Debra Hayes

Top of the pops: AARE’s Hottest Ten 2022

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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

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

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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 teaching workforce was ageing a long time ago and we knew we would reach a point where we would have so many teachers retiring that we would need to increase the number entering to make up the gap. 

Too many pundits are blaming the stress of the pandemic – but this is not the consequence of COVID. It is a failure of workforce planning by successive governments and now we all have to take some responsibility for – and find new ways – of working together to address the problem.

First, let me say that the ministers, both Federal and State, must urgently address the disparity between state schools and private schools in the recruitment process.

As head of the University of Sydney School of Education and Social Work, I observe closely what happens to students in their final year who are able to apply for Conditional accreditation, and to teach up to a recommended 0.6 of a full time teacher’s load. Some of my colleagues have wisely pointed out the risks of mixing work and study, and the potential to hasten burnout.  

The final year, with its long placement (internship), and opportunities for well-managed Conditional accreditation, is also a great opportunity for schools to assess a student teacher’s capacity and whether they are likely to fit within the school culture. 

Independent schools use this as a kind of probation period, and some provide scholarships to students in the final year of their teaching degrees AND, if they work out well,  guarantee them permanent, secure jobs. That’s not something public school principals are able to do. I hear from so many public school principals who say they would love to be able to offer similar incentives.

Instead, the majority of young students eager to stay in the public system have to work years as casuals before they can get a permanent secure job. We have outstanding student teachers who are committed to the public system but the public system is not committed to them.

Why is the public system so hamstrung? Our students, not just at Sydney University but across the nation, should be snapped up and looked after, instead of being abandoned to such a casual approach.

We need to value the contributions of those who have committed to a career in education. Instead, there is a chorus of critics. The immediate previous federal minister for education Stuart Robert attacked public school teachers as duds without a shred of evidence. While it is pleasing to note that the new minister has a vastly different approach, the general attitude of politicans and pundits is poor. As my colleague Nicole Mockler has written elsewhere, there is a lot of focus on “teacher quality” but none on system quality. Poor performance is blamed on “teachers themselves, rather than to the system in which they practise”.

As Mockler says: “It has been used to justify tighter controls on who enters teaching, denigrate teachers and evade difficult questions of equity and funding.”

For a moment, at the height of lockdown, I thought that changed. The work of teachers was valued, particularly by parents trying to teach their children at home. Suddenly everyone understood how hard it was to teach just one or two children. Imagine 30 in a classroom at once.

But that momentary shift in attitude appears to have disappeared and there has been a return to denigrating the profession, those who enter teaching, and those who teach teachers. This has an influence on recruitment and an impact on young people’s choices. Why would you join a profession that is so lacking in value and respect. 

We also need to do a much better job looking after and retaining the teachers we have. Almost two-thirds (59%) of teachers surveyed from New South Wales, the Northern Territory and South Australia indicated that they either intended to leave the profession before they retire, or were unsure if they would stay until retirement. If we think the problem is bad now, imagine what it will be like if those teachers do leave.

Public education must be made more attractive to our graduates but also to the teachers who are already in our public schools. It is difficult to maintain a steady flow into the public school system for the reasons I’ve outlined above – but even teachers early in their careers are deterred by the lack of security and flexibility. The incentives to work in regional, rural or remote areas are not enough to attract and keep teachers. Many of our graduates want to make a difference but they also need to be able to look after themselves and their families. Without any prospect of a permanent position, other systems and occupations become too attractive, especially when they offer higher starting and award rates, and more opportunities for earlier progression to higher rates of pay. This is especially so in the current tight labour market.

This is what poor workforce planning looks like.

It is not the time to shake up initial teacher education because it is not the problem causing a shortage in teachers, and we must not risk undermining the quality of these programs or of the graduates they produce.

