If the TFA program is judged to be successful then the 2 dominant factors contributing to its success must surely be, (i) They are indeed "smartypants" (ii) The mode of delivery of the teacher-ed program they are being offered
With respect to (ii)it's definitely what I would call a "Practice-into Theory" model of learning, very different from the "Theory-into Practice" models which dominate pre-service teacher education courses in Australian unis. Apart from Wollongong Uni which offered a P-I-T mode of delivery for about 10% of its intake each year between 1997 and 2006, no other unis seem to have been able to break the tradition of theoretical lectures followed by some field practice. (Wollongong won a National Carrick Award for this program in 2006)

If TFA is shown to produce effective teachers surely we should be thinking about doing something similar on mainstream pre-service teacher ed courses?
Cambo

One point that is often overlooked is that the Teach for Australia program is funded far above teacher education programs in the rest of the country. The clinical approach which is part of the program is something that should be universal, but with current funding levels that is simply impossible in mainstream teacher education programs. In other words, this is a program developed as a political showpiece with no generalisability to the mainstream.

Thank you to Andrew Leigh.

re
"So many teachers applied to the program that recruiters were able to take just the top 20 per cent."

What were the attributes of that top fifth?

The same attributes may be more applicable to one group of teachers than another - for example, the conceptual predominance of curriculum-directed needs of top level maths classes in years 10-12, as opposed to the crucial and often very informal learning processes that must be facilitated in a preschool or primary school setting.

Humans are natural learners. Human (all too human) scholars are highly disciplined learners. I am wondering how the choice of TFA candidates addresses the spectrum of needs across our developmental stages and socioeconomic strata.

Can TFA and the experience it provides can highlight and effect improvements to teacher selection and training? I will wait and see.

So graduates of any other degree are better at teaching than most people with an education degree. Our unis should be deeply ashamed.

I'm the first to sink the boot into the hard headed closed shop attitude that is teaching in Australia, but this is caused by teachers unions that are so frightened of accountability they would rather turn terrorist than accept change.
Having said that i must back our teachers. Despite the quantity of criticism that is levelled at our educationalists every time there is a debate around this subject, they do an outstanding job that is far above most other countries. Our schools are good, our kids complete and handle much more complex concept than we did at their age. We seem to think that just because they don't do what we did at school things must be going backwards. It's called progress.
The standard of teacher education in this country is excellent, i certainly do not want some lawyer teaching my child English. Hell they make a mockery of the "plain english" concept every time they write something. Australian teachers are in demand overseas because they can teach. This is not just getting up with a lesson plan but includes understanding of child psychology, sociology, developmental assessment, multiple teaching techniques, behavioural management and on the list goes.
By the time these other people have finished their studies most of them will have moved on to other jobs or just done a good job of buggering up education. Let's not forget we have a high standard to start with so why compare with the US that has a money based education system like there health system. If your rich you get educated, if your poor well.

Australian schools are money makers not teachers.

TTM

About 100% of software being used in the schools comes from the US. Probably the majority of text books now being used in primary and secondary schools come from the US, and in universities this would possibly be over 90%.

The product name of certain pieces of software from the US is now being directly written into the curriculum of TAFE education (EG Dreamweaver, Flash, Word etc).

So we almost have a US education system that comes under the title of Australian education.

Why not ask the US government to fund our education system as well, instead of the Australia taxpayer.

Tafe teaching is a very loose concept now. You can do course delivery on the back of about 6 weeks training, it's called workplace training and assessment. Universities have an altogether different arrangement. We are talking child education not adult. If you want your children taught by some post-grad doing their public service so it looks good on their CV or when they become a politician go for it. I'll stick with our highly trained and competent professional teachers thanks. This is another cover job to deflect attention from the under staffing issues we have due to the government not training enough teachers and loosing so many from job satisfaction, and it's not because their being underpaid. A few years ago the NSW government made a promise that there would not be more than 22 students in a K-2 class. Great isn't it. The true result is many composite classes that put higher workloads on teachers and deliver poorer student results. Now we are going to put under trained budding politicians in there to really stuff it up.
As Homer Simpson says "let's do it half arsed, it's the american way".

Nairbe says
"I'm the first to sink the boot into the hard headed closed shop attitude that is teaching in Australia, but this is caused by teachers unions that are so frightened of accountability they would rather turn terrorist than accept change."

Where is the evidence for any of Nairbe's opinions about any of the several unions representing Australian teachers, or for that matter, the supposed "hard-headed, closed-shop attitude"?

I doubt that Nairby can cite either fact or substantiated opinion to back that prejudicial claim.

Imagine the reaction if an attempt were made to apply the TfA concept to every profession: ‘Most of us played with Lego as children. Let’s have a six-week summer course to produce more engineers – Build for Australia. Most of us surely still have all those steak knives. Let’s have a six-week summer course to produce more doctors - Operate for Australia.’

