Babak Dadvand

Why our communities need the power of a voice

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, Community engagement, , , , ,

The referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament is a pivotal moment in Australia’s history of engagement with its Indigenous peoples. Amidst the ongoing, at times polarising, debates about The Voice, we gathered at La Trobe School of Education for a one-day workshop focused on fostering social justice through the frame of community engagement. 

Community engagement is about voice, and can be a powerful catalyst for equity and justice. It is grounded in the recognition of voice as a political project that hinges on not only the ability to speak but also to be heard. 

While the discussions that emerged in our workshop did not directly address the question of an Indigenous Voice, there were some uncanny parallels that we aim to tease out in this article. These include, among others, recognising that:

  • community engagement requires asking courageous questions.
  • community engagement is slow and persistent work.
  • community engagement requires adequate resourcing.
  • community engagement tackles deficit assumptions.
  • community engagement starts from those problems that matter.  
  • community engagement can ensure quality.

Community engagement requires asking courageous questions.

Community engagement for social justice and equity requires us to ask courageous questions about the oppressive conditions (past and present) that perpetuate marginalisation. This can amount to ‘truth-telling’. 

During his online keynote address, Tyrone Howard, from UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, emphasised that equity requires us to repair the historical harm. It also needs us to promote inclusion by examining our ‘blind spots’ that might prevent us from seeing the suffering of others, and how we might be implicated in them.

The education field is political. Thus, as Tyrone Howard noted, teachers must be equipped with the necessary tools and awareness to confront these blind spots. By preparing educators to navigate contemporary issues with a keen eye for (in)justice, we can foster more equitable educational spaces that represent and celebrate our diversity.

Community engagement is slow and persistent work.

Community engagement demands unwavering commitment and perseverance driven by a clear sense of purpose. Jo Lampert from Monash University raised concerns about the taken-for-granted use of the term ‘community engagement’ and its insufficient integration into initial teacher education programs. 

To rectify this, one must take a deliberate approach to work with vulnerable communities. This approach centres on co-design, shared decision-making and partnerships that prioritise their lived experiences and voices of those on the margins. 

The call for community engagement in pursuit of equity and justice is cognisant of the political dimensions of this work, particularly power dynamics and representation. This makes representation an essential aspect of a justice project. Without adequate representation, it is difficult to make claims for more just policies. 

Community engagement requires adequate resourcing. 

Equipping teachers with community knowledge and awareness requires strong partnership models within initial teacher education. One initiative that aims to prepare community-engaged pre-service teachers is La Trobe University’s NEXUS program. 

Bernadette Walker-Gibbs and Steve Murphy, from La Trobe School of Education, work at the cutting edge of  innovative university-school partnership frameworks that focus on capacity building for community-engagement among pre-service teachers. 

It should be noted though that building community engagement is a resource-intensive undertaking. To foster strong university-school partnerships, funding is needed to enable meaningful – rather than tokenistic – approaches to engagement and co-design.

Community engagement tackles deficit assumptions.

Tokenistic engagement can result in deficit views and lowered expectations. There is also a tension between recognising differences and deficit assumptions. This is called ‘the dilemma of difference’, which arises from concerns about effectively addressing differences without stigmatising individuals whose differences have been brought to light. Kitty te Riele from the University of Tasmania’s Peter Underwood Centre tackled these issues head-on, offering insights from working with disenfranchised youth.

Challenging the prevailing myth of low educational aspirations needs us to re-evaluate pre-conceived notions and explore the true aspirations of young people and their families. This requires a shift in perspective that embraces the diverse aspirations of young people in the context of social and material disadvantage against convenient myths and stereotypes.

Community engagement starts from those problems that matter.  

At the heart of community engagement lies the crucial task of tackling the issues that hold significance for marginalised individuals and communities. 

Lew Zipin and Marie Brennan from the University of South Australia shed light on the vital role of addressing real-world problems in education. This requires an inclusive approach to co-design that effectively incorporates local knowledge. 

