VATE/ALEA(Victoria) RESPONSE to BLUEPRINT FOR EDUCATION: KEY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

1. PREAMBLE

The following response to the four Blueprint for Education: Key Findings and Recommendations papers is made on behalf of the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English (VATE) and the Australian Literacy Educators’ Association Victoria (ALEA Victoria). These professional teaching organisations have been extensively involved in promoting exemplary theory and practice in English/literacy education in Victoria over the past forty years and welcome the opportunity to engage in a professional conversation about the directions and parameters of education, particularly public education for the next decade.

This response has been framed by our work in and findings from two long term projects in which the two associations, both at the local state level and through their national bodies, have been collaborative partners during the past four years. One is the International Federation for the Teaching of English Conference which was held in Melbourne in July 2003. At that conference over 1300 teachers and educators focused on developing visions for English/literacy education and a complementary vision of teacher professionalism that would address the complex questions of English/literacy education in the 21st century. These were contextualised in a more comprehensive vision of a world view in which all students are given every opportunity to develop as active global citizens.

The second context for our response is the Standards for Teachers of English Language and Literacy in Australia (STELLA) Project. This was a three year Australian Research Council funded project in which practising teachers across Australia, in collaboration with academic researchers and standards bodies articulated and developed a professional standards framework for English literacy teachers (The framework can be accessed at the STELLA website www.stella.org.au) Our work on STELLA has convinced us that a genuine reform agenda will only be successful if it bring teachers along with it as active participants in its processes by drawing on their expertise and understandings, and by facilitating the implementation of visions which teachers are prepared to own. In particular, teachers have to feel both a degree of professional autonomy, and that what is legitimately expected of them as professional people by governments and the wider community is achievable in the local contexts in which they work. VATE/ALEA Victoria are continuing work on the STELLA Project through an ARC Linkage Project, in conjunction with Monash University and the Victorian Institute of Teaching. The project is investigating a range of assessment tasks teachers might undertake to demonstrate their professionalism in a standards framework. We believe recognition of this kind of collaborative work by practising teachers with the Institute in developing the nexus between professional learning and professional standards frameworks should form an essential component of any statement on directions for teacher learning.

2. KEY FINDINGS FROM THE IFTE 2003 CONFERENCE

The following are the major deliberations/ findings of the five strands around which the IFTE conference was organised. There was, as might be expected, considerable overlap between each. They are concerns and preoccupations that the English/literacy education profession in Victoria will continue to explore and advocate within the framework of the government’s education reform agenda. Many, we believe will find ready acceptance; others, no doubt will prove controversial, even within the English/literacy education profession itself.

Strand 1: Literacy for a Democratic Society

The major findings of this strand focused on the need of governments and educators :

• to recognise and promote the rights of children as enunciated in The Declaration of the UN Rights of the Child (1959
• to articulate a shared vision of education appropriate for a participatory democracy, built upon the valuing of all peoples, an understanding of the interdependent nature of the relationships between the world’s people and a wish for justice for all
• to develop effective English/literacy education which allows students to participate in creating that vision through an emphasis on valuing the language and cultures of all children, the use of accessible inclusive language and texts which deepen cultural knowledge and provide authentic portrayals of diversity, and the promotion of rich definitions of literacy which include vernacular, multi, emerging and critical literacies.

Every student has a right to access, without barriers, both to the language of power (currently English) and to his or her language of culture and identity.

Students bring resources to their education from their multiple languages, multiple identities and multiple realities.

Multilingualism offers more ways of understanding and connecting to the world than does monolingualism. The diversity of ‘Englishes’ should be recognised in any definition of multilingualism.

Strand 3: Literacy and Textual Diversity: English as Cultural Studies

Literacy needs to be understood as a socially situated practice. This conceptual frame suggests that less emphasis be given to the components of literacy practices and more be given to the complex relationships that exist between language, culture and teaching.

A cultural studies approach to teaching suggests the need to invent new ways to use language to describe subject English. Is it possible, for example, to continue to use the term ‘English’ as an umbrella term to capture the complexities of recent approaches to the study of language, culture and identity?

Strand 4: 21st Century Literacies

Learners need to be given the opportunity to develop a wide repertoire of literate practices for an ever increasing range and complexity of contexts.

