EduResearch Matters is a blog for educational researchers in Australia to get their work and opinions out to the general public. Please join us here. We would love to get your comments and feedback about our work.
Each day this week, EduResearch Matters will publish the views of educational leaders on the state of education in Australia on the eve of the federal election. Today: Caroline Mansfield, Dean, School of Education, FremantleCampus, University of Notre Dame in Western Australia
Wish 1: Strategic investment to build a better regional, rural and remote (RRR) workforce
The issue of attraction and retention of teachers working in RRR contexts is not new, yet preparing teachers to work in these contexts is challenging. Investment is needed to support a range of strategies to build a better RRR workforce in Education and to encourage pre-service teachers have at least one placement in a RRR context. Successful models of how this might be achieved can be found in other disciplines. For example, the Majarlin Kimberley Centre for Remote Health which is a collaboration between 5 universities, aims to contribute to increased recruitment and retention of the health workforce in the Kimberley through placements, skills and knowledge for working in remote locations, cultural safety and innovative models of care. A model like this multi-university training hub would make a significant difference to the education workforce in RRR contexts, and could potentially improve outcomes for students living in non-metropolitan areas.
Wish 2: Supported collaboration between ITE providers and employers
Collaboration and meaningful partnerships between employers and ITE providers are critical for supporting teacher quality, transition to the profession, ongoing professional learning and research. The recent QITE report advocates such collaboration specifically to support the early years of teaching, a welcome move. Funding schemes to support collaboration on areas of strategic priority, and research to provide the evidence base for successful interventions will be essential as we move forward.
Wish 3: An evidence informed, career-span approach to teacher quality
The issue of teacher quality in Australia is also not new, and reforms to improve teacher quality have largely focused on Initial Teacher Education (ITE), with little evidence provided to support the view that ITE providers are not graduating high quality teachers. Although a further swathe of reforms is due, there is significant lag time for these reforms to impact the profession – 2025 at the earliest. What happens between now and then?
Focusing the quality teacher debate on ITE and prospective teachers neglects some broader professional issues of current teachers such as heavy workloads, stress, mental ill-health, increased external regulation and accountability, along with the declining status of teachers in Australian society. While these challenges are also well known, investment in school-based support to ease teacher workload (such as educational assistants, psychologists, allied health, administrative support) has not kept pace with demand. Investment is needed to improve working conditions for teachers, which in turn will increase attractiveness of the profession to potential teachers.
Caroline Mansfield is Professor and Executive Dean, Faculty of Education, Philosophy and Theology. In 2016, she became an Australian Teaching and Learning Fellow, having won a National Teaching Fellowship to continue her work regarding resilience in higher education (www.stayingbrite.edu.au).
Each day this week, EduResearch Matters will publish the views of educational leaders on the state of education in Australia on the eve of the federal election. Today: Jim Watterston, Dean of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Yesterday: Susan Ledger, Dean of Education, University of Newcastle.
As we head towards a federal election, commitments in the school education arena from the mainstream political parties seem to be both inadequate and misguided.
In my view, both the Government and the Opposition have taken a very limited policy focus from a school education perspective that does not effectively address the ‘so called’ problem. Put bluntly, the underlying rationale from both parties for proposed change is that the quality of students currently entering Universities to become teachers are not of sufficient standard. It seems that universities don’t really know how to adequately prepare the next generation of super-teachers who can turn around our academic fortunes! Simplistically, the rhetoric from both political camps goes along the lines of “if only we could attract the best students who have achieved an ATAR in Year twelve in the top thirty percent of the population, then we would be able to regain our once esteemed international PISA test results ranking and also improve the performance of all students in NAPLAN reading and mathematics testing”.
The recently released Quality Initial Teacher Education (QITE) Review commissioned by Minister (at the time) Alan Tudge, proposes seventeen curious and seemingly disconnected recommendations to improve the quality of new teachers graduating out of universities and transitioning into the profession. The Government report is the basis for reforms to lift school performance standards. More recently Shadow Minister, Tanya Plibersek has released a Labor policy commitment, should they be returned to government, that aims to ‘out-Tudge’ the government in the ITE problem solving domain.
The major problem is, however, that Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is not the easy answer to why national and international testing of student performance in Australia is in comparative decline. In addition to currently being a Dean of Education, I have previously headed up school systems in three Australian States and Territories and have been a principal of a number of small and large, rural, remote and metro schools. I know that while ITE could always be improved, there have been significant and highly positive national ITE reforms put in place over the past eight years which are making a difference but there is still no change to PISA and NAPLAN results. Why? Because ITE is not the fundamental problem or the direct solution to improving test scores!
Unfortunately, a quick survey of schools and particularly school leaders in Government and Catholic schools would reveal school performance standards are directly reflective of each school’s postcode.
In other words, the overall Socio-Economic Status (SES) of aggregated school families is, for the most-part, the determinant of overall school performance. Schools in poor communities generally get lower results than schools in high income locations. The real question should be that if we know this, then why aren’t we doing anything meaningful about it?
To address the stagnation and decline of student performance in Australia will require a brave and well-informed national government to first of all speak to and listen to those in all schools to find out that the problems of current practice stem from the inability to adequately fund challenged communities in order to provide equitable opportunity of achievement and life chances. As we reflect on the ten-year anniversary of Gonski funding which brought significantly increased funding to all schools, we should be asking the major parties to explain why the additional billions of dollars have not changed the achievement dial across all schools. We should ask them to invest more of the Gonski rivers of gold into paying high performing current and prospective teachers more attractive salaries to work in hard-to-staff communities and to use additional funding to provide better amenities such as quality housing, safety and increased capacity for travel in these locations so teachers can get the same access to services that metropolitan schools receive. What are these services you ask? Regular teacher professional development from experts at their school, access to professional support services within the school (psychologists, speech pathologists, nurses, access to quality relief teachers, student counsellors….and the list goes on), student engagement and disability support, and programs that build community connection and involvement.
The fact is, the further you move away from the metropolitan area the harder it is to attract the best teachers to move to under-resourced, understaffed, and unsupported schools. The most challenged schools in our country get the worst deal. Throwing a few dollars at students during their time in university will not ensure that ITE graduates go to the most difficult schools. My observation is that in our university, the highest performing students are quickly snapped up by the best and most inordinately resourced schools. I haven’t just read about this problem or have simply spoken to teachers and school leaders on Zoom calls or on the phone; I have visited thousands of Australian schools and have observed and listened to those in the field often describe the third world problems that exist in various locations.
