La Trobe University

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Retention: How to keep teachers

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It’s no secret that Australia is in the grip of a teacher workforce crisis. The federal government review has revealed a shortfall of over 4,000 teachers, while reports and media headlines continue to highlight “critical teacher shortages”, “fears students will suffer as burnout contributes to ‘unprecedented’ teacher shortage” and other alarming trends. Amid this national narrative of crisis, one question is rarely asked: What about the schools that are managing to retain their teachers? What can we learn from them? What succeeds in teacher retention?

Rewriting the Narrative

Much of the current research and policy debate has rightly focused on why teachers are leaving the profession. The Australian Education Union’s 2024 State of Our Schools survey highlights chronic underfunding, excessive workloads, administrative overload, declining wellbeing, occupational violence, and limited career progression as key factors driving teachers out of the classroom. 

But understanding what’s driving teachers away is only half the story. The other half, arguably the more actionable part, lies in what enables teachers to stay.

We thus need to balance the debate by asking not only ‘Why are some teachers leaving?’ but also ‘How are some schools managing to keep their teachers, despite all the odds?’

This shift in perspective opens the door to learning from the ‘success stories’.

Learning from the Schools Getting Teacher Retention Right

There is a plethora of research on why teachers leave. And yes – workload, burnout, inadequate support, limited career pathways and housing stress all play major roles. It’s vital that we continue to examine these factors. 

But when the national conversation remains stuck on what’s going wrong, we risk missing the bigger picture: learning from some schools that are getting it right.

Across Australia, in the very places hardest hit by staffing shortages, remote towns, outer suburbs, low socio-economic communities, some schools are quietly bucking the trend. They’re not just holding onto teachers; they’re building stable, collaborative staff cultures where teachers stay and thrive.

These schools are not unicorns. They are real and they exist in the same policy and funding environments as those struggling with attrition. What sets them apart are the ways they’ve created spaces and structures that help their teachers stay the course.

Yet, these stories rarely make the headlines.

Where Community Keeps Teachers

Some schools are keeping their teachers not through flashy incentives, but by building strong local connections. Our recent research found that in hard-to-staff schools, what makes the difference is context, knowing the community, responding to students’ real lives, and creating a culture of care.

In one rural Victorian school, one principal talked about success coming from “translating” teaching to fit students’ needs and building trust with families, many of whom had negative experiences with school themselves. 

Another principal in outer Melbourne talked about the power of “boots on the ground” leadership, being present, responsive, and deeply embedded in the school community.

These schools don’t rely on top-down rules. They focus on relationships, inclusion, and flexibility. And it’s working. They’re holding onto their new teachers because those teachers feel connected, supported, and valued in their school communities.

In our Queensland case studies, what stood out was the basics done well. When schools offered practical support such as affordable housing and child care, paired with strong, empathetic leadership and a culture that trusted teachers to use their professional judgement, something powerful happened. Teachers stayed. 

Teachers told us they had the autonomy to do what they came into the job to do: make a real difference in the lives of kids. It’s about creating the conditions where teaching feels possible, purposeful, and sustainable.

Ditch the Deficit Talk

For too long, discussions about hard-to-staff schools are being dominated by a deficit narrative. We hear that “no one wants to teach there”. Or that “students are too difficult”, or that “nothing can be done unless the entire system changes”. These narratives paint an unfair picture of the students and communities. And they also risk devaluing the incredible work being done by teachers and leaders who are making a difference in these schools and their communities.

Focusing only on what’s broken can be deeply demoralising for those working in the system. It can lead to policy solutions that treat schools as sites of failure, rather than places of potential.

A more productive approach is to ask: where is retention working, and why?

By highlighting success stories, schools that have achieved relative workforce stability even in high-turnover contexts, we can identify practical, replicable strategies. We can also challenge the myth that teacher attrition is inevitable in certain places.

Let’s Celebrate What’s Working

It’s time we give credit where it’s due. There are principals across Australia who have created supportive, empowering work environments despite resource constraints. And there are teachers who stay, not out of obligation, but because they feel connected, respected, and supported in their professional growth. There are communities that rally around their local schools to ensure teachers feel welcomed and valued.

These efforts deserve recognition, not just as heartwarming exceptions, but as serious sources of insight.

Learning from what’s working allows us to shift from damage control to positive change. It equips other schools, policymakers, and education departments with ideas grounded in real-world experience. Most importantly, it gives the teaching profession, and the students who depend on it, something increasingly rare: hope.

To be clear, naming and addressing the problems driving teachers out of the profession is still essential. But we can’t afford to dwell solely on the negative. A deficit-only narrative will not lead to change. What we need now is a dual approach, one that recognises what’s wrong, and builds on what’s strong.

Let’s start recognising the schools that are holding on to their staff. And let’s amplify the voices of teachers who choose to stay. Let’s look beyond the crisis headlines and ask: what can we learn from the schools that have found ways to build a stable teaching workforce?

Amid the crisis talk, there are quiet successes all around us. We just need to start listening.

Bios

Babak Dadvand is a senior lecturer in pedagogy, professional practice and teacher education at La Trobe University, Australia. His research focuses on issues of equity and social justice in education, with a particular emphasis on preparing and supporting teachers to work in underserved and hard-to-staff school settings. 

