PREAMBLEThe National Goals for Scho

PREAMBLE

The National Goals for Schooling in the 21st Century (The Adelaide Declaration) adopted by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) in 1999, was an historic commitment to improving Australian schooling within a framework of national collaboration. The Declaration acknowledges that achievement of the agreed national goals entails a commitment to collaboration for the purposes of:

• Further strengthening schools as learning communities where teachers, students and their families work in partnership with business, industry and the wider community;

• Enhancing the status and quality of the teaching profession;

• Continuing to develop curriculum and related systems of assessment, accreditation and credentialing that promote quality and are nationally recognised and valued; and,

• Increasing public confidence in school education through explicit and defensible standards that guide improvement in students' levels of educational achievement and through which the effectiveness, efficiency and equity of schooling can be measured and evaluated.

As a critical step towards the achievement of the national goals, MCEETYA established the Teacher Quality and Educational Leadership Taskforce (TQELT) in July 2001, to provide advice, among other things, on:

• Teacher preparation and ongoing development aimed at improving the quality and standard of teaching and learning; and,

• Professional standards for teachers and principals, both for entry to the profession and to meet the ongoing needs of students over time.

At the MCEETYA meeting in July 2002, Ministers considered a report from TQELT outlining the benefits of the development of a national framework for professional teaching standards. MCEETYA endorsed a recommendation that a developmental approach be adopted in relation to a national framework and TQELT was asked to provide advice regarding the structural components of quality teaching across a teacherís career. As a result of a lengthy consultation process, the National Framework for Professional Standards for Teaching was formulated and then considered at the July 2003 MCEETYA meeting. It received State, Territory & Federal Education Ministersí endorsement and Ministers agreed that the next step in implementing this decision was to use the National Framework to nationally align entry or graduate level standards. The significance of this endorsement by Ministers cannot be overstated and other groups such as employers and professional associations who are undertaking or will undertake work on standards for teaching need to recognise the imprimatur that the National Framework has and refer to it as a guide and key point of reference.

2




INTRODUCTION

This National Framework for Professional Standards for Teaching is the current response in continuing efforts to define and promote quality teaching. During the 1980s and into the 1990s, teachers and teacher educators in Australia were encouraged to understand and articulate what effective teachers do, influenced by a competency-based agenda (Louden, 2000). As part of responding to these challenges, the National Competency Framework for Beginning Teachers was developed by the National Project on the Quality of Teaching and Learning and published by the Australian Teaching Council in 1996 (National Project on the Quality of Teaching and Learning, 1996). Across the country, professional bodies, registration authorities, employing authorities and academics entered discussions about developing competences for teachersí work. However, critics argued that defining teachers' work through competencies not only deskilled teachers but also reinforced teachers' practices as reproductive of schooling rather than being transformative (e.g. Porter, Rizvi, Knight, & Lingard, 1992). The potential of competencies to fragment, technicise, and decontextualise teachers' work was highlighted (e.g. Hattam & Smyth, 1995; Louden & Wallace, 1993), as was their potential to restrict teachers' professional growth rather than transform and extend it (e.g. Whitty, 1994). Many critics were particularly concerned with a perceived emphasis on ëdoing teachingí rather than ëknowing about teachingí. By the end of the 1990s in Australia, the UK and the USA, there was a shift from the discourses of competencies to standards. As explained by Reynolds (1999), the concept of standards still aims to make the basis for accreditation of practice transparent but it is a broader concept than competencies as it includes a range of factors such as values and attitudes. Further, standards refocus issues of teachersí processes, purposes and efforts rather than outcomes alone.


This current National Framework for Professional Standards for Teaching provides an architecture within which generic, specialist and subject-area specific professional standards can be developed at National, and State and Territory levels. It provides an organising structure which establishes, at a national level, the agreed foundational elements and dimensions of effective teaching. The Framework complements the National Goals for Schooling, providing an agenda for strategic action on teaching and learning policy at the national level. It provides an agreed language, utilising commonly understood terms and definitions, with which to discuss professional teaching practice at the national level. It will therefore facilitate more effective information sharing about professional teaching practice across jurisdictions and provide a source document for Commonwealth, State and Territory governments to draw upon for their own strategic purposes. The Framework also aims to enhance the effectiveness of professional discourse between teachers and schools communities both within and across their respective jurisdictions, as well as providing a common framework for professional dialogue between teachers, teacher educators, teacher organisations and associations and the public. The National Framework will provide guidance, support and recognition for ongoing professional development of teachers. It aims to improve alignment of standards for pre-service teacher education graduates across Australia and thus portability of teacher qualifications.

Professional standards for teaching describe the skills, knowledge and values for effective teaching. They capture key elements of teachersí work, reflecting their growing expertise and professional aspirations and achievements. Standards make explicit the intuitive understandings and knowledge that characterise good teaching practice and enable this to be widely shared within the profession. The National Framework for Professional Standards for Teaching provides the basis for agreement on and consistency around what constitutes quality teaching and facilitates the articulation of the knowledge, understandings, skills and values for effective teaching through development of standards at the local level. The nature and content of standards developed and implemented at the local level will vary according to the purpose for which they are being developed, and the context in which they will be utilised.

In achieving all these intentions, the National Framework provides a powerful mechanism for raising the status and standing of teachers, and a common reference point for engagement within the profession and the community.

3




RATIONALE

Quality teaching

A strong and effective school education system is integral to individual success, social cohesion, progress, and national prosperity. It is clear that teachers have to be more and more successful with a wide range of learners in order to prepare future citizens with the sophisticated skills needed to participate in a knowledge-based society. The sort of pedagogy needed to help students develop the ability to think critically, create, solve complex problems and master complex subject matter, is much more demanding than that needed to impart and develop routine skills. Thus teachers have to be both knowledgeable in their content areas and extremely skilful in a wide range of teaching approaches to cater for the diverse learning needs of every student.

Internationally, a growing body of research confirms teacher quality as one of the most important school factors influencing student achievement (e.g. Darling-Hammond, 2000, 2003; Santiago, 2002). Based on reviews of studies of student achievement in the United States, Darling-Hammond, LaFors, & Snyder (2001) concluded that ëteachersí qualifications ñ based on measures of knowledge and expertise, education, and experience ñ account for a larger share of the variance in studentsí achievement than any other single factor, including poverty, race, and parent education (p.10). In Australia, a number of studies have similarly concluded that the quality of teaching and learning is an important factor accounting for variations in school studentsí achievements (e.g. Cuttance, 2001; QSRLS, 2001; Rowe, 2003; Rowe, Turner, & Lane, 2002).

Thus, quality teaching is at the centre of schooling systems and school effectiveness, and recognition of the critical relationship between teachers and learners highlights the need to better define and communicate what constitutes good teaching (National Reference Group for Teacher Standards Quality and Professionalism, 2003). Likewise, specific understanding of what constitutes quality teaching is a necessary aspect of any strategic and long-term approach to ensuring the provision of quality teachers, and necessary also in ensuring a shared commitment across teacher employers, the community and all levels of government on how best to develop and support teacher quality.

Moreover, it is increasingly agreed that identifying and publicly recognising what it is that effective teachers know, do and value is an important step in enhancing the public profile and standing of the profession. Teachers often feel that their work is