Australia Association for Research in Education
talking about teachers
Dear Premier, this will not work. Not now, not ever
A select number of teachers in NSW will soon be eligible for increased salaries of up to $152,000. This comes at a time when schools across Australia are facing devastating teacher shortages, while dwindling numbers of prospective teachers are pursuing teaching as a career. According to NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, “This is seismic reform that …
To save democracy, we need to flip the system
In her book Teacher, Gabbie Stroud beautifully encapsulates what is happening by stealth to the teaching profession: “Good teaching …comes from teachers who know their students, who build relationships, who meet learners at their point of need and who recognize that there’s nothing standard about the journey of learning. We cannot forget the art of …
How teachers can change our world for the better
Hello and happy new year. We start 2023 with a first for the blog: Nina Burridge and John Buchanan in conversation on Teachers as Changemakers in an Age of Uncertainty from the book Empowering Teachers and Democratising Schooling. Nina: What is a good education in the current context? What are your thoughts on this? John: …
What we must do now to rescue Australian schools
We expect education to be a catalyst for more equitable and inclusive societies yet too often governments and systems deploy one-stop solutions without detailed plans for how exactly improvements will be achieved or at what costs. The Building Education Systems for Equity and Inclusion report comes from an Academy of Social Sciences of Australia workshop …
Why restoring trust in teaching now could fix the teacher shortage
Burnout is blamed for an exodus of teachers contributing to ‘a teacher shortage crisis’ in Australian schools. The …
Will the Quality Time Action Plan reduce teacher workload?
Teachers want more time for lesson planning, not less. Last week, the NSW Department of Education released the Quality Time Action Plan, intended to “simplify administrative practices in schools”. Having highlighted the concerning growth in administrative workload in schools in a report based on a survey of more than 18,000 teachers for the NSW Teachers …
Teachers deliver powerful mindfulness programs for students. Now they might need space to strengthen their own minds.
Since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 appeared in Australia in late-January 2020, the country has been through …
The terrible trap of temporary teaching: I need to do more to get a job next year
These days, there’s a new kind of teacher in NSW public schools: the ‘temporary’ teacher. The category of temporary employment, a version of fixed-term contract work, was introduced in 2001. The category has been steadily growing while the proportion of permanent positions has declined and casual positions have remained relatively stable, as indicated in Figure …
The government knows how to help teachers. And it’s not more reform.
A decade after LSLD was implemented, it became evident there were no improved educational outcomes across the State’s schools. …
TeachING quality is not teachER quality. How we talk about ‘quality’ matters
The language we use to discuss the work of teachers in the public domain matters. It matters to our shared understanding of education as a society and it impacts on teachers’ work both directly and indirectly. My research at the moment focuses in part on the notion of quality in education, specifically how issues of …