Steve Murphy is a senior lecturer at La Trobe University and is informed by his experience as a teacher and educational leader in rural primary and secondary schools. His research focuses on teaching and school leadership practices. He is particularly interested in practices contributing to students’ engagement and achievement in STEM education. 

Terri Bourke is dean/head of school and professor at Queensland University of Technology and researches professional standards, professionalism, accreditation processes and diversity in education.

Reece Mills is an associate professor of education. He commenced his career in education as a secondary school science teacher before being appointed at QUT. Reece’s research aims to create ecologically and socially sustainable futures through education.

Scott Eacott is professor of education at UNSW Sydney. His current research looks at the systemic implications of housing and transport affordability for the teaching workforce.

Juliana Ryan is a senior lecturer in Teacher Education and Ethics in the School of Education at La Trobe University. Her deliberately diverse career has been shaped by a belief in the importance of social equity in and through education. Juliana has taught in community, carceral, vocational and university settings. 

migration

Is Australia now ready for migrant teachers?

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“We help you get started on your teaching journey in Australia”. — AITSL

Amid the 2025 federal election furor, migration became a central issue. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton  proposed cutting permanent migration and capping international students. He blamed recent arrivals for pressure on housing, healthcare, and education. “Labor’s brought in a million people over two years”, he said, citing record migration and housing strain.

While Dutton stopped short of claiming migrants are “lowering standards”, his rhetoric mirrors a global trend in right-wing populism. In March 2025, the US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the US Department of Education. He fulfilled a campaign promise to return school control to states—raising concerns over equity and federal support.

Both leaders framed migration as a threat to national capacity and cultural values. This revealed a deeper ideological project: the re-bordering of education under the guise of standards and control. Migration becomes a strategic focal point—mobilised to rally electoral support by casting it as both a cultural disruption and a structural burden to national institutions.

A more polished message

In contrast, the AITSL presents a more polished message: “Australia is popular for many things… a safe country with a friendly and relaxed culture… we can help you get started on your teaching journey”. Yet the AITSL portal also codifies a logic of superiority—positioning Australia’s education system as globally exceptional, its teachers as stewards of excellence, and its structures as the source of “evidence-based tools”.

This nation-branding rhetoric appears inclusive on the surface. But as our discourse analysis reveals, it constructs a one-way narrative of giving. Migrant teachers are positioned as beginners—“starting out”—even when they arrive with decades of experience. Their role is not to enrich the system, but to assimilate into it. As Mahati, a respected English teacher from India in Nashid’s doctoral study, reflected: “I had been teaching English for over twenty years across continents—India and Uganda—before I came to Australia. But here, I had to redo everything. It felt like I was invisible”.

The real costs are tangible. Laura, a cherished English teacher from the Philippines and participant in Nashid’s doctoral study, told us: “I took the IELTS test four times plus a review over two years. It cost me nearly four months’ salary in pesos. I had everything else ready—but the language requirement kept holding me back”.

Far from isolated

This issue is far from isolated. Migrant teachers frequently encounter inconsistent and retroactively enforced policy barriers. This occurs even amid a critical shortage of teachers and skilled migrants in education. While not representative of all, the stories of Amarjit, Anya, Reza, and others—such as Archana, Jigna, Joy, Hossein and his wife, Mahesh, Nishni, Samia, and Shurma—reflect recurring themes emerging from our shared work and Nashid’s doctoral research with immigrant teachers. Reza, a science teacher from Bangladesh, completed his Initial Teacher Education in Victoria. When he enrolled, the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) required a lower IELTS threshold. But by the time he graduated, the benchmark had shifted significantly. “Academic IELTS: at least 7.0 in Reading and Writing and 8.0 in Speaking and Listening, on one TRF (Test Report From), taken within 24 months”.

An overall IELTS score of 7.5 or 8.0 can still be rejected if one skill—such as Writing at 6.5—falls below the required threshold. As scholars argue, this rigid, decontextualised format reflects a neoliberal and neocolonial gatekeeping logic. It marginalises qualified multilingual teachers through standardised measures detached from real-world communication.

Reza explained: “I kept failing. One time I got 8 in listening but 6.5 in writing. The next time it was the reverse. After two years, I gave up and returned home”.

One teacher’s journey

He continued teaching—at an international college in Bangladesh—while repeatedly sitting for the IELTS test. Over time, each attempt brought him close, but never across the threshold required by Australian standards. After two years of emotional and financial strain, his family suggested he apply through New Zealand. There a score of 7.0 across all bands was still accepted. He met the criteria, registered with the Teachers Registration Board of South Australia (TRBSA), and used this to apply for skilled migration with family sponsorship—gaining an additional 10 points. From there, he transferred his registration to the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) and finally settled in Melbourne.

This narrative is part of a broader trend of policy drift: where teacher migration frameworks become increasingly exclusionary, often without recognising their global contributions, lived experiences, and situated knowledge of those navigating them. By contrast, NESA now offers more flexible pathways, including English testing exemptions for internationally trained teachers with relevant experience or English-medium qualifications.