So, it is well beyond time to stop producing micro-election commitments that don’t make a difference. It is well beyond time to actually commit to really focussing on equity for all and doing whatever it takes. Pay teachers what they are worth and hold them to account once they have the optimal resourcing that is required, and change will occur.
Instead of political auctions every three years for things we don’t want, we need a bipartisan ten-year education plan that is not the source of political squabbling but becomes long-term agreement on what really needs to be done so that we can all stay the course and make it work.
I’ve always been a dreamer!
Jim Watterson is the Enterprise Professor and Dean of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education.He served for six years as the National President for the Australian Council for Education Leaders. He was the Deputy Secretary of the Victorian Education Department, and Director General of both the ACT and, most recently, Queensland Departments of Education and Training.
Each day this week, EduResearch Matters will publish the views of educational leaders on the state of education in Australia on the eve of the federal election. Today: Susan Ledger, Dean of Education, University of Newcastle
Education has been noticeably absent in this election agenda. What should policy makers in the next government do to support and respect students, teachers, leaders and educational researchers? Reform efforts must recognise the complexity, diversity and interrelatedness of all parts of the education system – students and families, early childhood, primary, secondary, vocational, higher education, and initial teacher education.
Teacher education would benefit from seven key actions.
First, we must strengthen trust, understanding and support for the whole of profession – preservice, in-service and training. A combined approach within the profession will develop, induct and support great teachers who will inspire their students to learn (see Quality Teaching Model and NSW Great Teaching Inspired Learning)
Second, we need to replace career bureaucrats with teachers and teacher educators in key policy-making positions in the same way other professions are represented.
Third, we must recognise and adapt for diversity. Much can be learnt from our Australian Teacher Workforce Data information. It highlights the need for more culturally and linguistically diverse teachers to align with the changing student population.
Fifth, we need to prioritise ‘intelligent’ conceptualisations of what constitutes good evidence of teaching work (Mockler & Stacey, 2021). Collaborative research endeavours that draw from multiple perspectives, not singular silver bullet approaches would benefit all. Involving teachers as researchers in Research Invested Schools is helping to re-professionalise teaching and reinvigorate teachers as experts (Twining, 2022).
Sixth, we must focus on the learning journey of a student and strengthen links across the education lifecycle from early childhood to primary, secondary, vocational and higher education. We know, for example, that the return on investment in early childhood education exceeds all other phases, yet early childhood teachers and childhood workers earn significantly less than other educators.
Finally, the profession would benefit enormously by prioritising and actioning the recent Quality Initial Teacher Education Review recommendations, particularly:
· Recommendation #1: Raise the status of Teaching
· Recommendation #3: Reduce Teacher’s workloads
· Recommendation #9: Support families and carers to engage with teachers
· Recommendation #14: Establish a Centre for Excellence to teach, research and evaluate best teaching practice.
More than $550Million was spent on policy reform between 2009-2013 driven by the National Partnership Agreement on Improving Teacher Quality Program (NTPQ). Emphasising quality, standards, accountability and evidence-based practices,this reform transformed the education sector and led to the creation of:
· The Teaching Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG);
Teachers, schools and ITE providers responded to the calls for change and accommodated and adjusted their practices.
A decade later we are witnessing intended and unintended outcomes of this national policy reform. It has been successful in achieving its intended outcome – to develop a national standardised approach to our schooling system. Yet, we are also witnessing the unintended outcomes of the policy reform on our schooling sector.
Enactment of the NPTQ has resulted in uneven and potentially inequitable outcomes, resourcing, privileging and market-like rationalities. Media and politicians lament stagnating student results against benchmarks like NAPLAN and PISA. Teacher and teaching quality is under continual scrutiny. Teachers are leaving the profession in large numbers and it is increasingly more difficult to attract teachers into the workforce. Teacher shortages are already impacting students. Ideological debates between pedagogical choices in literacy, numeracy and teaching methods have arisen and promote competition over collaboration in teaching, learning and research forums. Burdened by unrealistic and often relentless administration many teachers, leaders and initial teacher education providers have been reduced to compliant technicians rather than inspiring practitioners. The workforce is undervalued and overburdened which has reduced the agency, confidence, and even the passion of the profession.
A focus on quality and accountability is positive and encouraged, but not when it is narrowly focused and comes at the expense of the teachers, students and families within our education ecosystem. Our measures of quality and accountability that judge the health of our sector must include individual and collective wellbeing, evidence of passion for teaching and learning, and confidence in emerging pedagogically informed technologies.
From my 30 years of teaching in rural, remote and metropolitan hard to staff schools, both in Australia and overseas, coupled with my more recent experience preparing teachers for schools’ changing population, environmental impacts and pandemics, I believe we must focus on the development of the whole child, teacher, leader and system, not simply component parts.
Professor Susan Ledger is Head of School and Dean of Education at University of Newcastle and in that role is responsible for transforming teacher education, advocating for the profession and developing partnerships between schools, universities and educational sectors
The public’s mind is focused upon politics in the final week of a bruising election campaign. The language of politics is drilled into for nuance and gaffes. But there are some keywords and concepts that are not mentioned in the main body of the Civics and Citizenship curriculum issued by ACARA this week and signed off by Federal and State education ministers.
This formal document conveys the official view of how young people are to be prepared by schools and teachers for participation as Australian citizens and the following words are all missing: social justice, human rights, care, empathy, truth, political literacy, discrimination, racism, mutual understanding, social change, climate change and advocacy.
The words ‘compassion’ and ‘civility’ are in the current curriculum but are now excised.
Year 9 students will no longer explore ‘How citizens’ political choices are shaped at election time, including the influence of the media (ACHCK076)’.
This will surely limit young people’s understanding of democratic debate? When reviewing a curriculum we need to look not only for sins of omission but also for sins of commission. But here there are plenty of examples of sins of commission too.
