Where is the Line Drawn Between Teaching and Parenting?

The role of teachers seems to be expanding, well beyond traditional subjects like Maths, English, and Science.

As well as teaching, educators are being tasked with educating on 'consent,' 'youth mental health,' and 'surf safety.' The issue now is where the boundaries lie, where teaching stops and parenting begins.

Dr Saul Karnovsky (Curtin University) thinks that the breakdown of families and the consequences of that are being laid at the feet of teachers.

"Research from Universities and Teacher Unions across Australia have consistently demonstrated that there are increasing rates of teacher stress, ill-health, demoralisation and burn out in the profession. These issues have largely been attributed to external factors within the influence of education policy makers and school leaders.

“Teachers feel that their professional agency has been severely diminished routinely describing their workload as 'excessive', 'unrealistic' and 'unsustainable'. The majority of teachers in Australia are working 60 hour weeks, most of this outside school hours, just to keep up with the workload demands imposed on them with this issue being cited as the primary reason for leaving or intending to leave the profession.

"Coupled with this is the underappreciated and low-status of teaching within public perceptions of the profession. Teachers feel that the Australian public do not value their work and at worst portray teachers as ineffective, out of touch or as 'glorified babysitters'. This has been particularly evident within media and political portrayals. Parents also increasingly treat teachers and school leaders poorly, with worrying levels of violence, intimidation and abuse of education staff occurring in Australian schools.

"There is an old Latin saying 'in loco parentis' which means 'standing in for a parent'. This applies to teachers now more than any time in history. Teachers must fill the vacuum that is left when communities and families break down. This role is exacerbated by the pronounced absence of social services and support networks for our most disadvantaged Australian communities. So you have a strange environment where the public and our politicians do not trust teacher’s professional judgements, yet expect them to shoulder the burden of giving generations of young Australians the skills, knowledge and capacities to be employed and fully participate in our nation.

“Teachers have a vital and difficult role in our communities, they are professionals who are committed to make a difference in the lives of young people. We need to value and trust their judgements and ensure we show care when they tell us they are struggling or need support. Two, we need to give teachers the time and resources they have been calling out for. This includes helping with their administrative burden of their jobs and providing more in classroom support through specialised educational assistance. Our political leaders need to develop new models for teacher workload in consultation with practitioners that provides a sustainable way forward. Third, Australia can look to different kinds of models for schooling that are successful around the globe where teachers have high wellbeing and job satisfaction. These innovative models have embraced alternative thinking in how schooling is organised in terms of factors such as age grouping, school hours, homework and so on."

Dr Meghan Stacey (UNSW Sydney) feels that teachers and teaching is becoming a political football while the profession suffers from a lack of professional regard.

"Unlike many other professions, we tend to think we know what teaching entails because the vast majority of us have been to school. But most of us only ever see the student’s ‘side’ of the desk, which can lead to underestimating teaching’s true demands.

"In reality, teaching is a university-based, complex form of expertise. Teachers work long hours and make thousands of often high-stakes, difficult and time-pressured decisions every day, for and with often hundreds of young people.

"Teaching won’t be the attractive profession that it should be until the true load and intensity of teachers’ work is properly recognised and remunerated through fairer pay and conditions."

Professor David Lynch (Southern Cross University) also feels that there is an unreasonable burden being placed on educators ,"Society is expecting too much from their schools and teachers," he says.

"Pick up any newspaper, read an education blog, listen to the nightly news and you hear increasing calls for schools and their teachers to do more. Think, teach surf safety, personal safety, consent education. Couple this with explosions in new knowledge as a consequent of the technological innovation, and with increasing calls for teacher to take a greater role in the welfare of students, (roles traditionally undertaken by parents) and you end up with a crowded curriculum.

"The school day stays the same but the things to do has just blown out. On a parallel plane knowledge is now contested, think the history wars, the reading wars and a social media environment where all manner of positions and opinions are promulgated, many unsavoury, which teachers invariably have to deal with as they play out in their classrooms and school yards. Taken together the role scope of the teacher has now been expanded to an unmanageable level. They have too many new responsibilities and concerns, which they have not been prepared for, and accordingly, we get stressed out, disillusioned teachers.

"Society is expecting too much from their schools and teachers. What makes this situation dire is that teachers by nature are caring and they are less inclined to push back on role creep, preferring to nurture the child.

"While this is admirable, it signals a need for schools to be constituted differently. The medical profession had similar problems in the doctor being all things to all people but has matured to well over 140 specialists, allied and paraprofessional health workers. The teaching profession now needs to follow suit. Teaching has become an impossible job.

"There are three key things which need resolution and actioning. First is to define (get an industry wide consensus) what the teacher does and does not do and accordingly, develop a program that prepares people for each new role. The solution is not about trying to prepare the teacher to do all things, there is thus a need to rethink ‘the teacher’ concept.

"The second is increasing research funding for education, because the field is largely piecemeal, small scale and often not specific to the day to day work of the teacher. In more simple terms education research is underfunded and that which is undertaken is not been packaged in ways that are user-friendly for teachers to consume.

"Third is getting the theory practice regime in teacher education better calibrated. There is a dearth of informative studies into how best to prepare teachers and where there are innovative programs research capacity is limited because funding is sparse. For example there are no studies that have follow teachers post-graduation over extended period of time.

"I suggest we really don’t know enough about teacher education."