We can have confidence in initial teacher education in this country. It is in very good shape. There is too much focus on the intake into teacher education. The fact is that, in NSW for example, school leavers wanting to enter an education degree must have three band fives in their HSC (including English) or equivalent – and those who don’t must do well in the first year of university studies before they are admitted. 

We can also have confidence in the quality of our graduates because of the standards they have to meet to become accredited. But what we must do is mentor our new graduates. Give them additional time for preparation, to continue to learn the craft of teaching. Don’t just throw them into the deep end and expect them to swim, because the job of teaching is complex and difficult and without proper support they are likely to not thrive, and may not survive.

It is great that new federal education minister, Jason Clare, has called a meeting of his state counterparts and other key stakeholders because to solve the teacher shortage, we must all  work together and be solution-focussed. The Labor Party has committed to new ‘universities accord’. What better challenge to meet first through this collaborative approach than bringing all stakeholders together to fix the teaching workforce crisis?  

This can’t just be another opportunity to continue unhelpful criticism of teachers or of young people who choose to be teachers or of initial teacher education. We must stop criticising people who are committed to teaching.

But there is something which can be done immediately in schools to help address the crisis. We can employ many more paraprofessionals, who can undertake the tasks that teachers currently do that don’t require a teaching qualification. Relieving teachers of these time-consuming administrative tasks is likely to assist in retaining our existing teachers.

There is also something that can be done in funding arrangements. State health systems receive large amounts of Commonwealth funding for teaching, training and research activities which occur in public hospital services. NSW alone gets $750m this year and the Commonwealth hands over $2billion nationally for it. This funding is provided to state health systems in recognition of the critical importance of education, training and research to the ongoing quality and sustainability of our health system nationally. This kind of funding is not available to school systems. 

Pay our teachers better. Improve their conditions. Invest in training and research in our public, catholic and independent school systems to improve quality and a pipeline of skilled graduates to renew our ageing teaching workforce. Teachers are striking because their pay and conditions are not adequate for the work they do. Entice back the teachers who have left by easing the burden of accreditation. Drop so many of the barriers we have.

The deans of education across Australian universities are wanting to work in cooperation with systems and with ministers. We are keen to do our bit by continuing to produce high quality graduates who will help to fill the teaching shortage.

The views expressed here in this blog are those of the author alone and are not made on behalf of or are intended to represent the views of the University of Sydney.

Debra Hayes is professor of education and equity, and head of the University of Sydney School of Education and Social Work.  Her most recent book (with Ruth Lupton) is Great Mistakes in Education Policy: How to avoid them in the Future (Policy Press, 2021). She tweets at @DrDebHayes.

The White Paper: old, tired and lacking evidence

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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, teachers and students can innovate and adapt to new ways of teaching and learning’. These responses were rapid, mostly impressive and sustained. The impact of inequality on learning was also laid bare. 

However, beyond this brief quote, these and other insights generated during these epoch-making times hardly rate a mention in the White Paper. The flickers of optimism in the earlier discussion paper due to improved performance on some measures have been replaced by a very gloomy picture of decline and stagnation. 

To be fair, the task of assessing whether education has become better or worse is extremely difficult at the best of times because education systems are complex, with multiple attributes, institutions and actors. They can be better in some respects and worse in others. For example, they can be better resourced but less efficient and better in terms of overall outcomes but worse in terms of inequalities between students. It also depends on your view of what education should be for and about.

The Productivity Commission’s view is squarely aligned to the economic purposes of education but even within this economic framing, tensions can exist between those who argue for systems that, variously: promote basic skills in English and mathematics and those who promote skills and attributes for networked, flexible and changing labour markets and ‘portfolio’ careers, and so on.

These disputes are not the only reason it is difficult to work out what is going on.

The volume of research in education has expanded rapidly and policy makers are faced with a cacophony of policy-relevant information. While there is widespread agreement about the importance of research and evidence in education, battles have been fought about what kind of evidence matters, and who is considered an expert. It’s sometimes difficult to get past the problem of ‘not being able to see the wood for the trees’ but I believe that it is possible to present a clear and concise view of what’s gone wrong in the past, and what needs to change.

