Directions in Education
No 14:1 - 28 January 2005
‘Making teaching a more satisfying occupation is a major challenge for our profession’, states Tim McMullen (in NSW), writer of our first piece, and he is correct! One way to do this may be to out-source the operations of a school, which Brian Caldwell (in Victoria) explores in the second piece, leaving more time for ‘principals to get a life’ as he puts it. In South Australia, major plans are emerging to make teaching more satisfying, as our third piece, from Pip Field, explains. Now that 2005 is underway, we are, it seems, already facing up to the demands of an over-burdened workforce - our nation’s teachers.
Assoc. Professor David Beckett, The University of Melbourne, Victoria Email: d.beckett@unimelb.edu.au
Continuing Teacher Shortages
TEACHER shortages continue to be a concern at both national and international levels. In California it is reported that college campuses are chronically understaffed in mathematics, science and special education (Sacramento Bee, 13/12/04). A report produced by the Santa Cruz-based Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning predicts a need for 60,000 new teachers in the next five years, and as many as 100,000 over the next decade, as baby boomers begin to retire from the profession. Additional problems in California include a strapped state budget that has meant the end of most of the teacher recruitment drives of recent years, as well as the higher teacher qualifications demanded by the Federal No Child Left Behind Act. There are also teacher shortages in urban areas, where the high cost of living makes it difficult for teachers to be able to live locally.
Many of these problems are mirrored in Australian schools. Significant shortages exist in the same disciplines as in California. Overstretched education budgets make comprehensive recruitment drives difficult. Newly developed teacher accreditation institutes are, rightly, demanding more rigorous teacher qualifications. And there are certain urban areas where the cost of living is so high that young teachers are unable to live locally. For example, some schools in Sydney’s eastern suburbs claim that they are having difficulty attracting young teachers, as they cannot afford to live in the area and they are unwilling to battle through the peak-hour traffic each day to get to work.
On a brighter note, some universities report increased demand for their teaching courses. Flinders University Head of Admissions commented: ‘All the teaching areas are in high demand, which is a trend right across South Australia. I think this is due to the press about the shortage of teachers and people are realizing there’s a demand for them, particularly in country SA’ (Adv, 13/12/04).
But many of the students who train as teachers do not enter or remain in the profession for very long. In an analysis of how to keep teachers in the profession, columnist Peter Martin asserts, ‘More so than in most professions, teachers don’t particularly like teaching’ (SMH, 12/1/05). He points to a paradox - the more job vacancies governments need to fill, the more relaxed teachers will feel about resigning (and later returning), creating even more vacancies to fill. He concludes: ‘There is something fundamental about the job, or the way we ask people to do the job, that makes teaching unsustainable for so many of our teachers’. Making teaching a more satisfying occupation is a major challenge for our profession.
Mr Tim McMullen, Head: Secondary Curriculum, Catholic Education Office, Sydney, NSW Email: tim.mcmullen@ceo.syd.catholic.edu.au
Re-Invigorating Public Education
TWO apparently unrelated developments have raised issues that lie at the heart of efforts to re-invigorate public education in Australia. One relates to public-private partnerships in the building of government schools in NSW (School groups look to private sector for building, SMH, 10/12/04). At issue here is provision in a timely fashion of facilities that the professional is proud to work in and that match the pedagogies that are required for learners in a knowledge society. The other is a plan to provide coaches for experienced principals in Victoria (How to get a life and run a school, Editorial, Age, 17/1/05). The issue in this instance is support for leaders in schools where expectations are higher than they have ever been, with all of the responsibilities that may be found in the self-managing school.
The possibility of public-private partnerships in NSW was canvassed in the light of needs for an estimated 100 new schools in growth corridors in the decades ahead. Some may see this as the thin edge of the wedge in the privatisation of government schooling. It may therefore come as a surprise that the Carr Labor Government has already gone down this track. ABN AMRO provided more than $130 million for nine already-completed schools, with ownership to revert to government after 30 years. Educational services are provided in the traditional manner but a private company (Spotless Services Australia) manages security, maintenance, capital expenditure, janitorial services and utilities. Schools were completed two years earlier than if completed under a wholly government operation. Maintenance standards are high; for example, failure to clean graffiti from high school walls within two hours of reporting results in a financial penalty to the private operator.
These arrangements are unremarkable compared to the ambitious program of building and re-building public schools in England, where the Blair Government is committed to the transformation of facilities in most schools over the next two decades, many through public-private partnerships. Many schools are already privately managed, leaving teachers to focus on their core work and principals to get a life.
