Quality Assurance through Teaching Standards: The Path to National TeacherAccreditation

Quality Assurance through Teaching Standards: The path to National Teacher Accreditation

Dr Greg Cunningham Director of Accreditation

Tim Milkins Director of Robotics

A Abstract

There is growing evidence that the quality of teachers is the most important educational resource in our schools. Therefore, greater attention must be given to the factors that shape that quality. Teachers play a leading role, greater than ever, in our technologically enhanced and skill-based economies where academic underperformers are perceived to be left behind (Sywelem, 2009). Teacher quality translates directly into students’ learning. A well-prepared and skilled teacher impacts student learning and assessment more than any other student background aspect. This includes minority status, language and poverty (Darling-Hammond, 2006). Teacher Education providers should have the capacity and ability to attract students with high academic potential to teaching and then collaborate with them to meet the ever-evolving demands of learning and teaching in the 21st century. Achieving such capacity in the providers of teacher education is the collective responsibility of the nation, universities and the profession. Internationally, educational practitioners and policymakers have been focused in developing adequate accountability and quality assurance procedures for teacher education. Many countries have already accredited their teacher education programs to ensure better teachers and higher quality instruction in classrooms (Ingvarson et al, 2006).

Teacher accreditation is both a “process” and a “status.” The “process” reports the current evaluation and development of educational quality with the improvement and validation of standards, while the “status” offers a guarantee to the community that teacher education institutions offer high quality training program(s) (Satyanarayana & Srivastava, 2009). Accrediting bodies produce and use certain criteria both to ensure teacher education programs meet the maximum expectations of quality. More than ever, the world needs effective teachers, but in many important jurisdictions around the globe, the fundamental components of teaching's professional standing are being neglected due to a number of factors including concerns about salary, professional working conditions and access to ongoing professional learning. It is important to consider the consequences for ongoing

reform in the context of the world, as well as how rapidly and successfully Australian policy for assisting the teaching profession has evolved.

Teaching has been referred to as the first profession and the “profession of professions” by Dr Gregor Ramsey in his significant November 2000 Report for the NSW government on the quality of teaching, Quality Matters. Ramsey stated that the occupation most essential to the development of other professions is education.

The local context

In NSW, for example, Tom Alegounarias, current Chair of ISTAA (the Association of Independent School’s Teacher Accreditation Authority) and previously CEO of the NSW Institute of Teachers (NSWIT) and later Chair of the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) oversaw the NSWIT implement a policy model for supporting teacher quality and standards which has drawn attention from policymakers worldwide. These professional teaching standards and associated accreditation and approval processes are viewed by government officials as among the most significant educational policy reforms in recent times.

Alegounarias cites that the reasons for success are many, but he was CEO of NSWIT in 2000, when the policy for supporting teacher quality and standards was codified into law for the first time in Australia. Further, this teaching standards’ agreement was ratified nationwide and was incorporated into the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership’s (AITSL) charter not long after AITSL was founded in 2005.

While it is not the intention here to analyse every descriptor of the Australian Standards’ Framework and associated policies that make it both unique and significant, certain dimensions are worth noting. One is the availability of accreditation as outstanding teaches, either at Highly Accomplished or Lead Teacher. This places outstanding teaching in a context of recognised professional growth from all other teachers. Outstanding teachers and leaders evolve their practice based on knowledge gained as students and in practice, not independently from collegial experience. The Framework also includes requirements for Initial Teacher Education graduates. The capacity to be accredited or registered at Proficient Teacher level and subsequently at Highly Accomplished or Lead Teacher is built on knowledge gained through a recognised university degree, complemented subsequently by practice and further experiential development.

Rationale for teaching standards The Standards were developed by practising teachers. A range of representative bodies including teacher unions nominated individuals that dedicated significant time to developing drafts that were subsequently independently validated by teachers in different contexts. Teachers themselves exercise judgment as to who meets the standards, within a strict system of oversight, run by accredited teachers. Outstanding teachers, for example, are selected from among those that are regarded by their peers, including principals, as

indeed being outstanding practitioners, and who are already active in providing leadership and support in their schools and classrooms. The integration of graduate qualifications with effective and outstanding teaching capabilities in a single framework represents teachers’ expectations of themselves as a coherent profession.

The Standards are a reference point for determining professional standing. In exercising consistent judgment against these high standards, teachers are issuing an assurance to the community that systems are in place for every student to be taught by a high-quality teacher. The Standards describe this expectation. Judgments against the Standards enact it. This is the essence of a profession. It is independent from but related to employment practices. Employers, that is, schools or systems, can and should be able to exercise judgment in selecting individuals to employ as teachers. The point of a profession is that this choice is exercised within the accreditation processes designed to protect the interests of the community and the status of the practitioners. This is important and virtuous public policy, and the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers make it happen.

While the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) stand as testimony to this groundbreaking work in professionalising the teaching profession, it is the application of the Australian Standards’ Framework and related policies that make them special and important here. The possibility of receiving accreditation as a superb educator – either at the Highly Accomplished or Lead Teacher levels – is an example of this. The Australian Standards’ Framework provides exceptional instruction in the context of professional development for teachers. Outstanding leaders and educators develop their practice based on knowledge they have learned in the classroom and in the workplace, not separately from collective experience. Graduates of Initial Teacher Education are subject to additional criteria under the Framework. Knowledge earned through a recognised university degree, supplemented by further training, is the foundation for the ability to be accredited or registered at Proficient Teacher level and later at Highly Accomplished or Lead Teacher.

As Alegounarias points out, the regulatory standards method is based on the concepts of community responsibility. Conversely, deregulators emphasize the advantages of this strategy over the professional standards’ strategy. Those opposed to professional standards claim that it would be impossible to get teachers to agree to a set of standards that would also make sense to the general public. Additionally, maintaining a deregulated approach would cost significantly less.

Standards and professional connection It is common reactive response to a perceived crises in teacher supply to implement crude performance pay systems and to eliminate teacher licensing or registration requirements. Many of these arguments come from outside education. The debate over how to improve education has not ended – even in Australia – and the arguments made in opposition to Professional Standards have not been defeated.

The areas of Professional Standards’ vulnerability that deregulators first identified still require attention. In NSW, where various forms of financial recognition are either already in place or are in the process of being implemented across all school sectors, teacher

accreditation at the higher levels of Highly Accomplished and Lead is progressing. However, not all states are committed. The quality of professional judgment demonstrated thus far must be maintained by the accreditation processes for Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher to delay the performance pay push. However, it must also accelerate the rate at which outstanding teachers are recognised. Initial Teacher Education has been the most active area of policy work since the Standards were established. When the Professional Standards Framework was first created in NSW, the deregulation option was available, and it is still available to any policymaker who doubts the value of accrediting teachers against Standards.

Accreditation is a key mechanism for assuring the quality of preparation courses in a number of professions. The profession of teaching's status is at stake.

References

Alegounarias, T. (2017). “Professional Standards: Threats and Possibilities” Journal of Professional Learning, www.cpl.asn.au/journal Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). “Securing the Right to Learn: Policy and Practice for Powerful Teaching and Learning” in Educational Researcher, 35(7), 13-24. Ingvarson, L., Elliott, A., Kleinhenz, E., and McKenzie, P. (2006). “Teacher Education Accreditation: A review of national and international trends and practices” in Teacher Education, 1. Satyanarayana, N., & Srivastava, R. (2009). “Accreditation: Panacea for Producing Better Professionals” in South Asian Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Oct 2020. Sywelem, MMG (2009). “Accreditation Models in Teacher Education: The cases of the United States, Australia, and India in International Journal of Education and Research, 2(3).