- Related consultation
Anonymous Submission 013
Related consultation – Teacher Education Expert Panel Consultation
Submitter information
Name Anonymous
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?
Little
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?
Little
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?
Somewhat
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 large extent
Feedback
Thank you for offering the opportunity to provide feedback on this report. Or the four reform areas, Reform Area 4: Improve postgraduate ITE for midcareer entrants is probably the most well-written section and brings up many good points. I was happy to hear there is not a suggestion or returning to one year graduate teaching degrees, even the shorten more intense version completed in 1.3 year seems very short. Teaching is a complex profession, and no amount of 'life skills' or other job prior experience prepares someone for teaching. I do like the current way of offering internships and work-while-you-study modes. I am concerned about some of the ‘colleges’ offering these course currently and their pedagogical knowledge and research expertise in specific key learning areas of the curriculum. Often these courses are lectured by more generic academics that don’t have the rigor of areas similar to that which you would receive when completing a full undergraduate degree at a university. I feel that many undergraduate teachers would also benefit from the intern style of degree where they can work at a school, getting paid, while studying. Since COVID I have found our ITE students in undergraduate degrees had become accustom to working more when their lectures were available online. This is not to say that I endorse online learning for teaching degrees, just that these students place a great deal of value on work and an intern model may be supportive for these students as well as midcareer students.
My main concern with this paper is twofold:
1. The teaching ‘expert’ panel is not expert in my mind to be making some of these suggestions. Representatives of academics currently teaching ITE degrees or researchers in the area of student learning and subject areas would have been appreciated.
2. Reform ‘Area 1: Strengthen ITE programs to deliver effective, classroom ready graduates’ has many flaws and does not present a variety of learning theories or teaching pedagogies – it seems very one-sided view of a small set of those from psychology backgrounds or special education settings regarding pedagogy (based on many of the readings in the ref list).
It is noted that in Area 3 you mention that “there is no clear evidence that a single model of practical experience will deliver consistent, high quality placements across all contexts” this is also true of effective evidence-based teaching practices. It is concerning that in Area 1 you present a single model for ITE provides to present to teaching students. You speak or rigor and relevance however you reference CESE (2017) and CESE (2020), neither of these are peer-reviewed research – therefore I would not consider this ‘seminal’ work. There is much debate and differing views regarding the ‘works’ you present related to the brain and learning – particularly Cognitive Load Theory. Students studying to be teachers need to be exposed to a wide variety of learning theories, including a constructivist theory of learning, this is particularly important in subjects such as mathematics and science. There is no one-size-fits-all, and students need to be exposed to these to aid in developing their own ideas and their own teaching philosophy. You state students need a foundational understanding of “why specific instructional practices work” – this is under your section on the brain and learning but this is not a flexible fluid look at learning at all. This reads like, ‘I’ll tell you what specific teaching model I want you to use’ – that’s not learning for the teachers either. You attempt to quote Black and Wiliam, a better reference from Wiliam is “everything works somewhere, and nothing works everywhere”. Good teachers have “adaptive expertise”.
This is also true of the ‘suggested effective pedagogical practices’ in the report. Only one of those listed is a pedagogy – explicit modelling, the others are just good classroom planning and practices – they are not pedagogy. Learning is not simply about ‘retrieval’ and ‘mastery’ and ‘acquisition’ – there is beauty in learning and curiosity and wonder, there is self-discovery, play and intentional teaching. I recommend you read the Early Years Learning Framework – this work present a rich, wide number of pedagogies that pre-school educators should be expose to – much more comprehensive than this report.
I am not suggesting explicit teaching is not needed, it is an essential part of my teaching, however, so is investigations, inquiry, problem-solving and student-centred approaches. My explicit teaching is also not a one-size-fits-all that I would present like a recipe (as you have describe in your lesson idea), it’s more likened to intentional teaching and it doesn’t always involve modelling. Or the modelling may occur after students have explored first. I mentioned you reference Black and Wiliam, but they state that it not necessary to present the learning intention first – they recommend talking about the learning at the end – so you don’t ruin the surprise. You seem to be pushing the ‘I do, we do you so’ model and focus on ‘worked examples’ – this is also very traditional and secondary focused. Current pedagogies involve all ranges of teaching practices, but they are only teacher-directed.
You also state these are for implementing in subject areas – but you then list literacy and numeracy – these are not subject areas. They are contexts applied and general capabilities developed. Some aspects of literacy do use explicit modelling and scaffolding – but this is not the totality of ways of teaching in all subjects areas.
Area 1 needs a full rewrite and there needs to be some collaboration with experts (education academics in each field of mathematics, English, science, technology, history, geography, creative arts and physical education) from universities currently teaching ITE programs in early childhood, primary and secondary degrees to provide the panel with a richer depth of research to cite and a great understanding of the diverse learning theories and pedagogies that students SHOULD be exposed to.
Here is a small ref list of what to read, particularly pertaining to mathematics:
Bobis, J., Mulligan, J., & Lowrie, T. (2013). Mathematics for children: Challenging children to think mathematically. Pearson.
Beswick, K. (2005). Preservice Teachers' Understandings of Relational and Instrumental Understanding. International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 2, 161-168.
National Research Council, Donovan, S., & Bransford, J. (2005). How students learn. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Powell, A. B., Borge, I. C., Fioriti, G. I., Kondratieva, M., Koublanova, E., & Sukthankar, N. (2009). Challenging tasks and mathematics learning. Challenging mathematics in and beyond the classroom: The 16th ICMI study, 133-170.
Skemp, R. R. (1976). Relational understanding and instrumental understanding. Mathematics teaching, 77(1), 20-26.
Sullivan, P. (2011). Teaching mathematics: Using research-informed strategies.
Sullivan, P., Askew, M., Cheeseman, J., Clarke, D., Mornane, A., Roche, A., & Walker, N. (2015). Supporting teachers in structuring mathematics lessons involving challenging tasks. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 18, 123-140.