State-level discrepancies

These state-level discrepancies expose a fragmented and inequitable accreditation landscape. Since 2022, our research and public engagement have informed national discussions and policy change. An article by the Australian Associated Press (AAP)—syndicated across 100+ media outlets— amplified the undervaluation of skilled migrant teachers, contributing to recent NESA reforms on English language proficiency test exemptions for internationally trained teachers.

Quang, a respected English teacher from Vietnam with four English-medium postgraduate degrees (two from Vietnam, two from Australia, including ITE/Secondary), shared a similar experience. “I passed everything—teaching practicum, assessments, I even got distinctions. But I still had to sit for another English test to register in NSW”.

This was only because two of his Australian degrees did not meet the four-year study requirement.

He started teaching as a CRT later. The principal introduced him to others by saying, “This is our new Vietnamese English teacher”. He wasn’t offended, even when told that others had laughed upon hearing that—but he understood what it signified.

“It shows what people expect: that someone like me isn’t usually seen as an English teacher”.

It’s not just language being measures

What’s being measured isn’t just language. It’s legitimacy. It’s the right to belong.

The AITSL migration guidelines suggest legitimacy flows from only a handful of countries—Australia, Canada, Ireland, NZ, the UK, and the USA—excluding many English-medium post-colonial nations like the Philippines, India, Kenya, Ghana, and Singapore.

Similarly, the “Teaching in Australia” guide constructs the ideal teacher through phrases like “Australian teachers must…”, framing competence as nationalised and native. Even appeals to “multicultural classrooms” fail to acknowledge migrant teachers as co-creators of this richness. Their linguistic and cultural knowledge is seen less as a resource, more as a hurdle.

This mirrors what Sender and colleagues call  epistemic monolingualism: a worldview that centres standardised English and Western pedagogies as the only legitimate forms of knowledge. Yet many migrant teachers resist this framing through what we call Hybrid Professional Becoming. They don’t simply assimilate—they reimagine themselves cosmopolitan teachers of English. They engage in translanguaging, build solidarity, and develop culturally responsive pedagogies.

Natalie, a Bangladeshi teacher, shared:
“Sometimes I switch to English, Chittagonian, Jessore dialect, or what’s called standard or non-standard Bangla—not for fluency, but to build trust. It’s about connection and recognising different ways of knowing”.

Quang, reflecting on his students, said:
“They’d ask me, ‘Is my accent okay?’ I’d say, ‘Your English is beautiful. Don’t worry about it’.”

These teachers are already transforming classrooms

Such affective, relational practices disrupt top-down discourses of “support.” These teachers aren’t waiting to belong—they’re already transforming classrooms.

Yet policy rarely reflects this reality. Instead, it reinforces rigid standards and racialised assumptions. As Anthony Welch notes, fast-tracking applicants from English-dominant nations won’t solve the workforce crisis. Australia must confront the systemic devaluation of those already here.

The AARE Election Statement (2025) calls for equity, multilingualism, and recognition of teaching as a global profession. But first, we must name the problem: Australia’s teaching workforce remains bordered by accent, passport, and memory.

So let’s stop asking whether migrant teachers are “ready for Australia”.

Let’s ask whether Australia is ready to learn from the teachers already here— fluent not only in English, but in empathy, hybridity, and the courage to reimagine education.

Biographies from left to right

Nashid Nigar teaches at the University of Melbourne and brings 20+ years of experience in language and literacy education, academic writing, and teacher development. Her PhD at Monash Education, awarded the prestigious 2024 Mollie Holman Medal, introduced the framework of Hybrid Professional Becoming—advancing research in multilingual curriculum, teacher identity, and curriculum justice. Her work, grounded in epistemic diversity and equity, informs national policy and supports culturally and linguistically diverse educators globally.

Lilly Yazdanpanah is a lecturer in the School of Education at La Trobe University. Her research focuses on equity and social justice in education, with a particular emphasis on teacher and student identity within English as an Additional Language (EAL) contexts. She has extensive experience teaching in undergraduate and postgraduate teacher education programs across the Middle East, Europe, Central America, and Australia. Before joining La Trobe, she held teaching and research positions at the Faculty of Education, Monash University, specialising in TESOL and General Education.  

Sender Dovchin is a Senior Principal Research Fellow and ARC Fellow at Curtin University. Her research focuses on linguistic racism and the empowerment of CALD youth in Australia. She holds a PhD and MA from UTS and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics. Recognised as a leading scholar in Language & Linguistics, she has published six books and numerous papers in top international journals.

Rachel Wilson is a leading scholar in education and social impact at the University of Technology Sydney. With a background in psychology, teaching, and research methodology, her work spans education systems, curriculum reform, equity, and leadership. Rachel has extensive experience in research training, educational evaluation, and policy advising, and is committed to advancing quality and justice in education.

Alex Kostogriz is the professor in Languages and TESOL Education within the Faculty of Education at Monash University. He currently serves as the Associate Dean (International) within the faculty. Alex’s ongoing research endeavours are centred around the professional practice and ethics of language teachers, as well as the realms of teacher education and the early experiences of early career educators.