Citizenship education globally has been criticised for being more likely to focus unhealthily upon national contexts, but Australia as a nation has a proud history of demonstrating outward-looking and generous global involvement. Now, the Civics and Citizenship curriculum rationale states that ‘the curriculum strongly focuses on the Australian context’. It follows through on this statement by effectively omitting global education from primary schools. The Year 6 statement that students explore “The obligations citizens may consider they have beyond their own national borders as active and informed global citizens (ACHASSK148)”, which was also an important element of that age group’s achievement standard, is excised. Also removed from the Year 6 curriculum is the invitation to find out more about ‘The world’s cultural diversity, including that of its indigenous peoples (ACHASSK140)’.
Also missing? The Year 9 content descriptor ‘How ideas about and experiences of Australian identity are influenced by global connectedness and mobility (ACHCK081)’. True citizenship education can contribute to building bridges between different groups of people around the world and create educational spaces to develop young people’s capacity to contribute to positive global social change .
The revisions to the Australian Curriculum signal that this is no longer a priority.
The new curriculum valorises knowledge over skills, values and dispositions. For example, the curriculum rationale states that ‘a deep understanding of Australia’s federal system of government and the liberal democratic values that underpin it is essential’; ‘Emphasis is placed on the federal system of government, derived from the Westminster and Washington systems’. The curriculum aims to foster ‘responsible participation in Australia’s democracy’. The curriculum language leans towards viewing young people as passive recipients of knowledge more than active learners. In a self-congratulatory spirit, students are to imbibe how ‘the system safeguards democracy’ and ‘how laws and the legal system protect people’s rights’. Student responsibilities are referenced three times in the curriculum rationale. Ten year olds are potentially stuffed with knowledge that they will not be putting into practice for another eight years including within elaborations which reference the secret ballot, compulsory voting, preferential voting and the role of the Australian Electoral Commission as key features of Australia’s democracy.
Some fundamental skills and concepts fall by the wayside.
From year 3:
‘The importance of making decisions democratically (ACHASSK070)’. Why? – seven and eight year olds can start to understand why fairness matters.
From year 4: the descriptor ‘Interact with others with respect to share points of view (ACHASSI059) – a fundamental attribute to value and nurture in nine year olds in developing their empathy and broader emotional literacy
From years Year 9 and 10: Students are no longer required to ‘Recognise and consider multiple perspectives and ambiguities and use strategies to negotiate and resolve contentious issues (ACHCS086) (ACHCS099)’ or to ‘Reflect on their role as a citizen in Australian, regional and global contexts (ACHCS089) (ACHCS102)’.
The curriculum language supporting active citizenship – already cautious (Hoepper, 2014) – is further diluted.
Year 6 students will no longer “Work in groups to generate responses to issues and challenges (ACHASS130)”.
The requirement that both Year 7 and Year 8 students ‘Use democratic processes to reach consensus on a course of action relating to a civics or citizenship issue and plan for that action (ACHCS058) (ACHCS072)’ is removed.
The Year 8 statement that students appreciate ‘How citizens can participate in Australia’s democracy, including use of the electoral system, contact with their elected representatives, use of lobby groups, and direct action (ACHCK062)’ has become vaguer and more passive ‘how Australians are informed about and participate in democracy (AC9HC8K01)’.
A curriculum aim for the early years of secondary education that currently enjoins students to explore “The freedoms that enable active participation in Australia’s democracy within the bounds of law, including freedom of speech, association, assembly, religion and movement (ACHCK061) is altered to the more anodyne ‘the characteristics of Australia’s democracy, including freedom of speech, association, assembly, religion and movement (AC9HC7K02).
The political influence in this area is stark.
Scott Morrison observed in parliament of students attending Strike4ClimateChange rallies in Australia that, ‘We do not support our schools being turned into parliaments…..What we want is more learning in schools and less activism in schools’ (AAP, 2018).
And acting federal Education Minister Stuart Robert insisted on the omission of a brief reference in an optional curriculum elaboration to the youth environmentalist Greta Thunberg (Baker & Carey, 2022).
The progressive notion of educating young people for active and informed citizenship is qualified – rather schools and teachers are ‘building their capacity to be active and informed citizens’. The message to young people is clear – you are citizens in waiting not citizens yet. We expect you to be compliant and to keep your opinions to yourself,
It may be possible for committed and confident teachers to re-form policy through active interpretation as opposed to narrowly conforming to the letter of curriculum content descriptors (Jerome, 2018; Sim, 2008). The rationale for the Year 7-10 Civics and Citizenship curriculum still includes the claim that through:
‘The study of Civics and Citizenship, students develop inquiry skills, values and dispositions that enable them to be active and informed citizens who question, understand and contribute to the world they live in. The curriculum offers opportunities for students to develop a wide range of skills by investigating contemporary civics and citizenship issues and fostering civic participation and engagement.’
Unfortunately, revised content descriptors (which will be what most teachers look to first in their curriculum design) do not generally align with this vision. Values, skills and dispositions tend to go missing. Moreover, previously highlighted links (via the use of icons) to General Capabilities such as ‘Personal and Social competence’, ‘Intercultural understanding’ and ‘Ethical understanding’ also no longer exist.
ACARA’s interpretation of what was represented as a decluttering administrative exercise might be seen as another person’s neutering and application of an ideological lens. It just became a whole lot harder for teachers to nurture a fuller achievement of democratic citizenship and human rights nationally and globally and more difficult not to promote a conservative political interpretation of civics and citizenship education in what is already a ‘Cinderella’ learning area lacking presence and status in many schools.
Peter Brett is an experienced History and Civics and Citizenship teacher educator and was involved in a variety of ways with the launch of citizenship education in England from 2002. He is a recent President of the Social and Citizenship Education Association of Australia [SCEAA] and a co-editor of Teaching Humanities and Social Sciences (Cengage, 2020).He is a senior lecturer in Humanities and Social Sciences education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania.
The cost of teaching a student from a low SES background is significantly higher than for more advantaged students. The reasons for these costs include the ‘obvious’ assumptions, such as bursaries, but are likely driven more substantially by infrastructure investment by a number of universities specifically supporting campuses in areas and regions as part of their mission to provide a university pathway as an option to a diverse range of our population.
We believe this investment (a better way of thinking about it than ‘cost’) could be better recognised in funding agreements by switching the focus from ‘activity-based’ funding (i.e. “count your widgets, take your dollars”), to ‘mission-directed’ funding (i.e. recognition of the social impact and additional resources that these contributions require and perhaps redirecting funding from the low cost ‘low hanging fruit’ approaches of some).
