Journal Category: For your Research

Nicole Mockler summarises her extensive analysis of how teachers are represented in the Australian media, and the links between the resulting deficit-based discussions and education politics and policy . . .

In October 2023, the ‘Be That Teacher’ campaign, the national advertising campaign designed to make teaching look more attractive as a career and to stem the teacher shortage, launched. At the time, Federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare, said:

This campaign is all about changing the way we as a country think about our teachers, and the way our teachers think our country thinks of them. (Clare, 2024)

At the time of the joint launch, the NSW Minister for Education, Prue Car, similarly noted that “restoring pride and respect to the teaching profession is key to our plan” (Clare, 2024).

As a researcher with a focus on how teachers and their work are represented in the public space, this interested me greatly. While there’s a lot that could be said about the ‘Be That Teacher’ campaign, the question that interests me the most about it is how far an advertising campaign can be expected to counter ideas about teaching and teachers’ work that are aired over and over again in media and policy spaces?

I started thinking about representations of teachers in the media almost 20 years ago, in the course of my doctoral studies. For the next 15 years or so I conducted quite a few small-scale studies, where I analysed a small and well-chosen collection of articles, usually around a set focus and/or timeframe, to identify themes and patterns. In some of this work, I explored media attention to things such as the MySchool website (Mockler, 2013), and the National Plan for School Improvement (Mockler, 2014); and also media representations of early career teachers (Mockler, 2019). Small studies like these allow you to engage deeply with individual texts and to really illustrate how and where particular assumptions and ideas are embedded and how they then get amplified into the public space. What they don’t do is allow you to identify and track patterns over time, or to make broader statements about the work of the print media in relation to education. And so, in 2018 when I found myself in the very privileged position of having a two-year research fellowship that allowed me to learn a new set of research methods, I set about conducting a 25-year analysis of representations of teachers in the print media, which was published in the book Constructing Teacher Identities (Mockler) in 2022. To conduct the analysis, I used a set of methods that fall under the umbrella of ‘corpus assisted discourse analysis’. First, I constructed what I call the ‘Australian Teacher Corpus’ or ATC, a collection of all media articles from the twelve national and capital city daily newspapers that include the words teacher and/or teachers three times or more. The book reported on the analysis of the 65,604 articles published from 1996 to 2020, but the ATC has since been extended to include articles published in 2021, 2022 and 2023, so it now includes over 71,000 articles. That’s an average of about 50 articles a week, every week, for 28 years. We talk about teachers a lot.

Back in 2021, I did a quick search for how many articles came up using the same parameters for accountants, public servants, nurses, lawyers and doctors, and found that far more column inches were devoted to teachers. About twice as many, for example, as were devoted to nurses in the years from 1996 to 2020. So clearly there’s a large appetite on the part of journalists, editors, and, presumably, readers of newspapers for stories about teachers and schools.

Given that there’s such a lot of coverage, there’s also a lot of findings out of this analysis, so I’m going to focus here on just three aspects of the analysis.

First, the ATC is replete with words and phrases that essentialise or homogenise teachers: teachers should…; all teachers…; every teacher…, and so on. These constructions appeal to the news value of ‘superlativeness’, one of a number of strategies whereby newspapers develop a sense of newsworthiness in stories (Bednarek & Caple 2017). The effect of this is to first, emphasise high intensity, and second, to make teachers’ work appear simple, as though there is a single right choice in any given circumstance.

‘Teachers should’ provides a good example of this:

This small cross-section of the approximately 2300 instances of teachers should points to many contradictory positions on what teachers should do (e.g. teachers should be given clear, concise road-maps of what to teach vs teachers should not adopt a cookie-cutter approach to learning). They contain advice for teachers about the need to affirm, respect and support children, to get to know their students, and to arrive in classes prepared [having] thought about how they are going to present material, suggesting that these things are not already part of teachers’ professional repertoires. Teachers should also points to level of disrespect displayed toward teachers in the print media, from the insulting claim that teachers should grow up to at least the age level of those who they are supposed to be teaching, to the no less insulting but arguably more tempered teachers should be paid according to how their students succeed.  Statements such as these, just two examples amongst a great many in the ATC, amplify messages of contempt toward teachers while also rendering their work simple and denying its complexity. All of which undermines teacher professionalism, normalising these attitudes for their readers.

Second, I was able to track through this analysis, the rise of the discourse of teacher quality since the mid-2000s, with attention to teacher quality outstripping general discussions of quality (for example of teaching, or of education or schools) in the ATC.

My analysis highlighted that discussions of teacher quality are almost invariably linked to a deficit assessment of teachers: stories of high or outstanding teacher quality are rare, while stories about declining teacher quality, or the need to improve it, dominate. When they’re prevalent in the media, discourses of teacher quality have the effect of making teachers responsible for the structural and systemic issues that proliferate in education, rather than pointing to what needs to be done at a structural level. The emphasis on teacher quality effectively lays blame for systemic failures on individual teachers, in a way that more nuanced discussions of teaching practice, even when we’re talking about the possibility of improving it, do not. Good teaching is practised rather than embodied (Gore, et al., 2004) – it’s a set of practices we engage in rather than a state of being – and real improvements in quality require good professional learning and support for teachers from early career into and beyond mid-career.

Finally, the ebb and flow of the three quality discourses shown in the graph above, highlight the way that discussions of teachers and their work, and particularly deficit-based discussions, are intimately linked to education politics and policy. The height of the teacher quality discourse, in 2012/13, was closely linked to the Gillard Government’s National Plan for School Improvement (2012), which constituted the Government’s response to the original Gonski review and was the catalyst for the Australian Education Act (2013). Similarly, the 2007/8 peak reflected the early years of the Rudd-Gillard ‘Education Revolution’, while the 2019 peak coincided with the release of the 2018 PISA results and discussions by Education Ministers and other policymakers around curriculum and teacher quality reform.

So, while it’s admirable that our Federal and State education ministers hold aspirations around “changing the way we as a country think about our teachers” (Clare, 2023), a systematic analysis of 28 years of print media coverage suggests that an advertising campaign, on its own, is unlikely to get us there. Media coverage of education, and specifically of teachers and their work, is heavily tied to discussions of education policy, largely led by politicians themselves. With the common positioning of teachers within those policy and media discussions infused with notions of deficit, it’s unlikely that the way we as a country think about our teachers will change without these discussions themselves changing. And for that we’re going to need more than promises of greater respect.

References

Bednarek, M., & Caple, H. (2017). The discourse of news values: How news organizations create newsworthiness. Oxford University Press. 

Clare, J. (2023).  Retrieved 10 January 2024 from

https://ministers.education.gov.au/clare/national-campaign-launched-encourage-more-australians-be-teacher

Gore, J., Griffiths, T., & Ladwig, J. G. (2004). Towards better teaching: Productive pedagogy as a framework for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(4), 375-387. 

Mockler, N. (2013). Reporting the ‘education revolution’: MySchool.edu.au in the print media. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34(1), 1-16. 

Mockler, N. (2014). Simple solutions to complex problems: moral panic and the fluid shift from ‘equity’ to ‘quality’ in education. Review of Education, 2(2), 115-143. 

