The report by the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) released today is largely what it claims to be — a set of strong, implementable recommendations to initiate genuine national reform of initial teacher education. Unfortunately it dismissed the opportunity to improve teacher quality by elevating the calibre of teacher education candidates.
The report recommends many laudable and much-needed reforms designed to strengthen the accreditation standards for teacher education courses, collect and publish better information about course quality, and improve the induction phase for beginning teachers. It recommends a much stronger role for the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) as a national regulator to set the standard expected of courses and their graduates, and enforcing them.
The report finds that accreditation of courses currently does not require providers (that is, universities) to present rigorous evidence of the quality of programs and outcomes. It also finds that many courses do not equip pre-service teachers with knowledge and skills necessary to be competent teachers, suggesting that some courses would fail to achieve accreditation were it to be more rigorous.
The key weakness in the report, however, is its failure to recommend elevating the standards for candidates entering teacher education courses. It is well-known that the countries with the best performing education systems around the world almost without exception draw their teachers from the top of the academic distribution. The TEMAG report confirms what is also well-known: Australian universities enrol large numbers of students who are low achievers.
Rather than acknowledging that a certain level of academic competence is necessary to excel at the complex challenge of teaching, the TEMAG report recommends that universities take a ‘sophisticated approach’ to selecting teacher education candidates, and provide support to students who may have trouble meeting the academic requirements of the program. Who will support these people when they start the much more difficult task of teaching in schools is not explained.
Numerous studies over the last decade in universities in each state and territory have identified low literacy and numeracy skills among undergraduate teacher education students.
The most recent study was published in the Australian Journal of Teacher Education. Dr Brian Moon, a senior lecturer in education at Edith Cowan University, tested several hundred secondary teaching undergraduates on spelling, vocabulary, and grammar. The words they were asked to spell or define were relatively common words such as parallel, candid, exaggerate, and profession.
The mean spelling score was 8 out of 20. No student spelled all words correctly. The degree of error in many cases was “severe”. The mean vocabulary score for basic definitions was 3 out of 10. No student got full marks and more than a dozen students got zero. Ironically, many students did not correctly define the word ‘pedagogy’. Scores for simple punctuation were better – a mean of 8 out of 10 – but responses to the sentence construction task were very poor. Students did not only not know the correct grammatical rules, they insisted on the accuracy of non-existent grammatical rules.
It is worth reinforcing at this point that these are not random people on the street. They are university students. They have spent at least 11 years in full-time education and are now in training to teach our children. Such tests indicate “serious deficiencies in literacy competence” that, according to Dr Moon, could affect their future teaching effectiveness. It is a classic case of the ‘Peter effect’; just as the apostle Peter could not give money to beggars that he did not have, teachers cannot teach what they do not themselves know.
Universities offer remediation courses but it is difficult to fathom how low academic aptitude of teacher education students does not affect the rigour of courses and the requirements for graduation. Unsurprisingly, in the 2013 Staff in Schools Survey, the majority of principals did not think that beginning teachers were well prepared to teach.
The TEMAG report has much in its favour. The response of the federal government will likely be positive, and the strong credentials of the AITSL board give some confidence that this review may just succeed where so many in the past have failed. By rejecting the elevation of entry standards, they only made their job much harder.
Jennifer Buckingham is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
Home > Commentary > Opinion > Poor students likely to make poor teachers
Poor students likely to make poor teachers
The report recommends many laudable and much-needed reforms designed to strengthen the accreditation standards for teacher education courses, collect and publish better information about course quality, and improve the induction phase for beginning teachers. It recommends a much stronger role for the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) as a national regulator to set the standard expected of courses and their graduates, and enforcing them.
The report finds that accreditation of courses currently does not require providers (that is, universities) to present rigorous evidence of the quality of programs and outcomes. It also finds that many courses do not equip pre-service teachers with knowledge and skills necessary to be competent teachers, suggesting that some courses would fail to achieve accreditation were it to be more rigorous.
The key weakness in the report, however, is its failure to recommend elevating the standards for candidates entering teacher education courses. It is well-known that the countries with the best performing education systems around the world almost without exception draw their teachers from the top of the academic distribution. The TEMAG report confirms what is also well-known: Australian universities enrol large numbers of students who are low achievers.
Rather than acknowledging that a certain level of academic competence is necessary to excel at the complex challenge of teaching, the TEMAG report recommends that universities take a ‘sophisticated approach’ to selecting teacher education candidates, and provide support to students who may have trouble meeting the academic requirements of the program. Who will support these people when they start the much more difficult task of teaching in schools is not explained.
Numerous studies over the last decade in universities in each state and territory have identified low literacy and numeracy skills among undergraduate teacher education students.
The most recent study was published in the Australian Journal of Teacher Education. Dr Brian Moon, a senior lecturer in education at Edith Cowan University, tested several hundred secondary teaching undergraduates on spelling, vocabulary, and grammar. The words they were asked to spell or define were relatively common words such as parallel, candid, exaggerate, and profession.
The mean spelling score was 8 out of 20. No student spelled all words correctly. The degree of error in many cases was “severe”. The mean vocabulary score for basic definitions was 3 out of 10. No student got full marks and more than a dozen students got zero. Ironically, many students did not correctly define the word ‘pedagogy’. Scores for simple punctuation were better – a mean of 8 out of 10 – but responses to the sentence construction task were very poor. Students did not only not know the correct grammatical rules, they insisted on the accuracy of non-existent grammatical rules.
It is worth reinforcing at this point that these are not random people on the street. They are university students. They have spent at least 11 years in full-time education and are now in training to teach our children. Such tests indicate “serious deficiencies in literacy competence” that, according to Dr Moon, could affect their future teaching effectiveness. It is a classic case of the ‘Peter effect’; just as the apostle Peter could not give money to beggars that he did not have, teachers cannot teach what they do not themselves know.
Universities offer remediation courses but it is difficult to fathom how low academic aptitude of teacher education students does not affect the rigour of courses and the requirements for graduation. Unsurprisingly, in the 2013 Staff in Schools Survey, the majority of principals did not think that beginning teachers were well prepared to teach.
The TEMAG report has much in its favour. The response of the federal government will likely be positive, and the strong credentials of the AITSL board give some confidence that this review may just succeed where so many in the past have failed. By rejecting the elevation of entry standards, they only made their job much harder.
Jennifer Buckingham is a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
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