Bridging the gap between educational institutions and the realities of marginalised young people requires recognising students as proactive mediators between life-based and school-based knowledge. Such recognition has transformative potential, leading to a contextualised, community-aware approach to teaching and learning.

Community engagement can ensure quality.

In recent education reforms, the discourse surrounding quality education has shifted towards a human capital perspective.

Sue Grieshaber and Elise Hunkin from La Trobe’s School of Education examined the nexus of quality and equity in early childhood education, highlighting concerns about the potential ramifications of market-driven approaches to education on equity.

There is an urgent need to broaden our definition of quality education beyond market values to incorporate relationships with families and communities.  

Overall, these insights from the workshop highlight the importance of co-design, teacher preparation, dispelling myths, curriculum design, and re-framing what is meant by ‘quality’. It showed how genuine community engagement for equity and social justice address power relations, challenge deficit narratives, and incorporate community voices. 

Australia is approaching another historical moment in its relationship with its Indigenous peoples, a moment that will shape the moral sentiment of the nation for decades to come. In the lead up to the referendum, our discussions about community engagement was a timely reminder of the power of voice as a vehicle for impactful participation in the decisions that matter and that affect the most disenfranchised. 

Babak Dadvand is a senior lecturer in Pedagogy, Professional Practice and Teacher Education at La Trobe School of Education. Babak’s research is in areas of teaching and teacher education with a focus on issues of equity, diversity and inclusion in relation to teachers’ work and student experiences. Babak’s current research is focused on the challenges that teachers face and the types of support that they need stay in the profession, especially in the more challenging working conditions of schools that serve communities that are socially-historically marginalised. Twitter: @DadvandBabak

Jo Lampert is Professor of Teacher Education for Social Transformation at Monash University. She has led alternative pathways into teaching in hard-to-staff schools for over 15 years, most recently as Director of the Commonwealth and State supported Nexus M. Teach in Victoria, a social justice, employment-based pathway whereby preservice teachers work as Education Support Staff prior to gaining employment as paraprofessionals (Nexus). She tweets at @jolampert

Top of the pops: AARE’s Hottest Ten 2022

21st century teaching, academic workforce, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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 write this year? Want to contribute? Here are notes for contributors. Pitch to me at jenna@aare.edu.au.

The 2022 AARE EduResearch Matters blog of the year, announced at the AARE conference in Adelaide: “Why restoring trust in teaching now could fix the teacher shortage”. La Trobe’s Babak Dadvand wrote a compelling account of one way to address the teacher shortage.

It is genuinely hard to choose the best because every single blog reveals new ideas and new thinking about education but I’ll just list our ten most read for 2022 (and of course, some of our older posts have racked up thousands and thousands of views). So many others were excellent and please look at our comprehensive archive.

Here we go! 2022 top ten.

Babak Dadvand on the teacher shortage.

Why restoring trust in teaching now could fix the teacher shortage

Inger Mewburn: Is this now the Federal government’s most bone-headed idea ever?

Is this now the Federal government’s most bone-headed idea ever?

Debra Hayes: Here’s what a brave new minister for education could do right away to fix the horrific teacher shortage

Here’s what a brave new minister for education could do right away to fix the horrific teacher shortage

Kate de Bruin, Pamela Snow, Linda Graham, Tanya Serry and Jacinta Conway: There are definitely better ways to teach reading

There are definitely better ways to teach reading

Marg Rogers: Time, money, exhaustion: why early childhood educators will join the Great Resignation

Time, money, exhaustion: why early childhood educators will join the Great Resignation

Rachel Wilson: What do you think we’ve got now? Dud teachers or a dud minister? Here are the facts

What do you think we’ve got now? Dud teachers or a dud minister? Here are the facts

Simon Crook: More Amazing Secrets of Band Six (part two ongoing until they fix the wretched thing)

(And part one is now one of our most read posts of all-time)

More Amazing Secrets of Band Six (part two ongoing until they fix the wretched thing)

Alison Bedford and Naomi Barnes: The education minister’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea*

The education minister’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea*

Martina Tassone, Helen Cozmescu, Bree Hurn and Linda Gawne: No. There isn’t one perfect way to teach reading

No. There isn’t one perfect way to teach reading

Thank you to all of you for making this such a lovely community, looking forward to hearing from you and a special thank you to Maralyn Parker who has now been retired from the blog for two years but is still a fantastically supportive human when I need urgent help.

