For this blog assignment I was communicating with one of my international contacts, Jodie Riek, a pedagogy teacher from Australia. We discussed equity in education and what quality education should look like. Riek shared a little about the education system in Australia as well as information about her thoughts and feelings on quality education and our role as educators.
Jodie Riek shared the following about equity in schools:
We have a national curriculum that is being implemented for the first time this year, so that is being met with lots of conflict and of course different state education departments have their own interpretation of it. Which means that the true intent of the documents have been watered down significantly.
The issues are generally the same as what you have there in the US. We need high quality teachers - not enough of them. The unions tend to protect and support the lowest common denominator in quality of teachers unfortunately.
In our early years centres (child care) qualified staff is an issue - there's just not enough of them out there. The staff turnover is very high too, with many of the staff very young and inexperienced.
In regards to quality education Riek shared her personal opinions:
Political agendas should not be the foundation our educational visions are built upon rather they should be there as scaffolding supporting the vision designed and developed by those who hold the expertise, the educators themselves. Accountability should still play a role in our education systems, but it should not be linked to funding, nor should standardised testing be our only criteria of accountability. We need to look at the journeys taken of not only our children during their learning periods, but also that of our educators. Our future, our children, are not identical beings and as such require different considerations, different approaches, and different learning experiences. They too have a vision, they want to be treated with respect, they want to learn in a way meaningful to them as individuals, and they want to be able to express themselves and be heard. We need to seriously consider our clientele, the future, our children when writing the narrative which will formulate the vision for our education systems. What is the end product, the vision we hold for them? Do we want them to become citizen which have developed a love of learning and therefore are lifelong learners; or do we want to ensure they have been taught only what is on the political agendas? We need to be united in our vision, we need to move beyond political agendas and write narrative with the inspirational change we know we can achieve WITHIN Education.
Erika,
ReplyDeleteI very much enjoyed reading your blog this week. It seems as though Australia is struggling with some of the same issues that we are here in the United States. It will be interesting to see how the new National curriculum works out. I can imagine that if we developed a national curriculum it would be met with the same scrutiny as in Australia.
Because of the mobility of families today, I feel that we need to develop common core standards for all states. What are your feelings about that?
Carol,
DeleteI do agree that the United States should have a common set of standards. I think that would solve many our education inequities.
Thank you for sharing what your contact from Australia is experiencing in the world of education in her country. I completely agree with her that political agenda should not have an impact on the schooling system and educators should still be involved in the policy making. Those who are most qualified to work with children should be the ones deciding what is best for them.
ReplyDeleteErika,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing with us about the system in Australia. As I was reading your contact's statement regarding the shortage of educated staff, I identified the same situation in the UAE especially for kindergartens and preschools. There's a huge shortage of educated staff. The most important ,or sadly enough in many cases the only criteria, is to be a Native speaker or have a good knowledge of the language. Even at our school we have parents who got teaching positions because they are native speakers or I know of colleagues whose previous jobs have got nothing to do with education, languages or children at all. In order to address this issue, they are requiring schools who are under KHDA (Knowledge and Human Development Authority) to only hire staff who have related educational background but there are many schools who are not under this organization yet.
Hi Erika, this was a great post. I think all of us agree with your contact about the importance of education being about the child and developing their passion for learning instead of political agenda. In the beginning of the post there was mention of the teacher's union. I wonder how many of us believe that the unions need to be re-evaluated and stop protecting the low quality teachers. Living in CT I hear all the stories about the unions in NYC and see the news stories and footage of the teachers that sit in rooms playing cards all day and do not teach for a minute, but since they are part of a union they cannot be let go or terminated from their jobs. I feel that there are so many educators that are willing to do what it takes to change the education system in each city and in the country as a whole, but there are not enough jobs for them because of the teachers that the union protects that really should not be teaching any longer. We all know we need high quality teachers, but to make room for them we need to terminate all the low quality teachers that are dragging our system down.
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