top students dont want to teach because teaching does not earn top dollars. The problem with governments paying teachers more is that you would then mainly be paying the existing stock of teachers more, and those teachers were self-selected as being willing to teach for the current rates……
I never had any intention of being a teacher, but 10 years ago a bloke rang me up, asked if I would be interested in having a lash at the caper, so I said ok. Glad I did. I enjoy it.
But there are very successful initiatives seeking to tap into young people’s natural altruism – well some young people’s natural altruism – to get great people into teaching – at least for a while. Like Teach for America – and hopefully teach for Australia.
Paul Frijters
13 years ago
nick,
sure, there can be all kinds of schemes to bypass the current stock of teachers that might work in the short-term. I am merely stating the fundamental barriers that now exists in most Western countries. And the barriers are growing. Just think of what happened in the last recession: teacher pay got frozen throughout much of Europe and the US. Dont bet on that gap being closed when the economy picks up.
Yes, fair point. Good old Govt – mucking things up with its (short term) monopsony power.
conrad
13 years ago
“But there are very successful initiatives seeking to tap into young people’s natural altruism – well some young people’s natural altruism – to get great people into teaching – at least for a while. Like Teach for America – and hopefully teach for Australia.”
If you look at the data on TFA programs, I think you’ll find it quite mixed — indeed some studies show negative effects of TFA, and this doesn’t even include the cost of running them and the opportunity cost for schools of having a high staff turnover. Most of these things seem conveniently ignored when looking at the data. So the problem isn’t tapping into people’s natural altruism for a year or two — at least with respect to TFA style programs, this is basically a waste of time no matter how good it sounds, it’s getting people to stick around for the longer hall or, for that matter, targeting all of the factors that don’t include the word “teacher” that never seem to get the attention they deserve, like managers, parents, the interaction between ability and SES, etc.
Victor Trumper
13 years ago
Tony only enjoys it because he can talk cricket every day.
That must boost the grades in mathematics
suvvdy
13 years ago
It’s common knowledge. Those who can – DO. Those who can’t – TEACH. It’s not rocket science.
Seriously, how many teachers have “lived” in the real world?
Victor Trumper
13 years ago
A splendid example of Tony and others talking about the magnificent game is here.
My wife is a teacher and your saying isn’t common knowedge at all
Patrick
13 years ago
I think that the biggest flaws with the current model of teaching are:
– that teachers have unions; and
– that teachers are employed, either directly or indirectly, by the government.
Surprise!
Seriously, though: Unions contribute a lot. Above all they contribute absolutely farcical barriers to entry, most notably the dip ed. Does anyone imagine that we could do any real harm letting an experienced physicist/engineer/mathematician tackle a class with no more than a two-week ‘handling kids 101’? Seriously? Even if s/he leaves after a year, are the kids and his/her colleagues seriously likely to be worse off? This applies perhaps several-fold in languages.
In addition, unions contribute lock-step pay based on seniority. Personally I suspect that the experienced mathematics professional would probably be a better teacher than many far more experienced maths teachers. I would be happy for them to be offered an incentive to teach (even part-time!). Under the current system that is impossible.
Secondly, the government imposes lots of rules on things like curricula, class sizes, etc. These rules are all absolutely well-intentioned (when are laws not?). They are often not well-researched (ie class sizes, I am pretty sure that the limits currently set are well above the threshold for making a difference anyway). Most of all they are often not demonstrably worth the cost (in terms of less flexibility) they necessarily impose. This reduced flexibility surely also reduces the attractiveness of teaching.
In addition to that point the government subsidises state education. Of course, when you subsidise something you get … that’s right, more of it. Here people will jump left right and centre to explain to me how the government actually subsidises private schools. I excuse your ignorance in advance, it is extremely hard to get any real figures on this and the press (most egregiously Fairfax but also for some reason Murdoch) consistently represents that the government subsidises private schools. It is much more likely that private-school parents are in fact subsidising State schools, even before you count the capital cost of those schools.
