Teacher training | Copycatchildren

Academies of Excellence for Teacher Education.

The full outline of the course content and strategies for enriching the teaching of our nation’s children is currently under review as the dynamics of the times demand. Through a dedicated and forward looking professional workforce it will equip all aspiring teachers to a 21st century model of professional teaching, fit for the Info/Technological times in which they will base their careers.

The model proposed would create a number of Academies of Excellence for Teacher Education (AETEs) across the nation with the single aim of educating all teachers in providing an excellent and equitable learning experience for all of our nation’s children, from birth to maturity. The course would be of four year’s duration with the balance of two years theoretical and curriculum design and study, the other two years being in a fully practical hands on school environment. Practical classroom experience would be concurrent with learning theories, curriculum content and teaching strategies. The course would mirror the current school timetable of five full days every week for forty weeks each year, and be only for the said purpose of training suitable applicants for the purpose of teaching our nation’s children.

The current practice of trainee teachers having to pass the LANTITE (Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education) before graduating, introduced in 2016 by the federal government through ACER to ensure literacy and numeracy standards for trainees, is clear evidence of the failure of the current system. Trainee teachers currently have five tries at passing the test. The current arrangements for training out nation’s teachers has completely failed. At present 84% of primary school teachers is female and on current enrolment projections will reach 90% in a decade. In itself that is a disaster for our children with such limited male teacher role models, 40% of them also having limited or no male role models in their childhood. Enrolments in AETEs would have to be gender balanced for them to succeed, applicants would need to ‘like children’ (Adrian Piccoli’s comment) and have had experience interacting or leading youth groups. Bonded scholarships would be offered to successful applicants on a living wage basis.

An exit pathway would be offered during the first year to ensure all candidates are fully aware of the gravity of the task they are undertaking; to enrich our nation’s health and future through our children, not continuing on into a profession to which they are not fully committed, nor suited. We can no longer endure the current situation where up to one in five of our teachers, some say higher, is less than able to do a great job fashioning the future through our children. Currently 23% of students drop out in their first year of study and approximately another 20% leave the profession within their first four years of teaching.

AETEs would be established within the bounds of the current universities which fail to fulfill their role to its highest potential, the emphasis being warped by the Federal Government’s budgetary constraints for its own political ends as is obvious from this data: https://www.oecd.org/education/talis/TALIS2018_CN_AUS.pdf

Also refer to this site for further details on the current situation; https://www.aitsl.edu.au/tools-resources/resource/ite- data-report-2019

The total number of AETEs would be sixteen; five to NSW, four to Victoria, two to Queensland, and one each to South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, each an enrolment figure commensurate to the demands of its schools.. If the facilities could be developed and personnel found the number of AETEs would be double sixteen with half the number of trainees at each.

The Initial Teacher Education (ITE) 2019 report here referenced makes for some sobering reading. Forty eight educational institutions currently provide Initial Teacher Education courses across a wide range of jurisdictions and self interested parties. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/tools-resources/resource/ite-data-report-2019

You should make your own conclusions when considering what that means for our children’s futures.

The brief outline of the course content and strategies for enriching the teaching of our nation’s children through a dedicated and forward looking professional workforce with its AETAs is as follows:

In summary the broad outline.

All applicants would attend an Academy of their choice in Australia in person with no online courses.

All applicants would spend their first year in a non-specialised mode, visiting for discussion and observation one day in every week an Early Childhood facility in term one, a Primary School in term two, a Secondary Schools in term three and a Special Education facility together with an administrative centre in term four.

The second last week of each term would be full time at the visited institution so that the final week of each term would be to summarise the term’s experiences and findings.

It would be at this time, possibly sooner, that the applicant would have made an informed decision as to whether teaching fulfilled his/her expectations as a life career.

For the second year of the course the initial cohort would remain as a unit for half the time, a specialised unit for the other half, having made the choice as to where their interest and expertise best lie in the four sectors available; Early Childhood, Primary, Secondary and Special Education. Their day a week at the prac school of their choice would continue and for two weeks of each term they would fulfill the role of trainee teachers under the guidance of their classroom or subject specific teacher.

The big change in the program would come in year three when the first and third terms would be spent only in the chosen educational facilities with full hands on teaching experiences, and the second and fourth terms spent entirely at the AETEs for real life study and research on the experiences of the previous term’s classroom teaching and observation.

The fourth and final year of training would see a repeat of the third year with the added focus at the academy of an in depth focus of a research topic that may after three years teaching expertise lead to the Master of Education Course, the precursor to further promotion or advancement.

The contents of the theoretical portion of the course are based around four aspects of teaching:

Knowing the child and the psychology of learning
Knowing the curriculum and how most effectively to explore it
Knowing the community and how to contribute best towards it
Knowing the education providers and how to best manage them

A special strand of Rural Community Education would be introduced in year three as an option for students to explore as an alternative career path without the current constricted promotional opportunity to reach the top without ending one’s career in only large metropolitan settings. Our rural and isolated children deserve the same quality and guarantee of learning continuity as their city cousins, without having to attend boarding facilities. This is a topic of great contention, considering the findings of A Survey for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission - 1999. As expressed by Commissioner Chris Sodi: “Children who live outside the major population centres in Australia should not have to settle for a second rate education.”

The transition of Teacher Training Colleges first to Colleges of Advanced Education and then to the Universities was driven by then Federal Education Minister John Dawkins last century and is the direct cause of the bleak situation teacher training has become. That may now be history, driven directly by government funding priorities and political excesses, but is no reason for its continuation. The profession of teaching, like the profession of brain surgery, are both highly practical professions and highly academic professions. Whist teachers don’t physically get inside students' brains as do brain surgeons their impact on students’ brains is just as crucial, the difference being that every school day teachers interact with four million students’ brains. It's time we took the training of these teacher brain specialists seriously, for our nation’s future depends greatly on their expertise, every day.

A huge impediment that is inherent in the teaching profession is the promotional and transfer structures, more so to its disadvantage in the public system compared to the private and faith based systems. Great teachers must have whole of life career paths, and stability, rather than only having promotional pathways to administrative more highly paid roles, or living with the ‘transfer to another place’ threat hanging over them. The fiscal strategy that state governments use in holding a huge proportion of positions as ‘Acting’ or “Contracts’ has destroyed cohesive school culture and continuity of teaching and learning. The funding of a nation’s education system, the very bedrock of society, must be prioritised as an investment in our nation’s future, not a budgetary line item to be manipulated for political purposes, as is the current practice, and has been for the past three decades at least.

In conclusion as the Info/Technological Revolution continues to intervene more and more in every day life many more pieces will be knocked off the chess board, for the game has changed. Artificial Intelligence is now a reality as are Smart Phones, UTube videos, Social Media platforms with insidious algorithms, Uber Everything, Airbnb and Expedia like monsters and that’s just in the past decade or so. What will teachers be teaching in the next decade? What will our schools look like in just ten years? Will there even be a need to have trained teachers when technology that takes no sickies or needs no holiday pay, with loadings, is seen by governments as a cost effective money saving strategy to adopt? The standardisation and data driven obsession of the past thirty years with the Global Education Reform Movement dictating how schools operate has denigrated the teaching profession to a service delivery mode. In a decade we will still need Brain Surgeons. Unless we urgently revise who should be our teachers and how we should train them, deciding what they alone can teach and what technology can never teach, we shall have no need for them to shape our nation’s future through the four million brains they work with, diligently, 200 days every year.

A new ladder for teachers to succeed in their chosen profession is urgently needed.

I have given you the rungs.