Australian Primary Principals Association

Australian Primary Principals Association 

Related consultation – Teacher Education Expert Panel Consultation

Submitted Files

Submitter information

Name Australian Primary Principals Association

Reform area 1: Strengthening initial teacher education programs to deliver confident, effective, classroom ready graduates.

Q: To what extent would the proposed opportunities strengthen ITE to deliver confident, effective, classroom ready graduates?

To a large extent

Reform area 2: Strengthening the link between performance and funding of initial teacher education.

Q: To what extent would the proposed opportunities provide a strengthened focus on improving the performance of ITE programs?

Somewhat

Reform area 3: Improving the quality of practical experience in teaching.

Q: To what extent would the proposed opportunities improve the quality of practical experience?

To a large extent

Reform area 4: Improving postgraduate initial teacher education for mid-career entrants.

Q: To what extent would the proposed opportunities improve postgraduate programs to attract mid-career entrants?

Somewhat

Feedback

Reform area 1: Strengthening initial teacher education programs to deliver confident, effective, classroom ready graduates. To what extent would the proposed opportunities strengthen ITE to deliver confident, effective, classroom ready graduates (for the range of contexts?)

We are confident that prioritising core content and alignment with the Graduate Teacher standards will support teachers to be confident in the classroom and offer some additions.

Brain and learning

We suggest that content relating to the brain and learning includes information about the impact of trauma on the brain and information about neurodiverse students. We also believe that an understanding of the brain at different stages and ages will support teachers to effectively engage students. (Dr Andrew Fuller has research on this).

Effective Practices

Effective teachers plan for all students. Formative feedback is essential to differentiating instruction, providing multiple entry and exit points. We would like to see reference to differentiation in this core content. Differentiation is essential in Tier One in the Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS)as well as in Tier 2. While we acknowledge differentiating well is a practice that is built over time, teachers can build their skills as they differentiate the content, process and product.

Self-regulation is essential to academic success and building this skill in students supports their learner efficacy. AEDC data shows this in an increasing challenge for some young learners, so having teachers aware of age-appropriate skill level and how to amplify the skill in existing classroom operations is a high impact practice.

Effective Practices in subject areas.

We believe that oral language skill development is essential to high quality reading instruction. Oral language is key to building and using vocabulary and receptive language is key to how students understand language. The work of Dr Carmel Crevola has identified the relationship between children with poor receptive language and academic achievement. APPA Principals have also seen the relationship between poor receptive language and poor classroom behaviour, and we feel that an understanding of the contribution of oral language to learning success is an essential component of the core content in ITE.

Classroom management

APPA believes that positive and strong relationships between teachers and students are key to a positive classroom environment, and this should be front and centre of a discussion about classroom management.

OEDC PISA data shows the importance of student’s belonging to school to academic achievement and school leaders understand its connection to school attendance and behavioural outcomes. Belonging is an active ingredient for trust, positive relationships and psychological safety and should be highlighted in teacher education. When a student belongs, they can be their authentic selves and are more likely to be accepting of others, which makes for more respectful and culturally and psychologically safe classrooms for all. A lack of belonging can lead to sadness, depression, and loneliness.

Student agency is a key lever in safe and respectful classrooms and is another proactive practice that teachers can utilise to complement other proactive approaches to classroom management.

Teacher self-regulation is also important in the creation and maintaining of positive classroom environments.

Reform area 2: Strengthening the link between performance and funding of initial teacher education

To what extent would the proposed opportunities provide a strengthened focus on improving the performance of ITE programs?

APPA is interested in the weighting that might be used to assess performance across the four categories.

We are concerned about how classroom readiness when exiting ITE would be assessed as our national education system is geographically and contextually diverse. Can one ITE prepare students for all contexts? We don’t think so. We believe systems at the local level have a role to play in the education and ongoing development of graduate teachers to ensure they are capable and confident to meet the needs of all students. This might mean funding longer induction programs for teachers going to First Nation or remote schools. Students in these schools are entitled to well-prepared teachers, skilled in establishing positive relationships and understanding the classroom practices that have the highest impact on those students.

We would like to see transition funding for mentors for all graduate teachers; activating a pool of retired teachers or in providing additional release time for experienced teachers to support graduates to develop their capabilities.

Public Reporting

In relation to the publicly reporting on the performance to inform the choice of ITE provider by students, we have concerns. Might this option of mobility to access a more ‘high performing’ ITE advantage some students over others? – i.e. those able to be more mobile due to family support and income vs those who cannot afford to live in the location of another ITE.

What might the reputational damage be to existing qualified teachers who trained at an ITE now deemed low performing; might they now be judged less favourably? Schools experience of the league tables that have resulted from MySchool tells us that data can be viewed simplistically and not tell the full story of the benefits of the school to a child and a community.

