EduResearch Matters

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.

Why we must talk about teacher professionalism now

21st century teaching, Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, professional development of teachers, professional standards, quality teaching, Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group, Teacher professional development, teaching standards, , , ,

In 2016, Judyth Sachs reflected on her 2003 monograph ‘The Activist Teaching Profession’ and asked, ‘Teacher professionalism: Why are we still talking about it?‘. In that paper, she argued ‘the time for an industrial approach to the teaching profession has passed’ and made a case for ‘systems, schools and teachers to be more research active with teachers’ practices validated and supported through research’ (p.413). I am not sure what Judyth would say five years later but I think this is the discussion that still needs to be had. We do need to talk about teacher professionalism in Australia in 2021 and particularly the way it is being constructed and reconstructed through teacher education policy.

In 2020, Martin Mills and I compared teacher professionalism as it was constructed in teacher education policies in Australia and England, and concluded,

… derision and mistrust of teacher education is evident in both contexts. The construction of teacher professionalism through the policies in Australia and England reflects a managerial approach dominated by performance cultures, increased accountability, and teacher standards … the extent to which teachers research and improve their practices, and invoke professional judgement involving interrogation of available research … rarely feature .

Mayer & Mills, 2020, p.14

The 2014 Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) review and the resulting updated accreditation standards and procedures have constructed teacher and teacher educator professionalism in Australia. Two key drivers are evident: making sure the ‘right’ people come into the profession and making sure beginning teachers are ‘classroom ready’. Teacher education was clearly positioned as a problem that could be fixed by tighter accountability mechanisms related to these drivers.

While the TEMAG review claimed to consider ‘wide-ranging evidence and research’ in recommending that the Australian Government act ‘on the sense of urgency to immediately commence implementing actions to lift the quality of initial teacher education’ (Recommendation 2), previous government reports, governments commissioned research consultancies, and/or reports from multinational entities like the OECD and McKinsey & Company, were used to support a perceived need for change. Peer reviewed and published research by teacher education academics rarely featured. In this way, evidence to support the claims and recommendations was constructed in a particular way, supporting Helgetun and Menter’s (2020) claim that evidence is often a rationalized myth in teacher education policy because policies are regularly politically constructed and ideologically based. 

An important component of the TEMAG argument and recommendations, as captured in the report’s title, was that graduates from teacher education programs must be ‘classroom ready’. As a result, teacher education accreditation requirements changed to include a final-year teaching performance assessment. This caused much upheaval, requiring significant changes to the teacher education curricula and to teacher education resourcing in order that programs remained accredited. However, little attention was given to what should be assessed; that is, what beginning teachers should know and be able to do. More attention was given to how teacher educators must design and implement the performance assessment, and various accountability mechanisms for surveillance of this process. The assumption seemed to be that the already developed Australian Professional Standards for Teachers accurately detailed the required professional knowledge, practice, and engagement, and that what was needed was a tighter accountability framework for teacher educators and their practices. Of course, regular critiques of such standards highlight how they construct a particular type of professionalism by focussing on what teachers do rather than what and how they think. None of this was not interrogated in the TEMAG review.

In addition, great emphasis was given to ensuring that the ‘right’ people come into the profession. This focus on the person (i.e., on teachers, not their teaching) resulted in recommendations about required academic skills and desirable personal attributes and characteristics for entry to teacher education programs. In the end, measures of academic skills ended up being the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) and levels of personal literacy and numeracy. Of course, many teacher education entrants are not secondary school graduates. Thus, the political and media hype about ATAR and the quality of the teaching profession is misguided. In relation to personal levels of literacy and numeracy, TEMAG recommended that teacher educators ‘demonstrate that all preservice teachers are within the top 30 per cent of the population in personal literacy and numeracy.’ Not surprisingly, this 30% category proved rather challenging to associate with a score on the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education Students.

Another aspect aimed at ensuring that the ‘right’ people were admitted to teacher education was the recommendation for selection processes to assess the ‘personal characteristics to become a successful teacher’ (Recommendation 10).

At its worst, this conjures up visions of the 1930s so-called teacher characteristics ‘research’ associated with what makes a good teacher (which inevitably included being female and liking children).

Ensuring the ‘right’ people come into teaching was translated into accreditation requirements for providers to use non-academic selection criteria and, in practice, this has meant everything from a short personal statement attached to applications to the use of commercially produced tests designed to assess personal characteristics. Moreover, teacher education providers were required to ‘publish all information necessary to ensure transparent and justifiable selection processes for entry into initial teacher education programs’ suggesting a mistrust in providers to make appropriate decisions about selection of entrants to their teacher education programs.

Thus, teacher professionalism in Australia is being constructed as being the right type of person with appropriate personal characteristics and levels of personal literacy and numeracy, who can demonstrate successful teaching practice against standards within a system that determines performance indicators and mechanisms for classroom readiness. Moreover, teacher educator professionalism can be interpreted as ensuring the production of graduates who are classroom ready at point of graduation via programs that are accredited using nationally consistent standards.

In Australia and in England, the relentless reviewing of teacher education continues in 2021. And, yet again, the wording does not disguise the goals of these reviews. In Australia, the ‘Quality Initial Teacher Education Review’ will consider how to attract and select high-quality candidates into the teaching profession and how to prepare ITE students to be effective teachers Nothing new to see here. In the UK, the Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Market Review is focussing on ‘how the ITT sector can provide consistently high-quality training, in line with the core content framework, in a more efficient and effective market’

Do we need to keep talking about teacher and teacher educator professionalism? Definitely! 

Diane Mayer is a professor of education (Teacher Education) at the University of Oxford and an honorary professor at both the University of Queensland and the University of Sydney.

Will the Quality Time Action Plan reduce teacher workload?

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Teachers want more time for lesson planning, not less.

Last week, the NSW Department of Education released the Quality Time Action Plan, intended to “simplify administrative practices in schools”. Having highlighted the concerning growth in administrative workload in schools in a report based on a survey of more than 18,000 teachers for the NSW Teachers Federation in 2018, we were excited to hear about this development. 

A way forward for reducing administrative workload?

The Plan provides a commitment to “freeing up time”, through a targeted “reduction of 40 hours of low-value administrative tasks per teacher per year”. Administrative work was the overriding concern for teachers in our workload survey, with more than 97% of teachers reporting an increase in administrative requirements in the five prior years. Further research shows that the heavy workload of teachers pre-pandemic was intensified by COVID19 in 2020. As researchers in the field and advocates for the important work of teachers, we find it encouraging to see tangible efforts made to address teacher workload.

According to the Plan, issues with administration are to be addressed through six “opportunity areas”: 1) curriculum resources and support, 2) assessment and reporting to parents and carers, 3) accreditation, 4) processes and support services, 5) extracurricular activities, and 6) data collection and analysis. Some of these areas, especially data collection and analysis, resonate with what we heard from teachers in our 2018 survey. And importantly, some of the actions in the Action Plan do seem to provide tangible reductions in the time teachers spend on this kind of work, such as automating data processing that was previously manual. 