Mockler, N. (2019). Shifting the Frame: Representations of Early Career Teachers in the Australian Print Media. In A. M. Sullivan, B. Johnson, & M. Simons (Eds.), Attracting and keeping the best teachers: Issues and Opportunities (pp. 63-82). Springer.  Mockler, N. (2022). Constructing Teacher Identities: How the Print Media Define and Represent Teachers and their Work. Bloomsbury Academic.

About the Author

Dr Nicole Mockler is Professor of Education within the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. She was awarded her PhD in Education at the University of Sydney in 2008, and also holds a Master of Arts in History/Gender Studies and a Master of Science in Applied Statistics. Nicole’s research interests are in the areas of teachers’ work and professional learning; education policy and politics; and curriculum and pedagogy. In 2022 Nicole was awarded the Australian Council for Educational Leadership NSW Dr Paul Brock Memorial Medal.

Steven Kolber, et al highlight the role of global think tanks, lobby groups, ideological entrepreneurs, and social media in the formation of Australian education policy; and provide us with some simple steps to stem the flow of ‘fast policy’. . .

Have you ever been reading or watching the news about education and thought to yourself: “How on earth did the politicians come up with that idea? Have they ever spoken to a real teacher?” Our study (Heggart et al., 2023) examined this process, and found that a small number of actors are working to insert the ideas of overseas think tanks and lobby groups into Australia’s media ecosystem with a view to influencing educational policy making and practice.  In the study discussed below, we found that these ideas were being used to directly shape the latest revision of the Australian Curriculum. This raises serious questions about the role played by various think tanks and lobby groups in the formation of Australian education policy – and what teachers and their organisations might do about that.

Fast policy and policy borrowing

This is a feature of globalisation that has been written about in a general sense before (see, for example, Peck, 2015), but it hasn’t been applied to the development of educational policy. In short, globalisation has meant that ideas can easily travel across borders and are ripe for adoption in new jurisdictions/countries even when they don’t really make much sense in these new contexts. Education, central as it is to the concerns of parents, politicians and the wider public, represents a site that is especially vulnerable to this kind of influence, and popular and populist ideas can have a direct, and almost immediate, impact.

Fast policy and policy borrowing are two concepts that can be used to understand the ways that policies can be very quickly adopted from nation to nation. One of the challenges facing education, as a whole, is the lack of, or limited, evaluation of various policies.  A thorough evaluation of different policies would indicate how successful each was, and question their relevance to the various parts of the Australian education system. Such evaluations are rarely implemented, however, due to a variety of reasons, including time constraints, disregard for the expertise of teachers, and a lack of political will to address the hard questions. This means that there are limited impediments to policies traveling from one jurisdiction to the next very quickly. In these cases, there is less attention paid to the educational value of the policy; rather, the important factor is that it is an ‘announceable’ for a politician. Fast policy is the way in which societies have adapted to globalisation in such a way as to allow for the simplification of policy development – so that policies themselves can be traded across borders.

Policy borrowing is a closely linked phenomenon. It is the idea that, like fast food, policies can be used in a ‘grab and go’ way without making many changes for context or local climate. While it is probably true to say that there might be good policies that can be adopted from other locations as examples of best practice, ideally after a period of consultation and contextualisation, the essence of fast policy is that this does not occur. Rather, policies are selected and deployed ‘off-the shelf’ – to the detriment of all involved.

A well-known example of this are the various ‘Teach for….’ policy approaches that aim to address teacher quality, and the teacher shortage, by fast-tracking teacher training. This approach began in the United States as ‘Teach for America’ and although it has had limited benefit for teachers or students, it has been adopted both in the United Kingdom (UK) as ‘Teach First’ and then later ‘Teach for Australia’ within most  Australian jurisdictions. To reiterate the power of fast policy as a tool: there is very limited evidence that any of these variants of the ‘Teach First’ policies have had any material effect on both teacher shortages or student learning outcomes. Despite this, the policies have been adopted and continue to be funded. 

 Ideological entrepreneurs

The way education policy is formulated and implemented within the context of policy borrowing and fast policy is not simple; rather, decisions about policies are contested by various interests. One of the key features of fast policy is that it has enabled specific groups to have a global reach and influence – something that these organisations have been quick to capitalise on, through the formation of far-ranging matrices such as The Atlas Network. This means that at any specific time, there are think tanks and lobby groups, as well as individuals, that are seeking to influence the formation of policy on both a local and a global scale. Those who make a career out of attempting to influence policy are termed ‘Ideological entrepreneurs’ within our study (Atwell et al., 2024). They are shaping and reshaping ideas, in this case conservative narratives with a focus on virality and reach, rather than any true pursuit of good policy. The educational sphere is fertile soil for the ideological entrepreneur, considering its inherently ideological nature. One way that ideological entrepreneurs seek to do this is by shifting the political frame.

 Political framing

Political framing is the way that politicians frame and reframe ideas until they become acceptable to voters. The Overton window is a rhetorical device used to understand this. Imagine the round window from play school, what’s inside the circle is acceptable opinions to hold. Everything outside is less acceptable and more extreme, the types of opinions that might get one ‘cancelled’ online. The job of the policy influencer online (much as it was in legacy media) is to move more extreme ideas into the frame of the window. One way this can be done is by advancing extreme points of view on particular topics (such as Critical Race Theory in the curriculum, as we discuss below), knowing that this will be rejected, but recognising that it will allow for debate about the wider topic and, hence, shifting the window in the sought direction. Our research examined the way this played out in the recent revisions of the Australian Curriculum and especially in History. In order to understand the way that these ideological entrepreneurs work globally and locally, and the influence that this has upon politicians and policy, we need to examine the game board: social media. 

The game board of Social Media and Old Media

For many teachers, the use of social media is something that we could not live without as it is a source of resources, advice and connection. Social media has, due to its virality and scaleabiltiy, – as well as the algorithms that govern what is seen on social media – changed the way politicians and members of the public engage with topics of debate. Indeed, the slow decline of ‘old media’ and traditional newspapers style coverage also has an important role to play here. As more experienced journalists within education are less likely to remain in their jobs due to extensive layoffs (Waller, 2012), the ensuing shortage of experienced journalists means that think-tanks and other groups that appear influential by their presence in news and social media, can have a much greater impact upon public opinion. Politicians are quick to tap into the debates about popular topics being framed or discussed in a certain way and can thus lend legitimacy to points of views that are at odds with public opinion – regardless of how they are presented via social media. The case study below describes this process.

Our case study: From Rufo to Latham

Ideological entrepreneur Christopher Rufo, from the Manhattan Institute, is where the story of Critical Race Theory (CRT) moves from an idea most closely explored within the United States to Australia and begins to have an impact upon the Australian Curriculum. Through analysing Rufo’s online engagement, it is possible to track his attempts to capture and define the educational policy landscape. The graph below tracks the posts he made and articles he wrote about CRT over the course of early 2021.His writing, speaking and posting around CRT wasn’t especially viral until he stumbled upon the idea of linking schools and children with CRT, at which point this idea took off: he had ‘gone viral’.

Source: Heggart et al., 2023, Page 3

This virality was quickly seized upon by Australian politicians. In the same year, One Nations’ Mark Latham pronounced that there would be no inclusion of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the Australian curriculum. This was a strange announcement: there already was no mention of Critical Race Theory within the curriculum and, for the most part, the consultation phase of the latest version of the curriculum had concluded and all that was required was some proofreading and revision of the curriculum document. Yet, this set in action another revision by the Education Minister at the time, who suddenly started talking to various news outlets about patriotism and the need for young Australians to fight for their country – a marked departure from previous commentaries on the newest version of the Australian Curriculum. As a result, the almost-completed version was sent back for redrafting to reflect this new, hardline focus.