Jenna Price

When one shocking shortage led to another

21st century teaching, teacher retention, teacher shortage, teacher workload, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Here is another of our intermittent blogs during the #AARE2022 conference. If you want to cover a session at the conference, please email jenna@aare.edu.au to check in. Thanks!

Symposium: ‘Teacher shortages in Australian schools: reactive workforce planning for a wicked policy problem’ (post starts after the photos!)

With nine people sitting on the floor, six standing, and a long queue leading from the entrance, the symposium ‘Teacher shortages in Australian schools: reactive workforce planning for a wicked policy problem’ was forced to change venues before it could even begin. The overwhelming interest in this session speaks to rising concern and anxiety for the state of the teacher workforce around Australia today.

The first paper, from Jo Lampert, Amy McPherson and Bruce Burnett, featured an analysis of how 20 years’ worth of government and university initiatives have sought to recruit, prepare and retain teachers in ‘hard to staff’ schools, the impact of these initiatives, and the policy lessons that can be learned from them. The analysis found that mostly, these programs have emphasised recruitment over retention (a frustratingly familiar feature of current initiatives like the Teacher Workforce Shortages Issues Paper, too), with few featuring any formal evaluation process. Policy lessons included a need to focus on benefits, provide financial support, and focus on the wellbeing and working conditions of staff.

Scott Eacott’s presentation on the operational and strategic impact of a teacher shortage on school leadership argued that we have a social contract in Australian education which is not currently being fulfilled. Eacott pointed to the need for a whole-system response instead of a school system which “cannibalizes itself through poor design and incentives”.

Eacott’s paper was followed by work from Susanne Gannon, tracing the #MoreThanThanks campaign of the NSW Teachers Federation, which has sought improved wages and conditions for teachers in NSW public schools. Gannon drew on the work of Carol Bacchi to explore how the construction of the teacher shortage ‘problem’ in NSW has become combative space, from ministerial denials of a problem at all; to a swathe of positive press releases from the NSW government on how teachers are purportedly supported; to the use of the phrase “the committee divided” 93 times in the recent, ‘Great Teachers, Great Schools’ report. Gannon concluded by questioning whether perhaps it’s “not even thanks” that NSW teachers are getting, but instead, open ideological warfare.

The final paper in the session was from Dadvand, Dawborn-Gundlach, van Driel and Speldewinde, exploring career changers in teaching and why they stay or leave. Career change teachers are often positioned as part of the workforce shortage ‘solution’, yet these participants were unsure about their future as teachers. The paper used in-depth interview data to privilege teacher voice and highlight the issue of teacher working conditions and support whilst in the job as what needs to be, but is not often, the focus of reform. 

A clear thread across presentations was an explicitly identified tension between the needs and desires of the local, straining against the structures of the centre. Eacott, for example, pointed to the challenges created when substantive teachers take leave without pay, resulting in their position having to be filled by precariously-employed staff (if they can be found). Yet supportive and attractive working conditions – including but not limited to leave provisions – are arguably what need to be addressed if the teacher shortage ‘problem’ is to be meaningfully engaged with. And this, in itself, requires re-assessing just what the ‘problem’ actually is: one of teacher working conditions, and the need to build supportive structures around teachers’ work in all schools. As discussant, Professor Martin Mills, concluded the symposium by asking, “What would a school look like where people committed to social justice wanted to teach?”

