RMIT University

When Numbers Deceive: Rethinking Equity for Culturally Diverse Doctoral Candidates

In Australian higher education, equity is often measured through population parity—the idea that when enrolment numbers for a group reflect their proportion in the general population, equity has been achieved. But what happens when parity is achieved and equity status revoked? What if those numbers plateau or even decline, and the group quietly disappears from policy focus? This has happened to culturally and linguistically diverse doctoral candidates in the 2016 Australian Council of Learned Academies’ (ACOLA) Report on Australian doctoral education. 

This is the central question we explored in our recent paper, Forgetting culturally diverse equity groups in Australian doctoral policy: what happens when population parity is reached? We use  Nancy Fraser’s concept of “participatory parity” and Foucauldian discourse analysis  to  expose how culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) domestic doctoral candidates have been effectively written out of Australia’s equity agenda.

A cue to disengage

The turning point, we argue, was the 2016 ACOLA Report, which noted that domestic candidates from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds had reached participation ratios above population parity. The ACOLA Report suggests that ‘participation by candidates from a non-English speaking background is good with ratios well above 1 for most of the reporting period but with a notable decline in the last two years’. After this comment, there is no further reporting or policy commentary on this group of doctoral candidates and very little concern that their numbers were actually declining. 

But rather than celebrating this as a step forward and continuing the work of support and inclusion, policymakers took this as a cue to disengage. Subsequent reports and policy documents, including the 2024 Australian University Accord, no longer list CALD domestic doctoral candidates as a priority equity group.

This matters for several reasons.

First, it assumes cultural diversity is homogeneous and stable—that all CALD groups experience equal access, support, and outcomes. This is demonstrably false. The experiences of migrants, refugees, and ethnically diverse Australians differ widely. Participation data based on ‘language spoken at home’ is an inadequate proxy for cultural diversity. Yet this flawed metric continues to shape reporting and resourcing.

Second, declaring population parity ignores ongoing structural inequities, including racism, cultural misrecognition. It also ignores the dominance of Northern/Western knowledge systems in academia. There is nothing in the ACOLA Report, for example, that considers the cultural and linguistic knowledge and networks brought to Australian doctoral education by these candidates.   

As we note, achieving numeric parity does not dismantle these barriers. The real danger is that when equity is reduced to counting heads, the deeper project of epistemic justice – the recognition and valuing of diverse cultural knowledges – is sidelined.

So, what can the sector and universities do?

We suggest reframing and a more nuanced understanding of parity. Specifically, we recommend adopting Fraser’s idea of participatory parity, which includes three dimensions: redistribution (economic fairness), recognition (cultural legitimacy), and representation (political voice). Participatory parity seeks to address concerns about cultural hierarchies and offers equal recognition for all cultures. 

For CALD doctoral candidates, this means not only opening doors to enrolment but ensuring their knowledge systems, methodologies, and lived experiences are recognised and valued in research spaces.

In practical terms, this could involve:

  • Restoring CALD domestic candidates as an equity group in national and institutional reporting
  • Funding culturally responsive supervision and support programs
  • Expanding doctoral scholarships and mentorships specifically designed for diverse cultural communities
  • Embedding epistemic diversity into doctoral training and research assessment criteria.

Especially urgent

The insights in our paper are especially urgent at a time when Australian universities are under pressure to reimagine research training – often with an overwhelming focus on industry partnerships. As this shift accelerates, it is vital that we do not lose sight of equity and inclusion as foundational to the mission of higher education.

For outreach professionals and equity leaders, this is a call to action. Metrics matter, but only when they serve justice, not when they become a convenient endpoint. If our policy frameworks stop asking why disparities exist—and start assuming they’ve been solved—then we risk institutionalising silence where advocacy is needed most.

We must go beyond the numbers. Participatory parity offers a way to re-anchor equity in justice, culture, and voice. It’s time we brought CALD doctoral candidates back into view—not just as participants, but as powerful knowledge-makers in their own right.

