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The Forum > Article Comments > Teach for Australia > Comments

Teach for Australia : Comments

By Andrew Leigh, published 17/5/2010

Teach for America has started to shape the US education debate. Now it is Australia's turn to trial the program.

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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.
Posted by vanna, Tuesday, 18 May 2010 6:04:59 AM
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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".
Posted by nairbe, Tuesday, 18 May 2010 7:22:11 AM
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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.
Posted by Sir Vivor, Tuesday, 18 May 2010 7:33:40 AM
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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)
Posted by Chris C, Wednesday, 19 May 2010 9:54:33 AM
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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.
Posted by Son of a Gun, Thursday, 20 May 2010 12:11:23 PM
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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.
Posted by Chris C, Thursday, 20 May 2010 3:23:47 PM
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