In this short example, we highlight the way that the ideas described above – policy borrowing, political framing and ideological entrepreneurship – are enacted across social media and have a material effect upon the Australian Curriculum. We note that the space itself is conflicted: there were battles between Mark Latham and various Liberal education ministers to seize the initiative about this topic, but the effect of these battles meant that the political frame of History and Civics and Citizenship Education shifted towards a focus on patriotism and duty. We can clearly see all of the elements of fast policy and ideological entrepreneurship in play here. Despite the obvious absurdity of an idea that didn’t really hold sway within Australia, it should be concerning to teachers that the Australian Curriculum became an object of political interference so swiftly.

So what?

Considering how quickly educational ideas can be adopted from other contexts and cemented into policy, it is important for teachers, unionists, and activists to be aware of these processes. When considering the funding and support that back some of these idea factories, such as think tanks and ideological entrepreneurs, it can make us feel powerless by comparison. But there are clear pathways to becoming more aware of these processes through training, and by using such training to inform your actions both online and offline. Choosing the way to respond is important because ideas are supported and thrive upon virality. Consider the last time you saw a dramatic headline about teaching that you then read and shared with your online network or discussed with your colleagues. Giving these ideas traction in this way may, in fact, be feeding the very thing you are trying to stop. This could mean that you need to check the sources quoted, think about whose ideas are being platformed and whether you’re helping or harming the situation by sharing them.

And if we were to learn these skills and apply them in our work, then we would also need to begin passing these same skills down to our students. It could even mean more teachers engaging around professional matters on social media, or unions taking a hold of this ‘game board’ as well and fighting the ideological war wherever it might be won. Alternatively, as schools can be relatively isolated from these kinds of debates, influential teachers in their contexts might engage their colleagues in ‘counter-practices’ early on that challenge these ideas before they have the chance to gain a foothold. As always there is a need for teachers to get their voices out into the world, but having the skills to recognise when, and how, this might best be leveraged is an important ability to develop.

References

Attwell, K., Hannah, A., Drislane, S., Harper, T., Savage, G. C., & Tchilingirian, J. (2024). Media actors as policy entrepreneurs: a case study of “No Jab, No Play” and “No Jab, No Pay” mandatory vaccination policies in Australia. Policy Sciences, 1-23.

Heggart, K., Barnes, N., Kolber, S., Mahoney, T., & Malcher, C. (2023). The Australian Curriculum gambit: playing knowledge games with education policy. Curriculum Perspectives, 1-11.

Peck, J. (2015). Fast policy : experimental statecraft at the thresholds of neoliberalism / Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore. University of Minnesota Press.

Waller, L. J. (2012). Learning in both worlds: Academic journalism as a research outcome. Research Journalism, 2(1), 1

About the Authors

Steven Kolber is a Curriculum Writer at the Faculty of Education, within the University of Melbourne. He was a proud public school teacher for 12 years, being named a top 50 finalist in the Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Prize. His most recent publication, ‘Empowering Teachers and Democratising Schooling: Perspectives from Australia’, co-edited with Keith Heggart explores these topics further. Steven has represented teachers globally for Education International, at the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the OECDs Global Teaching Insights, and UNESCOs Teacher Task Force 2030.

Tom Mahoney is a teacher and educator of secondary VCE Mathematics and Psychology students, currently completing a PhD in Educational Philosophy part time through Deakin University. His research currently revolves around the influence of dominant educational ideologies on teacher subjectivity. In particular, he is interested in the ways in which ideologies of neoliberalism and social efficiency contribute to limiting teacher agency and the teacher’s ability to engage educationally in schools.

Dr Keith Heggart is an early career researcher with a focus on learning and instructional design, educational technology and civics and citizenship education. He is currently exploring the way that online learning platforms can assist in the formation of active citizenship amongst Australian youth. Keith is a former high school teacher, having worked as a school leader in Australia and overseas, in government and non-government sectors. In addition, he has worked as an Organiser for the Independent Education Union of Australia, and as an independent Learning Designer for a range of organisations.

Dr Naomi Barnes is a Senior Lecturer interested in how crisis influences education politics. With a specific focus on moral panics, she has demonstrated how online communication has influenced education politics in Australia, the US and the UK. She has analysed and developed network models to show the effect of moral panics on the Australian curriculum and how it is taught. Naomi is also regularly asked to comment on how Australian teachers should respond to perceived threats to Australian nationalism, identity, and democracy. Naomi lectures future teachers in Modern History, Civics and Citizenship and Writing Studies. She has worked for Education Queensland as a Senior Writer and has worked as a Secondary Humanities and Social Science teacher in the government, Catholic and Independent schooling sectors.

Cameron Malcher teaches English, Drama and EAL/D in NSW public high schools. He has a Master’s in Educational Psychology from the University of Sydney and is currently undertaking a Master’s in TESOL at the University of Wollongong. Cameron has produced the Teachers’ Education Review Podcast since 2013, and his brief attempt at a PhD was on teachers’ engagement with podcasts and social media as professional learning activities, which he hopes to return to in the near future.

Cathie Burgess and Katrina Thorpe share the processes and results of a five-year teaching and research project to support all teachers to develop an Aboriginal curriculum narrative using a framework based on building relationships and listening to Aboriginal people and Country. . .

As Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal authors, we are two members of a team of four researchers who undertook a five-year teaching and research project we called Learning from Country in the City (LFC) (Burgess, et al., 2022a). This project emerged from an ongoing commitment to Aboriginal[1] education and Aboriginal Studies along with our personal and professional engagement in local Aboriginal community contexts. The project was undertaken with preservice teachers, early-career teachers, and Aboriginal community-based educators[2] from 2018-2022 at the University of Sydney, situated on Gadigal Land of the Eora Nation (now referred to as Sydney). We recognise the many Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators before us who have worked tirelessly to ensure that Aboriginal voices are foregrounded, and knowledges are embedded in Australia education systems (Holt, 2021). We continue to support these goals by working with preservice teachers to develop their capability to meaningful engage with local Aboriginal communities and move beyond surface-level and tokenistic approaches to the inclusion of Aboriginal curriculum content and pedagogies in their classrooms.

In our teaching, Learning from Country involves immersive learning experiences outside the classroom on Country. Here, preservice teachers walk with Aboriginal community-based educators while listening to, learning from, and observing the layered stories of local Country.

In this article we share our insights to the significance of connecting preservice teachers, teachers, and students to Country-centred learning. A Learning from Country Framework is used to represent the key processes of engagement and learning, which shifts the focus of Aboriginal curriculum planning and implementation from thinking about what “Aboriginal content” we might “add” to the curriculum (although this can be one outcome of LFC) to foregrounding the ethical practices and processes that you can undertake to open up opportunities for building connections to local Country and Aboriginal people.

Firstly though, we must acknowledge that learning from/on/with Country is not new and, indeed, has been practised in Australia for thousands of years. The expanding literature that centres Country and Aboriginal knowledges in curriculum is a testament to the continuity, resilience and significance of these pedagogical practices for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students and teachers in Australia now and in the future (e.g., Burgess et al., 2022a, 2022b; Country et al, 2020; Dolan et al, 2020; Harrison, 2013; Lowe et al. 2021; McKnight, 2016; Spillman et al., 2023; Thorpe, et al., 2021).