Catherine Manathunga is professor of education research and co-director of the Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre (ITRC) at the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) . Jing Qi is a senior lecturer at RMIT University in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies and the Social Equity Research Centre. Maria Raciti is a professor of marketing and co-director the of Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre (ITRC) at the University of the Sunshine Coast

Are machines now appealing?

A colleague recently shared a polite email from a student appealing their assessment grades. Every rubric criterion was defended and addressed in tremendous detail. 

It felt optimised, and in an age of generative AI, maybe that’s exactly what it was.

We’re entering a new phase where students use AI not just to prepare assessments but to craft appeals, generating arguments perfectly shaped to align with criteria and maximise persuasive force.

To understand this development, we must first examine the role of rubrics in contemporary education. Assessment rubrics function as what Michel Foucault might recognise as disciplinary technologies, tools that standardise judgment and render subjective evaluation processes transparent and measurable. They represent institutional attempts to rationalise assessment, making explicit the criteria by which student work is evaluated, theoretically democratising access to success criteria. 

Constructing appeals with unprecedented precision

As Pierre Bourdieu reminds us, institutions often reward not just knowledge but the ability to navigate codes and expectations. When rubrics and standardised criteria are coupled with AI-augmented optimisation, however, we risk shifting learning’s centre from transformative engagement to compliance engineering, undermining the outcomes we are attempting to measure.

Students with access to sophisticated AI tools can now systematically analyse rubric language, identify optimisation opportunities, and construct appeals with unprecedented precision. This development represents what Jürgen Habermas would likely classify as the colonisation of educational lifeworlds by instrumental rationality, the reduction of learning processes to technical problems requiring algorithmic solutions.

When academic feedback like “this section lacks depth” gets treated as a technical problem to solve, however, rather than expert judgment to engage with, we transform educational dialogue. The more “optimised” the process, the less space for generosity, nuance, or authentic learning’s messy back-and-forth.

Jacques Rancière’s work on pedagogy suggests that educational relationships depend on the assumption of human mutuality, a recognition that both student and teacher are capable of thought and interpretation. AI-mediated appeals disrupt this dynamic. When students rely on AI to process feedback, the algorithm does not engage with feedback as a thinking subject but processes it as information to be optimised against. 

Recognition and validation

I expect that students using AI for appeals genuinely care. They want recognition and validation, in addition to graduating with their degree. Max Weber’s analysis of rationalisation processes, however,  helps us understand how well-intentioned actions can contribute to broader structural changes that undermine their original purposes. Weber observed how the rationalisation of social life (the systematic organisation of action according to calculated rules) tends to displace value-rational action (action oriented toward ultimate values) with instrumental rationality (action oriented toward efficiency). When students optimise appeals against rubric criteria, they engage in precisely this type of instrumental calculation, even when their underlying motivations remain value-oriented.

Academic assessment involves what Aristotle called phronesis: practical wisdom that cannot be reduced to rule-following. When educators evaluate student work, they exercise judgment that draws on disciplinary expertise, pedagogical experience, and contextual understanding. This judgment necessarily involves interpretation and cannot be fully systematised. AI-optimised appeals attempt to bypass this judgmental dimension by reducing assessment to rule application. This reduction represents what Herbert Marcuse might recognise as one-dimensional thinking, the flattening of complex educational relationships into technical procedures.

The proliferation of AI-mediated appeals has broader implications for educational institutions. If Anthony Giddens is correct that modern institutions depend on trust relationships between expert systems and lay participants, then the mechanisation of student appeals may erode the trust relationships that sustain educational institutions.

Educators as algorithmic systems

When students systematically optimise against assessment criteria rather than engaging with feedback as developmental guidance, they effectively treat educators as algorithmic systems rather than professional practitioners. This shift may prompt educators to become more defensive in their assessment practices, potentially reducing the pedagogical risk-taking that often produces meaningful learning experiences.

