By Dr Simon Lindsay, General Manager, Improved Learning Outcomes, Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools.
The announcement by the Victorian Government, on 4 May 2021, that Victoria is investing $148 million in an Academy for Victoria’s highly skilled teachers (DET 2021) represents further acknowledgement in recent times of the value of the sophisticated, professional knowledge that teachers hold.
Through the establishment of the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership – together with initiatives such as the Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher (HALT) Certification within the Archdiocese of Melbourne – we see education systems recognise that significant improvement can be achieved through programs which build a culture of teachers sharing their insights of teaching and learning derived from everyday classroom practice.
The Teaching Excellence Program (TEP), within the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership, is a cross-sectoral program for Victoria’s highly skilled teachers that is aimed at amplifying and deepening teaching excellence through disciplinary knowledge, the science of learning and contemporary pedagogies. Specifically, the program will see leading teachers further involved in the key disciplines through a year-long teaching excellence program, where teachers will engage in communities of practice tackling some of the most persistent problems in education.
Programs will take place across seven regional hubs, as well as in Melbourne. It is expected that 200 teachers from across Victoria, including a proportional representation of teachers from the three sectors (government, Catholic and independent), will take part in 2022, rising to 500 teachers per year in following years.
Academy of Singapore Teachers
‘When we first started the Academy, we wanted to create a teacher-led culture to raise the professional standard’ ( Tan cited in NCEE 2016, p.9).
Intiatives like the TEP are based on the theory that a key route to improved outcomes is through providing formal structures and process for teachers to reflect, share and create new knowledge as part of their professional culture.
A prime example of this approach is the Academy of Singapore Teachers (AST), which provides insight into how a teacher-led culture has improved learning outcomes. The AST works with teachers and connects to schools to provide professional opportunities ’by teachers for teachers’ through networks of teacher leaders who offer a wide range of professional learning courses, activities, learning communities, resources and expertise.
More importantly, schools in Singapore have created time for learning and sharing among teachers, by building into the timetable dedicated periods for teachers to engage in professional learning communities, and for senior teachers to support their peers. For example, almost all teachers in Singapore are involved in research and innovation projects examining their teaching and learning to better meet the needs of students.
Teachers in Singapore are expected to become reflective practitioners through research and co-learning, and schools provide teachers with the structured time to come together as a group to discuss and implement their projects.
External reform attempts
In our own evaluations of professional learning initiatives over many years, the feedback that, ’having a chance to talk with other teachers about our teaching was the best part’, was perhaps not paid sufficient attention. Much of the professional learning that we see currently involves experts delivering external information or research to teachers with little consideration for the teacher’s perspective and, consequently, this has alienated teachers from their own knowledge and profession.
Day (1999) argues that, ‘externally imposed reform …. will not necessarily result in teachers implementing the intended changes … [as] a multitude of research projects in different countries have shown’ (p. 15). Using external policy as a means of finding effective approaches to teacher professionalism positions teachers as implementers of technical solutions designed by others, and does not result in substantially changed practice (McLaughlin 1997).
Instead, just as Singapore has done, supporting a culture of local professional inquiry and sharing, and supporting teachers to lead reform themselves, in alignment with system directions, provides a blueprint for attaining high education outcomes.
Culture-led reform
In the context in build cultures of teaching, it is interesting to reflect on how traditional cultures have created value in the past – notably from being together, sharing wisdom together, celebrating together and creating tools, stories and artefacts which convey the knowledge and practice of the community (Bruchac, 2014). These cultural pillars worked because they provided instruction from within the community on how to act in particular environments.
In the same way, providing opportunities for teachers to share their own stories, to define their own values, and to build a culture of teaching which matters to them, can similarly lead to improvement through culture. Perhaps in the busyness of doing teaching, we have restricted the highly treasured surplus time that traditional cultures have used so well for creating cultures of learning and improvement. However, it is this valued time for thinking and sharing together as a community of teachers which may hold the key to improved learning outcomes.
Review of the Australian Curriculum
The current review of the Australian Curriculum has highlighted two approaches to education reform, namely government-led and teacher-led. While the two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and more so should actually complement each other, the government-led discourse sees typical debate about what should or should not be taught to Australian students. While what we teach is of critical importance, this debate is, perhaps, focusing on the wrong issue.
What does actually matter to student outcomes is teachers having the skills and knowledge to design local curriculum which extends the learning for each student from their point of need. Jeremy Stowe-Lindner, principal of Bialik College, Hawthorn, stated recently that it was ultimately teachers, and not the curriculum, that would most influence the tone and direction of content in classrooms: ’Educators are not slaves to a document. They are masters-qualified professionals who put thought into what and how things are delivered’ (cited in Carey 2021).
Sharing wisdom
Teaching is a busy endeavour – from instructing, assessing, reporting, supporting, caring, interacting with families, to complying with legislation – is it any wonder that we find it hard to organise time together to focus on creating and sharing new knowledge?
Fortunately with emerging programs like the Victorian Teaching and Leadership Academy, HALT and other initiatives which create teacher-led, knowledge-building communities of practice, we are seeing schools and systems alike beginning to build and share the wisdom of a teaching culture emerging into its own.
References
Bruchac, M 2014, Indigenous Knowledge and Traditional Knowledge. In Smith, C. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. New York: Springer
Carey, A 2021, ‘Curriculum adviser defends “turning up the amplifier” on Indigenous history’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 May 2021, accessed 18 May 2021 www.smh.com.au/education/curriculum-adviser-defends-turning-up-the-amplifier-on-indigenous-history-20210507-p57pqd.html.
Day, C 1999, Developing Teachers: the challenges of lifelong learning. London: Falmer.
Department of Education and Training (DET) 2021, ‘Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership’, DET, Melbourne, accessed 18 May 2021 www.education.vic.gov.au/about/department/Pages/vatl.aspx.
National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) 2016, Empowered Educators: How High-Performing Systems Shape Teaching Quality around the World – Country Brief Singapore: A Teaching Model for the 21st Century, NCEE, Washington DC, accessed 18 May 2021 http://ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/SingaporeCountryBrief.pdf.
McLaughlin, M. W 1997, Rebuilding teacher professionalism in the United States, in: A. Hargreaves & R. Evans (Eds.), Buying Teachers Back (pp. 77-93). Buckingham, Open University Press.
Teaching Wisdom 