Avoiding the narrowing of teachers’ work

But other target areas of the Plan were more surprising to us, particularly those around curriculum. The Plan acknowledges that “skilled programming and lesson planning are a critical part of teaching” – but also states that “this task can be quite time consuming”. It offers to improve “the accessibility and quality of teacher resources” to “save hours of time teachers previously used creating and searching for content”. We’re not the only ones who were surprised by this inclusion – we noted plenty of social media discussion from teachers about it last Friday after the plan was released to them. 

We don’t have access to all of the data upon which the Department is basing its Plan. Maybe there are teachers who have called for more assistance in programming and lesson planning. There is, to our knowledge, no published research suggesting that this is a problematic workload area for teachers, although it has been a noted challenge in relation to conversion to remote teaching during the pandemic. This Plan strategy does seem to be at odds with the findings of our survey that teachers’ most valued activity, the one that they saw as most important and necessary, was “planning and preparation of lessons”. Similarly, teachers reported wanting more time for “developing new units of work and/or teaching programs”. They did not want to do less of this kind of work, in contrast to what the Plan seems to propose. 

According to policy analyst and scholar Carol Bacchi, policy documents always serve to create or give shape to policy problems. That is, for Bacchi, any ‘solution’ given in a policy is actively constructing a particular kind of ‘problem’ to be addressed. So it’s interesting that the Plan constructs class preparation as part of the teacher workload ‘problem’. This suggests that the problem isn’t that teachers need more time to do their preparation, but that the way in which they have been preparing in the past has been inefficient, with the solution to instil a more centralised approach. While teachers may be appreciative of such resources, it’s not what they advocated in our survey, where the top recommended strategy was to reduce face-to-face teaching time to facilitate a closer focus on collaboration for planning, programming, assessing and reporting. Similarly, we note that the NSW Teachers Federation salaries and conditions campaign launched last week, ‘More Than Thanks’, is – along with higher salaries – calling for an increase in preparation time of two hours a week, to enable this kind of work. 

There are also other interesting framings of the teacher workload problem in the Plan. For example, the support around data collection and analysis seems to be mostly about ‘streamlining’ existing requirements rather than removing them. This tells us that the perceived problem is not the data itself but how it is collected and reported. 

Lesson planning is core to teachers’ work 

Given that the Action Plan’s intended focus is on ‘administration’, this makes us wonder what ‘administration’ in teaching is understood to include. What is considered ‘administration’ and therefore peripheral, and what is considered ‘teaching’ and therefore core? This is quite a high-stakes question. Because if we position some aspects of teachers’ work as simply ‘administration’, then we run the risk of sidelining work that teachers value as part of their professional identity, such as the creative and intellectual work of lesson planning. 

We are wary of any policy approach which re-purposes concerns over workload as an opportunity to control or limit the central pedagogical labour of teachers. Reforms which chip away at the core work of teachers, where both societal contribution and teacher satisfaction is most concentrated, run the risk of damaging the profession and the education system it carries.

This may not be what happens under the Quality Time Action Plan. But given recent concerns over the commercialisation of education data and resourcing, it is worth asking whether it would be the profession itself providing centralised programming and planning resources, or if this would be outsourced. 

Teachers’ voices matter: give your feedback 

There is an opportunity to provide feedback on the Action Plan. We encourage teachers – those who live these matters each and every day – to fill in the feedback form. Workload issues are as complex as they are important, and we heartily welcome the ongoing efforts of all stakeholders to effectively support the people who staff our schools. 

Rachel Wilson is Associate Professor at The Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. She has expertise in educational assessment, research methods and programme evaluation, with broad interests across educational evidence, policy and practice. She is interested in system-level reform and has been involved in designing, implementing and researching many university and school education reforms. Rachel is on Twitter @RachelWilson100

Susan McGrath-Champ is Professor in the Work and Organisational Studies Discipline at the University of Sydney Business School, Australia. Her research includes the geographical aspects of the world of work, employment relations and international human resource management. Recent studies include those of school teachers’ work and working conditions.

Meghan Stacey is a former high school English and drama teacher and current lecturer in the School of Education at UNSW Sydney. Meghan’s primary research interests sit at the intersection of sociological theory, policy sociology and the experiences of those subject to systems of education. Meghan’s PhD was conferred in April 2018. Meghan is on Twitter @meghanrstacey

Mihajla Gavin is a lecturer in the Business School at the University of Technology Sydney, and has worked as a senior officer in the public sector in Australia across various workplace relations advisory, policy and project roles. Mihajla’s research is concerned with analysing the response of teacher unions to neoliberal education reform that has affected teachers’ conditions of work. Mihajla is on Twitter @Mihajla_Gavin

Scott Fitzgerald is an associate professor and discipline lead of the People, Culture and Organisations discipline group in the School of Management at Curtin University. Scott’s research presently covers two main areas: the changing nature of governance, professionalism and work in the education sector.

Teaching-focused academics: five ways to beat the struggle for identity

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An academic career centered on teaching should not be associated with a dead-end, or second-rate professional life. It is at the teaching coalface that the capacities that will enable students, academics, and universities to face the challenges of a changing world will be developed.

To support this work as the meaningful undertaking that it is, what kind of professional development would meet the identity, community and skill needs of academics?

We developed a collaborative program of professional development – targeting skills in education research – at a large Australian university. The results make a case that collaboration is key when building educational research knowledge and skills in higher education. In turn, these skills, and the communities of practice in which they are embedded, are essential to meaningful work for academics with a teaching focus.

In 2012 at Monash University, only two years into the introduction of education-focused academic roles (EFAs), a review by senior leadership showed that staff employed in the new roles felt isolated and underprepared.

This was the context we were responding to when we developed our professional learning program, the ‘Higher Education Research’, or HER, program. We took a route that would simultaneously address the perceived lack of capacity in specialized education research and the sense of isolation. The HER program parted ways with traditional interventions that look to ‘upskill’ individuals and centre on a particular new technology or methodology. Instead, we created an authentic social context in which participants could feel part of a scholarly community and build networks across disciplines and faculties.

The HER program ran in two cohorts, each lasting 18 months. They began with a series of four day-long workshops. Four months of workshops covered the knowledge and skills needed to plan and carry out a learning and teaching research project. Each research project would see participants examine an aspect of their own educational practice and then work towards the dissemination of their research. Full details of the project and what it involved can be found here.

From the focus groups, we were able to make a richer qualitative assessment in which five key themes emerged:

Struggle – Many said they initially struggled in the new roles as EFAs without sufficient support from the institution. They felt the pressure of needing to produce education research outcomes (such as evaluations of teaching and learning programs) that they felt ill-equipped for. However, they found that the stable structure offered by the HER Program was supportive. They characterised it as a safe container, nurturing them as they learned new skills.

Identity – HER participants developed new feelings and ideas about having ‘education-focussed academic’ as a professional identity. The HER Program generated a sense of community among EFAs that helped to alleviate their feelings of isolation and created a sense of belonging. One said, “We were able to meet people across the university who had similar ideas and that was great. I think it put us on the map a little bit more.” EFA communities became particularly important as EFAs otherwise felt alone as academics committed to teaching in their discipline.

