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.