Notice how Teach for America is primarily about how to get around the first two problems which are union problems. It is rather sad that so much ingenuity is required to get around a union.
Couldn’t agree more Patrick – I’ve railed against the credentialism you despair of here and even got a recommendation up in the 2008 Innovation Review (rtf).
Recommendation 5.3: Establish a program to encourage and support professional bodies (working with educational institutions and State and Territory Governments as appropriate) to provide accelerated pathways to facilitate enriching professional transitions so as to make Australia a world leader in this area.
• The Advocate for Government Innovation (see Chapters 10 and 12) should develop priorities with the aim of developing some breakthroughs within eighteen months;
• An early priority should be further building pathways for key professions in which there are skill shortages. One such initiative would facilitate the entry of science and mathematics graduates into teaching; and
The Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations should make a statement on progress on this agenda within eighteen months.
You’d think that the Office of Best Practice Regulation would be beavering away behind the scenes on this. Perhaps they are, but if so it’s certainly well behind the scenes. But because it’s not come up in any ministerial speeches, because it just makes obvious sense, but hasn’t been landed in the in-tray by any high-profile identification of it as an issue, it just sits there.
Patrick
13 years ago
What is an enriching professional transition?
That recommendation reads rather like something you were tearing to shreds just last week (or so) on this site.. :)
But seriously, you’ve got to get it down into a recommendation. What word would you choose rather than ‘enriching’? Perhaps it could have been left out, as the word ‘accelerated’ does most of the work, but the idea was to convey the sense that was mainly born in the examples in the text which I think makes the intent clear enough.
With necessity being the mother of invention, programs like the New York City Teaching Fellowship program were developed to respond to a drastic teacher shortage with accelerated transitional teacher training for the city’s professionals. Similar schemes involving accelerated transitions to teaching have been developed elsewhere in the US and England. Victoria’s Minister for Education also spoke recently of Victoria’s interest in a similar scheme.
But the idea of facilitating enriching professional transitions can be taken much further. For instance a science graduate might undertake say an eighteen or twenty four month graduate qualification in intellectual property law and undertake appropriate professional practice or ‘articles’ in an intellectual property law practice in order to qualify to practice as an intellectual property lawyer. A social worker might transition into family law or landlord and tenant law in a similar way.
Despite its shorter time-span, such a course could provide substantially better exposure than existing pathways to the issues dominating professional practice in the area chosen.
Of course if such specialist practitioners wished to practice in other areas in the future, further qualification and professional experience may be appropriate.
There are currently many obstacles to building such pathways. Even with the best will in the world, a professional body will consist of people who have qualified according to the ‘old’ way of doing things and who are accordingly conservative about alternatives. And professions have a conflict of interest in their role as gatekeepers. Representing those who have ‘paid their dues’ to enter the profession they are now ‘insiders’ with some interest in limiting new entrants to the profession.
For this reason, and particularly where, as is usual, they are participants in co-regulation with the professions, governments have an important role in ensuring that pathways remain flexible so that the most appropriate mixes of skills can be acquired in the most efficient way possible. They should use their influence on such co-regulatory bodies to bring this about.
Because state governments are typically involved in such co-regulation with appropriate policy development, this is an appropriate subject for progress within the COAG reform agenda.
conrad
13 years ago
“Above all they contribute absolutely farcical barriers to entry, most notably the dip ed”
Given that this is approximately 24 weeks of study, it’s hardly a great barrier to entry. Given that you couldn’t learn a second language in that time (or for that matter, how long does learning to knit take?), it’s not exactly asking the world of people. If really you want people with 2 weeks training teaching your kids, then lucky you, although I take your point about teachers without any knowledge of an area vs. non-teachers with knowledge.