Social relations – HER participants changed how they saw, acted on, and related to the social context of their work. Some described the growth in confidence they felt as they struggled together, developing comradery and solidarity that came with it. The program shaped later initiatives made by the participants, with some offering formal professional development and informal mentoring to their colleagues. Effects cascaded beyond the university when participants presented their education research activity nationally and internationally at conferences. These ripples connected participants to mentors, to mentors’ peers and the wider education research community.

Leadership – The HER program helped participants to develop as leaders. Some took up leadership positions in learning and teaching in their Department or Faculty, but leadership also encompassed the ways others perceived their expertise. They reported demonstrating in very practical ways how they led learning and teaching, such as by mentoring colleagues and leading quality professional development programs in their School or Department.

Criticality – The program helped academics to see their practice as university educators in more critical terms. Said one, “Even though HER was really about doing education research, I think my reflective practice probably improved as a result of being involved in the HER program. Even though your reflection wasn’t predominantly on what happened in the classroom, it was on your research project, it’s kind of difficult to uncouple those two things … I think my teaching became better with that reflective practice”.

The HER program was not a one-off event, but an on-going, collective effort to craft genuine research projects relevant to participants’ everyday practices.

This is why it had such an impact long after it ended. By actively taking part in developing academic communities, program participants were then able to seek out opportunities to connect with and influence their peers, spreading the benefits of the program through their institution.

The article makes six key recommendations for other universities who are seeking to build the capacity and expertise of education-focussed academics and maximise their impact at their universities.

By supporting programs like HER and seeing to it that they align with their university’s values and goals, leaders can put into practice the principle that teaching and education research are scholarly activities valued by the institution.

Dr Joy Whitton is a freelance consultant and until recently was Senior Project Coordinator at Monash University. Her research focusses on professional learning, and creativity in higher education teaching and learning. 

Associate Professor Julia Choate is the director of physiology education at Monash University.  Her research focuses on enhancing students’ university experiences, by developing employability skills and improving learning through innovative teaching practices

Graham Parr is Associate Dean (International) and Associate Professor of English and international education in the School of Curriculum, Teaching and Inclusive Education, Faculty of Education, Monash University

How To Transform Our Understanding Of First Nations Cultures To Abundant Futures

First Nations education, Indigenous education, Resources for Indigenous education, , ,

Big hART’s Creative Learning Producer, April Phillips, and Scott Rankin CEO reflect on the elements, process and approach of co-creating an ambitious First Nations led education project with the community of Ieramugadu (Roebourne), in the Pilbara W.A.

In the education sector, First Nations content and knowledge is widely accepted as rich, layered and highly important. However, most often this content is situated as: ‘a long, long time ago,’ steeped in broad generalisations, and seen through a deficit lens. Rarely do we ask; how might we present and build on this rich content and ideas, so as to privilege First Nations ‘cultures and histories’ as also strong and future focused? And also, how can we deliver learning in such a way as to move beyond the deficit lens? 

Through this retro positioning, we can lose sight of what is here now and strong and abundant, as well as what might be coming next. Cultural continuity in the past is remarkable, but so too is future continuity. Being able to acknowledge and present the lived experiences in the now, that will be taking us tens of thousands of years beyond now, holds inspiring educational potential. In partnership with the community of Ieramugadu, a new educational platform for this kind of approach has emerged, co-created with Big hART.

Big hART/ Ieramugadu partnership

Big hART, a social change and arts not-for profit was founded in 1992 with a purpose to illuminate hidden narratives. Nations are narrations (E. Said), and they are emergent and ‘told’ into being. And if you are excluded from, or demonised in that ‘telling,’ you are open to abandonment, hurt and trauma. The phrase, ‘it is harder to hurt someone if you know their story,’ underpins Big hART’s work.

Over a decade ago Big hART was invited by senior women to come to Ieramugadu and work with their young people, and tell the hidden stories. One of the first ideas they shared was, ‘heritage is a future leaning concept, it is our young people.’ This became a foundational piece of learning for Big hART, and set the tone of the Yijala Yala project. It has given rise to many opportunities for co-creation with the community. One such project was NEOMAD.

NEOMAD and NEO-Learning

NEOMAD, is a Gold Ledger Award winning First Nations sci-fi interactive comic, produced by Big hART, created by artist SUTU (Stu Campbell) and the community of Ieramugadu (Roebourne). More than forty young people worked alongside SUTU to develop digital skills, complete the images and ensure the magic of illuminated colours, recorded sounds and local languages were embedded in every page. Set in 2076, NEOMAD is an exemplar of the positivity that shines when First Nations are privileged with future continuity as well as past. The project champions a rare narrative – First Nations young people maintaining cultural work in the context of childhood freedoms, navigating dual worlds, and living fast paced adventures – all under the care and watchful eye of Elders. 

Once people read it, they say, “NEOMAD should be in all schools!” 

Bridging worlds: a support framework for futurism

Air dropping NEOMAD comics into every school in Australia could have been one way to reach our audience. And why not? Kids love it and the comic will surely bring future-focused fun to the classroom. However, ‘context’ has emerged as a step before the comic is read. The all-important introduction is the make-or-break moment, in amplifying the impact for both teachers and students. 

What we uncovered was a tentative hesitation amongst teachers, in knowing how to present First Nations futurism, in the present day, when reconciliation is still a long way off. This led to investigation informed by teachers: how might we take the conversation of futurism wider than NEOMAD alone? What would happen if we adopted a futuristic mode – live virtual education to bring co-learning to both teacher and students, in a safe, dynamic, fun parallel place? As a result, Big hART has developed a ‘supported learning’ offering, funded by the Telstra Foundations #Tech4good program.

Future focused in content and delivery 

In the NEO-Learning classroom, each student and their teacher arrive at a virtual destination. In the virtual classroom we spend time together, hear how to pronounce nation names – ‘Ngarluma’ and ‘Yindjibarndi’ from custodian Patrick Churnside via sound pods; we make predictions in the chat; we listen, read, look closely, share what we notice, download, vote and dance. 

“We have never done anything like this before,” they say.

Co-creation and self-determination is key

NEO-Learning is now a national offering, featuring a flow of additional content from the I Ieramugadu community, mentored in a new, on country Digital Lab. Big hART supports and champions local artists, many of whom are still in school. Artists make work based on their own lived experience, with new technical skills, alongside their peers. This after school learning isn’t a compulsory burden on young people, the learning is social, fun, grounding and good. The learning journey in digital art making is informed by mutual respect between artist mentors, young content creators and Elders. 

Shifting Perceptions 

There is a hunger in schools for new ways of knowing. Through NEO-Learning, First Nations digital artists, showcasing new technological modes, are helping to rewire ‘past tense’ assumptions about culture. And when strong digital art lands in a student’s world, the response is overwhelmingly positive and affirming. Young people recognise peer to peer learning as an act of generosity. As it catches on, young people try walking in each other’s shoes – running shoes, dancing shoes, space shoes, and imaginative futurist shoes – lets arrive before we leave!  

