Changing Modes of State Control in Australian Teacher Education Policy

• In Event: Teacher Education and the Common Good: International Perspectives

Abstract

Teacher education policy is one of the most heavily reviewed and contested domains of Australian public policy, with a remarkable number of state and federal reviews conducted since the 1980s. The ‘review frenzy’ that has characterised this area is arguably a product of Australian federalism, which reflects a complex mix of overlapping policy responsibilities in teacher education. Central here is that the federal government controls the universities in which teacher education programs take place, whereas state governments control schooling and oversee teacher registration, professional development, and employment.
The national landscape has been further complicated since 2007, when the federal Labor government came to power promising an “education revolution”, central to which was a commitment to improving teacher quality through national standards-based reform. In 2010, the Labor government established the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, which developed the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. The Standards include ‘Graduate’ level teaching standards that all teacher education programs in the country must now demonstrate alignment with, in addition to various state level requirements. The national agenda for teachers was further strengthened in 2013 with the election of the federal Liberal government, which has framed teacher quality as a central pillar of its national school reform agenda. A landmark in this agenda was been the establishment of a ‘Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group’, which has recently reviewed all teacher education programs in Australia and made recommendations for further change. Its final report, Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers, was submitted to the federal Minister for Education in December 2014. The government’s narrow focus on teacher quality has framed underperforming teachers as the cause of under-performing schools. At the same time, the government has weakened equity commitments in schooling policy in an era in which inequality is growing across the nation.
This presentation provides a detailed analysis of developments in Australian teacher education policy since the 1980s, with a particular focus on national policy shifts since the late 2000s. Our main argument is that since the 1980s, two dominant trends can be observed in Australian teacher education policy. First is a progressive shift towards nationalisation, driven largely by transnational economic imperatives and convergences within international research about what constitutes teacher quality and effectiveness. Second is a significant shift in the way ‘the state’ attempts to steer and govern teacher education, characterised by a new logic of standards-based governance that plays out at the national level and includes significant involvement from the federal government. While these two trends have similarities with international developments, we argue that neither trend can be adequately understood without focussing on the dynamic and unique nature of Australian federalism. The distinctive features of Australian federalism not only mediate transnational policy imperatives and trajectories, but also provide certain conditions of possibility for imagining and governing teacher education now and in the future.

Authors

• Glenn Clifton Savage, The University of Melbourne

• Robert L. Lingard, University of Queensland