Focus

Your focus isn’t broken, it just needs time

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My recent book, Writing Well and Being Well for your PhD and Beyond  includes a chapter on thinking towards writing which includes a focus practice using a rubber duck, a walking practice, and more information about focussed and diffuse thinking modes; and another chapter on recharging that gives advice on what to do when your brain gets tired after practising some deep thinking. For years, I advised students and researchers who were convinced their brains were broken because they couldn’t do eight hours of deep work every day, five days a week. I’ve never been able to focus like that, and my research suggests that’s normal and fine–which might be reassuring for you too!

We all know that it’s a challenge to focus, to go deep and still and clear and to stay there, to think hard thoughts or read long books or write longform. Many books, podcasts, news articles and research careers tackle this issue, from classics like Cal Newport’s Deep Work, or Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow, to recent work like Gloria Mark’s Attention Span. 

A number of recent panicked bestsellers claim our focus has been stolen, our children’s brains rewired, and that our ability to concentrate is deeply broken. Most prominently among these are  Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus. They argue modern inventions like our phones and the internet and traffic are why it’s hard to concentrate. 

But fear we have lost the ability to focus is as old as civilisation. 

So what can do to help ourselves focus?

Anyone who has ever worked in a bustling office, or cared for children, or taught in a classroom knows interruptions come from other humans. That’s why, across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe, societies keep inventing hacks to help us focus, whether that’s hermitages, meditation, pilgrimages or libraries. 

HERE’S how you can use each one of those techniques to help you and your students relearn to focus in everyday life. 

1. Become a hermit

Hermits withdraw from society, they give up power and responsibility, and the pursuit of a comfort, profit, or prestige. Some hermits live on their own, and others with a small group of like-minded people. They live in country huts, caves, or up on pillars. You can be a hermit for a shorter period of retreat. Cal Newport famously tells the story in Deep Work (2016) of the person who bought a first class round trip plane ticket to Japan. And then there’sSarah McLachlan who spent months in a cabin before she was ready to write the songs for Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (Pitchfork 2017). 

Writing retreats and writing groups give us examples of how we can do this in our everyday life. We set aside a time and a place to focus, we remove distractions of the the day-to-day demands of life, and we wait. Being a hermit is supposed to be uncomfortable, restrictive and ascetic – so if it feels difficult or itchy, we are doing it right. If we persist, eventually the hermitage becomes a place where we can find focus. 

2. Learn to meditate

Meditation is a practice of focus. Itt is different from  mindfulness, which can be more of aboutawareness and intention. When you learn to meditate, you have to learn how to hold a thought, image or phrase in your mind. And then how to bring yourself back to the thought every time your brain wanders. And it will wander. This is why most traditions use all of the senses to help hold and return to focus: songs, breath, bells, candles, incense, intricate images or patterns, beads on strings. 

We don’t do a lot of just sitting and thinking in every day life, so it helps to start short and slow and build up to more challenging practices. In this case, we are learning to focus to have our own thoughts and insights, so classes or a guided meditation recording may not  be so useful.

If we are practising on our own, then, it helps to surround ourselves with as many focus tools as we need. Have the right chair, the right fidget toy, a picture of the thing we want to think about, thinking music, a colouring in book or some knitting. Set a timer for 2 minutes. I find the first 30 seconds are always a mess, and you may too. Keep breathing and wait. After 2 minutes, get up and stretch. Come back tomorrow. Start being small but consistent, and then once you can do that, start extending the time. You’ll be fine. 

3. Walk it out

Going on a journey, preferably on foot, changes us. Whether we take our horses to Canterbury as Chaucer’s characters did in medieval England, or we walk the Narrow Road to the Deep North as Bashō did in Edo Japan, we not only leave our everyday lives behind, but we have the repetitive rhythm of steps and the physical experience of progress to get our thinking moving. There’s a reason that traditional universities have gardens, courts, avenues, and other walkable spaces: places for people to pace and stride and wander, as they talked it out with a colleague or worked it out in their head. 

I find the pilgrimage is a useful model for focus because it reminds me that focus is hard work and I can’t do it indefinitely. By the time my legs are tired, my brain will also be tired. So then I am reminded to stop focussing and recharge instead. 

We do not need to walk to go on a pilgrimage, but we do have to get up from our desk and move elsewhere. Some people find that they think well in the car or on trains. Or we might replicate the enclosed centrifugal journey of university courtyards in laps of a pool or velodrome. But this is not merely moving for exercise. It is important to start your journey with a clear intention: a problem to solve, an idea to generate, words to find. At the going out and at the coming home, return to your intention and check that you have made progress, even if you have not fully arrived. 

4. Go to the library

Obviously we go to the library for a whole range of activities and services: we borrow books, consult archives, attend story-times, use the computers, consult librarians etc.  But we can learn from the many students who pack into libraries just before their final exams to study, because libraries are a fantastic place to focus. Libraries are thinking infrastructure. Need a quiet place to put your head down? Need a place where other people are also putting their heads down? Need something to put into your brain first so it has something to chew on? Need a reminder that thousands of other people have also had ideas and the persistence and focus to think them and then write them down? Libraries have you covered.

