Teacher educators have been driving improvement in initial teacher education for decades. That’s been clear from as early as 1998 when the Australian Council of Deans of Education released “Preparing a Profession: Report of the National Standards and Guidelines for Initial Teacher Education Project”. The report outlined the first program standards for ITE and, as …
Why are some independent Christian schools so obsessed with sex and should taxpayers be paying for it? These two questions were raised on Monday night by Australian flagship current affairs program, Four Corners, which broadcast an expose on schools associated with Catholic sect Opus Dei. The report made shocking allegations about pastoral processes and the …
Meghan Stacey on the trouble with teaching Deb Hayes on making school systems more equitable. Phillip Dawson on how we should treat ChatGPT. Sarah O’Shea on widening participation at university. Scott Eacott on the Productivity Commission’s review of the National School Reform Agreement. The trouble with teaching by Meghan Stacey Last year was a big …
Thank you to all our contributors in 2022. We published over 100 blog posts this year from academics all over Australia, from research students to DECRA fellows, to deans and professors. Thank you all for being part of our community and many thanks to the AARE executive, especially newly-minted Professor Nicole Mockler. Didn’t get to …
The new Federal Minister for Education Jason Clare announced last Friday he would convene a Teacher Workforce Roundtable focussed on tackling the nationwide teacher shortage, to be held on August 12. The roundtable will include principals, teachers and education experts. The critical shortage of teachers is a crisis of our own making. We knew the …
In the months before the pandemic gripped the world, the NSW Productivity Commission released a presciently titled discussion paper, Kickstarting the Productivity Conversation. Its recently released followup White Paper sets out its plan for rebooting the economy. Lifting school results is part of the plan. The Commission acknowledges the ‘pandemic has shown how quickly schools, …
You would be forgiven for thinking that policy related to schooling is not a major issue in Australia. In the lead up to the federal election, scant attention has been paid to it during the three leaders’ debates. One of the reasons could be because the education policies of the major parties have largely converged …
What kind of schooling system do we want for our kids in Australia? I ask because In England, after almost thirty years of high stakes testing, the Chief Inspector of Schools, Amanda Spielman, is talking about a decline in England’s quality of education and blaming “an endemic pattern of prioritising data and performance results, ahead …
The Australian Labor Party recently announced it would invest $280 million to fund a new educational research institute if it wins the next federal election. The Deputy Opposition Leader, Tanya Plibersek said Labor’s proposed Evidence Institute for Schools would “take politics out of the classroom” and be “independent of government”. She also said the new …
Public discourse about schooling generally assumes that it’s in crisis. The script goes something like this: There’s a problem and it’s big – really big! Test results show us Australia is going downhill and teachers need to be accountable. There are ‘evidence-based’ solutions but teachers are not using them. If they did, literacy standards would …