Who are we and how did we discover this? A team of researchers spanning multiple universities (Victoria Uni, ANU, Curtin RMIT) and ACER published an article exploring the costs associated with supporting students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds in university. Our study has a ridiculously complex methodology – using econometric modelling to explore the economies of scale in relation to the costs of educating students in Australian universities, with ten years of financial, enrolment and employment data from 37 universities, and then exploring the outcomes with people who run universities across a range of states – but when you pare it all back, a relatively simple set of findings:
Here’s an overview.
Quantifying costs and differences in costs
First we compiled a large dataset spanning all Australian universities across 10 years. The dataset contained operating expenditure, student enrolments, level of enrolment, field of education and background characteristics of students, teaching costs, research grants, location of university and type of university. This was analysed using an econometric model to identify the average costs for each student, and to explore if there are economies of scale in enrolling some groups of students – in other words, does the average cost decline the more of a group of students you enrol?
The stark finding (that we checked and re-checked) was that when all other elements are controlled for, the average annual cost for a student from a low SES background at undergraduate level was about 6 times higher than for a student from a medium or high SES background. The difference was slightly lower for postgraduate level students, but nonetheless, it was still a notable difference.
However, the other aspect of the analysis did show that there are economies of scale in enrolling students from low SES backgrounds at undergraduate level – that is, the higher the number of students of this background, the lower the average costs per student become. We also found the opposite (i.e. a diseconomy of scale) for medium and high SES student enrolments.
Explaining the differences
We took our data findings ‘on the road’, visiting four diverse universities in Australia to talk with academic, finance and student support leaders. We wanted to test whether the outcomes from the analysis made sense on the ground and found that while views differed, some key explanations were clear:
The kind of additional support needed by students from low SES backgrounds includes: outreach support to raise aspiration and relevant individual capital prior to enrolment; academic, personal and financial support while at university; and in some cases, support to care for students with highly complex needs.
The support factors that contribute to the additional costs include investment in the items listed above plus the costs of establishing, maintaining and appropriately staffing multiple and/or regional campuses, particularly but not only those located in highly disadvantaged communities. Further, it was found that universities that are strongly prioritising or enacting missions to address disadvantage have higher costs than universities with other missions.
Additional support costs are not the same for all low SES students. Low SES students are not a homogeneous group. Depending on their particular background and circumstances, low SES students may experience different levels of disadvantage and/or multiple disadvantage.
In the universities consulted, there were different costs and different approaches to supporting low SES students. This was partly because of the differences in the universities’ missions, the number and geographic locations of campuses and the characteristics of the particular low SES students for whom support was being provided.
Future considerations on funding
We hope that what this research does is help to highlight the difference in investment required depending on the backgrounds of students enrolled in a university. The emphasis in shifting language from ‘cost’ to ‘investment’ is intended as a means of changing views and perceptions – much the way in which some universities in Australia embed in their mission an aim to open up opportunities by investing in areas or communities where previously a university pathway was not a consideration.
A radical, yet seemingly logical, proposition coming from this research is that if some student groups need a greater investment than others, then perhaps the funding pie should be cut in a way that recognises the variable investments required. From our work, we feel that consideration of ideas to recognise the various missions of universities and the different students they serve in following their mission could be captured in funding allocations. Ideas we have suggested for further consideration include a redistribution of funding based on need; shifting emphasis from activity-based to mission-directed costing; applying the principles of ‘cost compensation’; and conceptualising funding support for students from low SES backgrounds as a transformational investment that can improve outcomes for individuals, communities and society, rather than as a cost.
Dr Daniel Edwards is the Director of the Tertiary Education Research Program at the Australian Council for Educational Research, and an Honorary Senior Fellow with the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education.Daniel Edwards (ACER) wrote this post on behalf of the project team: Marcia Devlin (VU), Liang-Cheng Zhang (ACER), Glen Withers (ANU), Julie McMillan (ACER) and Lyn Vernon (Edith Cowan University)
We are constantly exposed to life-threatening events that result in trauma. Natural disasters such as seasonal bushfires and floods have affected millions of Australians. The COVID-19 pandemic has also brought about loss of life, extended isolation, and exposure to increased domestic violence— for some youth, all these events can be traumatic.
Likewise, human-induced traumatic events (e.g. violence, neglect, abuse, and household dysfunction) leave indelible marks on emotional and physiological wellbeing of Australian children and youth. For refugees from war-torn regions of the world, the trauma of violence, forced displacement, and resettlement stressors can be debilitating. Young people who grew up in foster care, experience extreme poverty, or identify themselves as LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, or questioning) are also likely to experience trauma that can interfere with their learning and social interactions.
But What is Trauma?
Trauma is the emotional, psychological, and physiological damage resulting from adverse events that overwhelm our ordinary coping abilities. Trauma can be caused by a single event (e.g. a car wreck), a series of events (e.g. sexual abuse), or collective historical wounding (e.g. forced removal of Indigenous children).
The impact of trauma can be multifaceted. Dr Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s leading trauma experts, describes trauma as a profound shock with lasting effects on one’s psychic, brain, and body. Trauma-impacted children and adolescents experience intrusive negative thoughts, anxiety, irritability, and feelings of numbness.
Why do teachers need professional learning on trauma-responsive education? Because, we argue, trauma affects student performance and teacher wellbeing. Traumatic stress associated with emotional and psychological wounding interferes with people’s ability to manage ordinary daily activities, including learning.
The Epidemic of Trauma in Schools
Trauma is a pervasive problem. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that in a classroom of 20 students, at least three are likely to have had traumatic experiences.
In the US, the National Council of State Education Associations called for a policy action to address ‘the epidemic of trauma in schools. In Australia, the damaging effects of the ‘hidden epidemic of early trauma’ are yet to gain increased public attention. The prevalence of the problem notwithstanding, there is still a lack of awareness about trauma and its impact. A secondary school principal in Melbourne told us:
People think that there are only certain areas that are affected by trauma. No matter where you are, children will be impacted by adverse childhood experiences, sometimes up to 40% of students within a class. There are many forms of trauma. [But] people aren’t recognising or appreciating that there is trauma.