Favourite way to focus

My favourite way to focus in a library is to use a book to think with/against/alongside. As a writer and an academic, I’m often reading and reacting to other people’s ideas. It’s easy enough to read in snippets, or to let myself get sucked into a fascinating fictional world when I’m on holiday, but if I’m tired and busy and bored, I find my brain keeps sliding off a difficult text I need to read.

I deal with that problem, by going to a library with the book and a notebook. I take notes about what the book says, but also about my feelings, my reactions, my original thoughts sparked by the book. I have pages of notes with marginalia expressing how annoying someone’s writing style is, how shoddy their research is, or how wrong their conclusions. The library helps me focus long enough to clarify and explain what I don’t like about the book, which is important as when I need to explain why I think a book is great. 

Each of these ‘tricks’ makes focus easier, but none of them make it effortless. Focus takes time, there’s friction in the process. It can’t be sustained indefinitely, because focus is hard work, 

It’s not magic

Focus is not a magic trick. And not everything is worthy of the magic of focus. Keeping a vague eye on the pot of soup bubbling on the stove and the songs on the radio and the chatty Teams messages from your colleagues does not need deep thinking. Save your brain for the hard, serious, chewy stuff.  

When you need to go deep, you don’t need to wait for the lightning of inspiration to strike you, or the panicked hyperfocus of a looming deadline. You can detach yourself briefly from the world, set up your environment to support your focus, and practise learning how to pay attention. 

In this post, I’m arguing that there’s nothing wrong with our ability to focus, but we can take some sensible steps to support deep focus, including (re-)learning how to do it. Focus feels hard and messy because it is hard work, and it’s where we address the hard problems. As we practise it more often, we’ll build up our focus muscles and increase our focus tools, but we will always have to practise falling in and out of focus. What matters is not our diamond mind, but our commitment to returning to try again. 

Katherine Firth is the inaugural Head of Lisa Bellear House, a residential hall at the University of Melbourne, and a senior lecturer in research education and development at La Trobe University.

Teacher readiness in hard-to-staff schools – here’s what we know now

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In current policy debates about graduate teacher readiness in Australian schools, one central question is often overlooked: how does the diversity of school contexts impact the specific needs and expectations placed on graduate teachers? 

Recognising this diversity is crucial for tailoring teacher education programs and support systems to better equip new teachers for the realities of schools, especially those that struggle with hiring and retaining teachers. These schools, broadly described as hard-to-staff, serve diverse communities with distinct socio-economic, cultural, and geographic characteristics that can profoundly impact teaching and learning dynamics.

In our study, we wanted to know what teacher readiness means from the vantage point of these schools. To answer this question, we conducted interviews with 17 principals from a range of hard-to-staff schools across Victoria. Their voices echoed concerns often overshadowed by broad-strokes policy discussions about ‘classroom-ready teachers’. 

One-Size-Doesn’t-Fit-All

The rhetoric surrounding ‘classroom readiness’ often hinges on a logic of uniformity and standardisation. It is based on the assumption that a teacher who has met defined standards and possesses knowledge of specific content is ready to work in any setting.

This approach obscures a reality that is far more complex than is readily acknowledged. Teaching requires exercising professional judgement about what works in response to student needs and community context. 

As one principal from a regional hard-to-staff school in our study remarked: 

“I feel that some students want to walk in feeling curriculum competent, that they know the curriculum and they can talk ‘the learning outcomes’ and use that departmental speak, and that makes them feel or believe or behave more like teachers? Perhaps that’s their perception. But the reality is that when you get into a community, and you’ve got 20 students to manage, that curriculum knowledge, it’s so secondary to the skills that has to be in place so that these children have someone that can look to, that co-regulates them, supports them, makes them feel safe, and then once they’re ready to learn, meets them at their need. 

And it’s that idea that if you’ve got the curriculum knowledge, sometimes I feel that the student teachers come in thinking that one size fits all this approach that I’ve seen, or has been modelled through me, or that has been unpacked with me will translate to every school and not into my setting.” 

An appreciation of diversity

The principal’s comment highlights a crucial point: A one-size-fits-all approach fails to acknowledge that readiness to teach involves more than merely adhering to a set of standardised practices. It requires an appreciation of diversity, an awareness of the distinct dynamics within each classroom, and the ability to address the particular needs of students and the broader community.

This is not to dismiss the value of specific forms of knowledge for teachers. In fact, such knowledge is vital in defining and distinguishing teaching as a professional field. The argument here is for practising professional judgement and leveraging contextual insights to determine what works best, for whom, under what conditions and why. Such a capacity is the hallmark of readiness for a profession that prioritises responsiveness to the unique needs of students in each classroom. 

Recognising complexity and diversity in teacher readiness

Drawing on insights shared by principals in our research, we revisited the debate on classroom readiness with a focus on questions about ‘context’. From low socioeconomic outer-metropolitan areas to regional centres to small rural communities, each school in our study presented unique opportunities and challenges to the workforce. 

Paying attention to context creates valuable opportunities for ‘learning to teach’ as a situated process that involves continuous learning, reflective practice, and adaptable strategies, all of which must be tailored to the specific challenges and strengths of each school environment. In the words of another principal:

“You’ve got to come in with confidence and humility and the ability to say ‘I’m at the start of my journey, and I’m looking forward to being mentored in your school. I want to grow in your school.”