Find out more about NEO-Learning here

April Phillips is a Wiradjuri-Scottish woman of the Galari people. She works across disciplines as an audience specialist, digital artist, virtual educator and researcher. Currently the Creative Learning Producer at Big hART, April has been part of the NEO-learning development team since early 2020. April has contributed to international graphic anthropology research under the topic of ‘childhood play’ in the living memory of adults. She is associated as a community member of the Graduate Certificate of Wiradjuri Language, Culture and Heritage; a graduate of the Bachelor of Creative Arts and Design and has partially completed a Masters of Education at Charles Sturt University.

Scott Rankin is a nationally renowned public speaker, writer, director, cultural commentator and co-founder of Big hART. His theatre, documentary and television projects have won multiple awards. Scott was the 2018 Tasmanian Australian of the Year, is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania and is a PHD candidate at the Queensland University of Technology.

Alan Tudge’s understanding of our history deserves a fail

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The Federal Minister for Education Alan Tudge says the draft History and Civics and Citizenship curriculum is not up to scratch. According to a letter seen by The Australian newspaper, Minister Tudge has suggested that the draft curriculum ‘diminishes Australia’s western, liberal and democratic values’. According  to Tudge, the curriculum provides a negative view about western civilisation placing emphasis on ‘slavery, imperialism and colonisation’.

He’s not happy with any of Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s (ACARA) draft curriculum but history came in for a belting.

Tudge also suggested that there has been an effort to remove or reframe historical events, emphasising ‘invasion theory’ over Australia Day. In addition, he is also concerned that Anzac Day is presented as ‘a contested idea, rather than the most sacred of all days’.

His comments are of particular concern to the Social and Citizenship Education Association of Australia (SCEAA).

SCEAA represents a diverse and experienced group of teachers, researchers and teacher educators from across Australia. The Australian Curriculum, and how it might best be taught is central to our work and advocacy. In this respect, we have provided detailed submissions regarding the  Australian Curriculum.. We are critical friends and do not hesitate to offer suggestions for improvements where we feel they are warranted. It is in this role,, and with a great deal of respect, that we respond to the Minister’s comments. In the case of History and Civics and Citizenship, we would argue that the Minister has mis-characterised aspects of the proposed History and Civics and Citizenship curricula. 

If we are to consider the Minister’s comments regarding Anzac Day, as one example, the evidence does not support his claims that it has been removed or reframed. For example, in Year 3, students are taught ‘How significant commemorations [such as Anzac Day] contribute to [Australian] identity and the content descriptor explicitly references ‘the importance’ of Anzac Day. 

This does not sound as if Anzac Day is being marginalised in the curriculum.

 There is an elaboration that allows teachers to explore the idea ‘that people have different points of view on some commemorations’. Whilst this is optional, its inclusion is consistent with the principles of critical thinking and engaging with multiple perspectives that are foundations of democratic societies. It does not demand the study of Anzac Day as a contested idea. In Year 9, students explore ‘The commemoration of World War I’. Part of this includes ‘different historical interpretations and contested debates about the nature and significance of the Anzac legend and the war’. The documents that comprise the curriculum are carefully articulated to be as close to neutral as possible; they don’t advance an ideological argument against Anzac Day.

Regarding the Minister’s concerns about ‘slavery, imperialism and colonisation within the curriculum, it is important to reiterate that within History and Civics and Citizenship there is a great deal of emphasis placed on critical thinking, and considering different points of view and perspectives. In History, especially, students must engage with concepts like ‘Continuity and change’, ‘Perspectives’ and ‘Contestability’. They must do so by applying historical inquiry and skills, which includes the analysis and use of sources, and the examination of perspective and interpretations. Again, these arguments about meaning and value are central to what it means to be an active and informed citizen and member of the community, and a student of History.    

Perhaps there is some confusion about what history is, and how it is meant to be taught? In the comments above, it appears that the Minister is suggesting that young people undertake no critical thinking about the centrality of Anzac Day (or anything else) in our culture, but solely experience it as an annual patriotic rite. This positions the study of history as something that is only celebratory and patriotic. While History can promote  feelings, it should also encourage reflection, thought and reasoned debate – such as, in this case, about the continued importance of Anzac commemoration in Australia today. This understanding better reflects the experiences of our members, who after all, are those entrusted to make the curriculum a reality and who lead ANZAC day celebrations in schools. There is highly respectful dialogue and interaction between schools, RSLs and others around Anzac Day, with many opportunities for educational conversations. Furthermore, the effective study of History is one that presents multiple sides which are supported by evidence, and invites critical analysis of those multiple views on the balance of evidence, in a way that neutralises biases as much as possible rather than amplifying bias one way or another. 

As Australian educational settings are super-diverse we need to embrace a curriculum that is not monocultural and embraces and critically explores and presents our history so that all learners can relate to it and be valued. History, at its most effective form of contribution to society, is a doorway into our past in ways that help us to make sense of our present and then enable us to make better informed decisions for our future. It is not about advocating any one view, itself. The  Australian Curriculum reflects this best practice approach.

This misunderstanding also applies to the Minister’s comments regarding Australia’s western democratic values. Again, an examination of the Australian Curriculum documents might correct this. Students in Year 3 through to Year 8  learn about government, politics and democracy in Australia. For example, in Year 3, ‘students explain how citizens contribute in their community’, the role of rules and the importance of making decisions democratically’. In Year 5 students explore ‘What is democracy in Australia, how does our democracy work, and why is voting in a democracy important’. A content descriptor outlines ‘the key values, and features of Australia’s democracy, including the election process and the responsibilities of electors’. In Year 6 ‘Students study the key institutions of Australia’s democratic government. They learn how State, Territory and Federal laws are made in a parliamentary system and the role of law and law enforcement’. There is an entire sub-strand in the Year 7 and 8 called ‘Government and Democracy’ which focuses on the key features of Australian democracy and government, and also the role of political parties and independent representatives. Students are also called upon to evaluate political and legal institutions (including in positive ways!) as they ‘Explain how democratic, political and legal systems uphold and enact values and processes, and how Australian citizens use these to contribute to their local, State/Territory or national community’.

Again, there is no evidence that this represents any particular ideology. It is hard to see how the curriculum exemplifies a ‘left-wing’ bias as represented in the media coverage. Instead, what it does do is strive to meet the twin goals of ‘active and informed’ citizens and membership of the community that are present in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Declaration; nationally agreed goals for schooling agreed to by all state and territory Ministers of Education.. Students have the opportunity to recognise what is good about our current institutions and their past, but, perhaps more importantly, how they might strive to improve and participate as informed citizens in the democratic life of all Australians. This constant evaluation of systems and processes is essential to a healthy democratic system.

Whenever a new draft of a curriculum is opened for consultation, stakeholders from all backgrounds are invited to respond and raise their concerns and questions. Such action is to be encouraged, since contributions from diverse stakeholders,  (including teachers and their representatives) strengthen education in Australia as a whole. However, these contributions must be weighed against the content of the curriculum and the practice of teachers in their classrooms.  

