for cross curricular work), with its focus on operational, cultural and critical dimensions of any technological literacy. Another key concept from digital literacies is the need to learn “with” and “about” generative AI. Education policy needs to reference educational concepts, principles and issues, also including automated essay scoring, learning styles, personalised learning, machine instruction and so on, with a glossary of terms.
  6. Acknowledging the known dangers of bots: It would also be useful for policy to be framed by long-standing research that demonstrates the dangers of chatbots, and their compelling capacity to shut down human creativity and criticality and suggest ways to mitigate these effects from the outset. This is particularly important given the threats to democracy posed by misinformation and disinformation generated at scale by humans using generative AI. 
  7. Teacher transparency: All use of generative AI in schools needs to be disclosed. The use of generative AI by staff in the preparation of teaching materials and the planning of lessons needs to be disclosed to management, peers, students and families. The Framework seems to focus on students and their activities, whereas “academic integrity” needs to be modelled first by teachers and school leaders. Trust and investment in meaningful communication depend on readers knowing the sources of content, or cynicism may result. This disclosure is also necessary to monitor and manage the threat to teacher professionalism through the replacement of teacher intellectual labour by generative AI.
  8. Stronger acknowledgement of teacher expertise: Teachers are experts in more than just subject matter. They are expert in the pedagogical content knowledge of their disciplines, or how to teach those disciplines. They are also expert in their contexts, and in their students’ needs. Policy needs to support education in countering the rhetoric of edtech that teachers need to be removed or replaced by generative AI and remain only in support roles. The complex profession of teaching, based in relationality and community, needs to be elevated, not relegated to “knowing stuff about content”. 
  9. Leadership around ethical assessment: OpenAI made a clear statement in 2023 that generative AI should not be used for summative assessment, and that this should be done by humans. It is unfortunate the Australian government did not reinforce this advice at a national policy level, to uphold the rights of students and protect the intellectual labour of teachers.
  10. More detail: While acknowledging this is a high-level policy document and Framework, we call for more detail to assist the implementation of policy in schools. Given the aim of “defining what safe, ethical and responsible use of generative AI should look like” the document would benefit from more detail; a related  education document from the US runs to 67 pages.

A radical policy imagination

At the 2023 Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) conference, Jane Kenway encouraged participants to develop radical research imaginations. The extraordinary impacts of generative AI require a radical policy imagination, rather than timid or bland statements balancing opportunities and threats. It is increasingly clear that the threats cannot readily be dealt with by schools. The recent thoughts of UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Education on generative AI are sobering.

A significant part of this policy imagination needs to find the financial and other resources to support slow and safe implementation. It also needs to acknowledge, at the highest possible level, that if you identify as female, if you are a First Nations Australian, indeed, if you are anything other than white, male, affluent, able-bodied, heterosexual and compliant with multiple other norms of “mainstream” society, it is highly likely that generative AI does not speak for you. Policy must define a role for schools in developing students who can shape a more just future generative AI, not just use existing tools effectively.

Who is in charge . . . and who benefits?

Policy needs to enable and elevate the work of teachers and education researchers around generative AI, and the work of the education discipline overall, to contribute to raising the status of teachers. We look forward to some of the above suggestions being taken up in future iterations of the Framework. We also hope that all future work in this area will be led by teachers, not merely involve consultation with them. This includes the forthcoming work by Education Services Australia on evaluating generative AI tools. We trust that no staff or consultants on that project will have any links whatsoever to the edtech, or broader technology industries. This is the kind of detail that may help the general public decide exactly who educational policy serves.

Generative AI was not used at any stage in the writing of this article.

The header image was definitely produced using Generative AI.

An edited and shorter version of this piece appeared in The Conversation.

Lucinda McKnight is an Australian Research Council Senior Research Fellow in the Research for Educational Impact Centre at Deakin University, undertaking a national study into the teaching of writing with generative AI. Leon Furze is a PhD Candidate at Deakin University studying the implications of Generative Artificial Intelligence in education, particularly for teachers of writing. Leon blogs about Generative AI, reading and writing.