An approach that begins with the actual conditions of schools reveals the limitations of standardised approaches in teacher preparation. It highlights the need to embrace complexity, value connection to the community and understand context as the foundation for any discussions about  what readiness for the profession ought to look like. 

Crafting a new narrative

A decade on from the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) review, we are back to square one, blaming teacher education as both the cause and the solution for ‘mixed’ educational outcomes for Australian students in international comparisons. 

If the lesson of the past is anything to go by, one thing should be clear: teacher education reform must account for and integrate the complexities of the real world. At their core, reform models of teacher education  must reflect the diverse socioeconomic, cultural, and institutional factors that impact teaching and learning. 

The Teacher Education Expert Panel Discussion Paper acknowledged the importance of ensuring teachers are prepared for their communities. Disappointingly this essential aspect was largely disregarded in the final Strong Beginnings Report. 

Narrow focus

A narrow focus on ‘classroom readiness’ limits teacher activity and discourages engagement with broader context. Therefore, we echo the calls for a more comprehensive approach that expands discussions on readiness beyond the classroom to encompass context. This approach derives its direction for policy reform of teacher education from the specific needs of schools and their communities.

As our research findings help demonstrate, such an approach emphasises open-mindedness, flexibility, cultural responsiveness, and genuine collaboration between schools and universities to create a more sustainable and effective pathway for preparing teachers to meet the diverse needs of their students and the community.

From left to right:

Babak Dadvand is as a senior lecturer in pedagogy, professional practice, and teacher education at La Trobe University with expertise on social justice education. His work extends to staffing challenges in the hardest-to-staff schools and effective practices in school-university partnership in Initial Teacher Education.

Juliana Ryan teaches professional ethics in the School of Education at La Trobe University. She uses participatory, narrative and discursive approaches to research professional and academic identities, post-secondary transitions, professional learning and social learning systems.

Miriam Tanti is professor and associate dean, partnership and executive director of the Nexus Program at La Trobe University’s School of Education. Her research focuses on university-school partnerships, with a particular focus on communities of practice. Her other area of interest is in the meaningful integration of technologies in education.

Steve Murphy is director of Rural and Regional Education Engagement at La Trobe University’s School of Education. His research focuses on strengths approaches to rural education, with particular interest in teacher preparation, school leadership and STEM education.

Creative thinking in students

Fourth in the world in creative thinking: how good!?!?

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For the first time, global PISA data includes an assessment of fifteen-year-old students’ ‘creative thinking’. The 2022 results for this new measure are now out – and the implications challenge some beliefs about teaching creative thinking. 

Australia ranks fourth among the eighty-one participating countries. Australia’s ranking on creative thinking positions us just behind Singapore, South Korea, and Canada. Australia’s other PISA results also climbed: We now rank 10th for mathematics and 9th for both reading and science. Australian teachers are clearly doing great work and deserve recognition and praise for it.

It’s a good thing

While critics have argued that attempts to teach students to think creatively are misguided, suggesting that creative thinking cannot be taught, the PISA results indicate that thinking by learners can be cultivated and Australian teachers are doing that better than most others. This is a good thing! We want our students to both acquire knowledge AND think constructively with that knowledge.

The global data collected by PISA shows that teaching students to think creatively does not compromise their learning in more traditional domains, such as mathematics, science, and reading. There is no evidence of a problematic ‘opportunity cost’. Students who performed more strongly in creative thinking also tended to perform better in mathematics, science, and reading. 

However, the PISA data also confirm that creative thinking is not just a natural consequence of acquiring domain-specific knowledge. The correlation between more traditional measures of academic achievement and creative thinking is not perfect. In the PISA data, the intercorrelations between performance in mathematics, science, and reading (irrespective of creative thinking) were stronger than the respective correlations between each of these domains and creative thinking. One country (Portugal) performed higher than average in creative thinking but only average in the other three domains. Other countries (China and Czechia) performed above average in mathematics, science, and reading but at or below average in creative thinking. 

It isn’t surprising

Plainly, creative thinking is not innate and immutable; it is learnable and the experiences that teachers facilitate matter. So, it is not surprising that Australia has ranked highly. My colleagues and I surveyed hundreds of primary and secondary teachers across Australia. We found Australian teachers appreciate the importance of teaching students to think. They routinely and skilfully invite and facilitate creative thinking as they teach the broader curriculum. 

Our research focused on both critical and creative thinking, but given that PISA defines creative thinking as “the competence to engage productively in the generation, evaluation and improvement of original and diverse ideas”, it is fair to say that PISA’s test focuses on critical (evaluative) thinking as well as creative (generative) thinking. 

Like Australia, other high-ranking nations – Singapore, South Korea, and Canada – all include creative thinking as part of their official curricula. It is reasonable to assume that Australia’s inclusion of Critical and Creative Thinking in our national curriculum – as a ‘general capability’ – has something to do with Australia’s high ranking in the PISA Creative Thinking test, particularly given the other high performing nations also have a specific creative thinking curriculum. However, it is not because Australian teachers formally teach this aspect of the curriculum. 