In a recent survey of close to 900 young people (16-25-year-olds), 42% of the participants reported that the pandemic worsened their mental health condition. Although not all individuals with mental health conditions have a trauma history, those exposed to traumatic events are more likely to suffer from mental health issues.
Trauma Inhibits Learning
Exposure to adverse childhood experiences is positively correlated with poor school performance. Traumatic stress during the early stages of life impairs brain development and affects memory.
Trauma also results in prolonged activation of the body’s stress-response system. Students cannot focus on the present and effectively engage with learning experiences when the stress-response system is activated for an extended time. Traumatic reactions such as anxiety and hyperarousal affect how students feel, think, and act on schoolwork. Trauma also diminishes memory.
Trauma Drives Disruptive Behaviour
For traumatised students, the slightest hint of danger triggers anxiety. Overwhelmed by feelings of fear and helplessness, trauma-impacted students may display emotional outbursts and act out in the classroom. Such disruptive behaviours are not wilful; traumatised youth have limited capacity for emotional self-regulation.
Seen through a trauma lens, disruptive behaviour can also be a language of communication. Traumatised children often adapt disruptive behaviours as a survival mechanism. Trauma turns their learning brain into a ‘surviving brain’. For instance, children who have experienced chronic neglect tend to use disruptive behaviours to communicate their desire for attention and attachment.
In schools where trauma is not recognised as a serious factor that affects engagement and learning, survivor students are less likely to get the necessary support. In fact, as Baldwin and Korn (2021) noted, “When traumatised children are restless and aggressive, they often get labelled as ‘bad,’ and their suffering gets missed.”
At a societal level, trauma is costly too. It is estimated that annually unresolved childhood trauma costs Australian taxpayers as much as $24 billion.
Student Trauma Increases Teacher Stress
Student trauma can produce a negative ripple effect on teacher wellbeing. According to the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey, one of the primary causes of teacher stress is student behavioural problems. Working with trauma-impacted students can expose teachers to excessive fatigue and draining stress. In other words, dealing with recurrent disruptive student behaviours and hearing trauma stories can result in secondary traumatic stress that generates emotional duress and makes teachers feel overwhelmed. Extreme stress may force teachers to leave school.
In 2019, a nationwide study showed that many teachers were concerned about their wellbeing, saw student behaviour as a serious challenge, and indicated an intention to leave the profession. Increased teacher attrition in state schools, in turn, widens the educational divide along the line of socioeconomic status of schools and communities.
In a recent Australian study that surveyed 749 teachers, over half of the respondents reported being stressed due to environmental factors, including disruptive student behaviour. The study also revealed that the stressed teachers ‘were considering leaving the profession’.
What Can be Done?
Teacher trauma awareness matters. One in three young people who participated in the 2019 Mission Australia survey reported that they “would turn to a teacher as a source of help with important issues”. Further, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) shows that students who establish positive relationships with their teachers display a greater sense of belonging at school.
But without timely and relevant professional learning, teachers may find it challenging to help traumatised students learn.
Teachers need to be trauma-responsive, but this does not mean that they should be trained to treat trauma. Instead, it means that teachers should use a trauma lens to understand student learning and behaviour. Trauma-responsive teachers are non-judgemental. They ask trauma-affected students: “what happened to you?” rather than “what is wrong with you?”
Schools should promote trauma-responsive practices. Professional learning opportunities on trauma-responsive education are instrumental in equipping teachers with valuable knowledge and skills for supporting trauma-impacted students. Without the necessary awareness about trauma and its impact on student behaviour and learning, teachers may find it taxing to cater to the learning needs of their students.
In closing
Teachers equipped with current knowledge and skills on the causes and consequences of trauma are well-positioned to promote learning for all. They are also likely to avoid misdiagnosing student behavioural problems as a marker of innate mischievousness. They take time to understand the message of disruptive behaviour and re-engage students in learning.
Trauma-responsive teachers create positive learning environments that provide a protective buffer against triggers and additional stressors and nurture resilience. Widening access to professional learning opportunities on trauma-responsive practices is critical in preparing teachers for the task.
Tebeje Molla is a senior lecturer in the School of Education, Deakin University. His research areas include student equity, teacher professional learning, and policy analysis. His work is informed by critical sociology and the capability approach to social justice and human development.
Damian Blake is a professor and Head of School for DeakinUniversity’s School of Education and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Damian’s research and teaching experience focuses on applied learning and teacher education aiming to improve young people’s educational outcomes and well-being.
This focus on aged care is long overdue but behind the headlines lies another serious policy failure. Aged care workers are prepared for their jobs by vocational education and training courses. Described as the neglected middle child of education, the vocational education and training sector has endured waves of market-based reforms that have weakened public training institutions and hollowed out qualifications. The quality of education is important in all industry areas but in sectors such as aged care, the stakes are so much higher.
The urgent need to improve aged care is core to Labor’s election campaign. In his budget reply speech, Anthony Albanese promised to implement the findings of the Royal Commission, including mandating the 24/7 presence of a registered nurse in residential aged care facilities, improving food, and increasing accountability for aged care providers. Labor also advocates a wage increase for aged care workers, and promises to fund any increase resulting from the work value case before the Fair Work Commission
Aged care was covered in Josh Frydenberg’s pre-election budget speech but not as a core theme. Frydenberg recommitted the Government to the five year aged care plan announced outlined last year, supplemented with the some additional new funding.
The Morrison Government is more circumspect when it comes to wage increases. While it has indicated that it will support the Fair Work Commission’s ruling it has made no commitment to providing the required additional funding.
A sector in crisis
The Royal Commission has documented in forensic detail the crisis in the aged care. This includes the appalling level of care and horrific abuse suffered by many residents of aged care facilities. It has also highlighted the difficulty of gaining access to the home-based services that could allow people to remain independent for as long as possible.
The Royal Commission also focused on the aged care workforce. It linked the conditions of care to inadequate staffing level, poor quality training, and conditions of employment of aged care workers, which is characterised by precarity.
Identifying this connection is vital. There has been a tendency to pit recipient and providers of care against each other. Championing the rights of workers can be seen to undermine the rights of the people in their care (and vice versa).
The intersection between the interests of recipients and providers of aged care was brought into stark relief by the pandemic. Without secure employment, aged care workers were moving between residential facilities. Without sick leave, workers were compelled to work even if they were unwell. Pandemic pay and restrictions were introduced as temporary measures to reduce the risk, but the model of insecure employment remains intact.
