'Loud and clear': major review finds ITE underprepares teachers for the classroom

By Sarah Duggan
Published February 24, 2022

Initial teacher education (ITE) providers should be required to publicly report the proportion of their academic staff who have recent teaching experience and have their performance tied to funding, a major federal review has proposed.

Released today, the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review’s final report outlines 17 recommendations that an expert panel say would attract more ‘highly suitable’ people to teaching and improve the quality of their preparation and entry into the profession.

The panel heard from 3000 people ‘interested’ in ITE to inform the recommendations.

Chaired by Lisa Paul AO PSM, former Secretary of the Department of Education, the panel received a ‘loud and clear’ message from teachers that many felt their ITE training failed to adequately prepare them for the practical aspects of the job.

Teachers felt underprepared in areas including phonemic awareness and phonics in reading instruction, classroom management, cultural responsiveness, supporting diverse learners and students with a disability, working with families and carers and teaching in regional settings, the review found.

“One way to ensure ITE students are classroom ready is to strengthen the link between practice and theory. If higher education providers prioritise recent practical experience for academic staff in ITE programs, there is an assurance that these programs will be guided by the most up-to-date teaching practices,” the report states.

Malcolm Elliott, president of the Australian Primary Principals Association and a member of the review panel, told EducationHQ that there was a “strong theme” in the findings around the need for stronger links between ITE and the teaching workforce.

“When we speak to school principals in particular, but experienced teachers more generally, one of the things that they say over and over again is that they just wish they had an opportunity to work more closely with the ITE candidates … and similarly feedback from the ITE graduates, who say 'Gee, if only I’d known a bit more about this, for example’...”

EducationHQ recently investigated the criticism cast at ITE providers. Current research and a building number of anecdotal accounts have suggested university staff hold an ideological bias towards inquiry-based learning approaches – a bias that critics argue diverts students away from evidence-based practices.

Greg Ashman, head of research at Ballarat Clarendon College in Victoria, told EducationHQ before the report was released that ITE currently focuses too little on the practical concerns of teaching.

“…Those who work in ITE typically do not currently teach. There are even some teacher trainers in Australia who have never taught. This leaves them vulnerable to ‘luxury beliefs’ – ideas that enhance their status with others who work in ITE but that are impractical to implement or hopelessly idealistic.”

He said many ITE practitioners pursue teaching approaches and research that are often deemed to be ‘superior’ from an ideological perspective.

“The basic problem is that the incentives of those who work in ITE are not aligned with the goal of ensuring graduate teachers are as effective as possible.

“In fact, many who work in ITE would be dismissive of the evidence about which teaching approaches are more effective than others, claiming that education is far too complicated to come to such reductive conclusions and labelling anyone attempting to do so as a ‘positivist’ – which makes you wonder what they think they are doing.”

Glenn Fahey, research fellow at libertarian think tank The Centre for Independent Studies, said he also saw an “ideological bias” among ITE staff.

“What we know is that by and large, education academics do weigh more heavily around the constructivist-inspired ideas…

“Academics have (now) got that driver’s seat in the teacher training experience. That’s why we’re seeing more of that constructivist and less of that instructivist approach coming through.”

The report said ITE providers should have clear funding incentives to offer evidence-based and ‘practical training’ to students.

“Performance by higher education providers should be made transparent amongst providers and then made public. Then, funding for ITE should be based on performance. Funding could also be tendered to higher education providers that meet quality criteria,” the report notes.

Funding incentives should also be handed to teacher employers – including school systems and schools – who uphold best practice, particularly with evidence-based approaches in reading instruction, the report said.

The panel also made a number of recommendations to better attract high quality and diverse candidates into teaching.

They found that if given the ‘right’ incentives, more high-achieving school graduates and mid-career professionals would consider taking up the profession.

Incentives include better pay, more recognition of prior learning in teacher training, and ‘innovative’ employment pathways into teaching, all of which should be looked into as a matter of urgency, the report urged.

“It was made crystal clear to the expert panel that a significant barrier to well-qualified mid-career professionals taking up teaching is the loss of earnings whilst studying teaching,” it noted.

“I’ve personally met a lot of people who have started teacher education in their mid-40s. And then gone on to 15 to 20-year careers in education, finishing off in their mid-60s, and have been just fantastic about it,” Elliott said.

The review suggested that for highly qualified candidates with strong subject knowledge, the Graduate Diploma might be enough preparation to teach in secondary schools.

“Teachers should be able to focus on teaching. The profession will be more attractive to new candidates if the burden of red tape is removed from teachers’ workloads…” the report added.

Professor Viv Ellis, Dean of the Faculty of Education at Monash University, said there was room for improvement in the report’s analysis.

“Unfortunately the report falls short when it comes to efforts to improve initial teacher education in schools.

"School placements – especially longer ones – provide the most powerful practical learning opportunities for student teachers. More attention must be paid to what happens in schools with ITE students.

"Any serious national effort to improve initial teacher education should address how schools can better influence how new teachers learn to teach,” Ellis said.

Elliott said he was hopeful for the future of the country's ITE.

“[This report is] a really, really fantastic step towards reinvigorating, acknowledging, building on continuously improving teacher education in Australia, and I think we've got some really exciting times ahead.

“A lot of work has been done, and there's more work to be done. I think initial teacher education really is on a good footing. But nevertheless, there's a lot of stuff that we can address.

“And obviously with 17 recommendations in the paper, there’s a bit to do, but it's exciting – really exciting.”

(Source: Education HQ.com)