Distorted: this feeble report misses the boat on classroom behaviour

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At an event at Parliament House earlier this year I heard that 2024 is going to be the year of education. That is excellent news given that we haven’t heard much about education from the Albanese government but, to be honest, that has been somewhat of a blessed reprieve given the hyperventilation of the previous Morrison LNP government.

I have mixed feelings about what might be coming but wouldn’t if education policy was informed by evidence rather than politics. It isn’t. The impact of that politicisation is never openly acknowledged and the policy decisions that are made (or not made) by governments are never the focus of inquiries or reviews. Instead, the “problem” is always framed by alleged deficiencies in students, parents, teachers, and/or universities.

Disagreement among panel members

Take, for example, the Senate Inquiry into the issue of increasing disruption in Australian classrooms. The interim report has just landed, and, like the final report of the Disability Royal Commission, there was disagreement among panel members. Labor and Greens senators have made additional comments that acknowledge the complexity of behaviour in schools and the Greens have only one recommendation: to fully fund public schools at the beginning of the next National School Reform Agreement in 2025. 

I was called to give evidence at the senate inquiry. At the time, I expressed concern that the Inquiry based its case for ‘increasing disruption’ on PISA data, noting first, that there are cultural and other differences between countries and second, that there are problems with the rankings. I will have more to say about the report and its recommendations in time but for now I want to take readers through points I made in the new first chapter of Inclusive Education for the 21st Century, which extend my comments from the evidence I gave to the inquiry.

Since that hearing, I have looked more closely at the data on which these claims are based and I’m frankly astonished that the Inquiry team did not do this themselves. Even a cursory glance should have been enough to signal to the Senate that these rankings were not a rigorous enough premise on which to base an Inquiry. 

Let us wade through this numerical sewage together

The claim for ‘increasing disruption in Australian classrooms’ is based on the difference in results from two surveys of 15-year-olds who participated in the OECD’s Program of International Student Assessment (PISA). 

The first survey occurred in 2009 and the second in 2018. The disciplinary climate data is based on five survey items:  

1.       Students don’t listen to what the teacher says. 

2.       There is noise and disorder.  

3.       The teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down.  

4.       Students cannot work well.  

5.       Students don’t start working for a long time after the lesson begins. 

Here’s where things get interesting! Here are relevant findings from the two reports.

PISA 2009PISA 2018
Participating countries were ranked on the percentage of 15-year-old students who selected ‘never or hardly ever’ and ‘in some lessons’ for Item 1 ‘Students don’t listen to what the teacher says’, and Item 3 ‘The teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down’.79 countries participated and 76 were ranked, however, this time the OECD developed a disciplinary climate index that encompasses all five items with some minor changes in wording.
Australia was ranked 28th for the first item and 25th for the second.Countries were ranked using their respective Index scores.
Differences between PISA 200 and PISA 2009 were calculated.Australia was ranked 69th
Australia deemed to have an average disciplinary climate that had not significantly changed between the two timepoints.
Differences between PISA 2009 and PISA 2018 were calculated 
There was a significant difference between timepoints in the responses of Australian students for only two of the five items: Item 3 ‘The teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down’, and Item 4 ‘Students cannot work well’. 
Item (5) also declined (-1.8%) but not significantly, while Items (1) and (2) improved (both +0.8%), but again not significantly.

What does all this mean?

First, Australia has not fallen from 28th or 25th in the ranking to 69th. Rather, the number of participating countries has changed over time and so therefore have the rankings. To be clear, the number of participating countries has grown from 43 (2000) to 65 (2009) to 79 (2018). And, because comparisons can only be made between countries that participated in each assessment, the number of countries in the rankings has changed from 38 in 2009 to 76 in 2018. This is not to dispute that Australia is ranked lower than anyone would like but there are problems with the rankings which render them meaningless. 

Here’s why

1)    The types of countries participating in PISA 2009 and PISA 2018 substantively changed due to the entrance of Asian countries. Unlike Australia, these jurisdictions/systems are grounded in Confucian culture, which has a profound effect on teacher-student relationships, classroom interactions, and climate. 