Australians need informed, engaged citizens to contribute to a healthy and responsible democracy. We are committed to educating young people with these kinds of qualities through our teaching in both schools and teacher education institutions.

From left to right: Keith Heggart is an early career researcher with a focus on learning and instructional design, educational technology and civics and citizenship education. He is currently exploring the way that online learning platforms can assist in the formation of active citizenship amongst Australian youth. Keith is a former high school teacher, having worked as a school leader in Australia and overseas, in government and non-government sectors. In addition, he has worked as an Organiser for the Independent Education Union of Australia, and as an independent Learning Designer for a range of organisations. 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). Sophie Fenton is an award winning founder, learning designer and researcher in education. She has taught History, Global Politics and Civics, as well as developing curriculum with VCAA and SEV. Today, she specialises in school design, curriculum adaptation and pedagogy innovation with a focus on human-centred design for the emerging cyber-physical world. 

What you should know about physical literacy

physical education, Physical exercise, physical literacy, , , ,

On Monday, we posted on the very real challenges facing those who teach PE on Zoom. Today we explore the meaning of physical literacy in the classroom.

The concept of physical literacy is not new but it has taken some time for key stakeholders here in Australia, such as Sport Australia,  to start using the term to promote physical activity engagement

Sport Australia has published the Australian Physical Literacy Framework (APLF) (2020). This document provide readers with examples of practice across five stages of (human) development. At no stage do these documents refer to school or curriculum programs. 

Instead another document the Physical Literacy Guide for Schools presents a holistic vision of the promotion of physical activity through the following macro-level areas: i. Culture, Organisation and Environment, ii. Curriculum Teaching and Learning, and iii. Partnerships. Even this latter document does little to explain how the concepts, domains or elements fit into health and physical education leaving Scott et al (2020) to write that the “…challenge is to find ways to appropriate integrate the APLF into HPE programmes.”

Physical literacy “…can be described as the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge and understanding to value and engage in physical activity for life” (Whitehead, 2019, p. 8). 

Our purpose for writing our article (see Brown & Whittle, 2021) was to explore this interest in the concept of physical literacy as it relates to the Victorian/Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education. 

While others have highlighted how the term and concept has gained traction internationally in the development of policy and the teaching during school physical education, we considered how physical literacy was likely to be taken up by teachers, if at all, and considered how it could be presented in the Victorian Curriculum and subsequently the Australian Curriculum should it be seen as worthwhile and meaningful. 

Our additional concern relates to how the concept of physical literacy from its intention to its enactment will occur with teachers. Research from educational policy sociology has suggested that teachers look towards implicit policy documents that are not formal in the curriculum sense (e.g. guidance materials produced by others not curriculum bodies, herein Sport Australia), placing teachers in “…uncharted territory, potentially feeling pressure to strengthen PL outcomes in their HPE programmes” (Scott et al. 2020, p. 6). We see that HPE teachers act as ‘policy actors’ and utilise materials to support their teaching but designed for a different purpose and in fact become ‘quasi-curriculum’.

Given the international and local contexts, we argue that there is perhaps a need to revisit how physical literacy is interpreted and enacted in the key learning area of HPE. 

Currently within the Victorian Curriculum there is no explicit reference to the concept of physical literacy, even though there are likely practitioners that discuss and engage with the concept in their schools and during their HPE classes. 

The contemporary pedagogical practices of primary and secondary health and physical education teachers are in line with the content descriptions and achievement standards of the curriculum. As an example, the teaching of movement skills, health-based physical activity/lifelong physical activity, movement concepts and teamwork and social capabilities are examples of content seen daily nationwide in health and physical education classes. All these content areas lead to the development of physical literacy. This then calls into question why physical literacy and why not physical education? 

Some have suggested that the concepts of physical literacy are more closely aligned to the general capabilities in the Australian Curriculum. Unfortunately however, the general capabilities are not present within the Victorian Curriculum. Given these points that we have raised above, we considered whether the concept of physical literacy could be considered as the sixth proposition that informs the content of the curriculum. One argument for our justification relates to the abstract nature within the research and lay literature of physical literacy as a concept. Several reasons led us to this position that PL could act as the sixth proposition:

  • That PL is a contemporary and futures-focussed term that currently pervades to lexicon of teachers and academics within the physical education literature
  • That PL derives its content and disciplinary base from multiple different perspectives and these may be privileged or not in enactment
  • Aligns with a 21st century curriculum
  • That there is an exponential explosion of research related to this term in the development, practice and assessment associated with HPE
  • Most importantly, that the concept is esoteric in nature, is difficult to define and there is little consensus about how it should be enacted in physical education.

Our contention is that it is best placed to exist as an overarching concept, or proposition within the curriculum. We argue that the concept of physical literacy should standalone as a proposition, as opposed to being embedded in the valuing movement proposition as proposed in the ACARA review of the HPE curriculum (ACARA, 2021). Additionally, and is not often stated, teachers are explicitly involved in physical literacy work during the teaching of health and physical education. Promoting its virtues as a proposition within the curriculum could be seen as an acceptable ‘middle ground’ in that it philosophically and conceptually approves that is should be part of the developing curriculum language, whilst simultaneously suggesting that teachers do physical literacy work.

Trent Brown is a senior lecturer at Deakin University and a former president of the Australian Council for Health Physical Education and Recreation. He has been an active researcher in the areas of physical education curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. In 2018 he co-authored Examination Physical Education – Policy, Pedagogies and Possibilities (Routledge) with Professor Dawn Penney.

Rachael Whittle has authored a number of health and physical education text books for both 7-10 HPE and VCE Physical Education and delivers teacher professional learning both nationally and internationally. Rachael’s doctoral studies research focussed on influences on academic performance in senior-secondary physical education.

Image in header © Charlotte Kesl / World Bank

Why it’s a nightmare to use Zoom to get moving

COVID-19 and schools, online learning, physical education, Physical exercise, Sport, , , , , ,

Schools around Australia were forced into online delivery of physical education (PE) in Term 2, 2020, due to measures taken to suppress and restrict the spread of Covid-19. We looked at what really happened in classrooms. The results show us exactly how marginalised PE became.

What we found in our research, ‘Just do some physical activity’: Exploring experiences of teaching primary school physical education online during Covid-19, is that few guidelines were provided to teachers by education departments, and that teachers found out ‘what works’ by ‘trial and error’. Our study found PE teachers missed the face-to-face interaction with students, and that often new teaching skills needed to be cultivated to meet the challenge of online lesson delivery, whether by synchronous or asynchronous delivery.

Students in Tasmania where this research occurred were required to study online from home for approximately 10 weeks, with schools only being ‘open’ to families of essential workers who continued in the workforce while the rest of the population were under work from home requirements.