To address the abuse, the neglect, the injustice experienced by elderly people there must be consideration of the capacity and conditions of employment of the aged care workforce. This requires examining the foundational ideas underpinning aged care.
Undervalued work
As a first step, we must confront a manifestly inadequate social settlement around care work, both paid and unpaid. Powerful fantasies of autonomy lie at the heart of the liberal political ideas that underpin our institutions. This obscures reality that we all rely on the care and support of others throughout our lives.
Care is devalued and care work is gendered, classed, racialised and internationalised. The increasingly transnational nature of care work has been disrupted but not eradicated by the pandemic. Under these conditions, the provision of care work involves multiple levels of oppression. One clear manifestation of the way care work is undervalued is the way it is dismissed as unskilled and poorly paid.
Marketisation of care and education
The serious failures in aged care are forged at the intersection of market-based reforms in human services and education.
Marketisation has been presented as the only way to achieve high quality, responsive and efficient services. This is not the result of inevitable evolution in service delivery but the consequence of a deliberate policy choice. The narratives supporting marketisation deflects attention from the foundational ideas informing these reforms and from alternative approaches
Over the past two decades, person-centred approaches have been introduced in aged care. Placing the goals and aspirations of older people at the centre of the design and provision of services is an urgent matter of justice. How it has been achieved, however, is the subject of debate.
In Australia, and elsewhere, the goal of person-centred care has been realised through forms of marketisation. Independence, autonomy and dignity have been reframed as individual consumer choice.
At the same time, marketisation has transformed the vocational education and training sector, which provides qualifications (mostly at Certificate III level) for aged care workers. The reform of Australian vocational education has resulted in the introduction of a narrow form of competency based training, demand-driven funding, and the allocation of government funding to for-profit training providers.
The quality of the courses preparing aged care workers have been found to be extremely variable. To be valued, qualifications need to be trusted. As a bare minimum, we need confidence that graduates have developed the knowledge, skills and attributes specified for their qualification.
The promise of marketisation was that competition and choice would produce more efficient and innovative training that responded to the needs of employers and students. Instead, a ‘tick and flick’ approach to training emerged, one that is incompatible with the development of the knowledge and attributes that lie at the heart of effective practice.
There have also been extraordinary opportunities for rent-seeking.
Markets are not neutral. The introduction of elements of marketisation has a profound impact, reshaping our institutions and the services they provide. A process of commodification transforms care and education from relational to transactional exchanges. This is reinforced by Human Capital Theory, which continues to influence education in Australia and internationally. The result is a narrow understanding of education in terms of an investment to increase an individual’s value in the labour market
The transformation of the Australian vocational education and training sector has been described as one of the clearest failures of neoliberal public policy. The work to repair the damage continues with a clear need for systemic reform.
The development of transactional qualifications to prepare workers for poorly designed transactional jobs has a terrible human cost. One of the challenges is the marketisation and commodification encourage approaches that set interests of providers and recipients of aged care in competition.
Beyond the marketplace
A society is not just if people are not able to receive the care they need. Justice cannot be achieved if the people providing that care experience considerable hardship because of a failure to recognise and value their work.
If we are to address the tragic conditions in aged care we must, as a nation, provide adequate funding but we need to go further and address the structural conditions and flawed underpinning assumptions.
The complexity of the relationship between the provider and recipients of care and support needs to be better understood. Transactional approaches have not transformed the conditions documented by the Royal Commission. They have introduced new forms of oppression and an exploitative social settlement around care. The flawed assumptions underpinning Australian training markets create a much riskier environment for the most disadvantaged and produce poor quality education. In the area of aged care, the consequences of inadequate qualifications are particularly damaging.
We need a ways of understanding care that can accommodate the needs and wishes of people requiring care without sacrificing aged care workers’ conditions of employment. We need a form of vocational education and training can prepare people for work, for changes in jobs and industries, and for social citizenship.
Mary Leahy us a researcher at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. She has an extensive background in research and policy development, focussing on access to education and employment. Her research examines educational and employment pathways, vocational education, trade union education, gender and the philosophical underpinnings of social and economic policy. Mary is the Lead Chief Investigator on an ARC Linkage project examining the history of the Trade Union Training Authority.
Australian governments have taken a limited view of the Arts, artists and the imperative of quality arts education for our children and young people for decades. They have neglected or ignored the research that education in, about and through the Arts, especially when authentically integrated across the curriculum, is a strong predictor of long term student success, In fact an arts-rich education is a far more accurate predictor of success than results in particular test scores (Schleicher, 2019).There is an urgent need for us to exercise our democratic responsibility to change this story for current and future generations. We need to demand that appropriate funding, resources and support are provided for the Arts and quality Arts education.
The Arts are part of our heritage and core to what makes us human. They are central to our development as compassionate and responsive individuals because they help us make meaning of ourselves, others and our worlds. Engagement in the Arts also contributes to our ongoing health and social and emotional wellbeing (World Health Organisation, 2019; Workman, 2017). Recent global and national trauma has also underlined how arts-rich experiences can aid recovery and renew hope for young and old alike (see for example, Teritotoi and The Banksia Initiative).
In Australia now, a neoliberal approach to education is increasingly at odds with the need to ensure every learner has access to meaningful arts experiences and processes throughout their schooling and higher education. Federal and state education Ministers frequently call for a return to ‘the basics’. The continued emphasis on high-stakes testing privileges technical approaches to literacy and numeracy and constrains teachers to teach to these tests ignoring their own professional expertise and artistry. Teachers frequently assert that they do not feel empowered to focus on the imaginative or creative when planning learning experiences.
Such a siloed and overcrowded formal curriculum measured so narrowly reinforces a one-size-fits-all formulaic pedagogy and inevitably leads to a reductive or narrowed curriculum that ignores the inter-connectivity of minds, bodies and souls. Despite the rhetoric about 21st century skills including the importance of critical and creative thinking, well developed communication and collaboration skills (NEA, 2013; Jefferson and Anderson, 2017) a competitive academic curriculum prevails.That leads to learner anxiety, disengagement and fatigue multiplies (Whitlam Institute, 2012).