Meghan Stacey is a senior lecturer in the UNSW School of Education, researching in the fields of the sociology of education and education policy and is the director of the Bachelor of Education (Secondary). Taking a particular interest in teachers, her research considers how teachers’ work is framed by policy, as well as the effects of such policy for those who work with, within and against it. She is an associate editor, The Australian Educational Researcher Links: Twitter & University Profile

Why restoring trust in teaching now could fix the teacher shortage

talking about teachers, teacher attrition, teacher recruitment, teacher workload, , , ,

Burnout is blamed for an exodus of teachers contributing to ‘a teacher shortage crisis’ in Australian schools. The teacher burnout argument offers a ‘convenient’ explanation of why teachers leave – they burn out as external pressures wear them down. Yet, framing the problem as one of teacher burnout diverts attention from ‘the moral crisis’ with which our teaching workforce has been grappling for years. 

The moral crisis is rooted in despair when teachers face persistent and chronic challenges to the values that animate their work. It emerges when the ‘call to teach’ as a moral practice meets an inequitably resourced education system that prioritises test-based accountability and top-down engineering of teachers’ work. 

The teacher shortage crisis 

The crisis talk has brought attention to some of the most legitimate grievances of teachers in Australia. Inadequate remuneration, unsustainable workloads, administrative burdens, and growing bureaucratic requirements have had irrefutable negative effects on teachers’ morale and their sense of career optimism. 

The teacher shortage crisis has also highlighted the importance of retaining teachers who are already in the job. This has led to a focus on improving teachers’ working conditions. At the same time, front-end-focused measures are introduced to address teacher supply issues. These policy solutions, including the recent Labor’s Plan to Fix Teacher Shortages, are aimed at making teaching a more attractive career option.

While these measures deal with elements of what has contributed a teacher shortage crisis, they remain largely oblivious to a less visible moral crisis that has haunted the teaching profession, a crisis rooted in tensions between the view of teaching as a caring practice driven by a sense of calling and education policies, school practices and working conditions that sit in tension with the call to service. 

A spectre is haunting teaching — the spectre of a moral crisis

A burnout explanation of why teachers leave the profession would lead to solutions that aim, at least in principle, to alleviate what burdens teachers, and burns them out. The New South Wales’ plan to support high-quality lesson planning is an example of such solutions. Universal access to centralised learning materials is offered to “free up lesson planning time each week” (Premier Dominic Perrottet). 

From a teacher burnout perspective, this policy response is adequate as it alleviates ‘the burden’ of lesson planning. This is, however, a problematic proposition. Many teachers view creating engaging lesson plans as part of their core work, something that provides them with the ownership of their practice.

A moral crisis explanation provides an alternative explanation of what wears teachers down and paves the way for their exit decision from teaching. Teachers may leave not because they burn out and have nothing more to offer; they leave because their call to service is consistently challenged by the realities of an inequitably resourced school system that pursues top-down engineering of their work. 

Viewed as such, teachers’ exit decisions can be interpreted as an ultimate act of dissent; it is a refusal to bear witness to and endure dehumanising conditions that undermine their professional autonomy, compromise their wellbeing and overlook what they cherish most in their work: making a positive difference in the lives of children and young people through the actual practices of teaching and learning. 

To exit, therefore, may not be a symptom of burning out. It can be an exercise of agency and a rejection of the top-down recipes that ignore the moral core that orients teachers’ practices.

Addressing the moral crisis

Addressing the moral crisis requires attending to what has eroded the fabric of education as a public good. This includes the school choice model and funding inequities that have created a two-tiered education system in which the least-resourced Australian schools cater for the most under-served students and their communities. Many of these schools have unsustainable working conditions that require teachers to forego their own wellbeing to do their job well. It should, therefore, not come as a surprise that the least advantaged schools in Australia are six times more likely to report teacher shortage problems compared to more affluent schools.

Attending to the moral core in teaching also requires a return to a view of education as a domain of possibility, agency and growth. It needs doing away with policies that prioritise compliance with centralised systems of monitoring tied to narrow test-based accountabilities. These practices have been shown to adversely impact on teacher morale and student wellbeing. We need to put the trust back in our teachers and their professional judgements. To do this, an audacious reform project is needed to rekindle an old flame amidst the ferocious onslaught of forces that codify teaching in purely managerial and technical terms.