In Australia, physical education (PE) is an essential education provision that is central to the development of the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary for lifelong health and wellbeing. It is a part of the essential learning area called Health and Physical Education (HPE), which all Australian students within compulsory ages of schooling are required to take. While regular physical activity is recommended for students to meet the achievement standards of the Australian HPE Curriculum (AC:HPE), it is important to remember that the rationale and objectives of the AC:HPE clearly indicate that PE should have an educative focus and an inquiry emphasis.

Regular participation in school PE is an important foundation to ‘becoming’ physically educated and to the physical literacy that informs physical activity as an ongoing lifestyle choice. Research has also noted that participation in PE has numerous affective, social-emotional and cognitive benefits. Despite the holistic outcomes associated with PE, it is often not given the time and resources it requires to develop students into independent, self-regulated and self-motivated seekers of physical activity by the end of compulsory PE in Year 10. This is due to schools prioritising time to other learning areas deemed more ‘academic’ and therefore ‘important’ to the priorities of the school. It needs to be acknowledged, that often PE has not helped its own image as a worthwhile site of learning through provision of school curricula that provides little more than a series of physical activity experiences. This has been described as keeping students busy, happy, active, and good (well behaved).

The study

This study was undertaken by researchers from the University of Tasmania and Flinders University, Adelaide. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects on the educative intent of PE when primary school teachers were forced into an online delivery of the curriculum. It is important to know more about this phenomenon to inform future situations like that experienced by Covid-19 suppression measures as well as existing distance education by online delivery.

Data was obtained from eleven Tasmanian HPE specialist teachers who were forced to shift to online delivery of primary school PE during 2020. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with these teachers, who taught in co-educational primary schools across a variety of Tasmanian locations.

Key themes

Analysis of teachers’ experiences led to the emergence of three key themes:

1. PE did not happen, but, in most cases, was altered to physical activity/fitness or educatively marginalised to just being a movement break between other subjects with higher status and priority;

2. Online learning platforms are already used by schools, but not with consistency. Using them to teach PE can be a lot of additional work and teachers had varying levels of willingness to use these platforms;

3. Connection with students is an important part of teaching, teachers preferred to connect with their students face to face and had concerns about delivery of feedback and student engagement online.

PE did not happen

Declining rates of physical activity participation, increasingly sedentary behaviour of Australian children and reports on low attainment of fundamental movement skills (and the problem of this when they are possibly predictive in the choice to be physically active) were already an issue before Covid-19. A focus on educative purposes for the progressive development of movement competence and confidence is one of the five interrelated propositions that shaped the writing of the AC:HPE. Yet, the educative ‘E’ in PE largely did not occur, rather, PE had been marginalised and replaced with physical activity tasks and in some cases to participating in online fitness activities. Online fitness videos can be a great resource for young people wanting to increase their movement levels during isolation, to accumulate sufficient physical activity through the day for healthy growth and development. However, physical activity provision of itself is not PE and HPE teachers are not personal trainers. Despite indicating an awareness of the difference between PE and physical activity, teacher comments indicated that they were happy just if their students were outside and active every day during isolation.

While students being active outside should be encouraged, particularly in light of recent research noting physical activity decreases during Covid-19, this physical activity should be undertaken in addition to PE lessons, just as it is in a ‘normal’ school day where physical activity breaks and ‘active classrooms’ are encouraged.  The educative focus of PE plays an important role in children becoming ‘competent’ in being active and developing the skills and dispositions required for lifelong health and activity, and the self-efficacy required to continue to independently seek to be physically active. While substituting physical activity for PE long term is going to be highly detrimental to this aim, it is important to acknowledge that expectations on teachers during Covid-19 suppression measures were unprecedented in living memory. Teachers were given very little time or professional development to prepare online content and teach online, and many participants perceived online teaching to be a temporary move until suppression measures had eased and teaching returned to normal.

Online learning platforms

Most participants appeared to be confident users of technology, yet some were concerned about the amount of screen time students were experiencing while learning online. This concern might go some way to explaining why some teachers chose to prioritise movement accumulation by setting physical activity tasks that would require students to get off their laptops but doesn’t mitigate against the expectation of teachers of all subjects to continue to progress students towards attainment of the student achievement outcomes outlined in the curriculum.

Participants who did teach online noted an increased workload due to different platforms being used and the time required to provide feedback to students. As one participant noted; “I’m giving myself a lot of work because I’m uploading the video to the 15 classes I teach, so it goes out to over 300 children and I had over 100 children respond every day. So, I’ve been on my computer the whole time responding to the children and watching their videos”. Using videos is a sensible solution to the challenge of online PE delivery, but teachers do need to be aware of the time required to give feedback.

Connection

Perhaps a reason for the loss of educative intent was the loss of connection teachers felt with the students and becoming physical activity leaders was seen as providing an online connection. Participant comments indicated both a concern for students missing the social benefits of learning together and working within a team, and their personal feelings related to missing their students. The ‘learning with others’ and the intra and inter-personal social skills development possibilities that come from PE teachers who deliberately plan for personal and social skills learning in PE, connects with the education through movement dimension that frames the AC:HPE.

While participants predominantly detailed the challenges of adapting their PE program for online delivery, several participants shared anecdotes of positive experiences with student engagement that had emerged during the move to online delivery. These included successful virtual cross-country carnivals and increased physical activity for some families. Exercise was one of the few reasons that Tasmanians were permitted to leave their homes during isolation, so it is important to acknowledge that some families may have increased their physical activity levels due to boredom and ‘cabin fever’. Nevertheless, these teacher comments indicated that online delivery of PE did have some benefits for students and their families, which teachers may be able to build on in the future.

Conclusion

The results suggest that for these teachers, the influence of Covid-19 forcing school curricula delivery online was (further) marginalisation of expectations for PE. PE is already recognised in the literature as a valued but not necessarily priority focus of learning, especially in primary schools. It appeared that the significant degree of contradiction between the value of PE and the provision of PE as a vague notion of physical activity accumulation became accentuated during online delivery. The departure of the ‘education’ in physical education became acceptable as physical activity accumulation was pursued.

For those who want more: http://www.iier.org.au/iier31/cruickshank-abs.html

A second paper focussed on the online teaching experiences of secondary HPE teachers during COVID-19 suppression measures is currently under review.

From left to right:

Vaughan Cruickshank is a Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education (HPE) at the University of Tasmania and is currently Program Director of the Bachelor of Education(HPE) and Bachelor of Education(Science/Maths) programs. His research interests are focussed on HPE, health literacy and how we can encourage people to be active and healthy for life.

Shane Pill is an associate professor in physical education and sport at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. He researches using qualitative methodology in curriculum, pedagogy, school leadership, and sport coaching. Shane is an award winning teacher educator, including the Australian Award for University Teaching (2016 and 2020) and Life Membership of the Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation.

Casey Mainsbridge is a Lecturer in Health and Physical education at the University of Tasmania, Australia. His research areas are in health, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, pedagogy, habits and behaviour change. Casey is the Director of Student Engagement in the School of Education at the University of Tasmania, and has also been a registered exercise professional for twenty three years.

Learning is not a race but politicians think it is. Now wellbeing is in peril.