All available evidence (including our own research and others’) suggests that Australian teachers do not feel confident in their knowledge of the ‘general capabilities’ in the Australian curriculum, including Critical and Creative Thinking, and do not teach the associated progression descriptors. That said, the mere existence of a component of our national curriculum called Critical and Creative Thinking arguably reflects and reinforces a widespread cultural belief in Australia (including among teachers) that critical and creative thinking skills are desirable and important for teachers to teach. 

The test

PISA’s creative thinking test covered four areas: written expression, visual expression, social problem solving, and scientific problem solving. Students were set tasks with no single correct response; for example, coming up with a story idea or multiple different approaches to address a challenge, or evaluating and improving an idea. Nearly 70% of Australian students achieved Level 4 or better, meaning that they could think of original and diverse ideas for different types of tasks, including simple imagination tasks and everyday problem-solving situations. 

While the results are informative and affirming of Australian teacher practice, the abilities PISA measured, in themselves, are of course limited. One obvious point, often (tediously) raised by those opposed to the notion of teaching critical and creative thinking, is that thinking in the absence of content knowledge is inherently constrained. Aiming to teach students to think critically and creatively in a knowledge vacuum or only in artificial contexts (like the tasks in the PISA test) would indeed be misguided. Practising the kinds of tasks in the PISA creative thinking test is not the reason why Australian students performed well on the test, and it should never be. Yes, of course, thinking is best taught by teaching and facilitating the use (and consolidation and extension) of knowledge. 

But there’s more

Additionally, there are discrete concepts and skills that students can be taught which meaningfully augment and add value to the individual mental abilities tested in PISA’s creative thinking test. These skills are applicable in different ways, depending on the subject area and grade level, and are not necessarily amenable to being measured on a standardised numeric ‘creative thinking’ scale. For example, teachers of different subjects and grade levels can teach different ways of creating ideas, including by combining ideas that have just been taught or by building on, modifying, or adapting ideas.

Students can be taught domain-specific ways to test ideas, to consider alternatives before making a decision, to effectively propose their ideas, or to write recommendations in a way that makes them more likely to be adopted. Students can also be taught to use learned information to think in questioning, accurate, and reasoned ways, to valuably complement creative idea generation. These are concepts and skills that some Australian teachers already teach – but they could be taught more explicitly and by more teachers. 

There are many valuable skills that teachers can teach – incidentally or formally – which are ‘observable’ (and thus assessable) but do not necessarily lend themselves to being ‘measured’. Learning self-regulation skills is no less potentially life-changing for a child because such skills are not typically scored by teachers. The same goes for the skills involved in productive thinking. Some things are worth teaching regardless of whether they are psychometrically scorable, and regardless of whether there is an international ranking to compete for.

How good?

Coming fourth among 81 countries for our students’ ability to think creatively is good – really good. The fact that Australian teachers value and are actively cultivating these abilities in their classrooms is not a coincidence. No doubt, Australian teachers’ efforts are having a positive impact on students’ propensity to think creatively – and this is reflected in Australia’s impressive ranking. 

But the test on which this ranking is based is very limited. It does not capture all the critical and creative thinking skills that Australian teachers should and do teach to help students (a) learn knowledge more deeply and (b) use their knowledge in careful and constructive ways. Australian teachers are very capable of teaching these skills, but we cannot take this for granted. Discrete, observable, and applied critical and creative thinking skills (flexibly applicable in all subjects and grade levels) should be focal in teacher education and professional development in this area. 

Nice if the home country scores well

Any singular, measurable construct of creative thinking risks becoming a distraction in the context of schools and what schools are for. Australian teachers want to teach critical and creative thinking skills – and they want to learn how to do this more effectively. Initial teacher education and in-service professional learning programs have an important role to play in ensuring that classroom teachers feel confident to teach and assess the broad range of critical and creative thinking skills that enhance academic learning and bring rich personal and societal benefits. Measuring creativity as a psychological construct is interesting – and nice if your home country scores well – but it should not be the focus of schooling.  

Kylie Murphy is the Academic Program Director (Postgraduate) and a senior lecturer in Educational Psychology and Pedagogy at La Trobe University’s School of Education. Kylie is passionate about ITE that develops critically informed, classroom-ready educators. She is currently researching the alignment between ITE coursework and professional experience, and ways to support more inclusive and effective teaching of critical and creative thinking in schools. Follow her on Twitter @KylieMurphyEd or on LinkedIn. 

Why our communities need the power of a voice

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, Community engagement, , , , ,

The referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament is a pivotal moment in Australia’s history of engagement with its Indigenous peoples. Amidst the ongoing, at times polarising, debates about The Voice, we gathered at La Trobe School of Education for a one-day workshop focused on fostering social justice through the frame of community engagement. 

Community engagement is about voice, and can be a powerful catalyst for equity and justice. It is grounded in the recognition of voice as a political project that hinges on not only the ability to speak but also to be heard. 

While the discussions that emerged in our workshop did not directly address the question of an Indigenous Voice, there were some uncanny parallels that we aim to tease out in this article. These include, among others, recognising that:

  • community engagement requires asking courageous questions.
  • community engagement is slow and persistent work.
  • community engagement requires adequate resourcing.
  • community engagement tackles deficit assumptions.
  • community engagement starts from those problems that matter.  
  • community engagement can ensure quality.

