Teacher Education Panel Report Misses

The recent Teacher Education Expert Panel report does not address the workplace issues that make the greatest difference in the retention and further development of teachers and their teaching.

The report acknowledges that there are great teacher education programs nationwide and that thousands of quality teachers have graduated from these programs and done well in their careers.

However, the knock is too many beginning teachers have reported that they felt they needed to be better equipped for the challenges they faced in the classroom on starting their teaching careers.

Many fail to complete their studies or stay in the profession long enough to flourish. Nearly four in 10 ITE students leave their course within six years of commencing their degree and around one in five beginning teachers leaves within the first three years of entering the teaching profession.

Associate Professor Louise Jenkins, Deputy Dean, Faculty of Education at Monash says, “We endorse the attention in the report to issues of equity and diversity, Indigenous teachers and students, and partnerships with and mentoring in schools, but the deliberations of the panel and the outcomes appear limited.

“Overall, the report does not address the workplace, including conditions and pay, issues that make the greatest difference in the retention and further development of teachers and their teaching.”

The report also doesn’t engage with the growing body of international research into effective teacher education and professional learning, including the importance of workplace learning. 

“Prescribing what prospective teachers are taught in universities will not have the effects intended; decades of research show that such front-loading of content gets ‘washed out’ in the practice of student teaching without appropriate interventions in the workplace.”