If appeals processes become dominated by AI optimisation, institutions may respond by developing counter-measures: AI systems to evaluate AI-generated appeals. In Jean Baudrillard’s terms, a simulation replaces real interaction with its mechanised imitation.

This broader context helps explain why AI-optimised appeals feel unsettling even when students’ motivations appear legitimate. The optimisation process treats educational relationships as data to be manipulated rather than human connections involving care, judgment, and mutual recognition.

The messy middle

We live in the messy middle where human and machine shape one another. It is a zone of entanglement where our judgements, our values and our decisions are increasingly mediated, supported or even challenged by machine outputs. Machines, however, do not care. Education’s meaning is formed in relational and ethical spaces. We must protect them.

Jonathan Boymal is an associate professor of economics in the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University’s College of Business and Law. He has 25 years of higher education leadership experience at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels across Melbourne, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam, in roles including Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Learning Teaching and Quality and Academic Director, Quality and Learning and Teaching Futures. Jonathan holds a PhD in Economics.

Are we now gaslighting teacher expertise?

Curriculum reform is underway in NSW, including the development and implementation of new syllabuses from kindergarten to year 12. Recent media coverage presents this reform as a ‘silver bullet’ for improving teaching and student outcomes. But there is a troubling undertone regarding teachers’ curriculum work in general – a subtle gaslighting of teachers’ curricular expertise and professionalism.

This builds on what Nicole Mockler describes, as a gaslighting of the teaching profession as a whole, in her forthcoming discussion paper “On Gaslighting, Moral Purpose, and Trust: Some Reflections on the Future of Teaching” Monash University Inquiry into the Future of the Teaching Profession.

Here’s what I’ve discovered from my own research engaging with early career teachers. They want to be curriculum-makers, not just curriculum deliverers.

Misunderstanding teachers’ curriculum work

Syllabuses are important materials in teachers’ day-to-day experiences in schools. Ensuring these official materials are clear and detailed for teachers is important and necessary. But we must also recognise teacher’s engagement with curriculum is a complex social practice.

It goes further than just listing content and outcomes in a document and believing that ‘delivery’ of these with ‘fidelity’ will resolve issues regarding teaching quality. Teachers are more than just passive conduits of curriculum.

Their curriculum work is a dynamic interpretative process. The quality of educative experiences in a classroom is dependent on teacher capabilities and opportunities that support them in transforming content into meaningful learning experiences.

Recent media coverage is largely and notably silent on this vital aspect of teachers’ curriculum work.  The focus has been on the troubled nature of past NSW syllabuses being “more open to interpretation”. These comments reveal a misunderstanding by some regarding the importance and value of teachers’ curricular interpretation in ensuring a classroom curriculum that is local, contextually relevant, and responsive to student needs and lived experiences. The silence surrounding teacher expertise and interpretation of curriculum points to a broader issue – the outsourcing of teachers’ curriculum knowledge and expertise in the name of a ‘teacher proof’ curriculum.

Gaslighting teachers’ curricular expertise

Underpinning current commentary on the new NSW syllabuses is a troublesome devaluing of teachers’ professional judgement and expertise with curriculum. This is apparent in recent conversations suggesting that teachers need access to externally vetted curriculum materials, and “directions on which lesson plans to use”

Here, mistrust in teachers’ knowledge and professional judgement is rife, disguised among seemingly innocent concerns for lessening the curriculum ‘burden’ on teachers’ workloads. 

This is nothing more than gaslighting; an attempt to convince teachers that they lack the required capacity to make such decisions or are too busy for curriculum matters and therefore it is ok for this important work to be outsourced to others. In reality, teachers value this curriculum work highly. They want more time for collaborative planning with their colleagues – not less, not outsourced. 

Don’t get me wrong – all teachers need supporting materials and shared resources, but they also need time and space to build their curricular expertise. This is about strengthening their understanding of the curriculum and the adjustments and transformations needed in ensuring best fit with their students and chosen pedagogical strategies (not just explicit teaching!). Time is of the essence here in how we respond to this gaslighting, raising awareness that attempts for further prescription and outsourcing of teachers’ curriculum and pedagogical work does little more than deskill our profession.  

