A teaching degree must include some ‘woke’ content

You can’t learn to be a school teacher on an apprenticeship model, says University of Canberra education dean Barney Dalgarno.

A recurring criticism of teaching degrees is that too much time is spent on ‘woke’ social theory and not enough on the practice of teaching. Some have even suggested an on-the-job apprenticeship model might be a better alternative.

Everybody agrees that practical skills in preparing lessons, delivering engaging content, supporting positive behaviour, and catering for the individual needs of students are at the core of teaching. Such practical skills need to be front and centre throughout a teaching degree. However, many don’t understand what is expected of a teacher in today’s classroom.

And if this is all that a graduate has, they won’t get past first base as a teacher.

Why? What else do they need?

Firstly, they need content knowledge. For a primary teacher, this means knowledge of all eight learning areas in the Australian Curriculum: English, mathematics, science, humanities and social sciences, the arts, technologies, health and physical education, and languages.

The curriculum includes topics like colonisation, social justice and climate change which some readers (and the occasional student) might consider a bit ‘woke’. Teaching degrees must cover the breadth of the curriculum to be accredited and to allow students to graduate.

Secondly, they need to know how students learn and how to teach. They need to know general techniques as well as techniques specific to each of the eight learning areas. New techniques emerge all the time, so teachers need to scrutinise the evidence to decide which techniques to adopt in their own classrooms.

TV shows suggest teaching is just about entertaining and motivating students. The Australian Curriculum doesn’t come with scripts, so just being a charismatic presenter won’t get you very far. Teachers have to understand the curriculum and be able to develop and adapt their lessons to meet the learning needs of the students in their class.

But teachers need much more than content knowledge and practical knowledge of the craft of teaching.

In the past students with a disability or a learning difficulty were channelled into specialist classes or schools. This was found to result in poor life outcomes for these students. Today’s classrooms include students with a wide range of unique characteristics and teachers are expected to cater for the special needs of all students in their class.

Teachers must understand and cater for the behavioural, emotional, intellectual and physical characteristics of each student. They must know where each is up to in their learning, and what to teach them next.

So, teachers need foundational knowledge of cognitive (brain), physical and emotional development. They need to understand subtle differences in the way children develop, and signs of developmental disorders where psychologists or speech pathologists might be needed.

Teachers also need to regularly assess students’ learning and collect data on their progress towards curriculum outcomes. They need data analysis skills to organise this data and use it to inform their lesson planning.

So could knowledge of curriculum content, child development and learning, lesson planning, assessment and data analysis, be learnt under an apprenticeship model.

It is hard to imagine how a teaching student could learn all this foundational knowledge while tagging along with a teacher as they prepare and teach lessons for their own class. Most would agree this kind of knowledge is more efficiently learnt from experts as part of formal study. Nobody would expect an apprentice electrician to learn the science of electricity only by watching an electrician do their work. They go to TAFE to learn this.

I would argue that there’s a clear role for university education in teacher training, while acknowledging that close alignment with the practice of teaching is really important. At the University of Canberra, our teacher educators have school-based teaching experience across government, Catholic and independent schools. This allows them to embellish all their teaching with practical classroom examples. We also teach a large number of units entirely in schools where our students learn from current teachers alongside academics. This clinical model of teacher Education is enabled by our nationally recognised affiliated schools partnership with 25 schools in the ACT.

We do engage our teaching students in some topics which take them outside their comfort zones. Topics like the philosophy of teaching, the political context of education and curriculum critique are not everybody’s cup of tea. We need future teachers to shape the Australian Curriculum and contribute to debates about the structure of schools, as society changes and technologies like AI (artificial intelligence) and chatbots emerge. We also cover topics like social, cultural and gender identity, which teachers need to help children grapple with their own identities in our contemporary society.

So even though we listen to students and give them the teaching knowledge and skills they ask for, we do include topics that they don’t all know they need. Even if, for some students, it sets off their personal ‘woke’ radar.

Professor Barney Dalgarno is executive dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Canberra.