Revisiting the teacher shortage crisis through a moral lens is more than reframing an existing problem in new terms. It requires us to attend to the values that sustain teaching as a caring form of practice. The moral argument disrupts the narrative that equates exit to a deficit in resilience and adaptability. Instead, it brings the focus back on teachers duty of care (for self and the other), and their agency to say ‘no’ to the conditions that dampen their morale, compromise their wellbeing and stall their care work. 

Babak Dadvand is a senior lecturer in Pedagogy, Professional Practice and Teacher Education at La Trobe School of Education. Babak’s research is in areas of teaching and teacher education with a focus on issues of equity, diversity and inclusion in relation to teachers’ work and student experiences. Babak’s current research is focused on the challenges that teachers face and the types of support that they need stay in the profession, especially in the more challenging working conditions of schools that serve communities that are socially-historically marginalised. Twitter: @DadvandBabak

How to get career change teachers to stick

career change teachers, initial teacher education, Quality Initial Teacher Education (QITE) review, , , , , , ,

The Federal Government review of Initial Teacher Education has reinvigorated debates about attracting high-quality candidates into the teaching profession and preparing them to be effective teachers. 

In response, the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review 2021 Discussion Paper has highlighted several issues, including ways to attract high-performing mid-career professionals into the teaching profession to increase teacher supply.

Workforce planning for schools: Putting the cart before the horse

The review of Initial Teacher Education provides an opportunity to rethink schools’ current workforce planning strategy. It has, among other things, brought attention to how we can better capitalise on the contributions that diverse, passionate and qualified individuals with different career backgrounds can make to the teaching profession.

Yet, workforce planning for schools in Australia has traditionally relied on short-term, inconsistent and at times one-off initiatives to staff schools, especially those that suffer from teacher shortage problems. Recruitment bonuses, incentives and special entry pathways into teaching have been central to government strategies. This reactive approach has prioritised teacher recruitment to teacher retention.

A more comprehensive workforce planning strategy needs evidence-informed decision-making to recruit and prepare and retain qualified career change teachers. 

Career changers in the teaching profession

While career change teachers have always been part of the Australian education landscape, we know little about them, the challenges they face, and the support they need in their career transition into the teaching profession, as we outlined in an earlier article. We’ve done a new study including interviews with 17 career change teachers to uncover the motivations and challenges facing these career changers. 

What do we know about career-change teachers?

I got made redundant, which was the catalyst for a career change from my previous role. I could have probably quite easily gone and gotten a job in my same career somewhere else, but I just decided to use it as an opportunity to make a more significant change. One of the reasons that I wanted to go into teaching was because I wanted to work in a field that was more connected to the community rather than in a corporate environment.

Career change teachers make unique contributions to the profession by bringing practical experience and specific skills. Based on their previous experience, connecting abstract knowledge to real-life applications is natural for career change teachers.  This can make learning more engaging and meaningful for students. They also come equipped with interpersonal and organisation skills from their previous careers. 

Our study found that many career-change teachers are driven by a sense of ‘calling’ and a desire to make a difference in the lives of young people. 

I was doing chartered accounting and then banking for about the last 12 years. That was my sort of pathway for a bit and I was increasingly finding it not very fulfilling. I was very busy and stressed and all those sort of things, but not feeling like I was actually contributing to a community and people as much as I wanted to. 

Supporting career change teachers in their transition

A common thread in our participants’ responses was the challenges they faced in their transition, which affected their morale and job satisfaction. 