Serious consideration should be given to similar arrangements if the public sector in Australia is to be saved from residualisation.
Professor Brian Caldwell, Managing Director, Educational Transformations Pty Ltd, Vic. brian@educationaltransformations.com.au.
The 3 Rs: Recruit, Recognize, Retain
ENHANCING workforce capability is one of South Australia’s Strategic Directions for 2005-6 within the Department of Education and Children’s Services (DECS). Increasing our capacity to compete for, and retain, qualified, talented staff in a global environment are key objectives. How to recruit and retain teachers emerged as one of the main issues from a series of public forums held across the State in 2004 by the Education Minister, Dr Jane Lomax-Smith and Education Department Chief Executive, Steve Marshall (Adv., 11/1/05).
In SA the Teacher Quality and Development (TQ&D) Team in DECS aims to provide structure for teachers’ purposeful professional learning and development. The TQ&D Team is responsible for five project areas: Professional Standards for Teachers, Advanced Skills Teachers, Beginning Teachers and Induction, Teacher Development, and the AGQTP (Australian Govt. Quality Teachers Project).
The Professional Standards Project, in particular, aims to recognize and enhance the status of teaching as a profession and to improve the effectiveness of professional learning and development, and is based on the MCEETYA National Framework.
Being conscious of an ageing workforce, there is a need to value and rejuvenate existing teachers, and to attract and retain teachers new to the profession, particularly to remote and complex schools. It is our aim to connect all beginning teachers with a mentor (Teacher Leader) and to introduce and value (digital) portfolios as a reflective tool and evidence of deep learning that is developmental, integrated, self-directed and lifelong.
Ms Philippa (Pip) Field, Project Manager, Professional Standards for Teachers, Department for Education and Children’s Services (DECS), SA
Email: field.pip@saugov.sa.gov.au
Learning areas are the focus of this next set of articles. (DB)
Australian Science Gets Some Funding
IN these days of budget restraints and cutbacks to funding for science, it is pleasing to hear of the recent development of state-of-the-art scientific and research facilities in Australia for tertiary and secondary students.
For example, the School of Medical Sciences at RMIT University, through its strong links with industry, has launched an impressive chemistry teaching laboratory at its Bundoora campus. The new laboratory, outfitted to the tune of $250,000, will boost science teaching and research in pathology, clinical biochemistry, haematology, molecular biology and other health care specialisations (Star, 26/10/04:2).
Secondary students are being catered for by Professor McKinnon, and his team at Charles Sturt University. He has developed a program that allows students to study and photograph planets, stars and galaxies by logging into a password-protected website where they pass through a portal to the telescope control computer. The program has been funded by more than $200,000 from the Department of Education, Science and Training (Aust., 19/10/04:37).
Not to be outdone, astronomers from the University of NSW (who have discovered that the quality of pictures from the ground-based telescope on the Antarctic plateau is nearly as good as that from images from the Hubble Space Telescope at a fraction of the cost) are seeking funding of $20 million over the next five years to enable the building of an optical telescope at Antarctica. This will allow Australian astronomers to stay abreast with developments in Astronomy (Aust., 16/9/04:5).
In comparison to some international places of science learning, these developments in Australian scientific opportunities are looking very positive. In Alaska, for example, the parents and other members of the community go big-game hunting to collect organs for dissection by secondary science students, as the school budget can no longer afford to buy the specimens (www.boston.com/news/education, 30/9/04). And in Iraq, the scientific tertiary and secondary communities have acknowledged that all their libraries, laboratories and computers were destroyed under the reign of Saddam (Aust., 13/10/04:26).
How fortunate that Australian science is not so impoverished.
Dr Julie Greenhalgh, Deputy Principal, Pymble Ladies' College, Pymble, NSW
Email: jgreenhalgh@pymblelc.nsw.edu.au
Is Phonics Fascist?
DR Brendan Nelson’s recently announced inquiry into the teaching of reading (Age, 6/12/04), prompted by a letter to him from 26 of Australia’s leading reading science researchers, has reignited the continuing controversy over reading standards and how reading should best be taught. A particularly disturbing aspect has been the reaction of some educators to the inquiry.
Some people seem to believe that teaching young children the alphabetic principle is a right-wing plot; that teaching phonics is somehow fascist. Teaching kids to read by emphasising letter-sound correspondence is portrayed as the first step on the road to totalitarianism - the next step clearly being to invade Poland!