What are we wanting? Teacher as deliverer or curriculum-maker?

While the NSW Curriculum reform proposes greater clarity and guidance for teachers, the implementation of these new syllabuses should offer us pause for thought. 

What kind of role do teachers want with the curriculum? What do they need to maintain strong curriculum identities? My own research with early career teachers points to their strong motivations and aspirations to be more than just curriculum deliverers, but curriculum-makers who are trusted and respected to make necessary and responsive curriculum choices within their local context. 

My research also suggests that the same goes too for our preservice teachers entering the profession. Critical dialogue is crucial, then, within this current reform context. School leaders, teacher educators, and the concerned public should respect the curricular aspirations of our teachers. This requires us to push back against concerning trends for ‘cookie cutter’ approaches to teaching, and with that, an outsourcing of teachers’ curriculum expertise to others as an attempt for greater ‘fidelity’ between schools and classrooms. 

Re-frame conversations

We need to re-frame conversations between teachers, school leaders, policymakers, and the broader public, moving beyond assumptions that changes to official curriculum materials offer the best and only solution. We need to listen more carefully to teachers’ voices and what they want to achieve in their curricular practice:

If I could just spend my time how I wanted to, I would obviously work hard, but if I could just spend my time planning lessons that I thought were really awesome, were really good for my learners and great for the content I was teaching, and then I could evaluate them properly, then I think I would feel like ‘ok I am benefiting society and doing the big picture thinking and fostering a love of learning in these students’ and these are the things that you go into teaching for. (First year teacher, public school in Sydney)

Creating conditions that enable this kind of work remain largely absent in conversations surrounding the implementation of the new NSW syllabuses. 

Teachers need time

Teachers need time, space, and support (not prescription or centralised materials), to help them sustain curriculum as a recognisable tenet of their professionalism. The implications of enabling school-level conditions to do this are immense, not only in promoting greater trust and regard for teachers, but importantly, for student learning and equity. A curriculum made by teachers, not others, shapes the quality of students’ access to knowledge and new ways of thinking for their future. 

Phillip Poulton is a lecturer in education (primary) at the RMIT University, Melbourne. He completed his PhD studies focusing on primary teachers’ classroom curriculum-making experiences and is published in a number of Australian and international research journals. Prior to working in initial teacher education, he worked as a primary classroom teacher and as a head of curriculum in a large public school in Australia. He is on Twitter @PhillipPoulton

Love this: Creativity Can Be Measured – in Diverse Ways. What we can learn from PISA

The latest on PISA Creative Thinking results:

Kylie Murphy: PISA results show thinking can be cultivated. Australian teachers are doing that better than most others

Dan Harris (part one): Fourth in the whole world but the government doesn’t care

Now, read on!

The good news is that the just-released PISA Creative Thinking test reveals new ways of assessing creativity. Now we must decided how Australia might apply these methods and findings.

What PISA did differently: two important methodological testing innovations

1. The assessment includes new, interactive item-types based on a visual design tool. For the first time in PISA, some items required students to produce a visual artefact, rather than construct a written response or choose the correct answer.

2. The assessment only includes open-ended tasks with no single solution but multiple correct responses. That demands more complex scoring methods, based on rubrics and sample responses. The collection and analysis of responses of many students around the world informs those rubrics and responses.  

This is good news for educators who believe in the dangers of a ‘single right answer’ approach to learning and assessment. Getting away from the exclusive use of written numerical and/or narrative responses and using visual design tools is also a great step forward. The test’s attention to the power of creative thinking to address complex social problems is also a welcome focus of the assessment and its results.