This is best achieved in a learner centred curriculum which recognises prior learning, is relevant and purposeful, engages the learner, and encourages the development of learners who are adaptable, creative, resilient, critical and able to share learning with others.

In the developing contexts of multiliteracies and e-literacies it will be necessary for literacy educators to develop a new dynamic and dialogic theory of the visual and the verbal.

Strand 5: Professional Identity and Change: the Role of English Literacy Educators in the 21st Century

Research and professional development events/programs need to recognise and value the role of rich, collaborative, ongoing and inquiry-based learning from teachers of English/literacy.

Narrowly framed research into teachers’ work or professional learning activities that are premised on deficit paradigms, although claiming to be motivated to improve teaching and learning, are more likely to be destructive of individual teachers’ professionalism and destructive of the integrity of English/literacy teachers as a community.

Greater value should be accorded to inter-generational conversations within the profession, in formal or informal professional learning contexts.

The English/literacy teaching profession regards with profound regret the efforts of some governments and regulatory bodies (both overseas and in Australia) who through policy pronouncements, dispatches in various forms to the media, and diverse regulatory and accountability practices, seek to diminish the richness and complexity of the work of professional English/literacy teachers and the curricula from which they teach. The profession needs to be proactive to resist such efforts if its integrity is to be maintained and improved, and if students’ learning is to be enriched and improved.

3. RESPONSE TO KEY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

A vision not a performance management plan

A blueprint for education should be framed in visionary language rather than in bureaucratic managerial jargon. Such a vision should articulate a world view and education’s role in shaping it. The vision should express a moral, ethical and political stance compatible with education’s capacity to enable students to develop as active purposeful citizens in an inclusive democratic society. It cannot be expressed in terms of benchmarked academic performances for students and performance measurement criteria for teachers and schools. The Ministerial Papers of the 1980s demonstrated that it was possible for a government to articulate such a vision and to energise the education community into developing productive collaborative strategies for implementing it.

Developing a culture of learning

The vision should be a coherent achievable one which is more than an attempt to synthesise the disparate, sometimes contradictory, findings in the discussion papers. While we recognise that the papers are the product of four different consultation processes we are also aware that they display underlying tensions between a visionary and a managerial view of education. The general thrust of the Excellence and Innovation paper is, by and large, visionary because it puts an emphasiss on ‘building a culture of trust and empowerment’ and on ‘ new models of governance…that support collaboration and more effective provisioning and resourcing within community contexts’. The implications of this thrust underlines the crucial need to articulate strategies for the building of a culture of learning which values life long learning, creativity, flexibility, diversity, innovation, collaboration and shared experiences, and which applies to a whole range of educational contexts - classrooms, schools, clusters and networks, school-community partnerships and teacher professional learning communities.

By contrast, the School Improvement paper is replete with ‘bureaucratic speak’ about performance management and quality assurance in an implied scenario of winners and losers. It is language which does not do much for the morale of teachers and schools, especially those that will be identified in the current jargon as ‘underperforming’.

Language reflecting the ethos of an education community

The language of the blueprint should be sensitive to the ethos of an education community it seeks to influence and ‘reform’. In particular:

• The phrase ‘Excellence and innovation’ should not be repeated ad nauseum as it runs the risk of becoming an empty mantra. It would be better to talk of excellences and innovations plural, and to contextualise them wherever possible so that the community becomes aware of the many kinds of excellences and the many varieties of innovation currently being practised and demonstrated in schools.
• For a profession characterised by collaborative reflexive practice words, phrases and terms which emphasise competition, a ‘relentless focus on improved school learning, ‘value adding’, ‘drivers of teacher learning’, ‘enhanced measurement’, etc are inappropriate. They simply do not reflect the complex ways in which the relationship between reflection and practice works in learning and teaching.
• Statements about performance and accountability need to be made with proper regard for the morale of teachers and school communities. In particular they must be scrupulous in avoiding ambiguities of intention and connotations of deficit models and punitive consequences. For example, these statements from School Improvement -‘There should be clearly understood consequences when schools are underperforming’ and ‘School funding should be linked to school improvement’- can be read either positively or negatively. Contextualisation and explication of such statements in positive terms are crucial if the blueprint is to prove energising rather than demoralising. All schools recognise they are capable of improvement. They also need to be made to feel that the kind of improvements expected of them are realistically achievable, that they take into account the full range of factors determining those achievements, including the socio-economic contexts within which they work, and, that if improvements are to be achieved, appropriate support strategies and resourcing will be provided through non-judgmental processes.