Educational research is incredibly diverse. What’s needed is the assembly of a wide range of research evidence, qualitative and quantitative, and a balanced review and synopsis. What does not help is the misuse and over-claiming that often follows the phrase, ‘research has shown’. Although there are still many unknowns, there are issues where the evidence is clear and which can be agreed upon.

So, what research evidence does the Productivity Commission draw upon? How does it respond to its own claim: ‘if we want to turn things around, we need to keep following the best available evidence? On what basis does it assert: ‘the evidence is that school results will be most affected by teaching quality’?

The chapter in the White Paper dedicated to schooling, Best practice teaching to lift school results, contains close to 80 references including reports by policy and research institutes (about 24); government reports (about 15); commissioned research (about 9), and; reports by organisations such as the OECD (about 6). While some of these references might be considered scholarly, the most trustworthy source of research evidence is derived from peer reviewed journals and some academic books. 

Less than 27% of all references in the White Paper’s chapter on best practice teaching are peer reviewed, and about 38% of these are more than 10 years old. In addition, 19% of the total number of peer reviewed papers draw upon Australian data. To be clear, the Productivity Commission’s chapter on lifting school results in NSW includes a total of four peer reviewed papers that contain data specifically related to the Australian context. 

This collection of references sets a very low benchmark for evidence-based policy advice, and falls well short of the Productivity Commission’s stated aspiration of ‘following the best available evidence’.

Educational researchers are keen to work with policy makers who, like us, want to improve the educational outcomes of young people, respect the commitment and professionalism of teachers, and ensure that public money is well spent. We also share a commitment to evidence-based practice because the quality of decision making is most likely to improve when we make use of trustworthy evidence. 

There are some clear and practical things we could do now to support these shared aspirations.

  • Establish mechanisms for policy makers to draw on a wider range of educational expertise and knowledge. Rather than relying on ‘what works’ research and poorly curated reviews of the academic literature, governments could co-fund broad-based education research institutes, with a mandate and resources to conduct, synthesise and disseminate education research. The national evidence institute is a step in the right direction.
  • Promote teacher and expert research further up the evidence hierarchy. Initial teacher education and professional development could be recast as research-informed processes aimed at developing teachers who have the capacity to conduct research into their own practice, and to utilise educational research to inform their practice. Teachers are not just end-users of research. Research production and consumption should be part of the professional work of teachers, with sufficient time allocated to such tasks.

As we edge towards the post-pandemic epoch, we must leverage this period of rapid and unprecedented change and disruption. Let’s not waste the opportunity to build a new consensus for change and improvement in education that recognises the capacity of teachers and students to innovate, adapt and learn. We are obligated to draw upon the best available evidence to support and resource them. The NSW Government would be well advised to set aside the Productivity Commission’s White Paper, at least as it relates to schools, and start afresh to build a new, broad, and evidence-based consensus for change in education that draws upon the best available evidence.

Debra Hayes is professor of education and equity, and head of the Sydney School of Education and Social Work.  Formerly a secondary science teacher, she researches, writes and teaches about inequality in education. Material in this blog is drawn from her new book with Ruth Lupton titled Great Mistakes in Education Policy: How to avoid them in the Future (Policy Press, 2021) 

New research shows what makes a difference in teaching literacy and why ‘evidence-based’ is not enough

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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 improve, test results would improve, and Australia would be among the best in the world again.

Well we have some good news and bad news for you.

The good news is our research, a long-term study of schools in communities in Australia experiencing high-levels of disadvantage, funded by the Australian Research Council, shows that teachers are indeed now implementing the ‘evidence-based’ local literacy agreements that they have been asked to implement and that their work includes a diverse range of research-informed approaches to literacy learning.

The bad news is despite the highly professional and caring use of evidence based methods by the teachers in the four schools in our study, the literacy levels for children from the most disadvantaged families remain persistently low.