What does the research in Aboriginal education tell us?

In 2019, 13 academics, from across ten universities, conducted ten systematic reviews analysing over 13,000 research studies reported on from 2006 to 2017 (Guenther et al., 2019). These reviews covered key Indigenous Education topics in the areas of curriculum, pedagogy, leadership, professional learning, racism, literacy, numeracy, language and culture, community engagement, and remote education. Key findings across the reviews found that successful schools did the following:

• engage honestly and respectfully with parents and community.
• demonstrate deep understanding of the local socio-cultural and political context resulting from colonisation.
• focus on holistic, wrap – around and culturally responsive strategies to support student, family, and community needs.
• articulate high expectations of students, teachers, and leaders.
• ensure curriculum, pedagogy and assessment reflects students’ cultural backgrounds and interests, and is clearly scaffolded and supported.
• implement culture and language programs to deepen students’ sense of belonging to build confident, engaged learners.

Acknowledging yet overcoming the challenges of doing this work

Many educators are challenged by working in this area for many reasons (Captain & Burgess, 2022). Significantly, teachers themselves have often had little or no education on Aboriginal Australia and feel vulnerable and unprepared. Not wishing to offend Aboriginal students and their families (Rose, 2015), and overwhelmed by a constantly growing and changing curriculum, teachers often avoid this area unless it is mandatory. Compounding this inertia, the Aboriginal content in the Australian Curriculum is limited and while the NSW curriculum improves on this, there is still no coherent, scoped and sequenced Aboriginal curriculum narrative across the Key Learning Areas and Stages, as there is in ‘mainstream’ subjects. We suggest an Aboriginal curriculum narrative is “a combination and construction of the stories that teachers know (and have probably experienced) about a particular subject or content area that provides knowledge, understandings, and therefore guidance about how and what to teach” (Burgess et al., 2022b, p. 158). This can result in teachers wondering how to start to build this narrative rather than add piecemeal and decontextualised Aboriginal content into the curriculum.

Unfortunately, the impact of racism still permeates education, and some teachers are influenced by the overgeneralisations, stereotypes and deficit discourses that position Aboriginal students and their families as the problem and, through a perceived inability to assimilate, as responsible for their lack of success (Bodkin-Andrews & Carlson, 2014). Fortunately, many teachers are beginning to listen to Aboriginal voices, embrace truth telling and implement inclusive classrooms where controversial and uncomfortable knowledges can be discussed respectfully.

Educational policies supporting Learning from Country

Importantly, Aboriginal curriculum is necessary for ALL students; it has not been constructed with only Aboriginal students in mind. In NSW, the Department of Education Aboriginal Education Policy has been mandatory since 1987. Rather than summarising the current policy, we look back to the 1996 version for its clear and simple articulation of three key tenets that underpin all versions of the policy:

1. “Aboriginal students: Curriculum, teaching and assessment programs will be challenging and culturally appropriate. Schools will have a supportive learning environment.
2. Aboriginal communities: Aboriginal communities and the Department of School Education will become partners in the whole educational process.
3. All staff – all students – all schools: All Department of School Education staff and students will have knowledge and understanding of, and respect for, Aboriginal Australia”.

This and subsequent Aboriginal education policies are also reflected in two of the Australian Institute for Teachers and School Leadership (AITSL), Australian Professional Standards for Teachers:

1.4.2    Design and implement effective teaching strategies that are responsive to the local community and cultural setting, linguistic background, and histories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

2.4.2    Provide opportunities for students to develop understanding of, and respect for, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and languages.

While past and present Aboriginal education policies provide teachers with the policy parameters to work within, teachers are yet to “heed the call” to enact the Aboriginal education imperatives (White et al., 2022) that have been articulated over many decades.

The Australian Curriculum’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cross Curriculum Priority (ACARA, 2011) is designed for application across KLAs and Stages. It consists of three interconnected aspects: Country/Place, Culture, and People, with three organising ideas in each. While these provide a reasonable base to work from, there are clear omissions that not all teachers will recognise or address. These include the lack of breadth and depth of Aboriginal content where concepts such as self-determination, Aboriginal resistance, treaty, truth telling, and racism are absent (Lowe & Yunkaporta, 2013). Moreover, while there has been a plethora of resources developed over the last decade or so, they have‘unfortunately been left to sit on the “virtual shelf” to date, with minimal uptake by the teaching profession’(White et al., 2022, p. 13)      

The Learning from Country Framework

We have created an LFC framework that can be used by teachers to localise curriculum, build relationships with community, engage learners, and create culturally responsive and sustaining classrooms. In describing the processes in Figure 1, we acknowledge the nonlinear, reflexive nature of Aboriginal Country-centred learning that links the past, present, and future.

Figure 1. Learning from Country framework. © Dr Katrina Thorpe, A/Prof Cathie Burgess, Dr Suzanne Egan, Prof Valerie Harwood in C. Burgess, K. Thorpe, S. Egan and V. Harwood, in ‘Towards a conceptual framework for Country-centred teaching and learning,’ Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 28(8), p. 931

The graphic was designed by Dharawal artist Michael Fardon. It can be described as follows:

The dark blue acknowledges that Country is strong—it is “full” of knowledge. The light blue circles represent the “activity” emanating and rippling throughout the Learning from Country processes which include deep listening to Aboriginal community voices and truth telling … As each waterhole ripples with new knowledge and impacts on existing knowledge, it flows into the next waterhole. The connecting waterways between the waterholes represent the ebb and flow of knowledges and understandings that ripple through each waterhole. (Burgess et al., 2022a, p. 164)

Country-centred relationships requires listening to local Aboriginal people about the cultural and socio-political history and current issues in the local area. Once you have begun this journey, you will be able to see, and enact, ways of bringing Country into the classroom, as well as explore Country beyond the classroom door. This makes learning more ‘hands on’ and engaging for students and contributes to a local Aboriginal narrative for use in your curriculum.

Relating deepens these connections through truth telling which includes listening to Aboriginal lived experiences of colonisation in this country. While this can be uncomfortable or even distressing, it is important to emotionally engage with these narratives to build empathy and understanding and to create a sense of belonging for everyone involved in this process. The Aboriginal community-based educators often talk about the healing power of these experiences and their sense of empowerment in educating future generations. To ensure you are being respectful, speak to Aboriginal staff and get to know your students and families to seek advice. All education systems have some level of regional and/or statewide support for teachers, and the NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) has local branch meetings you can attend.

Critical engagement occurs when you reflect on the emotional and intellectual learning you have encountered through LFC experiences and prompts you to reflect on how this impacts your personal and professional identity. By positioning yourself as a learner rather than a teacher, new ways of knowing, being and doing through an Aboriginal lens, helps you reimagine what an Aboriginal curriculum narrative might look like.

The ‘doing’ occurs as you develop culturally nourishing and sustaining teaching and learning practices that engage all students and brings the school-community closer together. This occurs throughout the LFC processes as you continue to think about how you will enact LFC in your classroom and maintain the relationships necessary to do this work.