2)    There was a significant difference between timepoints in the responses of Australian students for only two of the five items. The case for increasing disruption in Australian classrooms therefore rests on a 3.7% decrease in the number of students saying their teacher ‘never or hardly ever’ has to wait a long time for students to quiet down, and a 2.8% decrease in the number saying students cannot work well ‘never or hardly ever’. Given that there was no difference in students’ responses between PISA 2000 and 2009, that suggests that there has been no change in more than 20 years for at least two of the five items.

3)    Countries with almost identical disciplinary index scores are ranked above and below each other. For example, Australia and Belgium received Index scores of 0.20 and 0.21, respectively yet Australia is ranked 69th and Belgium 70th. There is a snowball’s chance in hell that these scores are statistically different to each other, so why is one being ranked above the other? Doing this simply expands the number of places in the ranking which makes the distance between countries look larger than it really is.

4)    No tests of significance between countries or ranks were conducted, so we do not know whether there is a statistically significant difference in Australian students’ responses to the OECD average or how much of a difference there is between Australia and the countries at the top of the ranking. Similar points have been made numerous times over the years in relation to the rankings for student achievement in reading, mathematics, and science, but at least in those cases, countries with statistically indistinguishable performances are grouped together and given the same rank. 

5)    Recent research by Sally Larsen from the University of New England has indicated no decline in TIMMS, PIRLS or NAPLAN results of Australian students. Any observed correlations between declines in PISA’s disciplinary climate survey and student academic outcomes should not be causally interpreted.

My view

If politicians are going to look at rankings, then look at them all. Let’s consider, for example, that: 

1.     Australia is sitting at the top of ranked countries in terms of the hours that teachers spend in face-to-face teaching. 

2.     Australian teachers spend more hours teaching than the OECD average (838.28 hours/year vs 800.45 hours respectively)

3.     Korea is ranked first in classroom disciplinary climate and Australia is ranked 69th. However, Australian teachers spend 323.30 more hours per year in face-to-face teaching than their Korean counterparts, who teach just 516.98 hours/year.

4.     In disciplinary climate, the difference between advantaged students and disadvantaged students in Australia (0.34) is double that of Korea (0.17). 

These are just some of the gaps and anomalies that arise when the PISA data is subjected to close reading, which is the absolute minimum amount of analysis that should have been conducted (if not, prior, then at least) during an Inquiry that used these data for its rationale.

The questions education ministers must ask

Readers of the Interim Report, especially Education Ministers, should regard it very critically and start asking serious questions:

  • Who stands to benefit from such simple representations of these data?
  • Might there be financial benefits for non-university providers from the ‘deregulation’ of initial teacher education?
  • Are there other data that have been ignored and, if so, what does their omission suggest about rigour and bias?
  • Might Australian students tell a different story if asked by expert researchers using both open and close-ended questions? 

Are we brave enough to ask them?

Linda Graham is professor and director of The Centre for Inclusive Education at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). She has led multiple externally funded research projects and has published more than 100 books, chapters and articles. Her international bestseller, Inclusive Education for the 21st Century: Theory, Policy and Practice, is now in its second edition. In 2020, Linda chaired the Inquiry into Suspension, Exclusion and Expulsion processes in South Australian government schools. She also gave evidence to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability on the use of exclusionary school discipline and its effects.

ICYMI – here are all the blog posts from the conference

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That was a huge week at the AARE conference hosted and we had so many excellent contributions. Many thanks to all of you who contributed during the conference, making time despite a huge and very busy conference.

All the blogs are here, in reverse chronological order, from the pre conference through to the wrap the morning after. Find them all here.

First, let’s start with republishing the 2023 AARE Blog of the Year, announced on Wednesday during the conference, Teachers now: Why I left and where I’ve gone by Robyn Brandenburg, Ellen Larsen, Richard Sallis and Alyson Simpson.

Teachers now: Why I left and where I’ve gone

And now, the blogs:

And now, that’s a wrap for #AARE2023. Thanks for the memories
Welcome to the fifth #AARE2023 blog of the conference
Welcome to the fourth #AARE2023 blog of the conference
Welcome to the third #AARE2023 blog of the conference
Welcome to the second #AARE2023 blog of the conference
Welcome to the first #AARE2023 blog of the conference