The majority of teachers in our study were implementing their schools’ well-developed literacy agreements. They were not loyal to methods of the past or inadequately trained. They adopted recommended methods of evaluation and regularly assessed their students’ progress.

We used ‘fly on the wall’ type of research, which included regular and constant visits to the classrooms of the teachers involved, to study what was happening and try to work out why it was happening. I want to share with you some of our findings.

Use of common pedagogies

Teachers used what we call common pedagogical approaches. These often took the form of tightly scripted lessons, in which teachers, operating in good faith, implemented a range of literacy programs.
The cost of such cooperation is well documented in the research literature: teachers’ pedagogical choices (choice of teaching methods) are narrowed, and their professional autonomy is weakened. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as curriculum narrowing, and in the case of literacy, ‘fickle literacies’.

We observed numerous missed opportunities for learning due to:
• too much emphasis on only the kinds of skills that can be easily tested;
• narrow views of literacy constraining the purpose of literacy teaching and learning;
• a prevalence of models of teaching that assume students need to have mastered particular basic skills, or sets of skills, before they can move on to other more demanding tasks (which is not the case for many children). These models, called normative developmental models, can be rigid, repetitive and disengaging, however highly qualified, experienced teachers were expected to adopt them because they were part of the school literacy plan or agreement.
• deficit views about the capabilities of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. These are views that lead teachers to expect less of some children and make it less likely those children will be offered more intellectually challenging literacy learning activities.

These missed opportunities were an unintended effect of teachers trying to do what they believed was expected of them.

Use of uncommon pedagogies

We also encountered a smaller number of teachers who adopted uncommon pedagogical approaches. Their practices stood out from the more common practices of their peers because they were palpably different. These teachers incorporated the requirements of their school’s literacy agreements into an already rich repertoire of teaching practice.

We observed numerous ways in which these teachers supported literacy learning by:
• recognising the knowledge and experiences that students have, and connecting these to school learning;
• actively and positively connecting classroom practice to families and communities;
• designing learning tasks that were open ended and that demanded complex thinking and language;
• providing opportunities for students to think about significant personal and social issues, such as loneliness, hope and relationships, by engaging with relevant texts.

These uncommon pedagogical approaches led to much higher levels of engagement and success by students. They built on relationships, especially with families and helped to develop trust that in turn can contribute to learning at home and at school.

The importance of a teacher’s body of work

Barbara Comber, one of Australia’s foremost literacy researchers, has argued that we do not usually think of teachers’ practices as demonstrating a body of work, perhaps because it is so ephemeral and of the moment. Instead, teachers are assumed to translate theory into practice or implement policy. However, the uncommon pedagogies of the teachers we observed illustrated complex designs, that demonstrated their intention to keep learning about how to improve their work. These rich banks of knowledge and experience could well be considered their ‘oeuvre’ or body of work, in the sense of what they create across a career.

How might we support teachers to develop their oeuvre? What might the public discourse of schooling look like if it were to be based upon a deep respect for teachers, their knowledge and their understanding of the local conditions of teaching and learning?

Peter Freebody and Allan Luke, two other highly respected Australian literacy researchers, reminded us some time ago that:

‘it is not that some literacy teaching methods work and others do not. They all work to shape and construct different literate repertoires in classrooms…What do particular combinations and blends of families of practices work to produce? In which combinations and emphases do they work with specific communities of students? For what practices, places, times, and occasions do they prepare students? And for what political and ideological configurations?’

Understanding teachers’ work is vital to improving literacy in Australia

We need to change the script that blames teachers for low literacy levels by telling them how to do their job. Our observation of uncommon pedagogies is an indication of how doing a teacher’s job can’t be simplified into a set of ‘evidence-based’ methods.

Well-intentioned efforts to improve literacy in Australia should be built upon the understanding that the work of teachers is complex, situated in particular classroom with particular children, and dependent upon a range of factors including a teacher’s own body of work, relationships with students and their families, the local context, and the availability of opportunities for sustained professional development and dialogue.