Conclusion

We acknowledge that this is challenging work as it asks you to rethink how you experienced education, but once the processes are underway, you will be rewarded by increased confidence in your curriculum and pedagogy, more engaged learners and calmer classrooms. Building relationships and listening to Aboriginal people and Country, is the place to start to develop an Aboriginal curriculum narrative. At the same time, you should explore resources and build your own knowledge of Aboriginal histories and cultures and reflect on these in relation to your local community. Truth telling, listening to Aboriginal community narratives, and Learning from Country reveals paths of resistance, resilience, and activism to mobilise genuine educational change for future generations.

---

[1] We use the term ‘Aboriginal’ as this is the preferred term in our local communities and the preferred term of the NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Inc. We acknowledge there are many Torres Strait Islander students, teachers and parents and we respectfully include Torres Strait Islander peoples within this.

[2] Aboriginal community-based educators agreed on this term to describe themselves which includes Elders, community workers, knowledge holders, political activists, cultural educators, Department of Education workers.

References

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2011). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/CrossCurriculumPriorities/Aboriginal-and-Torres-Strait-Islander-histories-and-cultures

Bodkin-Andrews, G., & Carlson, B. (2014). The legacy of racism and Indigenous Australian identity within education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 19(4), 784-807. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2014.969224

Burgess, C., Thorpe, K., Egan, S., & Harwood, V. (2022a) Towards a conceptual framework for Country-inspired teaching and learning Teachers and Teaching. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2022.2137132

Burgess, C., Thorpe, K., Egan, S., & Harwood, V. (2022b). Learning from Country to conceptualise what an Aboriginal curriculum narrative might look like in education. Curriculum Perspectives, 42(2), 157-169. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-022-00164-w

Captain, K., & Burgess, C. (2022). Be that Teacher who makes a Difference and Lead Aboriginal Education for all Students. Ultimate World Publishing

Country, K., Gordon, P., Spillman, D., & Wilson, B. (2020). Re-placing schooling in Country: Australian stories of teaching and learning for social and ecological renewal. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2, 31–44.

Dolan, H., Hill, B., Harris, J., Lewis, M. J., & Stenlake, B. W. (2020). The Benefits of in Country Experiences at the Tertiary Level. In B. Hill, J. Harris, & R. Bacchus (Eds.), Teaching Aboriginal Cultural Competence: Authentic Approaches (pp. 37-48). Springer.

Guenther, J., Harrison, N., Burgess, C. (2019) Editorial. Special Issue. Aboriginal Voices: Systematic Reviews of Indigenous Education. The Australian Educational Researcher, 46(2), 207-211

Harrison, N. (2013). Country teaches: The significance of the local in the Australian history curriculum. Australian Journal of Education. 57(3), 214-224

Holt, L. (2021). Talking Strong: the National Aboriginal Education Committee and the development of Aboriginal education policy. Aboriginal Studies Press.

Lowe, K., Moodie, N., & Weuffen, S. (2021). Refusing Reconciliation in Indigenous Curriculum. In. B. Green, P. Roberts & M. Brennan Curriculum Challenges and Opportunities in a Changing World, (pp.71-86). Palgrave Macmillan.

Lowe, K., & Yunkaporta, T. (2013). The inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content in the Australian National Curriculum: A cultural, cognitive and socio-political evaluation. Curriculum Perspectives, 33(1), 1-14.

McKnight, A. (2016).Meeting Country and self to initiate an embodiment of knowledge: Embedding a process for Aboriginal perspectives. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 45(1), 11–22

Rose, D. (2015). The ‘silent apartheid’ as the practitioner’s blindspot. In Price, K. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education. (pp. 66-82). Cambridge University Press: Melbourne, Australia

Spillman, D., Wilson, B., Nixon, M., & McKinnon, K. (2023). ‘New localism’ in Australian schools: Country as Teacher as a critical pedagogy of place. Curriculum Perspectives, 43(2), 103-114. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-023-00201-2

Thorpe, K.,Burgess, C., & Egan, S. (2021). Aboriginal Community-led Preservice Teacher Education: Learning from Country in the City. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 46(1). Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol46/iss1/4

White, S., Anderson, P., Quin, A., Gower, G., Byrne, M., Bennet, M. (2022). Supporting the teaching profession to enable a culturally responsive curriculum. Lee, O.L., Brown, P., Goodwin, A. L., Green, A. (Eds) International Handbook on Education Development in Asia Pacific. Springer https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2327-1_82-1

Yunkaporta, T., & Shillingsworth, D. (2020). Relationally responsive standpoint. Journal of Indigenous Research, 8(4). https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/kicjir/vol8/iss2020/4

Appendix

Videos produced by the University of Sydney One Sydney Many People (OSMP) strategy:

• Explaining LFC https://youtu.be/GvnJSqGZOI8;
• LFC Experiences https://youtu.be/9f70k-peyMo;
• Relationship building https://youtu.be/5v-SnEC1UFc

Journal Articles & Book Chapters

Burgess C. (2022) Learning from Country: Aboriginal Community-Led Relational Pedagogies. In: Peters M.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Teacher Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1179-6_474-1

Burgess, C., Thorpe, K., Egan, S., & Harwood, V. (2022). Towards a conceptual framework for Country-centred teaching and learning. Teachers and Teaching, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2022.2137132

Burgess, C., Thorpe, K., Egan, S., & Harwood, V. (2022). Learning from Country to conceptualise what an Aboriginal curriculum narrative might look like in education. Curriculum Perspectives, 42(2), 157-169. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-022-00164-w

Golledge, C & Burgess, C. (2023). Learning (history) from Country. Teaching History – Journal of the History Teachers’ Association of NSW.

Scarcella, J.  & Burgess , C. (2024). Applying Country-centred place-based pedagogies to include all learners in English. International Perspectives on English as an Emancipatory Subject: Promoting Equity, Justice, and Democracy through English [volume 5 pp]

Thorpe, K. (2022) Learning from Country: Aboriginal-led Country-Centred Learning for preservice teachers. In Lee, O.L., Brown, P., Goodwin, A. L., Green, A. (Eds) International Handbook on Education Development in Asia Pacific. https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-981-16-2327-1.

Thorpe, K., Burgess, C., Egan, S., & Harwood, V. (in press). Learning from Country in the City: Aboriginal Community-Based Educators teaching the teachers. Springer

Thorpe, K.,Burgess, C., Grice, C. (2023). Aboriginal curriculum enactment: Stirring teachers into the practices of learning from Country in the city. In K. Reimer., M, Kaukko., S. Windsor., K. Mahon., & S. Kemmis. Living Well in a World Worth Living In. Volume 2. Current Practices of Social Justice, Sustainability and Well Being. Springer

Thorpe, K., Burgess, C., & Egan, S. (2021). Aboriginal Community-led Preservice Teacher Education: Learning from Country in the City. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 46(1). Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol46/iss1/4

Thorpe. K,. ten Kate, L  & Burgess, C. (2024) Reimagining democratic education by positioning Aboriginal Country-centred learning as foundational to curriculum and pedagogy. Curriculum Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-024-00233-2

About the Authors

Dr Cathie Burgess is an Associate Professor in Aboriginal Studies/Education, Aboriginal Community Engagement, Learning from Country and Leadership in Aboriginal Education programs at the Sydney School of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney. She has extensive teaching and leadership experience in secondary schools and maintains strong connections with school-communities through teacher professional learning and research projects. Along with co-author Kylie Captain, Cathie published ‘Be that Teacher who makes a Difference and Lead Aboriginal Education for all Students’ Amazon Best Selling bookbased on over 40 years’ of educational experience in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Cathie’s work in Aboriginal Education/Aboriginal Studies is acknowledged through an Honorary Life Member, NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group and Life Member, Aboriginal Studies Association NSW.

