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Australian teacher performance and development framework

By Mike Williss - posted Tuesday, 8 May 2012


In pursuit of its neoliberal education “reform” agenda, the Gillard Government created the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) on 1 January 2010. AITSL is a public company fully funded by the Commonwealth with an independent board charged with developing “rigorous national professional standards” and “fostering and developing high quality professional development for teachers and school leaders”.

The National Professional Standards now exist, and a draft of a framework for teacher professional development was launched on Friday 30 March 2012 for a three-month consultation period.

The AITSL draft document, Australian Teacher Performance and Development Framework (ATPDF) opens with the following acknowledgement of teacher attitudes towards teacher appraisal: “Australian teachers report that they do not always get the feedback they need to improve. In an OECD survey, 63 per cent of Australian teachers report that appraisal of their work is largely done to fulfil administrative requirements.” It goes on to say that its proposed framework “aims to promote genuine professional conversations that improve teaching and minimise the risk that administrative and bureaucratic requirements will become the focus.”

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The remainder of the document, including a series of “essential elements”, prescribe a series of administrative and bureaucratic requirements within which teacher performance and development must occur. It is a breathtaking switch from the left foot of “genuine professional conversations” to the right foot of “administrative requirements”.

The ATPDF ignores a substantial body of work on the promotion of teacher professional autonomy in the top PISA performing countries (Shanghai, Finland, Hong Kong et al) and instead cites seven documents that provide the evidence base for the framework. Five of the seven are primarily studies of current Australian practice. Examples of works ignored by AITSL are Pasi Sahlberg’s Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? and Ben Jensen’s Catching up: Learning from the best school systems in East Asia published by the Grattan Institute.

The following features of the ATPDF show clearly the administrative and bureaucratic hands operating at the potter’s wheel of teacher performance and development:

  • It is referenced against a single statement of expectations of teacher development, the National Professional Standards for Teaching: “They define the standard expected of all registered teachers and provide a roadmap for improvement above this level.  They provide a basis for professional conversations within schools…”
  • “There must be clear accountability for improving the quality of teacher performance and development.”
  • There must be “alignment of these improvement activities with the school’s plan.”
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  • Each teacher must “engage purposefully in performance appraisal and development” in a cycle that begins with the setting of objectives. These must be developed by the teacher “with the principal or delegate” and “must clearly articulate agreed objectives based on the school’s shared view of effective teaching, derived from the National Professional Standards for Teachers…Objective should be designed to be measurable…”
  • The next stage of the cycle is stated as “The teacher then takes action to ensure they meet expectations…”
  • The next stage is for the teacher to “collect and consider evidence against the agreed objectives, deliverables and performance measures”. A “far from…exhaustive list” of seven sources of evidence is presented with emphasis on the teacher collecting “multiple forms of evidence”.  A “central role” is accorded to “data showing impact on student outcomes”.
  • A formal review, conducted “at least annually” and including the “provision of written feedback” completes the cycle but not the process, for the review “should serve as the basis for developing new objectives”.

One outcome of this process, we are assured, will be “greater teacher satisfaction”. But that’s not all. There’s a sting in the tail with reference to “integration with other processes”. Not only “may” these processes “assist teachers to decide whether they are ready to apply for promotion, or for certification as Highly Accomplished or Lead teacher….Participation in performance and development processes will also support beginning teachers to move to full registration, and already registered teachers to renew registration”.

If this is not the negating of genuine professional conversations by administrative and bureaucratic requirements, then I don’t know what it is. As one of the documents that provide the evidence base states: “The performance and development planning cycle used in most government systems and elements in the Catholic sector, provides a very good foundation for the further development and strengthening of teacher performance and development in all state and territories” (p.5). This neatly encapsulates AITSL’s flawed approach: building on a foundation characterised by already existing bureaucratic and administrative requirements.

