On the teaching of writing in ITE
Part 2 in a series on the teaching of writing in Australia, this time looking at initial teacher education
Today’s post is a follow-up to yesterday’s about the AERO literature review on the state of writing instruction in Australian schools. Yesterday, I plotted the progress of pedagogy in this area over time, in an attempt to make sense of where we are at and how we got here. Today, I’m going to look at the way that initial teacher education (ITE) in Australia has contributed to the dearth of teacher skill and knowledge in this area - me included.
I’ve written before about ITE in Australia. It’s a bit of a bugbear of mine. I don’t think I would mind so much if the teaching qualification didn’t take so long - two years after an undergraduate degree - and wasn’t so expensive. A lot of what Emina writes about the lack of preparedness of graduates to teach writing has been said many times before and there have been multiple and ongoing reviews into this known issue. As far as I can tell, not much action has been taken.
The report says:
Of the Australian teachers surveyed, 49% reported being underprepared to teach writing (Wyatt-Smith et al. 2018). It was apparent that ITE providers emphasise different pedagogies and theories, resulting in graduates employing a broad range of largely inconsistent approaches in Australian classrooms (NESA 2018b). Many ITE providers provide only surface level coverage of writing components while others overlook components entirely (NESA 2018b). The 2018 report, ‘Preparation to Teach Writing: Report of the Initial Teacher Education Review’ recommended:
• the development of minimum specifications for content knowledge and instructional practices
• that the specifications become part of ITE accreditation policy and processes
• that the specifications be developed based on evidence-based practices and best practice approaches in existing programs
• that ITE providers assess students developing capabilities based on these new specifications
• that all ITE providers be given a timeframe within which to transition to the new specifications (NESA 2018a; NESA 2018b).
I can see quite a few problems with the recommendations here. I don’t delight in negativity, especially when it comes to the importance of ITE. But I do feel it’s worth pointing out a few potential issues with the implementation of this plan. It’s quite possible that one of the many reviews has flagged these already, and I’m speaking from my own experience, but here goes:
A lot of sessional tutors in university methods courses bring their own pedagogies which may or may not be evidence based. As we saw with yesterday’s post, many of these pedagogies are problematic. In my experience, my methods lecturers were retired teachers who most likely brought their own ways of doing things into our university classrooms.
Many (OK not all, but a lot of) academics in education and specifically English specialise in critical, not pedagogical fields. I’m talking about secondary here, but we tend not to get the Emina McLeans and Pamela Snows, with huge amounts of technical knowledge on the explicit teaching of reading, grammar and writing. We just don’t get the literacy specialists, the speechies and the reading scientists teaching secondary English methods.
With regard to the above points, how are course designers qualified to oversee a cohesive and evidence-based approach to writing instruction? I’m not saying this can’t happen, but I am saying that universities don’t have a great track record.
Frankly, I’m surprised that teachers receive any instruction in the teaching of writing. I got exactly none. I didn’t attend a sandstone but a respectable and recognised university, not all that long ago. I can tell you what I did learn:
A lot about programming and lesson sequencing. Not what to put in a cohesive program and nothing on how to plan lessons on writing instruction, but I did learn the value of engaging students through origami when teaching haiku. Does that count? I didn’t get to use these skills for a few years after I graduated because my Heads of Department had the good sense not to let me at programs before mentoring me.
I learned about trends in Young Adult literature. My tutor owned a children’s bookstore. The course felt a bit like a Tupperware party.
I did an entire subject on how to create a webquest. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s basically weeks of class time where students surf the internet trying to find information we could have just provided.
I also completed an entire subject on how to meet the needs of diverse learners. I didn’t learn how to scaffold but I still have some fidget toys I bought for a groupwork display. They’ve never been used.
As I said, this was not a terrible university. And I want to emphasise that it was not a lifetime ago. I frequently tweet about ITE, coloured of course by my own experience. The not-infrequent response by full time academics in Education faculties is that schools should be upskilling teachers on the job. I agree that learning on the job is essential. I learn (and teach other adults) every day. But I do wonder whether learning the fundamentals could be accommodated by the onerous and often irrelevant ITE courses that we labour over for two long years. It’s grossly unfair to expect early career teachers to learn through ‘discovery’.
We’ve been waiting a long time in Australia for real change in ITE. According to the report, the situation is similar in the US. In the intervening years since the 2018 review into ITE, it seems no new literature has crossed AERO’s desk. If today’s first year students receive effective instruction on how to teach writing, it will be 2027 before the first Year 7s benefit. Universities don’t have to wait for government coercion before improving their offerings. I hope they read the AERO review as a call to action.