Sankey, Derek

Sankey, Derek 

Related consultation – Teacher Education Expert Panel Consultation

Submitter information

Name Sankey, Derek

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 great 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?

To a great extent

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 great 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?

To a great extent

Feedback

Initial teacher education in Australia is in dire need of reform in all four Reform Areas identified by the Expert Panel. The Expert Panel is to be congratulated on their excellent work and their Discussion Paper goes a long way in identifying urgent reforms needed.

There are, however, issues that will need to be addressed especially in regard to Reform Areas 1 and 3. There is also an overarching concern in regard to ideological impediments to reform that should be factored into the reform agenda. If the four Reform Areas identified by the Expert Panel are to be achieved, the role that universities are currently playing in initial teacher education, in Australia needs to be thoroughly scrutinised.

The Expert Panel seems to assume that universities can provide the solution to the problems of ITE in Australia. On the contrary it can be argued that, in large measure, they are the problem and will remain so for as long as their role is not thoroughly scrutinised and reformed. In this regard, for example, the Expert Panel might consider the merits of abolishing the B.Ed. degree, which is hardly fit for purpose and insist, instead, that all who enter teaching have a full university degree in a relevant subject.

Reform Area 1. The Expert Panel is entirely correct in identifying the crying need for teachers in Australia to have an intellectually sound research-based understanding of brain science as the basis of their classrooms practice. Currently Australian teachers have a very sketchy understanding of brain science and what they do know is often incorrect, or only partially correct. As much research indicates, neuromyths 1 abound in education, both internationally and in Australia. Moreover, the lack of a sound understanding of brain science in education has led to the advocacy of misguided practices, including the ill-founded opposition of many teacher educators to the teaching on phonics in literacy learning2.

The Expert Panel does not, however, seem to fully appreciate the staff resourcing implication of this reform proposal. It seems to assume that those currently employed in university faculties and school of education have the ability (even if they had the inclination) to teach ‘brain and learning’ when, to the contrary, very few teacher educators have a sound scientific understanding of how children and adolescents learn. This has obvious staffing implications. On the other hand, it should be noted that Cambridge University Press has recently published a textbook3 that targets the Australian context and is available to support the Expert Panel’s suggestions for insisting on ‘brain and learning’ in Reform Area 1.

Reform Area 3. The Expert Panel does it seem ready to abandon current models of ITE that involve teaching practice ‘placement’ (when university student teachers go into schools for periods of practicum). It is strongly advised that the Expert Panel adopt the notion of internship rather than ‘placement’. This might involve student teachers being attached to one designated ‘training school’ for two days per week throughout their ITE. Student teachers on ‘placement’ often feel they are an outsider and visitor to the school. By contrast, as an intern at their designated school they can feel they belong and, with the support of school staff, can carefully learn and hone the skills of teaching. This alternative model would greatly assist the delivery of Reform Area 3 and it also has relevance for Reform Area 4.

A second major impediment in delivering Reform Area 3 is that most teacher educators have little or no recent and relevant experience of teaching in a school. By comparison, it is worth noting that in England and Wales, as long ago as 1985, it was a government requirement that all who teach in ITE should have recent and relevant school experience, defined as one academic term of full-time school teaching, on a full timetable every five years. Currently there is often a major disconnect between university ITE providers and the real schools and classrooms, where newly qualifying teachers will eventually be employed.

Ideological impediments. The Expert Panel also seems not to be aware that a major impediment to ITE reform is the cult of Post-modern relativism that pervades university ITE faculties and schools of education. This ideology is strongly anti-science and reduces everything to issues of race, gender and identity4. The University of Sydney can be considered a clear example, made worse when recently downgraded from being a faculty in its own right to be a school within a Faculty of Arts and Social Science, but the problem of post-modern extremism is ubiquitous. The Expert Panel should anticipate that those currently ensconced in university faculties and schools of education will strongly resist change, to protect their ideological control of initial teacher education.

References

1. Geake, J. (2008) Neuromythologies in education. Educational Research 50(2), 123-133.

Howard-Jones, P. (2014). Neuroscience and education: Myths and messages. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 15, 817-824

Kim, M., & Sankey, D. (2018). Philosophy, neuroscience and pre-service teachers' beliefs in neuromyths: A call for remedial action. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(13), 1214-1227.

2 Australian College of Educators (2018). The great literacy debate. Special edition of Professional Educators. https://www.austcolled.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Prof-Ed-Special-Edition-Oct-2018-1.pdf

3 Kim, M. & Sankey, D. (2022). The science of learning and development in education: A research-based approach to educational practice. Cambridge University Press.

4 Pluckrose, H., & Lindsay, J. (2020). Cynical theories: How universities made everything about race, gender, and identity – and why this harms everybody. Pitchstone Publishing