The first 100,000 words: Writings on Education by a Teacher

Teacher Representation 2.0 – The media, global education and the unions role. In my previous blog, the first of 2019, I outlined the difficulties that I see for teaching as a profession in Australia, with a specific focus on teacher representation and leadership. Based on what can only be called an impressive response, I have now learnt many things that add to and challenged my earlier thoughts. The exploration of these ideas may well be something that I continue, as I feel that too frequently ‘teacher voice’ and ‘teacher representation’ are things cited freely without the associated awareness of the difficulties and complexities that are present. These difficulties and complexities need not be explored because the likelihood of a sudden change of direction that allows teacher voice to be possible or allowed is not within sight. A special thanks to Jelmer Evers and Howard Stevenson, whose work reminded me of something I completely failed to mention, the role of the Educa...

Ranting, raving and complaining Hattie and the tenor of debate within Education I agree with the contention that Australia is within the grip of a movement described as “the Cult of the Guru” with John Hattie as the visible figurehead and Visible Learning as the corporate and commercial arm. It is worth noting that the emergence of Hattie within Australia closely mirrors the rise of Dylan Wiliam’s in the United Kingdom and more recently the USA. Wiliams’ Classroom Experiment and Hattie’s Revolution School TV programs, Wiliam’s Learning Sciences International and Hattie’s Visible Learning bear much in common, though their agendas differ. So, it is clear that this is not merely an Australian trend, but one aspect of the broader ‘Global Education Reform Movement’ (Sahlberg 2006; 2016), a trend whose examples I am sure others more qualified than I could add to. The critiques of Hattie’s methods are numerous and robust (Bergeron & Rivard, 2017; Higgins & Simpson, 2...

Teachers of all countries unite!   by Jelmer Evers Anyone who reads on Twitter and reads newspapers and has something to do with education cannot have failed to notice that something is going on in education. There is much discussion about the representativeness of teacher organisations. The Education Cooperative has the motto "From, For and By Teachers", but that has not always been the case in recent times. We need what Dennis Shirley calls "the promise of the present moment" A manifesto in six points: More democracy More organizing and networking More active teachers on boards Increased us of new technologies A merger of all trade unions. Membership to ‘Education International’ Trade unions fight inequality and promote democracy I think it is good to first determine something: trade unions are a democratic necessity. I have often heard such a disdain towards trade unions. Unions, who needs' em? Right? Wrong. We cannot do without tra...

The key question I would like to explore is: As a profession, how should we best represent ourselves. As @beardface noted earlier on Twitter, the common metaphor and analogy for teachers and teaching currently are Doctors and/or Medicine. This may seem like a positive association, which is true for pay, conditions and status, but the persistence of the idea, and its over-application, also holds issues. Specifically, Davies (1999) conceived of Education as medicine in the debate around the ‘what works’ and ‘evidence-based’ practice and research (Hammersley, 1997; Olson, 2004; Slavin, 2002, 2004). In response, Olson (2004) rejected the analogy made between education and medical research, commenting on the differences between a ‘drug’ being administered and an educational intervention. Whilst Hammersley (1997) shifted the analogy to align educational research with surgical operations made up of complex decision-making. What I am questioning here, however, some 20 year...

After writing a blog around the difficulty of teacher representation and the four spheres of knowledge that seem unattainable for any one teacher (Politics – Policy – School – Classroom) to truly be across. I was contacted by Clare King ( @clarelorelei ), who has been called upon to make a submission to the ‘ Inquiry into the Status of the Teaching Profession ’, she has been contacting politicians and received positive responses particularly from Andrew Laming and Pasi Sahlberg. Below is my version of her submission, which will likely be different to the below. If anyone else is interested in writing their own ’10 policies to improve the status of the teaching profession’, have a go and let myself ( @steven_kolber ). In addition, if there are experts in any of these areas, feel free to let me know where I am (undoubtedly) incorrect, or off the mark.                                   ...

                                               Teacher activism and discussion has centred around the concept of improving the esteem of our profession and improving the reach of our profession’s voice. Teachers feel that for too long politicians have dictated terribly flawed and faulty policy ideas to our workplaces. Stripped of our agency, we feel powerless ad this contributes to our sense of burnout. Or as Gabbie Stroud would say, “not burnout, but Demoralisation”. We are demoralised and disempowered. The Parliamentary Inquiry into the teaching profession typifies this thrust from teachers into the public sphere, supported by the rise in status of Eddie Woo and the more recent emergence of Gabbie Stroud as our spokespeople. Stroud’s genius is the way that she has been able to put into words an idea that is understandable to politicians, shows strong fee...

#edureading - Introduction for the new or interested participants Rather than type out the same instructions multiple times. Read here for the summary of what #edureading is and how you can get involved.  If you are interested in participating with us, the first step is to create a short video introducing yourself to the group, by following this link here:  https://flipgrid.com/35c76cfb . It is worth looking over the existing participants to get a feel for the group that you are interested in engaging with.  After that, you should begin engaging with the questions for the article or book that you are interested in discussing. There will sometimes be a video produced by me to give you an overview of the article, how long it should take, an overview of the questions and so forth. All relevant things are available here:  https://sites.google.com/view/educational-reading-group/home The format of our discussion is an 'Asynchronous' (i.e. not at the sa...