Fig 1: PISA Creative Thinking test domains

Student beliefs

This important data set aligns with international best practice creativity research. It reflects longstanding reports by both students and teachers that any area of enquiry can benefit from creative approaches and creative risk-taking. PISA’s test reports that “around 8 out of 10 students (OECD average) believe that it is possible to be creative in nearly any subject”,  But many students did not hold positive beliefs about their own creativity or ability to improve. This seemingly contradictory finding is consistent with my own research in which perceptions of creativity in compulsory education are expanding beyond the arts and into all subject areas, but self-confidence continues to lag. .

School environment

PISA’s focus on the whole-school environment is encouragingwelcome, but in stark contrast to the other areas of enquiry, this one is minimal and draws on limited data to make incomplete recommendations. It says, in part:  

·            “Classroom pedagogies can make a difference. Across OECD countries, between 60-70% of students reported that their teachers value their creativity, that they encourage them to come up with original answers, and that they are given a chance to express their ideas in school.” Australia has long produced robust, empirical data specific to our national context that advocates as much, but has not been taken up by policy makers.

·            “Participating in school activities such as art, drama, creative writing or programming classes regularly (once a week) is associated with better performance in creative thinking than doing so infrequently or every day.” I’m mystified as to why arts activities (note that they stop short of advocating for direct instruction of arts skills, but that’s another battle) are associated with improved creative thinking at weekly rather than daily engagement. Or, for that matter, why such measurements are helpful. Are Education Minister Jason Clare and his advisors really debating whether to mandate weekly versus daily arts activities? His three 2023 education reviews hardly seem to suggest as much.

Lastly, PISA recommends that improving creative thinking across whole school systems “consistently and effectively…requires educators, curriculum developers and assessment designers to have a shared understanding of what creative thinking is, how students can develop creative thinking skills, and how their progress can be measured”.

Again, our calls for this detailed work to effectively underpin our National Curriculum’s Creative Thinking General Capability have gone unanswered – or more recently answered with a mandate for direct instruction and phonics. 

Will the weight of the international PISA recommendations effect greater change?

Key Insights but will they become Key Actions?

In summing up, the report links high performance in creative thinking with performance in the PISA core domains. Yet some countries and economies performed relatively better than expected in creative thinking, given their students’ mathematics, science and reading performance. Students in Australia, Canada, Finland, and New Zealand demonstrated a “large overall relative strength in creative thinking together with high mean performance.” These findings certainly don’t seem to concur with the current government narrative about Australia’s international test scores falling. Despite an overall decline since the tests began in 2000, Australia’s PISA scores in maths, science and reading have remained about the same since 2017, a part of the narrative always left out. Surely creativity is a far more important workplace skill now than it was 24 years ago, a fact similarly left out of current debates. 

According to the PISA summary, high-performing systems in creative thinking have often implemented at least two of the following four concrete approaches to supporting the development of creativity and creative thinking in education:

1. Embedding creativity and/or creative thinking throughout the curriculum.

2. Supporting educators to recognise, develop and evaluate creative thinking by defining learning progressions or rubrics. 

3. Creating opportunities in the curriculum for students to engage in creative and/or interdisciplinary work. 

4. Encouraging accountability through monitoring and evaluation. 

We need a more joined-up approach

While Australia can boast a Creative Thinking General Capability in our National Curriculum, it is hardly present ‘throughout’ the curriculum as point number one above recommends. Points 2-4 offer clear ways of improving how we capacitate teachers and students for creativity. My own research has long advocated for a more joined-up, creative ecological approach to fostering creativity in schools, one which takes into consideration place, people, processes, product, and policies (both internal and external). The PISA recommendations limit its systems approach to curriculum, pedagogy and assessments – in other words, only products and processes. This leaves a long way to go toward integrating subjects, transforming places and spaces for the digital revolution and crucial person-to-person collaborations, as well as recognising the centrality of place to learning, as our First Nations colleagues have long advised us to do.

Still confused about creativity?