A highly significant and increasing body of research, scholarship and professional practice demonstrates unequivocally that embedding arts-rich or quality arts processes and experiences across the curriculum makes an important contribution to the way we engage in learning and how we learn (for example, Catterall, Dumais & Hampden-Thompson, 2012Deasy 2002; Winner, Goldstein & Vincent-Lancrin, 2013). Engaging in quality arts processes and experiences enhances our academic and non-academic success (see for example, A New Approach; Martin et al, 2013 ) and nurtures our imagination and creativity (Gibson & Ewing, 2020 . Every child therefore deserves an arts-rich curriculum to enable them to experience multiple ways of knowing, thinking, doing, interpreting and being (Gadsden, 2008). This kind of learning becomes even more critical given the ‘post-normal times’ described by Sardar (2010) . Times in which old orthodoxies are disappearing in lives characterised by uncertainties, contradictions and chaos. Sardar insists that: ‘The most important ingredients for coping with post-normal times … are imagination and creativity’ (Sardar, p. 48). He suggests that we all need to listen to a broad spectrum of human imaginations.
Each art form is a discrete discipline with distinctive knowledges, skills and understandings. Each embodies different kinds of literacies, different ways of making and representing meaning (More than words can say). At the same time, each art form involves processes that include play, design, experimentation, exploration, communication, provocation, use of metaphor, expression or representation, and the artistic or aesthetic shaping of the body or other media (Ewing, 2011). Different art forms thus enable us to develop a better understanding of ourselves, others and the world because the Arts activate our thinking and challenge our traditional systems and ways of being. Students themselves discuss how arts and cultural learning fosters their imaginations and creative intuitions as well as their self-efficacy in ways that other learning does not (for example, Saunders, 2019; Thomson, Hall, Earl & Geppert, 2018). The Arts disciplines therefore can and should play an important role in fostering our imaginations, creativities and gaining deep understanding of and competence in the multiple and ever-increasing literacies needed today.
The event will also be recorded and made publicly available afterwards. If you are unable to attend in person, please select the ticket option to have the video link sent to you.
Robyn Ewing AM is Professor Emerita, Teacher Education and the Arts and Co-Director of the Creativity in Research, Engaging the Arts, Transforming Education, Health and Wellbeing (CREATE) Centre. Her teaching areas include primary curriculum, especially English, literature, drama and early literacy development. Robyn is passionate about the arts and education and the role quality arts experiences and processes can and should play in creative pedagogy and transforming the curriculum at all levels of education.
20 years into a new century how do we understand educational expertise?
In Finland teachers are trusted professionals, who have a large degree of autonomy over pedagogy and assessment, are able to carry out research, and play a critical role in the design of curricula (Pollari, Salo & Koski, 2018). This does not appear to be the case in many other jurisdictions, including Australia. Indeed, increasingly “teachers and principals are cast as technicians who have the technical skills to implement the ideas of others but not the professional expertise to engage in the exciting task of theorizing and designing curriculum” (Reid, 2019, p. 44-45).
This has led to a growing call for teachers to become ‘research-engaged’ (Godfrey, 2016) and for teachers’ practice to be more research-informed (Kolber & Heggart, 2021). However, the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL, 2011) do not expect teachers to ‘access and critique relevant research’ unless they wish to be recognised as ‘highly accomplished’ and do not expect them to engage in research until they become ‘lead teachers’. In contrast, the OECD (2021) argue that teachers need to be experts in learning, and this means that they need to be involved in research, because “the current knowledge base is not in the library; it is in the invisible college of informal associations among research[ers]’ (Locke et al., 2009, p. 48). Indeed, to be a mature profession you need to own (i.e. create) the knowledge base – you have to be research literate (Sachs, 2016, cited in Mills et al., 2021), which “means being both a discerning consumer and a discerning producer of research” (Mills et al., 2021, p. 81).
Beyond individual teachers, the turn to more research-informed practice is reflected in the proliferation of government-backed education research institutes devoted to influencing policy and practice, among them the Education Endowment Foundation in the UK, the What Works Clearinghouse/ Institute of Education Sciences in the US, and the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. These initiatives attempt to address the ‘theory-practice gap’ which the OECD (2021, Executive Summary) identified as a “major barrier to the use of scientific knowledge and research evidence” in education. However, these research clearing houses tend to adopt a ‘What works’ approach that de-professionalises teachers (Gore 2020, cited in Mills et al., 2021) by presenting them with guidance on ‘evidence informed practice’ that can marginalise context and individual teacher’s expertise. The Gonski 2.0 Report (Department of Education and Training, 2018) recommended creating a national evidence and research institute, which led to the formation of the Australian Research Education Organisation (AERO) in 2021, which aims to build more explicitly upon teachers’ expertise.
Similarly, a positive approach is evident in the Q Project at Monash University, which with $6.3million of funding from the Ramsay Foundation, is exploring teachers’ use of evidence. This at least positions teachers as engaging directly with research, rather than having it mediated by centralized research clearing houses. However, this still positions teachers as consumers of research, rather than as researchers. In today’s knowledge economy being seen as having expertise requires that you are contributing to the professional knowledge base, not just drawing upon it (Twining & Henry, 2014).
A quiet revolution
In the last decade, a growing number of schools have moved to embed ‘research-informed practice’ as a key part of their professional learning and improvement agendas. While research has long been happening in schools this has often been on the periphery, or something done ‘to’ schools rather than ‘by’ schools. Breaking this pattern, in the last few years more than 30 Australian schools have either established a ‘research centre’ or ‘institute’ of some description, or appointed a ‘research lead’, often reworking an existing senior leadership role to explicitly focus on research. They are raising the expectation for schools as not just passive consumers of expert knowledge produced elsewhere, but genuine contributors to the knowledge economy.
What we’re calling ‘Research Invested Schools’ embrace research and innovation as key to their identity and enterprise. They have clear research and innovation priorities, engage staff in inquiry programs from practitioner research through to PhDs, and are both conducting their own studies and translating research conducted elsewhere. Many Research Invested Schools emphasise practitioner research, where teachers design and implement small projects inquiring into their practice. For example, Pymble Ladies’ College supports research through its own ethics committee, which has membership across the school and academic community. Staff and student research is published through their ‘Illuminate’ and ‘Perspectives’ journals. Similarly, the Barker Institute at Barker College publishes a journal of staff academic writing, hosts public events, and conducts its own research. For example, it is conducting a longitudinal study following the journey of a cohort of students through 10 years at Barker.
