The Politicized Discourse of "Quality Teachers" in High-Poverty Schools in Australia

• In Event: 29.050 - Teacher Education for Equity: National and International Perspectives

Abstract

Objective
This paper reports on one component of a larger project that investigates ‘quality’ teaching in high poverty schools in Australia. Here we consider what ‘front-line workers’ in and around schools in high poverty communities understand as ‘quality’ teaching. After identifying the discourses called upon by educators to make sense of their day-to-day experience of teaching, we consider potential barriers and enablers enacting and sustaining high quality teaching in their communities.

Perspectives/Theoretical Framework
There remains little agreement about what “teacher quality actually means, how it matters or how it should be assessed” (Author, 2012). Quality teaching discourses usually take one of two approaches. Some have a clear evaluative component, suggesting that quality teachers have measurable skills, knowledges or attributes that produce teacher effectiveness. Critiques of such models claim there is an overemphasis on student outcomes as test scores that ignores the contextual detail of teaching well. In contrast, ‘quality’ is also used within reflective processes that promote professional development and improved practice. By this way of thinking, the term ‘quality teachers’ is considered problematic because it essentializes and individualizes what it means to provide quality education across all schools.

Methods/Data Sources
Participants were engaged in ‘purposeful conversations’ about their understanding of ‘quality teaching’ and how they know when it occurs. The semi-structured interviews were analyzed for themes and to examine the impact of emerging/competing discourses of quality teaching across the four stakeholder groups. Interviews captured a range of beliefs, practices and forms of knowledge production concerning what constitutes quality teaching. Participants included school principals (n=12), teachers (n=17) departmental staff (n=7) and teacher educators (n= 10), all of whom work in or around schools in high poverty communities.

Results/Scholarly significance
Participants across all groups discussed increasing pressures to ‘measure’ quality in specific ways, making the term itself a potent, ‘dirty word’ despite their desires to improve schooling for underserved students. The responses we collected document the differences in responses, particularly between the teacher educators and departmental staff who critique quality teaching discourses from the outside, and principals and teachers who respond as ‘insiders’. Interestingly, all groups expressed discomfort about the terminology of ‘quality teachers’. School-based educators perceived the term more literally and supported the notion that there was such a thing as a ‘good teacher’. The opportunity to reflect on different interpretations of ‘quality teaching’ provides us with insight into a gap between the goals of those who ‘critique from the side’ and those who ‘critique from afar’. The program reported in this paper aims to provide versatile teachers well suited to teaching in communities of high poverty. By listening to the voices of those involved, we have uncovered the difficulties of discussions about what kinds of teaching and teachers are best for students in schools in high poverty communities, against the particular political and policy background that currently defines teachers’ work.

Authors

• Jo Lampert, La Trobe University

• Bruce Munro Burnett, Australian Catholic University

• Barbara M. Comber, University of South Australia

• Annette Woods, Queensland University of Technology