We support the affirmation of teachers’ professional knowledge and expertise as crucial to any educational vision implicit in the papers, and in particular the fact that one of the discussion papers, Teacher Learning, has the profession’s continuing well being as its primary focus. We would, however, offer the following provisos.

• The priority given to schools as the locus of teacher learning – ‘the place where teachers learn, not the places from which teachers go to learn’- is admirable. It has the potential to address issues of developing professional learning teams within schools, of developing whole school approaches to learning and teaching, of ensuring greater collaboration in school clusters and networks, and the delivery of quality professional learning to rural and regional Victoria. It also accords with our long held conviction that ‘one size does NOT fit all’, and that teachers and school communities are better situated to diagnose problems and needs specific to their local contexts and to provide strategies and solutions for them than are centralised bureaucratic ‘template’ strategies and solutions. Having said that we would also suggest that ‘local’ should not be equated with parochialsm. Our experience as professional teaching organisations with national and international affiliations suggests that teachers belong to many professional learning communities - local, state, national and global – and that participation in any one inevitably is nourished by, and nourishes, the others. We would not like to see a resourcing scenario develop where one ‘locus’ – the local - was preferred at the expense of the others.
• ‘That assessment of teacher performance be linked to student performance, based on a range of evidence’ (Teacher Learning) is one of those statements that, without considered contextualisation and explication, will be treated with suspicion by the profession. It’s axiomatic that schools want the best for their students and that teachers undertake professional learning to improve student learning. What will be crucial in any accountability criteria that link teacher and student performance will be what constitutes ‘a range of evidence’ That range of evidence must take into account the commitment elsewhere in the papers to curriculum diversity and authentic assessment practices and principles and not be confined within a current testing of student performance regime which is too restrictive and narrow in its expectations of educational outcomes. By contrast, a school’s success in enabling its students to access diverse post-post compulsory education opportunities is infinitely richer ‘data collection’ than ENTER scores.

A comprehensive reform of curriculum, especially one coupled with reform of pedagogical and assessment practices, is timely. It is obvious that the CSF is proving a cumbersome straitjacket for curriculum initiatives in many schools, and that the initiatives in post compulsory education to provide alternatives to the VCE need strengthening and extending. The development of an essentials learning framework offers the opportunity to flesh out a vision for public education in a P-12 continuum in ways that recognise the need for schools to provide diverse, flexible and inclusive programs to meet the diverse aspirations and capabilities of all their students.

An essential learnings framework will not come as a surprise to our members. Through our national affiliations we are already aware of work being done on essential learnings models in Tasmania and South Australia, and our state associations have already sponsored two seminars on the theory and practice of similar work in the new basics approach in Queensland. Furthermore we expect our professional expertise as literacy and English teachers to be fully utilised through collaborative decision making at the very beginning of developing a Victorian framework. We have no doubt that the rich definitions of literacies and the contexts in which they are practised which were explored and articulated at the IFTE Conference will be a necessary underpinning of any framework. Similarly, VATE looks forward to exploring the relationship between the ‘deep learning’ embedded in the traditions of subject English and the new directions for that subject explored at the conference, and an essentials learning framework.

We also need to learn from the history of curriculum reform in Victoria. Both the development and implementation of the CSF and the VCE were accompanied by widespread ongoing consultation and resourcing. Future reform will benefit from similar, if not increased, levels of such support. The processes were also accompanied by vigorous intellectual debate within the education community about the intrinsic worth of such reforms. Elements of that debate are still occurring within our associations. For example, some members regard the English CSF as a truly innovative document because of its recognition of the plurality of texts possible for study in an English curriculum and its emphasis on the constructed nature and the contextual understandings of texts. Others argue that its model of a continuum of literacy development through levels of complexity ignores relevant research on literacy and language acquisition.

However, whatever differences of opinion they might have, all our members agree that the VCE and CSF were flawed curriculum reforms for one essential reason. Their potential curriculum and pedagogical richness have been diminished by assessment procedures that are both restrictive and cumbersome. Any future curriculum reform will need to bite the bullet of getting the assessment side of the equation right. The affirmation throughout the discussion papers of ‘authentic assessment’ practices is promising. We hope they, rather than ‘enhanced performance measurements’, inform the vision.