Dr Katrina Thorpe is an Associate Professor at Nura Gili: Centre for Indigenous Programs, UNSW, Sydney. Katrina’s research focuses on educational approaches that engage students in Country-centred ‘Learning from Country’ pedagogies. Katrina is passionate about developing culturally responsive pedagogies that facilitate connections between students and Aboriginal people, communities and Country. Katrina has over 25 years’ experience teaching mandatory Indigenous Studies across a number of disciplines including education, social work, nursing, health and community development.

Mary Ryan, et al share the outcomes and benefits of co-designed professional learning between education researchers and classroom teachers. . .

Professional Learning (PL) for teachers is an increasing area of interest due to the complex nature of our profession. Professional Learning is different to Professional Development (PD) as it can be tailored for individual teachers and include informal conversations, adaptive release learning that teachers do in their own time, and/or collaborative research in schools. PL provides opportunities to support teachers’ work, the learning needs of students, changing curricula and the demands of external assessment regimes in the contemporary landscape. The proliferation of PD for teachers, often denies the contextual experiences and expertise of teachers in favour of prescriptive top-down approaches. However, in our research alongside primary teachers, we used PL to show how co-design between teachers and researchers can have a real impact on teacher agency, practice and, consequently, student learning.

In a recent journal article, we reported on our research and PL program with primary teachers on the teaching of writing. Our research design included a discovery phase to find out what was happening for students and teachers regarding writing. Next, we engaged in a co-design process with teachers so they could better understand the conditions that were enabling or constraining writing and developed action plans to trial and evaluate. You may also be interested in our WORD project website. Our findings have broader implications for PL programs in schools.

Key ingredients of effective Professional Learning

Two major reviews of PL literature, including Darling-Hammond et al. (2017) in the US and Cordingley et al. (2015) in the UK, identified overlapping features of effective Professional Learning that have an impact on practice:

1. a focus on discipline-specific content integrated with both general and content area pedagogical knowledge in a cohesive program of PL;
2. active learning cycles for teachers to design, experiment, reflect and consolidate;
3. expert feedback and support in understanding the content, research evidence and evidence-based practices;
4. collaboration with other teachers to encourage a shared sense of purpose; and
5. sustained duration, typically a year or longer, to provide teachers sufficient time to learn, practice, implement, collect, and analyse evidence, and reflect on their practice.

Recent scholarship has highlighted the value of educational co-design and the way it shapes collaborative partnerships  amongst teachers, learners, and researchers (Juuti et al., 2021).

The key theme across the literature is that effective PL offers complex and varied opportunities for collaboration and teacher input. Successful partnerships between teachers and researchers work to recognise the everyday demands teachers face and help them to co-design sustainable methodologies that work in the classroom.

How can a reflexivity process help us make the most of professional learning?

We found reflexivity was a great way to guide a more nuanced approach to Professional Learning to account for the way students and teachers make decisions about learning and teaching, especially in relation to writing. In addition, reflexivity theory (Archer, 2012) helps us to explain the dynamic contextual conditions that shape any learning and teaching event.

Reflexivity involves deliberating about possible courses of action, weighing up the contextual conditions to decide what might be feasible in this pedagogic situation and then choosing a way forward.

There are three distinct, yet related, conditions that shape, and are shaped by, our engagement in any situation (Archer, 2012). These conditions are Personal, Structural, and Cultural. Personal conditions relate to personal identity; Structural conditions are systems, practices, and resources in this context; and Cultural conditions relate to prevailing beliefs, and expectations in this context. These conditions apply both to teachers and students.

Table 1. Some conditions that influence or are influenced in the classroom

Personal conditions in teaching	Structural conditions in teaching	Cultural conditions in teaching
Identity as a teacher and learnerConfidence and efficacyBeliefs about teaching and learningKnowledge and skills	CurriculumPlanning documentsTimetableResourcesLanguageEveryday practicesStudents’ wellbeing and approach to learning	Importance of the subject areaHow the purpose of learning tasks is framedIdeologies of approaches to teaching e.g., explicit teaching, inquiry-based learning, and othersRelationships across school and community Expectations of parents, school system, government

In our project, we found that students (and teachers) approached decision-making around writing in quite different ways. Archer (2012) calls these modes of reflexivity, which may change in different learning contexts. These reflexive modes are communicative, autonomous, meta-reflexive, and fractured. The modes help us describe the different ways writers take on the task of writing:

• Communicative reflexives – decisions need to be confirmed by others before they lead to action; for example, seeking constant affirmation from the teacher or peers about decisions or following the teacher’s ideas and/or structures without injecting personal style or voice.
• Autonomous reflexives have a clear idea about their approach to a task and their decision-making leads to direct and quick action; for example, setting a plan that aligns with their favourite approach and not veering from the plan, so they get it finished.
• Meta-reflexives tend to consider the broader context alongside their own goals and past experiences to make decisions that will lead to the best outcome for everyone; for example, meeting the expectations of the task and teacher while pursuing their own priorities at the same time.
• Fractured reflexives find it difficult to make decisions or take purposeful action; for example, disaffected students who are paralysed by language requirements or the perceived enormity of the task.

Each of us can adopt these modes of decision-making at some point and in some contexts, but Archer argues that we generally have a dominant mode. Self-assessment and regulation can be much more effective if we understand our mode of reflexivity in any given context (Ryan et al., 2022). If teachers recognise their own and students’ modes of reflexivity, they can create pedagogic and classroom conditions that support students to enact effective learning decisions.

We found throughout the project, that three key terms were helpful for the teachers to consider in relation to the conditions that might enable or constrain their pedagogy: Know yourself, Know your students, Know your context.  Below are some reflexive prompts you may like to consider:

Know yourself	What do I know about the topic?What do I struggle with or feel I lack knowledge of in relation to the topic?Do I engage in this topic as part of my life? If not, why not? What do I want/need to know?Where can I get support?
Know your students	Where are the children in my classroom at in relation to this topic?What kind of readers and writers are they?What kinds of texts are they interested in?How can I differentiate/assess where the kids are so I can meet them there and uplift them?How can I draw on the strengths of the children (their diverse knowledge of language other than English, cultural knowledge, experience of this subject matter at home etc) so that I can support their growth in this topic?
Know your context	What program (other than the mandated curriculum) is in use at my school in this subject area? Does it use a commercial program or rely on external resources?How deep/shallow is my knowledge of the curriculum and policy that influences my pedagogy in this area?How does my school culture support my knowledge and pedagogy?How valued is this topic in the school and community? Do they know enough about it?

Features of Co-designed Professional Learning

Because reflexivity foregrounds the impact of context on teaching (including the teacher’s own impact on that context), we adopted a co-design approach to the PL element of this study. Our co-design had four parts:

1. We collected and analysed classroom data to understand the nuances of the educational contexts.
2. We helped develop a plan with the participating teachers to support new enacted pedagogies.
3. We worked with the teachers to discuss these action plans and the teachers set their own goals.
4. We had sustained, contextualised discussion with teachers regarding how these actions were working in practice. We provided guidance to teachers in the form of classroom visits and debriefs.