As it happens, I think there is a lot to learn when teaching — if you tested all the kids in an average primary school, for example, you’d find many with undiagnosed reading and maths problems, and teachers that wouldn’t know what to do about them anyway (or how to spot them). That of course is a problem, because if you are 16 by the time someone helps you, then the amount you are likely to benefit is much less than if you are 6, and not being able to do things like read efficiently tends to lead to rather poor life outcomes. Now part of this problem is presumably what teachers are not getting taught or learning at universities (or in latter on the job training), but it’s hard to see it being any better with people trained for 2 weeks.
conrad
13 years ago
Patrick, I might also say that if you think that even the smartest people that are not qualified do a job that is as good as those that are qualified, then you might like to do a bit of searching on the empirical data. For example, try looking at what the query Teach for America returns in terms of articles actually evaluating the program.
I was an early Teach for Australia guy, which is to say that I knew I wanted to teach for a while, maybe three years. And so it turned out. I did a Grad Dip which, apart from the prac teaching was an entire waste of time. It was at a tired old Melb Uni School of Education or whatever it was called. Coursework was:
1) Philosophy of education
2) Sociology of education
3) Psychology of education.
You can tell from that that it could have been useful or not, but at least on its face the structure of the course doesn’t show a lot of endeavour on behalf of the uni does it?
Not ever being much good at just cramming for exams or at doing essays quickly I did the old Groucho Marx on it and made an exception in their case. I tried never to write an essay in more than two days and never to cram before the exam for more than a week. And I didn’t attend lectures (I knew law students who’d got through easily on this but not only did I want to do well, but it scared me I’d fail if I did this.)
Anyway, I did fine, and so was ‘qualified’ to become a teacher.
Don’t you think as a general proposition you might give more autonomy to student teachers, so that they could choose to blend more of their studies with their actual teaching over – say the first three to five years – rather than impose the ‘receptacle’ theory of knowledge on them, which is to say you fill them up with knowledge and then they can do it all.
Wouldn’t learning about dyslexia and the teaching of language for instance make much more sense when one was grappling with the issues in the classroom?
conrad
13 years ago
Nicholas,
I’m not against the idea of on the job learning (I don’t really see why it should ever stop for some professions), and I’m also well aware that some of the things being taught in education faculties are not exactly what people want to or need to learn (as one of my recent students, who was a very smart graduate and went on to do teaching, said “the only time I learned anything was in my placement”, and, after doing one of the equivalent tertiary teaching subjects myself, I can only agree). That being said, there is empirical evidence out there showing that putting entirely unqualified people in classrooms does not lead to thrilling results, even if they’re the top students from the top universities (like I said, just look up the empirical TFA results), and hopefully not all universities are just teaching dross.
Given these results, I don’t think that the Grad Dip. is a bad compromise. If you’re worried about the amount of time it takes, and you think that getting smart people in is really important, then an alternative, for example, would be to pay people whilst they were doing their placements (or entire Grad Dip if you really want for some types of teacher — it’s only 24 weeks). I think the problem now is that the Grad Dip courses are getting closed down (at Melbourne, for example), although I assume that’s because they cost too much to run due to finding placements, not because the alternative is better, and now they are trying to to force people to do either a degree or 2 years of study with a degree, which I agree is too much.
top students dont want to teach because teaching does not earn top dollars. The problem with governments paying teachers more is that you would then mainly be paying the existing stock of teachers more, and those teachers were self-selected as being willing to teach for the current rates……
I never had any intention of being a teacher, but 10 years ago a bloke rang me up, asked if I would be interested in having a lash at the caper, so I said ok. Glad I did. I enjoy it.
Paul,
But there are very successful initiatives seeking to tap into young people’s natural altruism – well some young people’s natural altruism – to get great people into teaching – at least for a while. Like Teach for America – and hopefully teach for Australia.
nick,
sure, there can be all kinds of schemes to bypass the current stock of teachers that might work in the short-term. I am merely stating the fundamental barriers that now exists in most Western countries. And the barriers are growing. Just think of what happened in the last recession: teacher pay got frozen throughout much of Europe and the US. Dont bet on that gap being closed when the economy picks up.