Reading scientists with the most impeccable liberal credentials have had their integrity impugned by overheated lobbyists for the whole-language approach to teaching reading, eager to discredit (by whatever means necessary) any research findings of which they disapprove. How to teach young children to read has, in fact, been transformed into some sort of liberality test of political correctness. These disagreements about the teaching of reading have not been dubbed The Reading Wars for nothing.
Even more bizarre are the so-called critical literacy enthusiasts who seem to think that being able to learn to read is merely a trivial prerequisite for what primary kids should really be doing. Let me share with you this advertisement from the magazine The Reading Teacher.
It is an ad for a book on critical literacy, headed ‘No more stories about dogs named Spot, trips to Grandma's or broken arms’ (?!). The author (Lee Heffernan) is quoted as saying ‘Instead of simply recording life events, critically literate readers and writers use text to get something done in the world’. This book (for upper primary school children) urges an approach to writing that ‘allows students to question multiple viewpoints, explore socio-political issues, and take action to promote social justice’.
Social activism? For ten-year-olds…? Political correctness notwithstanding, my reading research team clings tenaciously to the view that the most important academic gift we can give to children is the ability to read fluently and easily. At a more appropriate time in their development, and without political indoctrination in either direction from well-meaning but misguided politically active teachers, our children will then be able to make up their own minds on social issues, having been able to read all sides of an argument.
Teaching kids to read should never be about politics: it is far too important for that.
Professor Kevin Wheldall, Associate Dean (Research), Australian Centre for Educational Studies, and Director, Macquarie University Special Education Centre, Sydney, NSW
Email: kevin.wheldall@mq.edu.au
Future Requires Creative Learners
ACROSS the world countries are reforming their systems of education as they struggle to prepare young people for the increasingly complex and challenging demands of the 21st century. In many countries creativity is being given priority as never before.
One example is the establishment of a National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education by the UK Government, resulting in the release of All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education in September 2000 (www.dfes.gov.uk/naccce/naccce.pdf). This landmark report emphasised the vital need to develop the creative abilities of all young people.
Is Australia ready for the creativity challenge? We know that participating in the arts can increase students’ self-esteem and confidence, their capacity to communicate clearly and to work with others. Yet the arts and creative endeavours are still not central to our education systems.
The two major reviews into visual education and music provision in Australian schools announced by the Government late in 2004 (Aust., 12/10/04) are a good start.
The Australia Council firmly believes all children have a right to a creative education and are entitled to have full benefit from the cultural resources in our communities.
Enlightened educational administrators all over Australia are respecting these rights, as evidenced in projects like Portraits (WS, 25/10/04), and the music program of Caringbah High School, which led to that school’s inclusion in Australia’s Best Schools 2004 (Aust., 12/11/04:13).
We need to further capitalise on the potential of the arts by fostering long-term collaborations between schools and the rich creative resources that are usually right there in their communities - from the local theatre company or art gallery, to the musicians, authors, performers, designers and other artists who are no doubt local residents, even parents, in the school community.
By committing to work together over time, we can ensure our children and young people have the creative skills to tackle the economic, social, cultural and environmental challenges in their lives, in our communities and globe of the 21st Century.
Ms Jennifer Bott, CEO, Australia Council for the Arts, Strawberry Hills, NSW Email: j.bott@ozco.gov.au
Information technology continues to expand and yet confound our expectations of it or IT. (DB)
Adolescents in Chat Rooms
AUSTRALIAN statistics show that the popularity of chat rooms rises with age, peaking at 67% among 12 to fourteen-year-olds (ABS, 2003). Researchers have shown that chat room use has many risks to adolescents, such as access to age-inappropriate information, exposure to wrong and misleading information and increasing risks from cyber offenders.
Research was conducted in Adelaide, aiming to study adolescent experiences within chat rooms, level of parental help and support available to adolescents in chat room use and perceived need for professional help to cope with chat room experiences. Data for this research were collected through focus group discussions, in which 114 students from eight public and two private schools participated, and it showed that only 18% of the respondents received parental support and guidance in chat room use. Only 26% reported parental concern about chat room use to the extent that they were prevented access at home.
However, in spite of this parental concern, adolescents accessed chat rooms outside their homes. Interestingly, the study found that, while 39% of girls’ parents showed concern for chat room use, only 7% of boys’ parents showed concern. A majority of adolescents (62%) required professional help and guidance in chat room use and preferred young professionals offering online help.
Teachers can play an important role by creating awareness among their adolescent student about risky behaviours within chat rooms. A recent US study has shown that adolescent girls receiving guidance from their teachers engaged in less risk-taking behaviours within chat rooms.
