How to keep teachers and improve learning
Melissa Clarke: Hi, I’m Melissa Clarke, coming to you from Gadigal Land. This is ABC News Daily. A new way of teaching in the classroom is being adopted in some schools, with teachers tailoring their approach to how young brains absorb knowledge. But is this the revolution in teaching that its proponents suggest, when others argue better pay and less admin will do more to improve the standard of teaching? Today, ABC’s Education and Parenting reporter Conor Duffy on how best to teach the teachers.
Teacher: Say it with me girls and boys, a noun is the name of a
Students: person, place
Melissa Clarke: Conor, you’ve been chatting with Catholic schools in Canberra and Goulburn, and the teaching in those classrooms is a little bit different. What’s going on?
Conor Duffy: Well Mel, there’s something of an educational revolution happening.
Teacher: Capital letter.
Students: Capital letter.
Teacher: One idea
Students: One idea.
Teacher: Punctuation.
Students: Punctuation.
Conor Duffy: The director of Catholic Education Canberra and Goulburn, Ross Fox, is in charge of just over 50 schools, many of these low and medium fee. He said his teachers were working hard to turn things around, but they just weren’t seeing results.
Ross Fox: There’s a sense of frustration amongst our teachers in the past, that they were putting so much effort in and seeing no result and no reward in terms of student learning.
Conor Duffy: So Fox implemented the Science of Learning approach to teacher training and developed it into a program that his school system calls Catalyst. Now this method looks at the way young brains absorb knowledge and it structures lessons to reflect this.
Ross Fox: The feedback from teachers, the feedback from students is that the practices we’ve adopted, in line with the science of reading, the science of learning, understanding how brains work, how students learn, are paying dividends in terms of what students can achieve, what they can do.
Conor Duffy: It emphasizes direct explicit instruction, tailored to that knowledge about the way young brains work, with the teacher ensuring a tight disciplined classroom and with the students being in no doubt about what they’re supposed to be doing and learning at all times.
Melissa Clarke: So what does this look like in the classroom, this direct explicit instruction, and how is it different from what might currently be going on in other classrooms?
Conor Duffy: I know a lot of this can all sound a little bit hoity-toity, but one clear example of the differences is in reading. So for example, a method of teaching reading called balanced literacy or whole learning, one key plank it has is that learning to read is natural and easy and that students can acquire the skills they need just by immersing themselves in books. It does involve some teacher-led instruction, but it quite strongly emphasizes that students working on their own, simply by being around literature, can be enough. Now the science of learning approach is exactly the opposite.
Teacher: Chew, what word? Ready, my turn first. Chew, your turn.
Conor Duffy: It says that reading is not natural and involves both understanding language and decoding words and its approach to this is very teacher-directed. Every single part of the process is systematically broken down and spelled out to the student.
Teacher: Ready, I’m going to sound it out. Tuh, er, oo. Is that right? Yeah.
Conor Duffy: Supporters of the science of learning say that the evidence shows that this works for the greatest number of students and that it’s often disadvantaged students, especially those who don’t have classroom messages reinforced at home, who struggle with the balanced literacy or whole learning approach.
Melissa Clarke: Catholic Education, Canberra, and Goulburn are happy with these changes, but do we have any concrete evidence that it is a better way to teach kids?
Conor Duffy: Well, they did commission an independent review using NAPLAN data that found the percentage of students underperforming in reading dropped dramatically between 2019 and 2022 from 42 percent to 4 percent, and there were similar great results for writing and reading. Now, a panel of experts advising the Federal Government on teaching degrees, which has examined a range of theories on different teaching styles, has also come down on the side of the science of learning philosophy.
Melissa Clarke: The Federal Government has been looking at this issue, how best to prepare teachers for the classroom. How much is it considering adopting these kinds of practices that Catholic schools in Canberra and Goulburn have adopted?
Conor Duffy: Well, it’s much broader than that, Mel. Last August, the Federal Government set up an expert panel to look at teacher education in Australia. So education ministers wanted to ensure that graduating teachers were better prepared for the classroom. The panel was led by Sydney University Vice-Chancellor, former Education Department Secretary, and Professor Mark Scott, and Professor Scott said that when teachers start work in the classroom, they’ve often been left overwhelmed by the complexities of teaching and pretty unprepared by their university degrees.
Prof Mark Scott: You want to make sure that of all the things that those studying to be teachers are focused on, that they’re getting these things right, and particularly something like classroom management. If students aren’t confident in that so that when they’re faced with a complexity in the classroom, they’re not overwhelmed by that complexity, then there’s a real risk if they’re not confident in that, they won’t have the resilience and endurance that’s required to develop strong careers.
Conor Duffy: So the panel has produced a final report called Strong Beginnings and it makes 14 recommendations to improve teacher training.
Melissa Clarke: And are any of those recommendations along the lines of the Science of Learning approach the Catholic schools around Canberra and Goulburn have been taking?
Conor Duffy: Yes, I was struck reading the report by how similar some of the philosophies seemed, and Professor Scott confirmed to me in an interview that they do have the same approach at their core. They include mandating that university teaching degrees now include content that helps teachers understand how young brains process, store and retrieve information, literacy, and numeracy teaching strategies, fostering rules and routines and modeling desired behavior, and how to teach in ways that are culturally and contextually appropriate.