Yes, fair point. Good old Govt – mucking things up with its (short term) monopsony power.
“But there are very successful initiatives seeking to tap into young people’s natural altruism – well some young people’s natural altruism – to get great people into teaching – at least for a while. Like Teach for America – and hopefully teach for Australia.”
If you look at the data on TFA programs, I think you’ll find it quite mixed — indeed some studies show negative effects of TFA, and this doesn’t even include the cost of running them and the opportunity cost for schools of having a high staff turnover. Most of these things seem conveniently ignored when looking at the data. So the problem isn’t tapping into people’s natural altruism for a year or two — at least with respect to TFA style programs, this is basically a waste of time no matter how good it sounds, it’s getting people to stick around for the longer hall or, for that matter, targeting all of the factors that don’t include the word “teacher” that never seem to get the attention they deserve, like managers, parents, the interaction between ability and SES, etc.
Tony only enjoys it because he can talk cricket every day.
That must boost the grades in mathematics
It’s common knowledge. Those who can – DO. Those who can’t – TEACH. It’s not rocket science.
Seriously, how many teachers have “lived” in the real world?
A splendid example of Tony and others talking about the magnificent game is
here.
Thanks, Trumps.
Those who can teach – DO. Those who can’t TEACH say “Those who can – DO. Those who can’t – TEACH.”
I teach Can Do.
It’s not related to cricket in anyway whatsoever.
Suvvdy,
My wife is a teacher and your saying isn’t common knowedge at all
I think that the biggest flaws with the current model of teaching are:
– that teachers have unions; and
– that teachers are employed, either directly or indirectly, by the government.
Surprise!
Seriously, though: Unions contribute a lot. Above all they contribute absolutely farcical barriers to entry, most notably the dip ed. Does anyone imagine that we could do any real harm letting an experienced physicist/engineer/mathematician tackle a class with no more than a two-week ‘handling kids 101’? Seriously? Even if s/he leaves after a year, are the kids and his/her colleagues seriously likely to be worse off? This applies perhaps several-fold in languages.
In addition, unions contribute lock-step pay based on seniority. Personally I suspect that the experienced mathematics professional would probably be a better teacher than many far more experienced maths teachers. I would be happy for them to be offered an incentive to teach (even part-time!). Under the current system that is impossible.
Secondly, the government imposes lots of rules on things like curricula, class sizes, etc. These rules are all absolutely well-intentioned (when are laws not?). They are often not well-researched (ie class sizes, I am pretty sure that the limits currently set are well above the threshold for making a difference anyway). Most of all they are often not demonstrably worth the cost (in terms of less flexibility) they necessarily impose. This reduced flexibility surely also reduces the attractiveness of teaching.
In addition to that point the government subsidises state education. Of course, when you subsidise something you get … that’s right, more of it. Here people will jump left right and centre to explain to me how the government actually subsidises private schools. I excuse your ignorance in advance, it is extremely hard to get any real figures on this and the press (most egregiously Fairfax but also for some reason Murdoch) consistently represents that the government subsidises private schools. It is much more likely that private-school parents are in fact subsidising State schools, even before you count the capital cost of those schools.
Notice how Teach for America is primarily about how to get around the first two problems which are union problems. It is rather sad that so much ingenuity is required to get around a union.
Couldn’t agree more Patrick – I’ve railed against the credentialism you despair of here and even got a recommendation up in the 2008 Innovation Review (rtf).
You’d think that the Office of Best Practice Regulation would be beavering away behind the scenes on this. Perhaps they are, but if so it’s certainly well behind the scenes. But because it’s not come up in any ministerial speeches, because it just makes obvious sense, but hasn’t been landed in the in-tray by any high-profile identification of it as an issue, it just sits there.
What is an enriching professional transition?