The AMA would black ban unqualified people pretending to be doctors. But it wouldn’t need: the Medical Practitioners Board would never allow unqualified people to practise medicine. Sadly, the body set up to maintain professional teaching standards in my state, the Victorian Institute of Teaching, allows these unqualified people to take classes.

At least the middle classes can be grateful that the unqualified people from Teach for Australia are currently confined to disadvantaged schools. The children of the better-off still get properly qualified professionals in their classrooms.

Here’s some research:

‘The news that Australia is following the United States in introducing a program which puts untrained teachers in the classroom came as a real shock to us here.

‘Simply put, you are being conned. Teach for America (TFA), the model for your national program, is not effective in helping students in poverty learn more, though it is very effective at raising large amounts of money….’

(The view from America: what on earth are you thinking?, David Berliner, Sydney Morning Herald, August 17, 2009)

(http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-view-from-america-what-on-earth-are-you-thinking-20090816-eme4.html?page=-1)

The Teach for Australia model has been developed by looking at the American and UK models, identifying their weaknesses, forming strategies to overcome their weaknesses and adapting the program to the Australian context. So, first and foremost, any comparison between the various models is moot.
Secondly, the TFAus candidates are not qualified teachers after six weeks - they are qualified after two years of intensive, practice-based training and mentoring. The candidates are not paid as much as fully qualified teachers and are not given complete responsibility for individual classes. Rather, their expertise and experience is harnessed to improve the experience for kids in disadvantaged schools.
But it is the Aussie way to knock something before you've tried it. I just wish we would be more open-minded in trying a new pathway to attract highly qualified people who would not otherwise be teachers to help combat inequality in the Australian education system.

Son of a Gun,

Correct. The “TFAus candidates are not qualified teachers”, yet they take classes unsupervised for four days a week. It is not like other teacher training in which the student teachers have a classroom teacher as a supervisor who must be present during the student teachers’ lessons.

The TFA trainees have been given “permission to teach” by the VIT. I cannot imagine the Medical Practitioners Board giving people who had done a six-week summer course in medicine, even if they were bright science graduates, “permission to practise medicine” unsupervised for four days a week, even if some one said it was “open-minded” to try a “new pathway”. There is too great an understanding of the skill and knowledge required in medicine.

The VIT accredits teacher training courses and registers teachers who have completed them. These courses require at least a year of training on top of a degree. If teacher training really requires only six weeks, then it would be logical to make this the new standard for all teachers.

Some of us remember the control of entry fight of 40 years ago, which successfully ended the practice by the Victorian government of putting untrained people in front of classes. We never thought that dressing the practice up with a new name would allow it to resurface. I never thought that the very body trusted to maintain professional standards would be complicit in so directly undermining them.

Thanks for your comment Chris C.

I never commented about the medical profession. Given that there is no policy that I am aware of that seeks to train medicos in six weeks and that the differences between medicine and teaching are so great it is hardly productive to compare them, I will assume that your comparison of TFAus with a nonexistent policy of the MPB is a rhetorical strategy to make everyone believe that your attitude against TFAus is the only logical, reasoned, enlightened view to take. In fact, the comparison is illogical, fabricated and uninformed.

However, the point you raise about unqualified teachers from 40 years ago is interesting and worth thinking about. I would be interested in seeing the differences between the recruitment strategies and presage of teachers then compared with TFAus strategies now. From what I have read, TFAus recruits high calibre graduates and provides them with further university training prior to and during their placement. I am not sure if the teachers you mention from 40 years ago were graduates, if they had demonstrated a capacity to teach and lead, or if they had undergone intense training prior to and after first stepping into a classroom.

Further, some of us might remember that we learned more about teaching when we actually started teaching than we ever learned from books. It is worth trying to think of ways to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Good on TFAus for working toward this with the impressive goal of combatting educational disadvantage.

Son of a Gun,

The comparison with medicine is perfectly valid. A comparison with law would also be valid. Each profession has requirements which must be met by those who practise it. Those requirements include a certain amount of specified training and education relevant to the knowledge and skills of that profession. Lawyers, doctors, engineers and others would think it ridiculous that the required skills and knowledge could be imparted in six weeks. That is why we don’t have Operate for Australia or Litigate for Australia (both for poorer citizens only, of course).

It is certainly true that we learn more about the act of teaching students by actually doing it, but teaching is more than the skill required to deliver a lesson in a classroom. It includes knowledge of teaching theory, educational history, collegiate practices, policy knowledge, interpersonal skills, etc. These cannot be provided in six weeks. If they could be, there would be no justification for year-long Diplomas of Education. Every potential teacher would do a six-week course over summer.

Student teachers have always been able to learn a lot from teaching rounds. The difference in the case of TfAs is that there is no one supervising their classroom practice, whereas with student teachers a fully qualified teacher must legally be present in lessons at all times.