In relation to the four categories, selection, retention, classroom readiness and transition, we are interested in the weighting that could be applied to each category and appreciate the commitment to providing a balanced view of ITE program quality and to minimising perverse incentives. We are also interested in the data about where students go to teach as teacher shortages are more keenly felt in country and remote areas as well as in some specialist subject areas. What might we learn from ITEs who have higher numbers of students, not from country and remote schools, moving to country and remotes schools?

A diverse workforce is needed to reflect the diversity in our communities, and we are pleased that attracting diverse cohorts of students is a priority. We are also pleased that this review includes attention to identifying barriers to success and designed targeted improvements for diverse groups to ensure their retention in the profession. And if a particular ITE provides the cultural and psychological safety for minority students and is therefore a choice for diverse applicants; what funding and support could be provided to those students to live safely and affordably away from home?

Classroom readiness

As a professional association, we would welcome the opportunity to co-design ITE programs with ITE providers, to ensure a shared understanding of the contemporary classroom and of context in our communities.

We also believe that mentoring is important to ensuring effective transition into the teaching profession and that this must be funded so that the mentor has the capacity to do this well. There are teachers willing to do this as an add-on to existing work, but this is too important to leave to teacher good will. In addition, graduate teacher access to on-going professional learning relative to their context and learning need must be assured.

Reform area 3: Improving the quality of practical experience in teaching

To what extent would the proposed opportunities improve the quality of practical experience?

We would welcome increased collaboration between schools and ITE providers to ensure the better integration of theory and practice. We also agree that activities before and after placement, along with the conceptual understanding of the practice to be undertaken and the skill level required is important. We also believe that having a strong philosophical underpinning of the purpose of education is important as it positions curriculum, skills and concepts in context. For example, because we believe all children can learn, we utilise and range of pedagogical practise to engage students in the learning.

Effective provider-school partnerships, with clarity of roles and responsibilities, cohesion of theory and effective communication and support are needed.

Incentives: Given the current challenge of teacher workload, we believe attention to mentor teachers capacity to do this well is needed. Some potential mentors have reported that effective mentoring, including feedback, planning, and coaching of some student teachers is time intensive and not compensated for in the existing rates of funding or in understanding that the mentor teacher retains responsibility for the 25+ students in the class. An increase in funding to mentor teachers or an increase in funding to the school to enable additional funded release time for the mentor teacher would be welcomed. In addition, how might we utilise the pool of experienced and often expert teachers who have recently retired but who would be willing to provide mentoring support during placements, especially in country and remote locations?

We don’t believe we need more frameworks to support teachers to mentor well, rather clarity about the goals we are going after in the existing ones. We understand ‘working towards’ the graduate standard, we make use of the Classroom Practice Continuum, and we can gather classroom student’s feedback on effectiveness of the relationships, psychological and cultural safety as we understand that many students learn because of who we are (i.e. our humanity), rather than what we are (i.e. teacher).

What can we learn from those mentor teachers who do this well? What might we learn from the exit interviews at the conclusion of a school placement? This could help us understand the desired capabilities of effective mentor teachers and to consider how these mentors could be used at the local level to build the capability of peers.

Streamlined coordination of placements amongst ITEs and the processes associated with practical experience would be a positive step forward. Schools can receive multiple requests from ITEs and individual students for classroom placements so centralising this would be useful.

Support for students with competing commitments / learning needs is important. Support could include part-time practicums over a longer period and having some hours of work in an Out of School Hours Care or Vacation Care when supervised by a qualified teacher contributing to placement hours. We have students who coach sports teams, work as Chaplains in schools, in Childcare and volunteer for Scouts, YMCA etc. How could this significant experience be captured as evidence of the Teacher Standards such as “the ability to know students and how they learn” or “create and maintain safe and supportive learning environments”. Could we consider micro-credentialling?

Reform area 4: Improving postgraduate initial teacher education for mid-career entrants

To what extent would the proposed opportunities improve postgraduate programs to attract mid-career entrants?

APPA understands the challenges in attracting and developing mid-career entrants into ITE while ensuring they can deliver quality teaching in classrooms.

We wonder if in addition to examining opportunities to condense the program and enabling flexibility in programs, we look at scaffolded support into the classroom in the year after they graduate. We have written earlier in this submission about the importance of mentoring and wonder if we can borrow from the medical model of resident medical officer, in our case, having graduates work under the supervision of teaching professionals in their first year. The in-situ model can help with application of theory to practice and the use of ongoing formative feedback, enables adjustments to planning and practice. In the primary context could we promote team teaching where an expert teacher is partnered with a graduate to co-plan and co-teach while co-developing teaching expertise.

We conclude our submission with an acknowledgement that teaching can be the best job in the world, but that it faces challenges and complexities in increasing number. We will retain teachers when job resources match job demands and when students have access to the appropriate health, mental health and family support, leaving teachers to focus on teaching and learning.