That recommendation reads rather like something you were tearing to shreds just last week (or so) on this site.. :)
Thx Patrick,
Yes, well when in Rome . . . ;)
But seriously, you’ve got to get it down into a recommendation. What word would you choose rather than ‘enriching’? Perhaps it could have been left out, as the word ‘accelerated’ does most of the work, but the idea was to convey the sense that was mainly born in the examples in the text which I think makes the intent clear enough.
“Above all they contribute absolutely farcical barriers to entry, most notably the dip ed”
Given that this is approximately 24 weeks of study, it’s hardly a great barrier to entry. Given that you couldn’t learn a second language in that time (or for that matter, how long does learning to knit take?), it’s not exactly asking the world of people. If really you want people with 2 weeks training teaching your kids, then lucky you, although I take your point about teachers without any knowledge of an area vs. non-teachers with knowledge.
As it happens, I think there is a lot to learn when teaching — if you tested all the kids in an average primary school, for example, you’d find many with undiagnosed reading and maths problems, and teachers that wouldn’t know what to do about them anyway (or how to spot them). That of course is a problem, because if you are 16 by the time someone helps you, then the amount you are likely to benefit is much less than if you are 6, and not being able to do things like read efficiently tends to lead to rather poor life outcomes. Now part of this problem is presumably what teachers are not getting taught or learning at universities (or in latter on the job training), but it’s hard to see it being any better with people trained for 2 weeks.
Patrick, I might also say that if you think that even the smartest people that are not qualified do a job that is as good as those that are qualified, then you might like to do a bit of searching on the empirical data. For example, try looking at what the query Teach for America returns in terms of articles actually evaluating the program.
oops, that should be “are” not is.
Hi Conrad,
I was an early Teach for Australia guy, which is to say that I knew I wanted to teach for a while, maybe three years. And so it turned out. I did a Grad Dip which, apart from the prac teaching was an entire waste of time. It was at a tired old Melb Uni School of Education or whatever it was called. Coursework was:
1) Philosophy of education
2) Sociology of education
3) Psychology of education.
You can tell from that that it could have been useful or not, but at least on its face the structure of the course doesn’t show a lot of endeavour on behalf of the uni does it?
Not ever being much good at just cramming for exams or at doing essays quickly I did the old Groucho Marx on it and made an exception in their case. I tried never to write an essay in more than two days and never to cram before the exam for more than a week. And I didn’t attend lectures (I knew law students who’d got through easily on this but not only did I want to do well, but it scared me I’d fail if I did this.)
Anyway, I did fine, and so was ‘qualified’ to become a teacher.
Don’t you think as a general proposition you might give more autonomy to student teachers, so that they could choose to blend more of their studies with their actual teaching over – say the first three to five years – rather than impose the ‘receptacle’ theory of knowledge on them, which is to say you fill them up with knowledge and then they can do it all.
Wouldn’t learning about dyslexia and the teaching of language for instance make much more sense when one was grappling with the issues in the classroom?
Nicholas,
I’m not against the idea of on the job learning (I don’t really see why it should ever stop for some professions), and I’m also well aware that some of the things being taught in education faculties are not exactly what people want to or need to learn (as one of my recent students, who was a very smart graduate and went on to do teaching, said “the only time I learned anything was in my placement”, and, after doing one of the equivalent tertiary teaching subjects myself, I can only agree). That being said, there is empirical evidence out there showing that putting entirely unqualified people in classrooms does not lead to thrilling results, even if they’re the top students from the top universities (like I said, just look up the empirical TFA results), and hopefully not all universities are just teaching dross.
Given these results, I don’t think that the Grad Dip. is a bad compromise. If you’re worried about the amount of time it takes, and you think that getting smart people in is really important, then an alternative, for example, would be to pay people whilst they were doing their placements (or entire Grad Dip if you really want for some types of teacher — it’s only 24 weeks). I think the problem now is that the Grad Dip courses are getting closed down (at Melbourne, for example), although I assume that’s because they cost too much to run due to finding placements, not because the alternative is better, and now they are trying to to force people to do either a degree or 2 years of study with a degree, which I agree is too much.