Finally: “Students in many countries/economies report that they do not find learning or engaging in creative work at school particularly enjoyable.” Might this be because teachers – and students – are still largely confused about what creativity and creative thinking are? Are teachers and students confused about how to ‘do’ creativity in school contexts? I doubt students would say the same about creativity on TikTok, or decorating their room, or sports participation, where creativity and its learning potential are inherent. Teachers have long been calling for more help on assessing creativity, but students in these PISA results are calling for the content to be more creative. Australia’s education sector needs to evolve past the obsession with creativity assessment, and – while not perfect – the PISA test suggests some ways forward. 

The Australian Council for Educational Research manages PISA in Australia and will release a national report later in the year, with results for states and territories and additional demographic characteristics.  Beginning in 2025, though, ACER will take over the administration of the entire suite of PISA tests, a great coup for Australia. In doing so, Australia will be in a perfect position to advance PISA’s aim of “providing internationally comparable data on students’ competencies that have clear implications for education policies and pedagogies”.

Now all we need is the political will to make creativity central to that work.

Daniel X. Harris is a professor at RMIT and a leading international scholar in creativity, diversity and social change. They were most recently an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, DECRA Fellow, RMIT Vice Chancellor’s Primary Research Fellow, and are currently research professor in the School of Education, RMIT University, and Director of Creative Agency research lab: www.creativeresearchhub.com.

Fourth in the whole world! Yet the government doesn’t care

Since PISA released its first creative thinking test results last week, there has been a flurry of commentary both formal and informal among educators and education researchers. 

The report, called Creative Minds, Creative Schools, ranks Australia 4th out of a total 81 participating countries, with Singapore topping the list at number 1 in all areas including literacy, numeracy and creative thinking. That’s sweet revenge for the city-state Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak once called ‘uncreative’ .

In the decade since then, Singapore has shown itself to be a leader in both direct instruction and creative innovation, a trend now making global headlines due to PISA. But is Australia listening? And will we similarly be able to pivot from the 2023 juggernaut of ‘return to phonics’ and direct instruction, toward a more nuanced approach to education that incorporates both approaches?

How is this included in the curriculum

Broad findings of the test are widely available, including yesterday’s post here by Kylie Murphy. But the findings have not yet been sufficiently unpacked in relation to the ample amount of Australia-specific empirical data and scholarship already available. There are some familiar findings here: the PISA Executive Summary definition that “indices of imagination and adventurousness, openness to intellect, curiosity, perspective taking and persistence are positively associated with creative thinking performance” is something most ‘creative skills and capacities’ lists and studies (including mine) have identified over years. 

The more pointed question remains: where and how are these indices included in the Australian Curriculum in ways that are actionable by teachers overburdened with literacy, numeracy and a constant prioritising of STEM curriculum?

What’s creativity got to do with it

The PISA Creative Thinking test results not only provide scores in a range of task types, but also correlation against scores in reading, science and mathematics skills. Together, they provide an interesting relational snapshot between what has traditionally been considered ‘core’ content for learners, and creative thinking, now a recognised 21st century skill alongside critical thinking, collaboration and communication. These assessment results show that “academic excellence is not a prerequisite for excellence in creative thinking”. This will come as no surprise to most educators. While some students excel in ‘academic’ ways of thinking and doing, not all do – a difference long documented as a poor indicator of success in work and life.

What we do know – and what PISA results reinforce –  is that test results, including creative thinking here, often correlate to socio-economic status: “Students with higher socio-economic status performed better in creative thinking, with advantaged students scoring around 9.5 points higher than their disadvantaged peers on average across the OECD.” Where is the government attention to these statistics, in the constant rhetoric about falling test scores?

Interestingly though, “the strength of the association between socio-economic status and performance is weaker in creative thinking than it is for mathematics, reading and science,” a powerful rationale for the levelling power of giving more priority to skills and capacities like creative thinking. In Australia and just five other countries, “more than 88% of students demonstrated a baseline level of creative thinking proficiency (Level 3), meaning they can think of appropriate ideas for a range of tasks and begin to suggest original ideas for familiar problems (OECD average 78%)”. That’a result Australia should be proud of and keen to build upon in both social equity respects as well as the increasingly outmoded ATAR obsession.