Framework for Improving Student Outcomes (FISO),, NAPLAN, wellbeing, , ,

Pasi Salhberg is right, we need to prioritise wellbeing during the endless lockdowns many of us are enduring. But this message is only partially right, because wellbeing isn’t just what’s important ‘right now’, it should always be the most important thing in learning. Unfortunately, our schooling systems have never understood this. In fact, mass schooling systems have their roots in nation-building imperatives that had, and continue to have, little to do with individual flourishing.

You only have to listen to politicians crooning about NAPLAN results improving during lockdown to know what’s important to our leaders. There is a relentless focus on student achievement rather than wellbeing. Luckily though, not all educators think this way, probably not even many of them. Yet, we all seem to be caught in the groupthink of policy by the numbers in education, while anchored to industrial-era thinking about the role of education while lip service is paid to the young human beings effaced by the numbers.

Wellbeing has always been a lesser priority for policy-makers, rather than the core focus. They seem to love to talk like it’s important, but when it comes down to it, academic success, measured by numbers, is always first. Even the latest Framework for Improving Student Outcomes (FISO), from the Department of Education and Training Education Victoria, bundles “whole school approach to health, wellbeing, inclusion and engagement” down the bottom of their list of eight pre-conditions for school improvement. It is quite literally at the end of the list, and oddly, what looks like wellbeing seems to be more about building the capacity of children to cope with the system rather than policy attempts at transforming it. 

What’s really odd is that for things that should be a race, like vaccination rates, politicians are inclined to think they’re not, and for things that shouldn’t be a race, like learning, they are only ever conceived as precisely that. No one is allowed to fall off the pace, lest, heaven forbid, the NAPLAN numbers turn sour, or the ‘Olympics’ of PISA ratings have us slipping down the medal tally. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, in the last 40 years especially, we’ve turned our schooling system into an individualist zero-sum game of mass-produced insecurity. 

Politicians seem to be more interested in getting our kids vaccinated just to get them back in class, to get them back to their ATARs, and the schools back to their competition for academic achievement and climbing league tables. Yet, COVID-19 is a disaster that doesn’t seem to want to go away. Teachers have been reporting ‘shattering’ work pressure, and things aren’t letting up with so many still under lockdown. Mental health issues amongst our young has doubled during the pandemic. And, as has been pointed out, “children and young people can be particularly vulnerable to the emotional impact  of disasters and they look to the adults around them for reassurance and protection”. This isn’t going to be easy, when there are many adults who are barely coping themselves and seeking help in record numbers. 

Educators are well aware of the wellbeing issues that are on the rise. But they are caught between parent anxiety, the need for someone to keep the kids occupied while parents struggle with working from home, and the structures of schooling and assessment that are unrelenting in its focus. There are a number of ‘elephants in the room’, but parents’ longer term anxiety about their children’s futures can be eased by a fundamental restructuring of education away from the hyper-competition it has become. As some are already suggesting, it’s time to abandon the ATAR factory and start thinking about alternatives. We should have been doing this all along, but the ATAR ‘perfect score’ has long dominated the media imagination. If we can head off these obsessions, just maybe, wellbeing could then be front and centre ahead of other curriculum priorities rather than an afterthought. If we get wellbeing right, we just might find ourselves on the path to the optimal environment for learning rather than the hypercompetitive one that we have.

Dr George Variyan is a lecturer in Master of Educational Leadership in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. His background includes teaching, learning and leading in schools in Australia and overseas. George’s engagement in research is based on a critically orientated sociology, which explores human agency in the relationship between education and society. Key interests include educational sociology, gender, social justice, and ethics.

At least six ways COVID has crushed higher education (now university managers make it worse)

academic workforce, Changes to higher education, COVID-19 and universities, higher education, , , ,

Even less work-life balance, anxiety around online skills, fears the pandemic will be used to crush academic autonomy and cut costs. And by the way, COVID hit academic women hard.

Our research found the onset of the pandemic produced unprecedented organisational challenges for the higher education sector globally. That has been widely documented. As part of research funded by the Worldwide Universities Network, we undertook a global attitudinal survey in June and July 2020 to identify the impact of universities’ response to the pandemic on academics’ wellbeing.

Our publication, forthcoming in the Higher Education Research and Development journal, reports findings from the survey specific to the Australian higher education context and presents stark results. One year on, many academic staff in Australia are again working remotely, having previously returned to campus, and are likely to be feeling significant strain.

From the 370 survey responses, key findings include: work-related stress due to COVID-19 (78% agreement); reduced work-life balance (77% agreement); and digital fatigue (78% agreement). In terms of university leadership and managerialism, 69% of respondents felt that COVID-19 had intensified top-down governance and 60% felt that it had weakened trust in university leaders. This was also implied in strong agreement (92%) with the statement ‘The COVID-19 crisis will be used by universities as a means to legitimise ‘cost-cutting’ initiatives (closing programmes/departments/making job cuts)’.  Responses to open-ended survey questions reflect frustration over the implications of government policies that have created a quasi-market model of higher education in Australia and the associated over-reliance on international students as an income source, severely impacted by the pandemic.  These political and sectoral conditions, combined with the pandemic, created the perfect storm, the effects of which have impacted on the wellbeing of staff, as supported by the survey data.

Although overall there were some similarities with findings from other countries, respondents generally commented primarily on their universities, university leadership and the higher education sector, and government treatment of the sector was a secondary theme.  In the UK for example, the government’s furlough scheme has been available to the university workforce although to what extent it supported the sector remains to be seen.  Our global findings have also noted the gendered impact of COVID on female academics.

Ultimately it is the sense of community that will suffer most.

Academic staff reported undermining of academic autonomy with regard to rigid requirements around online teaching but the potential for greater autonomy if some of the more flexible working arrangements were to be retained. Some respondents had concerns about their own competence in using online digital tools, and concerns that changes to teaching, such as online teaching, would negatively impact on student learning outcomes. Conversely, some noted that digital skills and confidence had rapidly been acquired during the pandemic. Online working was also perceived by some respondents to weaken relationships: ‘Ultimately it is the sense of community… that will suffer the most.’ Facing the possibility of more online teaching and remote working in future, a challenge for the sector is to foster and maintain meaningful relatedness with colleagues and others via digital technologies. Although most survey respondents did not report an improved sense of belonging within their institution, this gap was filled by a general sense of support from colleagues and line managers.

The need for effective leadership within the higher education sector has never been more apparent than during COVID-19, but as made clear by our respondents, government appears to have abandoned the sector and university leadership are seen to use the pandemic as an opportunity to reduce costs. Sadly, many of the predictions in the survey responses were quickly borne out, including redundancies, restructures, pay cuts, course cancellations and moves to fully online courses.

The move away from the physical campus was occurring incrementally across Australian campuses prior to COVID-19. For example, unlike the UK, mandatory lecture recording was already commonplace in Australia and many students do not attend lectures in-person as a result.  It seems likely that the pandemic will have accelerated this process, which will have implications for staff and student wellbeing that university leadership should anticipate.