It also recommends practical placements be improved, all with the goal that teachers emerge from uni more confident and better able to teach basic literacy and numeracy.
Prof Mark Scott: But fundamentally, you do need those practical skills to make you equipped to help students learn from day one when you’re a teacher and help you deal with the invariable complexity that you’ll see in the classroom. And if you feel underskilled in those areas and not confident in those areas, then you’re going to find it very, very tough.
Melissa Clarke: So the big question is, are these recommendations going to be adopted? Because often you get panel recommendations and nothing happens. Is this revolution of teaching as you describe it going to go nationwide?
Conor Duffy: Yes, well, Professor Scott assured me that a new quality advisory board that will be set up will have teeth and that universities that don’t comply could risk their accreditation. So federal, state, and territory ministers have given their in-principle support and they’ve given universities two years effectively to update their programs to reflect these changes. There are pretty serious consequences if they don’t.
Melissa Clarke: Conor, teacher education and pedagogy is often a pretty contested area. Some of this sounds a bit familiar with old debates around phonics, for example, and whether that’s the best way to teach reading. I’m just going to guess that this new approach to teaching that’s being suggested doesn’t necessarily have unanimous support. Would that be fair to say?
Conor Duffy: 100 percent. And disputes like this have been occurring for as long as there are schools. The American philosopher and educator John Dewey summed it up way back in 1938, saying the history of educational theory is marked by the opposition between the idea that education is development from within and that it is formation from without.
So not everyone thinks this is the best approach and some see the Science of Learning as a trendy concept imported from America and not yet backed by the evidence, though the government’s panel disagrees. The other contention is whether it is the top priority for ensuring that more teachers stick around.
Melissa Clarke: It seems that there are a couple of issues running in parallel here. How best to teach is one thing and then simply getting enough teachers in a school can be a struggle in the first place. Does that issue need to be solved first or at least at the same time as we talk about how to teach in the classroom?
Conor Duffy: Yeah, as you say, Mel, they are related and the review looked at both issues. Enrolments to study teaching at university are declining and even amongst those students still signing up, according to this report, as many as 50 percent of those who start the degree don’t finish it. An estimated one in five new teachers also leave the profession in the first three years. A significant factor for that high dropout rate is how unprepared new teachers feel for managing a classroom. And since we published this story, we’ve heard directly from quite a lot of teachers that they almost quit on their first prac.
Student teacher: I was completely overwhelmed and I was pretty close to just giving up on teaching then and there. There’s been a lot of focus on writing essays and not that much on the practical skills that I’ll need to help deal with student behavior.
Conor Duffy: So if these new approaches to teaching help with that, it could make a big difference to teacher retention.
Prof Mark Scott: We think if you could lower that dropout rate by 10 percent, that’s 3,000 extra teachers you can get. And there are similar trends you can see where over time you could save thousands of teachers for the profession if you could stop people from leaving very quickly for their degree.
Melissa Clarke: So lots of students dropping out of teaching, that’s a problem when we already have a teacher shortage. Connor, how bad is the shortage?
Conor Duffy: So the Federal Government predicts a shortfall of 4,000 high school teachers by 2025. Education Minister Jason Clare says there are lots of reasons for the shortage but one of the solutions is reforming teacher training and providing teaching students with better practical experience. But of course, it’s not just teacher education.
The Deputy Dean of Education at Monash University, Louise Jenkins, said workplace issues such as pay and conditions make the biggest difference to teacher retention. Older teachers also say that the status of teaching is an issue too, that a generation ago teachers were regarded as leaders in the community, not too far off the status that society gives to doctors, and that improving the regard that teachers are held in is key to lifting morale in a workplace that feels undervalued and getting more teachers to stick around.
Melissa Clarke: And that’s important. We know that a good teacher does make all the difference, right, Conor?
Conor Duffy: Absolutely. I was probably heading nowhere fast before my year 10 history teacher, Mr. Sajko, pulled me into line, and the clarity and brilliance of his lessons meant I was so much more engaged with and loved the last couple of years of school, which hadn’t been the case for me earlier on. I hear that so many times in the round.
It’s one of the things I love about working around in education is hearing the stories of people’s transformations. And all of that gets us back to the core idea of why this all matters. history teacher, Mr. Sajko, pulled me into line, and the clarity and brilliance of his lessons meant I was so much more engaged with and loved the last couple of years of school, which hadn’t been the case for me earlier on. I hear that so many times in the round. It’s one of the things I love about working around in education is hearing the stories of people’s transformations. And all of that gets us back to the core idea of why this all matters.
Teacher: Say T.
Students: T.
Teacher: Instead of mm say
Students: T.
Conor Duffy: High-quality, dedicated, and caring teachers that have the time and resources to develop positive relationships and support learning can make a huge difference in students’ lives and will have a huge say in the success or otherwise of the next generation.
Melissa Clarke: Conor Duffy is the ABC’s National Education and Parenting Reporter. This episode was produced by Veronica Apap, Flint Duxfield, and Sam Dunn, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is David Coady. Over the weekend, catch This Week with Sarah Dingle. She’ll be looking at the future of both the Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe and the central bank itself. I’m Melissa Clarke. ABC News Daily will be back next week with Sam Hawley returning. You can find all of our episodes of the podcast on the ABC Listen app. Thanks for listening.
