NSW school leader Rebecca Birch and Victorian school leader Dr Greg Ashman suggest they were compelled to act given the recent influx of negative articles targeting the organisation – articles largely written by education academics.

The off-the-mark criticism cast at AERO has seemingly been timed to align with an independent review that is now underway, the authors note.

Birch says she and Ashman wanted to give other educators a platform to have a say in the unfolding debate.

“Greg and I wanted to kind of be a voice of the teachers who actually find [AERO] helpful, and use our platforms to make sure that their views were heard, because there’s a lot of noise around AERO – and a lot of it is actually quite distracting because it doesn’t really relate to the work that they are mandated to do.”

Academics have argued that AERO risks de-professionalising teachers, questioned its independence from private and commercial interests, and suggested the version of evidence-based practice it promotes “reduces evidence to prescription, positioning teachers as technicians”.

“The evidence and resources presented by AERO appear to position teachers as incapable of understanding and interpreting research, then making professional judgments based on their students and the school content,” Professor Linda Graham, from Queensland University of Technology, writes in an AARE blog post.

But Birch says these key lines of inquiry are completely disconnected from the teaching profession.

“[That’s] the thing that stands out the most.

“If you say on the one hand ‘teachers need autonomy’, but also in the same sentence that we can’t think for ourselves and be discerning, I think that shows a real disconnect with the people who make up the profession and the kinds of thoughtful, reflective practitioners they are.”

Behind the published criticisms are deeper concerns around shifting power structures, Birch suggests.

“I think some universities are unhappy that those power structures are not universities.

“Someone’s going to have power, and I don’t know if [unis are] ever going to want to relinquish their power.

“It’s (the sentiment that), ‘we’d like for teachers to have autonomy, but not that kind of autonomy. We’d like them to still think of us as the dominant [source of] information’.”

In their open letter, Birch and Ashman contend that AERO performs a critical function that initial teacher education has not historically met.

“They don’t put in necessarily the work to translate their research into things teachers can use,” Birch explains.

“It’s not an impossible job. What we’ve got is, I don’t know, 50 years of researchers doing research, putting it out there, kind of waiting for it to have an impact just on the basis of authority of the university – but it’s not enough for busy teachers to go through and discern what is relevant, what is valuable, and how does it actually impact their practice.”

This is precisely where AERO steps in, she says.

“I think that AERO is doing that service of doing that hard work and filtering it in a very neutral way.

“And they’re giving advice on what are the ‘best bets’.

“So, they’re not saying ‘teach like this’, they’re saying, ‘the research is pointing in a certain direction, and this is the direction that it’s pointing’.

Birch’s own school has partnered with AERO to implement a school-wide approach to writing instruction. She says the idea that AERO can wield control over teachers’ practice is “a bit far-fetched”.  

“They give you the learning, it’s up to you to implement it.

“…I think that it’s actually very hard to get behavioural change in an organisation and from individuals.

“So, this idea that [AERO] would impose a view and that teachers would blindly adopt it doesn’t really reflect how schools work or how individuals work.

“It’s not human nature to just blindly accept authority and make big, habitual behavioural changes and sustain them…”

School leaders, teachers, education experts, and international education heavyweights, including Dr Anita Archer, Dr Carl Hendrick, Paul A Kirschner and Tom Bennett have signed the letter. 

Birch says the numbers are sitting around what she had anticipated.

“You never know how many people are going to give up three minutes to actually do it.

“I think that a lot of teachers don’t have time to be advocates within their profession, they can take small actions, but they don’t necessarily have the time to take those bigger actions.

“And so Greg and I are in a really good position to put something together to make it really easy for them to just say, ‘this is my sentiment as well’.

Birch says the letter has prompted policymakers and others in the public eye to send through private messages of support.

Aware that public school teachers are constrained by what they can and can’t say in the public realm, signatories’ school names are deliberately not noted, she adds.

“That’s a good thing. It doesn’t mean that no one can be identified, but I think it could be helpful that they might feel less exposed by signing a letter than they would say to write a blog post or something like that.

“I think people have different levels of fear or concern around that. And I do know that some teachers have been able to speak publicly because they’re doing great work, for example, for the media people at the Department of Education, they do approve certain things.

“But I think there might be a general level of fear or anxiety around being out there and having a name out there…”

Birch and Ashman say it is regrettable that education academia has “evolved as an ecosystem in which delivering good outcomes for children in classrooms is a somewhat distant concern”.

They argue AERO is under attack because it poses a threat to this. 

Birch says she hopes the KPMG review sticks closely to AERO’s mandate. 

“There’s a lot of other arguments to be made about structural issues. I don’t think the review is the platform to start making those.

“I don’t think putting AERO at the center of [that] is helpful.”