Lamenting our chronically fragmented and underperforming education system, former teachers Dr Deidre Clary, Dr Kevin Donnelly and Dr Fiona Mueller have mounted a case for why ITE should not be left in the hands of universities.

Their new policy paper calls for a ‘serious review about what has gone wrong’ in Australian schooling, and puts forward seven recommendations to address what they deem to be a failing system, one they say has left generations of school leavers 'academic and cultural orphans’, essentially ill-equipped for work, further study, or citizenship.

Overhaul initial teacher education

Major ITE reform is one. 

“It’s not [the job of universities] – they’ve decided it’s not their job. They have another agenda,” Mueller tells EducationHQ.

“And the reality is, teachers are saying they’re not prepared for the classroom when they graduate. That tells me, without a doubt, that the academics are not doing their job. 

“There’s too much theory, way too little [practical focus], way too little real-world, real-classroom activity...”

Mueller and Clary maintain their call is based on sound, common-sense logic.

One only has to look at the sector’s ‘long history of adopting experimental methodologies’ to see the role influential academics have played in the widespread adoption of fads and ideologically-swayed learning ‘innovations’ – misguided ‘silver bullets’ that have been unfairly thrust on the teaching workforce, the researchers contend.

They point to constructivist approaches such as student-centred teaching and inquiry-based learning, in addition to other innovations such as outcomes-based education, open plan classrooms, whole language, multiliteracies, critical literacy and pedagogy, genre theory, balanced literacy and interdisciplinarity.

A case of ideological bias

ITE in Australia has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, with commentators and researchers declaring a constructivist ‘ideological bias’ amongst academics has left graduate teachers without a solid grounding in evidence-based teaching approaches that are aligned with the science of learning. 

Some more controversial analysis has gone so far as to claim that our universities are indoctrinating preservice teachers with ‘woke’ ideologies at the expense of teaching core literacy and numeracy skills. 

Others have advocated for a ‘sustained shake-up’ of the sector to ‘undo decades of neglect’, with Australia said to be a decade behind comparable countries in efforts to improve ITE and bring teachers’ practice up to speed. 

Clary says for years Australian education has lurched from one ‘next best thing’ to the next, with no ‘forensic investigation’ into why and how these flawed methodologies were allowed to take root in our reform agenda in the first place.

The former deputy principal believes ITE run by university academics is really at the crux of the problem.

“I started teaching in the ’70s, and I’ve noticed over a period of five decades how Australia has been always fixated on the next best thing.

“I look at [the whole language movement] when I was working in universities, and how that was picked up and we ran with that in Australia. 

“We didn’t have an evidence base that had Australian context, we borrowed that from the United States … a forensic investigation has never been done about why that was introduced, who introduced it.

“Outcomes-based education is another thing that I was involved in. That came in, well, it went out within five years,” Clary says.

The current focus on explicit teaching/evidence-based instruction is a welcome shift, the two say, but it does beg an ovbious yet overlooked question: how could we have strayed so far from best practice in the first place?

“Explicit teaching is actually good, but as Fiona and I have said before, we’re just re-badging. We’ve had it before, it worked, then we threw it out. Now it’s coming back in, but it’s like a re-banding or a re-badging,” Clary asserts.

“So how do we fix that? Part of the problem, I think, is teacher education. Actually, it’s the whole problem, to be honest.”

Teaching not a specialty 

The priorities of education academics are clear, they argue.

Under pressure to publish original research – a requirement of their employment and a critical factor in the all-important university rankings – academics’ expertise and area of interest might have little to do with their teaching role within ITE programs.

As Clary points out, there is also no legislated requirement that they conduct objective and intellectually rigorous research that directly supports teachers’ classroom practice and key aspects of school education.

“With education, I found that very little of the research sometimes is actually helping our cause here in Australia – and my area is literacy,” she says.

“…And if it was, it was for a minority, not the majority. 

“And can I say, it takes a long time when you’re working on papers, so there’s very little time for teaching…”

Some instuitions, Clary flags, even involve ITE students in conducting their research.

“It’s not just the lecturers or the professors … [the research could even be based on] what’s happening in the teacher training institutions themselves – that could be ‘evidence’ itself.”

The researchers flag the varying levels of enthusiasm within the ITE sector to recent policy shifts, also noting the Strong Beginnings: Report of the Teacher Education Expert Panel review finding that there is currently no systematic approach or program of research designed to inform improvements to ITE programs.

Follow Singapore’s model 

Australia needs to establish new national teacher training institutions that come with “high entry standards, focused on practical, evidence-based teaching skills, rigorous research, and ongoing professional support”, their paper proposes.

This is aligned with the Singaporean teacher training model which works “magnificently well”, Mueller says.

“The proportion of ... useful study and experience to the total amount of time spent in a four-year degree at university is just not constructive or productive. So that’s why I say [universities are] not doing the job.

“They’ve got other interests, they’ve got other agendas, so it’s time we just take it away from them and put that responsibility on a dedicated institution, as they do in Singapore…” she adds.

Without bold reform that includes greater national consistency in teaching, learning and assessment, Australia faces continued academic decline, growing inequality, and diminished economic and civic resilience, the researchers warn. 

“The time for cosmetic change is over – systemic change is urgently needed,” they conclude.