Community engagement requires asking courageous questions.

Community engagement for social justice and equity requires us to ask courageous questions about the oppressive conditions (past and present) that perpetuate marginalisation. This can amount to ‘truth-telling’. 

During his online keynote address, Tyrone Howard, from UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, emphasised that equity requires us to repair the historical harm. It also needs us to promote inclusion by examining our ‘blind spots’ that might prevent us from seeing the suffering of others, and how we might be implicated in them.

The education field is political. Thus, as Tyrone Howard noted, teachers must be equipped with the necessary tools and awareness to confront these blind spots. By preparing educators to navigate contemporary issues with a keen eye for (in)justice, we can foster more equitable educational spaces that represent and celebrate our diversity.

Community engagement is slow and persistent work.

Community engagement demands unwavering commitment and perseverance driven by a clear sense of purpose. Jo Lampert from Monash University raised concerns about the taken-for-granted use of the term ‘community engagement’ and its insufficient integration into initial teacher education programs. 

To rectify this, one must take a deliberate approach to work with vulnerable communities. This approach centres on co-design, shared decision-making and partnerships that prioritise their lived experiences and voices of those on the margins. 

The call for community engagement in pursuit of equity and justice is cognisant of the political dimensions of this work, particularly power dynamics and representation. This makes representation an essential aspect of a justice project. Without adequate representation, it is difficult to make claims for more just policies. 

Community engagement requires adequate resourcing. 

Equipping teachers with community knowledge and awareness requires strong partnership models within initial teacher education. One initiative that aims to prepare community-engaged pre-service teachers is La Trobe University’s NEXUS program. 

Bernadette Walker-Gibbs and Steve Murphy, from La Trobe School of Education, work at the cutting edge of  innovative university-school partnership frameworks that focus on capacity building for community-engagement among pre-service teachers. 

It should be noted though that building community engagement is a resource-intensive undertaking. To foster strong university-school partnerships, funding is needed to enable meaningful – rather than tokenistic – approaches to engagement and co-design.

Community engagement tackles deficit assumptions.

Tokenistic engagement can result in deficit views and lowered expectations. There is also a tension between recognising differences and deficit assumptions. This is called ‘the dilemma of difference’, which arises from concerns about effectively addressing differences without stigmatising individuals whose differences have been brought to light. Kitty te Riele from the University of Tasmania’s Peter Underwood Centre tackled these issues head-on, offering insights from working with disenfranchised youth.

Challenging the prevailing myth of low educational aspirations needs us to re-evaluate pre-conceived notions and explore the true aspirations of young people and their families. This requires a shift in perspective that embraces the diverse aspirations of young people in the context of social and material disadvantage against convenient myths and stereotypes.

Community engagement starts from those problems that matter.  

At the heart of community engagement lies the crucial task of tackling the issues that hold significance for marginalised individuals and communities. 

Lew Zipin and Marie Brennan from the University of South Australia shed light on the vital role of addressing real-world problems in education. This requires an inclusive approach to co-design that effectively incorporates local knowledge. 

Bridging the gap between educational institutions and the realities of marginalised young people requires recognising students as proactive mediators between life-based and school-based knowledge. Such recognition has transformative potential, leading to a contextualised, community-aware approach to teaching and learning.

Community engagement can ensure quality.

In recent education reforms, the discourse surrounding quality education has shifted towards a human capital perspective.

Sue Grieshaber and Elise Hunkin from La Trobe’s School of Education examined the nexus of quality and equity in early childhood education, highlighting concerns about the potential ramifications of market-driven approaches to education on equity.

There is an urgent need to broaden our definition of quality education beyond market values to incorporate relationships with families and communities.  

Overall, these insights from the workshop highlight the importance of co-design, teacher preparation, dispelling myths, curriculum design, and re-framing what is meant by ‘quality’. It showed how genuine community engagement for equity and social justice address power relations, challenge deficit narratives, and incorporate community voices. 

Australia is approaching another historical moment in its relationship with its Indigenous peoples, a moment that will shape the moral sentiment of the nation for decades to come. In the lead up to the referendum, our discussions about community engagement was a timely reminder of the power of voice as a vehicle for impactful participation in the decisions that matter and that affect the most disenfranchised. 

Babak Dadvand is a senior lecturer in Pedagogy, Professional Practice and Teacher Education at La Trobe School of Education. Babak’s research is in areas of teaching and teacher education with a focus on issues of equity, diversity and inclusion in relation to teachers’ work and student experiences. Babak’s current research is focused on the challenges that teachers face and the types of support that they need stay in the profession, especially in the more challenging working conditions of schools that serve communities that are socially-historically marginalised. Twitter: @DadvandBabak

Jo Lampert is Professor of Teacher Education for Social Transformation at Monash University. She has led alternative pathways into teaching in hard-to-staff schools for over 15 years, most recently as Director of the Commonwealth and State supported Nexus M. Teach in Victoria, a social justice, employment-based pathway whereby preservice teachers work as Education Support Staff prior to gaining employment as paraprofessionals (Nexus). She tweets at @jolampert