So what further lessons can we learn from the pandemic and its impact on the higher education sector in Australia? First, it is clear that COVID-19 exacerbated existing issues with the neoliberal, marketised model and cannot be entirely blamed for the current crisis in the sector. Second, although government support of the sector — for example, the exclusion of JobKeeper supports — has been critically lacking during COVID-19, this is not out of step with recent policy trends in Australia. Third, the pandemic brought into sharp focus the sector’s strong reliance on the international education market, and the resulting impact on the Australian economy. The interconnected issues of marketisation, inadequate government support, reliance on (and treatment of) international students require robust discussion at a national level and a revised policy approach for the future. Fourth, the evidence from this study shows that university leaders must address the wellbeing needs of academic staff; not only through Employee Assistance Programs and other supports, but through reasonable and sustainable expectations.

Forthcoming article: 

Fiona McGaughey, Richard Watermeyer, Kalpana Shankar, Venkata Ratnadeep Suri, Cathryn Knight, Tom Crick, Joanne Hardman, Dean Phelan, Roger Chung This can’t be the new norm’: academics’ perspectives on the COVID-19 crisis for the Australian University Sector

*Corresponding author: fiona.mcgaughey@uwa.edu.au 

From left to right: Fiona McGaughey is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia Law School and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).  Fiona has broad research interests including international human rights law, modern slavery, pedagogy and student wellbeing.  Richard Watermeyer is Professor of Higher Education and Co-Director of The Centre for Higher Education Transformations (CHET) in the School of Education at the University of Bristol. A sociologist of higher education his recent books include Competitive Accountability in Academic Life: The Struggle for Social impact and Public Legitimacy (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar) and the Impact Agenda: controversies, challenges and consequences. (Bristol: Policy press). Kalpana Shankar is a Professor of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin and co-director of the UCD Centre for Digital Policy.

Why homeschool? It gets complicated now

Homeschooling,

A new way to think about homeschoolers: accidentals and deliberates

When you think about a homeschooler, what pops into your head? 

Is it a fundamentalist Christian, reflexively avoiding the secular world that is perceived as dangerous? 

Perhaps it’s a hot-housed, overachieving wunderkind whose music or sport makes attendance at school impossible? 

Is it a child whose school experience was awful and now they’re refusing to go back?

The truth about who homeschools in Australia, and why, is more complex than any of these stereotypes. However, research in Australia and overseas (English, 2021; Ray, 2015; Puga, 2019; 2021; Fields-Smith, 2020) suggests the last one, where a child has negative school experiences, or finds school hostile, is closest to the reason the majority of Australia’s homeschoolers choose to do so. 

How many home educators are there in Australia?

The population of homeschoolers has grown exponentially in each state and territory over the past five years. It’s increasingly likely you’ll see them more often in the community. However, the legal term is home educator (see the WA policy documents as an example), because it takes the school out of the equation.

The legally registered home educating population in Australia is around 26,000 students (English & Gribble, 2021). 

However, accurately measuring that population is difficult and the figure is likely to be an undercount.

Each state and territory has different policies to manage home educators and this leads to different counts.

Policy differences also mean that some states have higher levels of ‘illegal’ families who choose not to register.

One report (Townsend, 2012), from 2012, suggested the undercount of home educators in Queensland was as many as 12,000.

Others (Krogh & Giuliano, 2021) suggest the ways the different states manage their registration process affects the numbers of families willing to engage with their legal obligations.

While states and territories have different rules, they all share one thing in common, home educators must register with their authority that manages this population. 

In some states, a person may ask to come to your house and see your setup (NSW), in others, you have to make a statement about what you expect to do (Victoria), in still others, you have to send in a report and reapply every 10 months (Queensland). 

The highest number of home educators, as a percentage of population, is in New South Wales and Victoria, both have around six in every thousand students who are home educating (English & Gribble, 2021).

The biggest growth in the last five years has been in Queensland, where the population grew by around 26 per cent in 2020, possibly in response to the pandemic (English & Gribble, 2021).

But, as with all states and territories, Queensland has seen a strong growth in home educators over the last five years, so while 2020 may have forced some families’ hands, it is in line with expectations based on yearly growth (English & Gribble, 2021).

Accidental home educators

Research into why people choose to home educate is amongst the most robust in the field. 

In Australia, there is a strong correlation between negative school experiences and the decision to home educate (English, 2013; 2021).

In my research, I figure as many as 80 per cent of the families who home educate do so because one, or more, of their children has had a negative experience at school (English, 2021).

I term these families ‘accidental home educators’ (English, 2021) because they did not set out to home educate and do not have any of that stereotypical ideological opposition to school.

There are a number of reasons for their choice. A good deal of work in the field suggests families may be home educating because a child has a diagnosis of ASD (Hurlbutt, 2011) or ADHD (Duvall, Delquardi & Ward, 2004) or have a mental health condition, such as anxiety or depression (Gribble & English, 2016). In most cases, these studies found children were previously enrolled at school, but left due to the problems in school. 

Neuman, 2019 provides an excellent discussion of the differences between dissatisfied parents who home educate and those who stick it out at school.

Research (Neuman & Guterman, 2017) suggests these families feel more in control and can manage their lifestyles more effectively when they choose to home educate.

The other group of home educators, those who were always going to choose to home educate and who hold an ideological aversion to schools, I term the deliberates (English, 2021).

These families are generally religious, or anti-authority. It is likely they have lower rates of vaccination than the other families, so schools’ ‘no jab no play’ policies may affect their ability to send their child to early childhood which may lead them to eschew institutionalised education altogether.

Earlier conceptualisations of home education choice (Van Galen, 1991) split families into two groups. These two groups were ideologues and pedagogues, which meant either ideology or problems with schools’ approaches to teaching and learning led to the decision to home educate.

The first group was termed ideologues because they were described by Van Galen (1991) as ideological in their opposition to school.

The second group was termed pedagogues. 

Van Galen (1991) defined these families as not caring too much about what the school believed, it was the teaching, the environment, the classrooms and the rules that were the problem. 

This group’s “criticisms of schools are not so much that the schools teach heresy, but that schools teach whatever they teach ineptly” (Van Galen, 1991, p. 71).

The two categories of ideologue and pedagogue do not seem to hold in Australia because most of the home educating population have spent some time enrolled in a school.

In any event, as Rothemal, 2003 argued, these two categories are reductive and fail to account for the reasons the home educating population is growing.

As numbers of home educators grows, understanding how the choice interacts with other policies, particularly those that favour choice and parental control over education, is important. 

There are parallels in international studies with neoliberal choice policies (see Oliveria & Barbosa, 2017) and policies favouring the private supply of education services (see Aruini & Davis, 2005) may also be implicated in the choice to home educate.

In all, whatever educators think about home education, it is likely to remain a growing trend. In particular, where schools are forced to shutter due to major catastrophes such as pandemics (Duval, 2021) and even climate change induced calamities, it may be an increasing minority of the population who home educate. 

If Queensland has seen a 26 per cent increase in the last year and the population around the country grows, it’s likely to be an increasingly strong political force in Australia, one which governments ignore at their peril.


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.