We refer to this process as Co-Designed Professional Learning (CDPL). Our process was iterative: this means we introduced different types of analysis and action as the teachers worked with us to identify their enablers and constraints in teaching writing. For example, we studied the way time was spent during lessons when the teachers indicated their number one constraint was a lack of time to teach writing well. This process involved recording writing lessons and coding the time to understand the content of talk, how much time was spent on writing vs classroom management, and opportunities for students to discuss their ideas with teachers and peers through dialogic talk. The codes we developed were guided by evidence-based principles for writing pedagogy. This fine-grained analysis allowed us to offer targeted feedback to teachers and support the development of a suite of talk-prompts and time-saving strategies for their writing teaching.

Outcomes of co-designed professional learning

In the latter half of the CDPL project, we found that students spent more time writing and focused individually on the writing task. We found that teachers were more aware of time, allowing for more student-centred writing time and less interruptions from the teacher to clarify the task. We also found that the CDPL helped teachers to set goals. Students were observed to remain on task working independently on their writing and talking through their ideas while working. We witnessed higher student engagement in writing and more sophisticated texts. The teachers were more intentional in their pedagogy – using their data and action plans to focus on areas of improvement for themselves and for specific students. The amount of time spent on classroom management was also significantly reduced. Our focus in the project was not on NAPLAN results, but due to the co-design of effective writing pedagogy based on contextual classroom evidence (including teacher knowledge and confidence in teaching writing), student NAPLAN writing results improved significantly for classrooms in this study.

This CDPL was beneficial for teachers in multiple ways.

• They were able to make sense of complex (personal, structural, cultural) conditions of their classrooms.
• They received in-time guidance about how to account for these dynamic conditions in their teaching.
• They exercised agency through their action plans, pedagogical design, and targeted support for students based on the data. This strengthened their confidence.
• CDPL has the potential for sustainable change, as the teacher develops new, transferrable skills.

The CDPL was beneficial for students in their ability to:

• Write for a clear audience and purpose.
• Make choices related to their writing and write about topics they are interested in.
• Spend more time on writing.
• Receive quality feedback on their writing from teachers and peers.

These findings have important implications for teachers’ professional learning and the ways in which schools approach PL programs.

Where to get research support?

University researchers are generally keen to work with schools and teachers on programs of professional learning that may also include some research. Search for the expertise you need by looking at Education staff profiles on university websites or feel free to contact the NSW Council of Deans of Education as they would be happy to circulate your request to all NSW universities.

References

Archer, M. (2012). The reflexive imperative in late modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cordingley, P., Higgins, S., Greany, T., Buckler, N., Coles-Jordan, D., Crisp, B., Saunders, L., & Coe, R. (2015). Developing great teaching: Lessons from the international reviews into effective professional development. Teacher Development Trust. https://tdtrust.org/about/dgt/

Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., & Gardner, M. (2017). Effective teacher professional development. Palo alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/effective-teacher-professional-development-report

Juuti, K., Lavonen, J., Salonen, V., Salmela-Aro, K., Schneider, B., & Krajcik, J. (2021). A teacher-researcher partnership for professional learning: Co-designing project-based learning units to increase student engagement in science classes. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 32(6), 625–641. https://doi.org/10.1080/1046560X.2021.1872207

Ryan, M. Khosronejad, M., Barton, G., Myhill, D. & Kervin, L. (2022). Reflexive writing dialogues: Elementary students’ perceptions and performances as writers during classroom experiences. Assessing Writing, 51, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2021.100592

About the Authors

Mary Ryan is Professor and Executive Dean of Education and Arts at Australian Catholic University. Her research is in the areas of writing pedagogy and assessment, teachers’ work in, and preparation for, diverse classrooms, reflexive learning and practice, and reflective writing. She was formerly a primary teacher and has an extensive record of professional learning for teachers. Her funded research projects are in the areas of classroom writing and preparing teachers to teach for diversity to break the cycle of disadvantage.

Dr Lauren A. Weber is Lecturer of Language, Literature and Literacy in the School of Education at the University of Wollongong. She specialises in the teaching and learning of English from primary to tertiary contexts and has published her research in a range of outlets including English in Education, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, and Cordite Poetry Review. She is a core member of the Shakespeare Reloaded project team. Lauren often works in community to connect children and young people with rich and authentic opportunities to read and write works of literature.

Dr Georgina Barton is a Professor of literacies and pedagogy at the University of Southern Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. She currently teaches English and literacy education courses in the post-graduate teacher education program. Georgina worked in many schools before becoming an academic and she conducts most of her research with teachers and students. With over 180 publications, her research often intersects between literacies, the arts and wellbeing. Georgina’s latest co-authored book titled Aesthetic Positive Pedagogy (Palgrave) is about a positive approach to literacy with aesthetics at the core of learning.

Dr Janet Dutton is Senior Lecturer in Secondary English at Macquarie University, NSW, Australia and was the Chief Examiner, NSW HSC English. A former English teacher, Janet has extensive experience designing and delivering teacher professional learning and is passionate promoting creative pedagogy. Janet researches in the areas of English curriculum, creative pedagogy for EAL/D learners, out of field teaching, transition to teaching and teacher retention.

Scott Fitzgerald et al. reflect on the shift from centralised decision-making to increased school autonomy and the resultant impact on teachers and principals . . .

Over the last decade in Australia, devolution and school autonomy have affected teachers’ and principals’ roles, workloads and working relations within schools. The moves towards devolutionary reform in Australian education systems has a long history. The genealogy of these changes can be traced back to the 1970s (MacDonald et al., 2021) and reflects a significant shift from centralized decision-making to increased school autonomy. However, as education scholars have long noted (Lingard & Rizvi, 2006), the concept of devolution has been a fluid and contested one.

Devolution policy in Australia in an era of new public management

An important difference in understanding approaches to devolution is between the social democratic tradition of the 1970s (epitomised in the 1973 Karmel Report, ‘Schools in Australia’) and New Public Management (NPM) models. The Karmel Report argued for enhanced decision-making at a local level in a manner that more readily addressed the specific needs of students, the community and teachers. The NPM model suggested devolution could help drive greater efficiency and effectiveness in the school system by encouraging self-management of schools, controlled centrally by greater accountability requirements.

The latter view became ascendant in the 1980s and has remained dominant for the last 30 years. Greater school autonomy has been delivered to areas of budgeting and staffing (the organisation and management work) as opposed to decisions around curriculum and assessment (learning and teaching). This is despite evidence from the OECD (2013) showing that this particular form of self-management within schools is proven to have little to no effect on improved student outcomes.

The establishment of the National Education Agreement and Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) in 2008, followed by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) in 2009, signalled that, rather than becoming more devolved, curriculum and assessment were in fact to become more centralised via national standards and accountability measures such as the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test  (Thompson, 2013). Here we have what Professors Bob Lingard and Fazal Rizvi have described as “the two arms of the same process of corporate managerialist reform”: devolution and centralisation (Lingard & Rizvi, 2006).

Devolution, principals and teachers

The effects of this policy ensemble have been investigated by a considerable body of research over an extended period of time. Looking at Australian states, we have seen the effects of increased teacher and principal workloads. In an article on this topic, we reported on teachers’ views of devolution-driven work changes associated with the Local Schools, Local Decisions (LSLD) package of school autonomy reforms in New South Wales (Fitzgerald et al., 2019). While increased school autonomy was consistently associated with work intensification, primarily in relation to ‘paperwork’ requirements, respondents noted other variations in workload pressures arising from the increased school differentiation facilitated by devolutionary policies. Although the overall experiences of increased workload remained consistent, distinct patterns of work intensification were evident, reflecting the working environment of a school’s level (primary or secondary), location and relative socio-educational advantage.