Different types of creative thinking tasks show different aptitudes

While the rankings show which countries scored highly overall, the test also highlighted variations in types or applications of creativity. These results show what Australian students do well, in our unique creative contexts and cultural orientations. It also provides an opportunity for us to understand how we can make the most of them. The risk, of course, is that the data are used for blunt comparison, a deficit-approach that often drives ‘moral panic’ responses around fear of ‘slipping’ in international rankings, and short-term stop-gap solutions. For the 2022 results, students in Singapore were the most successful across several task types, especially social problem-solving tasks. Students in Korea were the most successful in scientific problem-solving contexts and evaluate and improve ideas tasks. Students in Portugal performed the most successfully in visual expression tasks.

Such results offer an exciting opportunity to reflect as a national education sector on how we might aspire to raising aptitude in multiple tasks, for example, rather than simply ‘beating’ other countries in overall results.

Gender and equity gaps

The report makes a point of how comprehensively those identified as girls outperformed those identified as boys in creative thinking. “In no country or economy did boys outperform girls in creative thinking, with girls scoring 3 points higher in creative thinking on average across the OECD,” and in all type of creative tasks. 

If participating nations were to use the data to fund “Get More Boys into Creativity” campaigns, as they do with girls in STEM, the utility of a binary gender analysis would be clearer. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t carry through university and workplace trends: A recent analysis of female-identified versus male-identified creative university graduates and early-career employees does not correlate to the strong performance by female-identified 15 year olds. It shows female-identified creatives at both adult stages consistently fall behind their male-identified counterparts.

A welcome measure

Overall, the PISA Creative Thinking test results are a welcome international measure to complement the literacy, numeracy and science tests. Thus far, there has been no comment from government on Australia’s fantastic 4th in the world result – in stark contrast to the ongoing failure narrative of falling test scores. Australian students need to be well-rounded and best prepared for the jobs of the future by the end of their secondary schooling. That’s why our teacher preparation programs at RMIT University’s School of Education, I’m sure like the vast majority of other schools, ensure that all students receive training in all the basics that our new teachers and students need to excel in 21st century life, at the centre of which is creativity. 

Daniel X. Harris is a professor at RMIT and a leading international scholar in creativity, diversity and social change. They were most recently an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, DECRA Fellow, RMIT Vice Chancellor’s Primary Research Fellow, and are currently research professor in the School of Education, RMIT University, and Director of Creative Agency research lab: www.creativeresearchhub.com.

Scholarships for teaching students are great – but will they really diversify the profession now?

Australia is in the midst of a teacher shortage, and with 35% of teachers considering leaving the workforce before they reach retirement age, the problem may get worse before it gets better. This means we need to increase the number of teachers graduating from university teaching degrees. The full set of data for 2024 university applicants isn’t available yet, but UAC data suggests that applications to study teaching degrees at universities are trending downwards

One of the strategies to address the teacher shortage is the new Federal Government scholarships to encourage more people to undertake teaching degrees. While hoping to attract more people to teaching overall, the scholarships target groups under-represented in the profession, with scholarships available for First Nations peoples, people for whom English is an additional language/dialect, people with disabilities, people from regional, rural or remote locations, and people from low socio-economic backgrounds. Currently, the level of diversity in the student population in Australian schools far exceeds the diversity of the teachers, with the majority of teachers being from monolingual, White-Anglo and middle-class backgrounds, and more likely to be born in Australia than the general population.