Whilst Research Invested Schools can and do carry out research independently, they may also form partnerships with local universities or school networks, (such as the Association of Independent Schools of NSW’s School-Based Research Projects program). Some schools have acted as industry partners for major Australian Research Council linkage grants, such as studies of Indigenous education between The Scots College and the Australian Catholic University, and next-generation learning spaces between Brisbane’s Anglican Church Grammar School and the Learning Environments Applied Research Network at the University of Melbourne. Research Invested Schools are also very focused on research translation, especially parent and community education, sharing their learning through conferences, lectures, publications, podcasts, webinars and more. The Crowther Centre at Brighton Grammar School in Melbourne produces a podcast featuring leading thinkers on boys and boys’ education, which has over 60,000 followers.
By contributing to the development and utilisation of educational research, Research Invested Schools are helping to re-professionalise teaching and reinvigorate teachers as experts.
A group of schools hosted by The Scots College, Sydney, recently hosted a gathering of over 20 leaders of Research Invested Schools around the country. These schools are eager to connect for joint projects and shared professional learning, and to advocate for schools as learning organisations and teachers as trusted experts leading a grass-roots renewal of the teaching profession.
This article was developed in collaboration with Hugh Chilton (The Scots College), Caitlin Munday (The Scots College), Allyson Holbrook (University of Newcastle), and Carl Leonard (University of Newcastle).
Peter is Professor of Education (Innovation in Schooling & Educational Technology) at the University of Newcastle (Australia), having formerly been Professor of Education (Futures) at the Open University (UK). He has also been a primary school teacher, initial teacher educator, the Head of Department of Education at the Open University, the Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology, and Co-Editor in Chief of Computers & Education. He has brought in over £10million of external funding, most of which was focussed on issues to do with the purposes of education, the management of educational change, and enhancing education systems, informed by understandings of learning, pedagogy and the potentials of digital technology. He blogs at https://halfbaked.education, is @PeterT on Twitter and his LinkedIn profile is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-twining/.
While homeschool, distance education and pandemic school are terms that were used interchangeably during the pandemic, when schools closed, went online, reopened, perhaps closed again or went back online, parents weren’t homeschooling or doing distance then. However, in the wake of this experience, more parents have opted for home and distance education. These terms have been used interchangeably, but they don’t mean the same thing.
Homeschool/home education
Homeschooling or home education, the preferred, legal term, is a legal educational option enshrined in every state or territory Education Act. While the precise definition differs, there are some key elements to home education that separate it from distance education and pandemic schooling.
First, home education is always the responsibility of the parent (or in some states a registered teacher can be designated). They accept full responsibility for the planning, implementation, management and monitoring of the child’s learning in a suitable, home-based environment.
Second, parents must be responsible for providing a high quality education for their children. The state or territory will check the education is high-quality through reviewing the parent’s learning plan.
Third, the parent is the primary person who is responsible for learning, usually in consultation with the child.
Fourth, the parent must show that the child is learning, just as a regular school reports to parents. Some states, such as Queensland, require all parents to prepare a report. Some states, such as Victoria, audit families. Some states, such as NSW, send department representatives to check on the child and their learning.
Fifth, home education is time limited to the ‘compulsory school age’. In Queensland and South Australia for example, compulsory school age is between six and 16 years (on completion of year 10). In other states, it is 17 (such as New South Wales and Victoria). After this age, a parent can no longer enrol in home education.
There are some providers that offer curriculum and planning services to home educators. These can be Christian or secular. Many of these providers offer registration and reporting assistance with staff available to answer parents’ questions. Some services offer resources that parents put together as they see fit.
These groups straddle the divide between homeschooling and distance education but always place the onus on parents to provide the education. In addition, at no point is the child enrolled in a school. These providers simply support parents in educating the child. The key difference between home and distance education is the parents’ role.
Distance education
Distance education is a different but also legal educational option enshrined in every state or territory Education Act. However, access differs across states and territories.
Unlike home education, in distance education, the parent enrols their child in a school of distance education where teachers plan, implement and report on the child’s progress. The parent is responsible for overseeing that education or they can outsource that responsibility to a home tutor.
Not every state or territory allows the same access to distance education. In some states, like Queensland, if you’re prepared to facilitate your child’s learning and pay the fees, your child can be enrolled in public distance education regardless of geographic location.
While some state distance education options charge fees, these can be waived for a number of reasons including if the student lives rural or remote, if the student has caring responsibilities, if the student is excluded from state schools, if the student is suffering from a medical condition or if the student is in jail.
In the ACT, enrolment in distance education is through a local state school, but the student is not expected to attend that school and does their education through distance at home instead.
There are also private distance education providers. Many of these are based in a strong Christian foundation and offer a Christian lens on their students’ learning. There are some private, non-religious options for families who prefer a secular education.
But none of this is what happened when schools were forced into preparing for pandemic learning
Pandemic school
Pandemic school was neither home nor distance education. While parents were expected to oversee the education of their children, it was not the same.
When schools closed during the pandemic, the child was still enrolled in their school. Their classroom teachers were still responsible for their education, the parents were facilitating the on- and off-line components of their education.
Parents were not, or should not have been, expected to be heavily engaged in their learning. Parents were facilitators not teachers.
The ACT recently held an inquiry into the experiences of students and parents who were schooling during the pandemic. That inquiry found many parents and students wanted more flexibility in school delivery after the period of pandemic schooling.
For a growing group of parents, this time was found to be beneficial for their children.
There is also a Catch-22 for schools which has led to an increase in enrolments in home and distance education.
Some families fear the reopening of face-to-face schools may mean their children will get sick with COVID at school.
Another group of parents are upset about school vaccination policies that mandate vaccinations for entering school sites, effectively locking them out of their children’s schools.
It may be that, in the fall out from the pandemic, the difference between home and distance education is less academic and more real for many families.
Rebecca English is a senior lecturer in the School of Teacher Education & Leadership in the Faculty of CI, Education & Social Justice at Queensland University of Technology. She teaches into the BCT Curriculum area as well as the sociocultural studies units and was a teacher in both the Catholic Education and Education Queensland sectors for seven years.