Challenges included: 

  • Adjustment to professional identity as teachers
  • Transfer of skills from the previous occupation to teaching
  • Establishing collegial relationships in the new workplace
  • Maintaining work-life balance
  • Meeting financial commitments
  • Developing self-efficacy and professional confidence in the new career
  • A mismatch between expectation about and reality of teaching 

The support provided by initial teacher education programs is integral to a positive transition to teaching and long-term teacher retention. In their adjustment from their previous career to studying and teaching, the support provided by university-based mentors, familiar with the needs of career change teachers, is the first step in this direction and vital in bridging the gap between study and teaching. 

The university provides us with what they call a clinical specialist so someone who is an experienced teacher, sometimes an academic, sometimes someone who’s been in more senior roles in schools. […] I had a very good clinical specialist. She had a lot of experience working in schools such as mine, where sometimes the behaviour can be really challenging […] I think in my first year that was really important because the behaviour was quite challenging and it took me quite a while to figure out how to teach in that environment. 

School-based mentors can offer specific advice about teaching, curriculum, the school context, expectations and practices.  

I have a mentor at school who I meet every week for a period. She has been very helpful and I go to her for advice even outside our scheduled meeting time. The school also provides support for new staff and they organise meetings to coincide with important events such as report writing and parent teacher interviews to ensure that we know what to expect and to provide any help. The school also has a teacher who provides support to new staff so I can always contact her if I require any help with anything. 

Retaining Career Change Teachers

Understanding the challenges that career change teachers face in their transition and the support they need is the first step in ensuring our schools are staffed with the most qualified teachers. Tailored, adequate and ongoing support is essential in preparing and retaining the most passionate career change teachers. It helps reduce investment loss due to the revolving door of teacher recruitment and teacher attrition.

While career change teachers can be drawn to the profession as a part of a larger solution to teacher shortage problems, these problems are likely to persist if education systems fail to address systemic issues that impact teachers’ sustainability within the profession, including issues relating to relatively low pay, insecure employment, heavy workloads, inadequate ongoing support and ever-increasing administrative duties in teaching.

From left to right: Babak Dadvand is a senior lecturer at the School of Education, La Trobe University. Babak’s research is in areas of teaching and teacher education with a focus on issues of equity, diversity and inclusion in relation to teachers’ work and student experiences. As a teacher educator, Babak has worked with multiple cohorts of pre-service teachers, including those who enter the teaching profession through employment-based pathways into teaching. Babak’s current body of research is focused on the challenges that pre-service and in-service teachers face and the types of support that they need in their transitions into the profession, especially within the more challenging working conditions of schools that serve communities that are socially-historically marginalised. This Industry Report is informed by and builds upon Babak’s recent research and teaching work. Merryn Dawborn-Gundlach is a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne. She is a subject coordinator and lecturer in the Master of Teaching (Secondary) and Master of Education (International Baccalaureate) courses at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Merryn is active in developing initial teacher education in Victoria, as coordinator of the Master of Teaching (Secondary) Internship course, a position which supports change of career teachers as interns in schools. Merryn’s research interests focus on transition and retention of early career teachers, developing scientific reasoning competencies of pre-service science teachers, investigating the supports required by change of career teachers and supporting out of field Physics teachers in Victoria. Jan van Driel is a Professor of Science Education and co-leader of the Mathematics, Science & Technology Education Group in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE) at the University of Melbourne. His research interests include science teacher knowledge, teacher education and professional learning. He has supervised 25 doctoral students to successful completion. He has served on the boards of associations for educational research in the Netherlands and the USA. Currently, he is co-editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Science Education anda member of the Education Committee of Council of the Australian Academy of Science and the executive board of the Australasian Science Education Research Association (ASERA). In 2018, he was identified as national field leader in Education by The Australian. In 2021, he received the MGSE Research Excellence Award. Chris Speldewinde is a Research Fellow and Sessional Academic currently undertaking a doctorate at Deakin University that examines STEM teaching and learning in Australian bush kindergartens. Chris has several academic and practitioner publications regarding bush kindergartens. Chris works on projects involving with multi-university research teams investigating issues in early childhood, primary and secondary school education. He also has interests in the implications of teacher education; teaching out of field; policy and governance in education; and early childhood and primary school education.