Benefits of a diverse teacher workforce

Research also tells us that a diverse teaching population has a positive impact on student learning outcomes and engagement in schooling. Students perceive schools as more inclusive and welcoming environments when they see teachers who have similar racial and ethnic backgrounds. Based on teachers’ own experiences as culturally and linguistically diverse students, they can better understand their students’ cultural practices and beliefs and how they grow as learners. As insiders to the experiences of racism, they are valuable in the fight for educational and social justice. They make significant contributions to their school communities, due to their distinct experiences and their ability to offer students a different worldview, as well as becoming cross-cultural mentors for their mainstream colleagues.

But will these scholarships work to diversify the teaching profession?

There is no doubt that these scholarships will be attractive for some promising teacher candidates who would otherwise face greater challenges juggling study with their work, health needs and caring responsibilities. There is potential for the pool of students studying teaching to be widened because of the availability of such scholarships,  which would be a positive outcome.

However, financial support during their studies isn’t going to provide everything these students need to have a successful career in teaching. For example, our research has found that teachers from culturally, linguistically and racially diverse backgrounds (we use the acronym CLRD) experience higher levels of isolation, exclusion and racism in their workplaces. CLRD teachers can experience discrimination on the basis of skin colour, accent, dress and even food. Teachers have told us:

“At times, my faculty  would have lunch together in the staff room. It would have been nice to be told about this, even just to be polite, but it did make me feel very left out.”

“Teachers from Anglo background speak to you in a condescending way, belittle you, question your knowledge and qualifications, and there’s definitely a hierarchy where they consider themselves better than you.”

Forced to conceal their true identity

While there isn’t explicit evidence to connect these experiences to racism, every CLRD teacher who participated in our research shared a story like this. Teachers from CLRD backgrounds often feel forced to conceal their true identity to try and fit in, and it means that they’re less likely to stay in the profession and thrive in their careers.

In addition, most CLRD teachers described additional labour they were expected to undertake because of their race, language or cultural background. Some teachers were happy to do this work to help their students, but many commented that this was labour they did not see their white counterparts being asked to do.

Further, when it comes to scholarships, it’s vital that recipients successfully complete their ITE programs. Some teacher candidates from equity groups may require additional academic support from their university, and may not complete their programs without that help. Some universities do a great job of providing this support, but it takes extra resources. How students will be supported needs to be a part of the discussion.

So will these scholarships keep new teachers from leaving the profession?

The financial support may help teacher candidates from equity groups to take the leap into university studies, but it’s not a single solution to teacher retention.  Teachers on these scholarships are required to teach in public schools for a period equal to the length of their studies – two or four years. But to create a sustainable pipeline of teachers, we need them to stay longer than that, and based on our research there are other barriers that need to be addressed. Support from school leadership teams is essential, as is a united front on the part of the school, to reject racism and discrimination. Schools and leadership teams must genuinely see cultural and linguistic diversity as a positive attribute, rather than a deficit. Cash incentives during their studies isn’t going to be enough of a drawcard to stay in a harmful work environment.

From left to right: Dr Rachael Dwyer (she/her) is a Lecturer in Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Her scholarship is focused on creating social change, through decolonizing, arts-based approaches to teaching, advocacy and research, and sharing her scholarship in ways that impact policy and practice. Dr Rachael Jacobs (she/her) is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Arts Education at Western Sydney University and a former secondary school teacher. Her research interests include assessment in the arts, language acquisition through the arts and decolonised approaches to embodied learning. Professor Catherine Manathunga (she/her) is an historian who draws together expertise in historical, sociological and cultural studies research to bring an innovative perspective to educational research, particularly focusing on the higher education sector. She has worked for over 32 years in universities throughout Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Professor Daniel Harris (they/them) is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, and Co-Director of Creative Agency research lab: www.creativeresearchhub.com. They are an international expert in creativity studies, creative methods, affect theory and autoethnography. They are committed to the power of collaborative creative practice and social justice research to inform social change.  Dr Jing Qi (she/her) is Manager of Community Languages Teacher Education Program in the School of Global, Urban and Social Sciences at RMIT. Jing draws together experiences in multilingual, transcultural, and technological studies in her current educational research projects in the areas of teacher education, international education and teacher education.