Andy Hargreaves wrote the Forward to Pasi Sahlberg’s book, Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? Hargreaves, together with David Berliner, Michael Fullan and Linda Darling-Hammond is credited by Sahlberg as providing the work that has been “implemented in developing Finnish education since the 1970s” (p. 35). Hargreaves describes as a “failed theory” the belief that “teacher quality can be increased by a system of competitive rewards” of the type embedded in the ATPDF: registration and its renewal, promotion, bonus payments of between $7500 and $10000. He criticises countries like Australia, Canada and the U.K. for approaches which, while not going all the way with the U.S., nevertheless turn capacity-building “into something else- training people in prescribed strategies to deliver accountability goals and targets imposed by others.”

The clearest difference between both Shanghai (now at the top of the Program for International Student Assessment Tables or PISA) Finland (which it has displaced into second position) and most other countries performing at that level is the time that has been given to teachers to work as collaborative autonomous professionals.  According to the Jensen report, Shanghai teachers teach between 10-12 hours per week compared to Australian teachers who teach on average 20 hours per week.  Jensen observes: “Teachers in Australia have 50 per cent less non-teaching time than Shanghai teachers to do the things that matter” (p. 15). Finland’s teachers spend on average 600 hours per year teaching, compared to over 1000 hours accumulated by teachers, on average, in both the U.S. and Australia. 

In a length arbitration between the South Australia Department of education and the South Australia Branch of the Australian Education Union, the Industrial relations Court of South Australia described the workload of teachers and leaders in South Australian public schools as “excessive, unreasonable and unsustainable”. Leaving aside the public perceptions of how easy teachers with their several holiday breaks get it, this is a damning assessment of the pressures under which teachers operate during term time. And while it is a determination of teachers in South Australia and in the public system, it could apply equally to teachers in every other state and territory and across all three systems: public, Catholic and publically subsidised restrictive enrolment (private or independent).

Salhberg addresses the question of assessing teacher performance in Finland in this way: “Foreign visitors in Finnish schools often ask how teachers are assessed based on their effectiveness.  Or how do administrators know who are effective teachers and who need to upgrade their teaching competences?  The overall finding is clear: There are no formal teacher evaluation measures in Finland…The question of teacher effectiveness or consequences of being an ineffective teacher is not relevant in Finland. As described earlier, teachers have time to work together during a school day and understand how their colleagues teach.  This is an important condition for reflecting on teacher’s own teaching and also building shared accountability between teachers…The basic assumption in Finnish schools is that teachers, by default, are well-educated professionals and are doing their best in schools.  In real professional learning communities teachers trust each other, communicate frequently about teaching and learning, and rely on their principal’s guidance and leadership” (p.91).

There is a mistaken understanding by Jensen that may be used to counter the idea that teachers should be given more time for collaborative developmental activities.  He states that Shanghai, with average class sizes of 40, has “traded off” large class sizes for time. This is not true. I am no expert on Chinese schooling, but I have visited over 14 times to that country since 1974. Average class sizes throughout much of China are still as high as 60-70 students. Shanghai has not raised class size to provide teacher time. It has brought class size down – still not far enough – but nevertheless has a class size average that is lower than that in much of the rest of the country.

Some features of the Shanghai system include all teachers, not just beginning teachers, having mentors. Beginning teachers having multiple mentors for subject specialist and classroom management issues. Teachers are organised into research groups and lesson preparation groups. There is frequent classroom observation and feedback and there are professional learning communities at district level.

What this non-teaching time does, amongst other things, in Finland and Shanghai is to refresh teacher performance, raise teacher morale and increase teacher effectiveness.

When the Productivity Commission says in its School Workforce research report, released on 3 May 2012, that principals need the power to fire poor teachers and that there should be performance-based pay for teachers, it entirely misses the point.

If teachers are denied the opportunity and time to develop as autonomous professionals working collaboratively in professional learning communities, if they are forever on a treadmill of always being in front of a class and then being expected to jump though system hoops of accountability and performance measurement, then we will always have a largely demoralised pseudo-profession, and we will always be hearing calls from the unenlightened to “sack dud teachers”.

The AITSL draft ATPDF is on the wrong track, and calls like those from the Productivity Commission only compound the problems inherent in denying teachers as a profession.

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Article edited by Jo Coghlan.
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About the Author

Mike Williss is a teacher of Chinese in South Australia. After 32 years in the classroom , he now works for the Australian Education Union in South Australia.

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