It is timely that schools launch programs for adolescents and their parents. Parents need to know that internet chat rooms are here to stay and it is timely to get to know their adolescent child’s experiences within the chat rooms. Traditional ‘stranger-danger’ campaigns have proved ineffective. Schools need to launch ‘awareness creation’ programs to educate the adolescents about specific risky behaviours in chat rooms and how to stay away from them.
Dr Rahamathulla Mubarakali, School of Social Administration and Social Work, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA Email: mubarak@flinders.edu.au
Keeping a Finger on the Pulse
INSTEAD of answering names in a traditional classroom roll call, pupils scan their fingertips into a computer (PA News, Scotland, 30/8/04). Such technological innovations are on the increase in Western societies and currently include email and SMS text mobile phone messages to parents, conveying a student’s absence almost immediately after detection. Further developments in this pursuit, involves parents’ ability to access class rolls online to monitor their child’s/children school attendance patterns.
In NSW, 35 high schools, eighteen of them public, have installed the program during the past six months, resulting in a 50 per cent drop in truancy rates in some schools (DT, 13/12/04:3).
Students missing class is a significant issue addressed by every school, each day. Absenteeism is on the increase in many government schools and much of it is unexplained. ‘More than 10,000 Victorian students skip classes each day but don’t explain why’ (Age, 9/12/04:3). The Association of School Councils in Victoria said it would like schools to employ truant officers, while the Victorian Primary Principals Association said welfare officers should be introduced to every primary school (Age, p.3).
So, are such advances in technologically-based monitoring programs the strategic answer to decrease student daily absences? Do these innovations consider and address all the various forms of student absences, such as full-day and partial truancy, school refusers, school withdrawal (short and long-term) early leavers and late arrivals?
We are not yet sure. What these programs do enhance, however, is important communication between home and school, and visa versa. Consequently, schools utilising the technology are focusing on implementing new strategies to monitor student absenteeism and subsequently improve dialogue between the school and parent/caregivers in pursuit of reducing student absence. Whilst this may not be the only answer in reducing student absences, effective communication between schools and parents has proven to have a positive and significant impact on the possible resolution of individual absences and the larger issues of truancy and school withdrawal.
Where to from here? More than a finger on the pulse is required. We need to embrace programs that ensure students participate meaningfully and willingly in their own learning.
Ms Lila Mularczyk, Principal, Merrylands High School, Merrylands, NSW
Email liliana.mularczyk@det.nsw.edu.au
Mature Age = Mature Motivations
IS higher degree study less appealing? Data on application rates for 2005 indicate initially that demand may have fallen (by 1%), in particular, the rate for non-school leaver applications, which is down 6% on last year (SMH Dec 8 p5). Should educators and politicians be concerned? Labor spokesperson Jenny Macklin blames the massive price hikes in HECS; Gavin Moodie, higher education policy analyst at Griffith University, says, ‘When the economy’s booming, there’s less demand on university study: jobs are plentiful, with lots of overtime - [people see] no need to study, and they don’t have the time anyway’.
Well, some have the time! In Coburg, in Melbourne’s north, 650 Kodak workers were made redundant, as the company blamed the stranglehold of digital photography (CT, 8/12/04:19). Mario Creaco, a storeman at Kodak, is angry: ‘I‘ve been here 34 years. This is the only job I have ever had … I don’t think I will get another job’. Now that employability has supplanted employment as a policy focus, educators have been caught up in the generic skills debate, which is the latest variant of the lifelong learning push. Mario may need to learn some generic skills if he wants to return to employment.
Just down Sydney Road from Coburg, into Royal Parade, Parkville, another worker is leaving. After a professional lifetime of high achievement at the University of Melbourne, Professor Kwong Lee Dow retired as Vice Chancellor during January 2005. He reflects on education policy changes in the offing, stating that the higher education is to be much opened up by private and teaching-only universities (Aust., 8/12/04:34), and, more personally, will work as Deputy Chair of the National Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership, as well as re-reading the twelve volumes of Proust’s Remembering Things Past.
All around us, people are moving in, and around, employability. The official figures cannot tell the story of diverse motives, bundles of generic skills, and creations of new opportunities for those of ages well beyond the school leaver market. What we do know is that demand for learning, both in studies, and through workplace experiences, will accelerate dramatically. Are our formal institutions (schools, universities and TAFEs) geared up for the new pedagogies: the reflective, material, interactive and purposeful ways of learning which older adults know intimately to be powerful, and expect their teachers and managers and leaders to be able to facilitate?
Assoc. Prof David Beckett, The University of Melbourne, Victoria
Email: d.beckett@unimelb.edu.au
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