The prevalence of common pedagogies is a sign that educational policy is working, it’s just not working in ways that address the problem it is intended to solve.

 

Deb Hayes is Professor of Equity and Education at the Sydney School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. She is co-author of the book, Literacy, Leading and Learning (Routledge, 2017) with Robert Hattam, Barbara Comber, Lyn Kerkham, Ruth Lupton and Pat Thomson. Follow Deb on Twitter @DrDebHayes

How educators might work in the fake news world

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I want to share here the deep concern I have for the role of educational researchers and teachers in this burgeoning post-truth and fake news world.

Educators know that policy and practice should be informed by more than one kind of evidence. Educational research is not like medical research where if a drug is found to work it will usually keep working in that same way wherever it is used. When we find something that works in education we need to do detailed case studies, preferably conducted over time, to see its effects elsewhere with other teachers and in other classrooms. As I see it the era of post-truth that we are experiencing today risks undermining the important gains that have been made in education, in recognising and valuing knowledge from a number of different sources.

There is no disputing that fact checked journalism, admissible legal evidence and peer-reviewed scholarship must now compete for legitimacy amid multiple other forms of ‘evidence’. Knowledge is indeed powerful, even when it is based on weak evidence, or lies. This new contest over knowledge is perhaps better described by the term, post-fact politics, and the proliferation of lies as a deliberate political tool.

It is an era that holds profound consequences for all educators. We have the responsibility of educating a generation of students who are likely to be active members of online communities where post-fact politics and fake news abounds.

These new communities function like echo chambers. Most of us, teachers and parents included, are members of at least one. The views, people and news we like proliferates, while those we don’t want to hear are filtered out by our community on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat and other social media.

The issues are multiple and constantly changing as new ways of connecting online develop. How do educators engage in productive dialogue with members of these communities who are informed by post-fact ‘evidence’?

Educators are already addressing the issues in everyday-type classroom exchanges, such as a child who brings to school information found on the Internet that is untrue or misleading, or having a discussion with senior students about their concerns around the behaviour of the current United States President.

One way I see as obvious and attainable as an educator is a stronger public discussion about the values we teach, and the values we value, which are not necessarily the same thing. For example, compassion, like other important human values, although seemingly increasingly rare, has the potential to unite us in our common humanity. A drowned child washed up on a beach, another shell shocked and alone in the back of an ambulance, these seem to have been moments that cut through. They tapped a vein in a world fatigued by war, famine and poverty. Schools must be, and many already are, places where young people experience and practice such values.

Teachers have always had the opportunity to influence the lives and chances of young people. But I believe the values we teach in the post-fact world are more important than ever.

Those concerned with education, and a fair and equitable schooling system need to lead the way. Our diversity as scholars, policy makers and practitioners is our strength, not a weakness. We should be helping each other confront the issues by guarding against lies without forfeiting our ability to contest claims to truth.

Politicians should trust teachers to work together at the local level with parents to understand and address the needs of young people and provide resources to support local decision and collaboration.

Instead of admonishing each other for weak practice and evidence, educators need to recognise that the complex educational problems we face can’t be solved by a simplistic view of knowledge or science, or by political quick fixes.

 

Debra Hayes PhD is an Associate Professor in the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Her research investigates the unintended detrimental effects of schooling in contexts where there are high levels of poverty and difference. Her forthcoming co-authored book is titled: Literacy, Leading and Learning: Beyond Pedagogies of Poverty (Routledge)

 

If you want to read more:

Hayes, D. & Doherty, C. (2017) Valuing epistemic diversity in educational research: an agenda for improving research impact and initial teacher education, Australian Educational Researcher 44(2):123-139. doi:10.1007/s13384-016-0224-5

Latour, B. (2004) Why has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern, Critical Inquiry 30: 225-248 (Winter)