In another article, we reported on research that examined how 30 principals in two devolved Australian state settings, NSW and Western Australia, responded to the workload pressures associated with school autonomy (McGrath-Champ et al., 2019). Despite new leadership profiles tied to the leadership standard for principals (AITSL, 2014), the findings suggest that these school leaders were ill-equipped to support the local, school-level working conditions of teachers. Moreover, while principals valued the greater discretionary powers that came with school autonomy, the associated workload burden further compromised their support of, and work with, teachers who also faced work intensification. Notwithstanding this overarching finding, once more there were locational differences (between metropolitan, regional and rural schools) in how principals understood and responded to teachers’ changing working conditions.

A greater differentiation in the experiences of teachers and principals, both across school systems and within schools, has been a concerning outcome of devolutionary policies. This issue was explored in detail in an article that examined the ways in which the Independent Public School (IPS) initiative in WA drove new market dynamics within the state’s public school sector (Fitzgerald et al., 2018). Drawing on extensive interview data from two schools – one IPS and one non-IPS – we found that competition and choice associated with the devolutionary IPS program reinforced mechanisms of residualisation, marked by increasingly complex and disadvantaged student cohorts, particularly in non-IP schools. Nonetheless, teachers in both schools reported new pressures such that all teaching staff described significant dissatisfaction in their work.

Teachers’ dissatisfaction emanated not only from workload pressures but also from the fracturing of school-level working relations in devolved, ‘autonomous’ schools. This process was evident in WA’s IPS and NSW’s LSLD initiatives. In an article based on 31 school leader and teacher interviews, we encountered consistent criticism of the negative workload implications of the increased responsibility and accountability associated with LSLD (Gavin & Stacey, 2023). Despite the lack of clarity they experienced around their decision-making and accountability, principals appreciated their elevated importance and enhanced discretionary power. In contrast, teachers raised concerns that ‘local decisions’ about resource management in schools had become more opaque. Teachers noted, for example, that principals used their increased staffing autonomy to create extra leadership, rather than classroom teaching, positions. Moreover, while principals pointed to the managerial burden associated with their expanded hiring discretion, teachers perceived that selection processes were now more often shaped by nepotism than merit. 

The real effects of devolution

There is no firm evidence that the way school autonomy has been implemented in Australia has improved student outcomes. Nor has it led to more equitable outcomes for students or staff – an issue we engaged with in an article collating contributions from school autonomy researchers around the world (Keddie et al., 2022). Instead, research, including our own, has raised real concerns that devolution and school autonomy has contributed to the inequities in our education systems. School autonomy in staffing and resource allocation poses risks for trust in the crucial working relations at a local school level and, as the level of bureaucracy and paperwork in schools has grown, has contributed to the unsustainable and increasingly complex workloads that teachers face. While LSLD may no longer be in place in NSW schools, revised structures of governance will require ongoing attention if they are to avoid the range of difficulties evident under previous autonomy models.

References

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2014). Australian professional standards for teachers.  Retrieved from http://www.aitsl.edu.au/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers

Fitzgerald, S., McGrath-Champ, S., Stacey, M., Wilson, R., & Gavin, M. (2019). Intensification of teachers’ work under devolution: A ‘tsunami’ of paperwork. Journal of Industrial Relations, 61(5), 613-636. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022185618801396 

Fitzgerald, S., Stacey, M., McGrath-Champ, S., Parding, K., & Rainnie, A. (2018). Devolution, market dynamics and the Independent Public School initiative in Western Australia: ‘winning back’ what has been lost? Journal of Education Policy, 33(5), 662-681. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1412502 

Gavin, M., & Stacey, M. (2023). Enacting autonomy reform in schools: the re-shaping of roles and relationships under Local Schools, Local Decisions. Journal of Educational Change 24 (501-523). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-022-09455-5

Karmel, p., ( 1973) Schools in Australia: report of the Interim Committee for the Australian Schools

Commission. Interim Committee for the Australian Schools Commission

https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/1973-05/apo-nid29669.pdf

 Keddie, A., MacDonald, K., Blackmore, J., Boyask, R., Fitzgerald, S., Gavin, M., Heffernan, D., Hursh, C., McGrath-Champ, P., Møller, E., O’Neill, Parding, Salokangas, Skerritt, Stacey, Thomson, Wilkins, Wilson, Wylie, & Yoon. (2022). What needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education? Australian Educational Researcher, online first. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-022-00573-w

Lingard, B., & Rizvi, F. (2006). Theorising the ambiguities of devolution. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 13(1), 111-123. doi.org/10.1080/0159630920130108  

MacDonald, K., Keddie, A., Blackmore, J., Mahoney, C., Wilkinson, J., Gobby, B., Niesche, R., & Eacott, S. (2021). School autonomy reform and social justice: a policy overview of Australian public education (1970s to present). Australian Educational Researcher, 50, 307-327. link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13384-021-00482-4 

McGrath-Champ, S., Stacey, M., Wilson, R., Fitzgerald, S., Rainnie, A., & Parding, K. (2019). Principals’ support for teachers’ working conditions in devolved school settings: Insights from two Australian States. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 47(4), 590-605. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143217745879 

OECD. (2013). PISA 2012 Results: What Makes Schools Successful (Volume IV). https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/pisa-2012-results-what-makes-a-school-successful-volume-iv_9789264201156-en

Thompson, G. (2013). NAPLAN, MySchool and Accountability: Teacher perceptions of the effects  of testing. The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 12(2), 62-84.

About the authors

Dr Scott Fitzgerald is an Associate Professor in the School of Management at Curtin Business School, Curtin University. His research interests are in the broad areas of industrial relations, human resource management, organisational behaviour and organisation studies. His research expertise also spans various disciplines: sociology, political economy and media and communication studies. A key focus of Scott’s recent research has been the changing nature of governance, professionalism and work in the education sector. 

Mihajla Gavin is a Senior Lecturer in the Business School at the University of Technology Sydney, and has worked as a senior officer in the public sector in Australia across various workplace relations advisory, policy and project roles. Mihajla’s research is concerned with analysing the response of teacher unions to neoliberal education reform that has affected teachers’ conditions of work.

Susan McGrath-Champ is Professor in Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School, Australia. She has a PhD from Macquarie University, Sydney and a Masters degree from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her research includes the geographical aspects of the world of work, employment relations and international human resource management. Recent studies include those of schoolteachers’ work and working conditions.

Meghan Stacey is a former secondary school teacher and current Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at UNSW Sydney. Meghan’s research interests are in the sociology of education and education policy, with a particular focus on the critical policy sociology of teachers’ work. Her first book, The business of teaching: Becoming a teacher in a market of schools, was published in 2020 with Palgrave Macmillan.

Rachel Wilson is Professor, Social Impact at the University of Technology Sydney. Her research takes a system perspective on design and management of education systems and their workforce. She has expertise in educational assessment, research methods and programme evaluation, with broad interests across educational evidence, policy and practice. She is interested in system-level reform and has been involved in designing, implementing and researching many university and school education reforms.