Some of the unqualified people from 40 years ago did have degrees. Some did not. The point is that at that time the teaching profession itself had the confidence to insist that no one took a class who had not been properly trained in teaching, and after a long battle, the government accepted the argument and established the registration boards (abolished by the last Liberal government of Victoria and now re-instated as the VIT).

Multiply by 25 Andrew? Where is this Paradise?

A classroom with only twenty five children is a dream that most teachers have but reality puts class sizes much nearer 35.

Teaching is something much greater than having knowledge. The task of the teacher is to inculcate a desire to learn and there is no degree course for this.

Thanks for the article though,I don't look forward to TFA's introduction in Australia, especially if it engenders the narrow veiw of the world taught in American schools.

After 18 years in the class room I still never cease to be amazed that high school kids never cease to amaze me. The older I get, the more fascinating the whole business of teaching becomes. My aprenticeship was for about ten years, about the same as a good tradesman, say. If you want a skill, you can't just suddenly click your fingers and have it in 6 weeks.
TFA compared to real teaching is more like comparing Twenty20 cricket with a Test match. Like T20, TFA is all style at the expense of substance.
TAC.

Well put, TAC

Seems to me that the trick, regarding training, is to find the optimal balance between apprenticeship and tertiary training. In medicine, the apprentice starts with a greater knowledge base and is deemed an intern. No-one expects the internship to substitute for the prerequisite theoretical knowledge, nor vice-versa.

With teaching and learning, we are all both active seekers and at times unwilling subjects to these experiences, and I expect we all have strong memories and opinions about how it ought to happen in an institutionalised setting like a school.

I decided in year 7 to become a teacher, because I thought I could do a better job than one of those adults whose unpleasant eccentricities were inflicted on year after year of students under the guise of "a good teacher". Did I succeed? Considering results student by student, as a doctor might subjectively consider the same succession of patients, I had successes and failures, and over 30 years, in total, no evidence of a significantly different outcome, compared to the "good teacher" long since gone.

With teacher aides in many classrooms, I see people who have the intuitive skills and gifts that beg for an assisted career path for mature age learners. As with the TFA cohort, they require supervision by journeymen, specialists, registered teachers, whatever name you may give to the people who are recognised as responsible.

I think it's a poor idea to leave raw recruits of any kind unsupervised in a class of students. I'm disappointed to hear of Victoria's opportunistic use of TFA.

Hilly,

I guess the paradise of 25 students in a class must be in Victoria. In my 33 years of teaching (1974-2007), there were only two years in which I had a full year with any class over 25 - one class in 1975 and two classes in 1981. In 2005, my year 7 English classes were 14 and 16 students each.

At my last school, the average class size was 21.3 students. The overall average for Victorian secondary school English classes was in 2009 21.6 students, English classes being chosen because English is a core subject. The maximum is 25 students. The overall average primary school class size was 22.1 students. The maximum in prep to year 2 is 21 students.

The Victorian secondary PTR was 11.9:1 in 2009. Victoria’s primary PTR was 15.7:1.

vanna,

A quick scan of my mountain of textbooks from uni (undergrad and postgrad) revealed a very small number of American texts. Two, to be exact, and they were guides for my American Literature course (an oxymoron, some would say).

Almost all of the textbooks I have used in schools are generated in Australia. In fact, most are from Queensland. I'd be quite surprised to find that books such as "Secondary Maths for Queensland" would be American texts. I'm not sure why they would go to all the trouble of substituting local place names, using local maps and local terminology, either.

Similarly, the SOSE textbooks used in every school I attended or have worked in in Queensland are tailored specifically to Queensland SOSE curriculum needs. Again, no Americanisation there.

Not sure about software. Most tends to be internet-based these days, some American, some from elsewhere.

I just wanted to set the record straight, as the Americanisation issue is clearly one of great importance to you.

Son of a Gun and Chris C,

Would either/both of you be interested in writing a short opinion piece voicing your views on Teach for Australia for print publication? Please email me at leech@acer.edu.au

Thanks.

Otokonoko

American literature is no more of an oxymoron than any other category.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_novelists_from_the_United_States
gives a fair list of novelists -

Then there are 5 poets off the top of my head - Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Theodore Roethke, Allen Ginsberg and Ed Dorn. And plenty more where they came from, including TS Eliot, born and raised a Yank. Best of my knowledge, those I've selected are all dead or male. My guess is there are plenty of other US writers living, male and female, who can spin a better tale than you can. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway & Hunter S Thompson aren't in the running though, because they're dead, too. And Djuna Barnes.

I wouldn't expect much from you the way of a list of favourite American authors from your days at uni - just as Australian literature was not covered at Kickatinalong State College, my Alma Mater. But then again, maybe you went to a better class of tertiary institution. It's a shame if some of your instructors were needlessly snobbish.