AUSTRALIAN PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR TEACHERS

Standard 7: Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community

Through an enhanced understanding of theory and reflexivity and their relationship to teaching as a profession, this chapter enables readers to more meaningfully engage with school professionals and communities through a critically aware and socially cognisant lens.

Introduction

In today's world, teachers’ work is more complex than ever before. This is due to: changes within the last 50 years in global economic forces and highly competitive production modes; the merging of finance, trade and communication knowledges; rapidly advancing technologies; political instability; and environmental concerns. There has been an intensification of migration and labour markets, bringing into contact diverse languages, cultures and identities in ways never before experienced (Romain, 2011). Those living in the Antipodes have not been untouched by changing global forces. These both result in and coincide with a local range of social, cultural and political complexities. These include, but are not limited to: economic disparities in and between postcodes; continued social disadvantage of Indigenous Australians; intolerance towards religious and other forms of diversity; changing mores in relation to gender and sexuality–diverse people; the rise of single-parent and same-sex-headed families as well as changing family constellations; and a political imperative that reduces access to social services, which have been increasingly privatised.

The increase in privatisation is one element of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism, an economic theory that gained popularity in the late 1970s, has considerable influence on schooling. Claiming to offer individuals greater choice and freedoms, neoliberal educational policies have significantly impacted on the functioning and intent of education, requiring schools to produce particular kinds of work-ready subjects.

AUSTRALIAN PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR TEACHERS

Standard 1: Know students and how they learn

It is critically important that teachers employ strategies for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Equally, it is important to understand and respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to promote reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians (see Standards 1.4 and 2.4). Indigenous education is a national priority. The inclusion of teacher standards that focus on Indigenous education is testament to how important it is for teachers to have access to quality resources to enable best practice in relation to Indigenous education – for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Indigenous identity foregrounds all aspects of Indigenous education.

Introduction

Australian research on Indigenous education has been based on deficit notions of cultural difference as the inhibitor to educational parity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous young people. Research from the 1970s focused on ‘why’ Indigenous young people were not succeeding in conventional school settings, and ‘how’ schools could engage and improve outcomes for Indigenous young people. In the following four decades, there has been limited research on the types of learning within which Indigenous young people have subsequently re-engaged after being disengaged.

The research presented in this chapter focuses on the specific Australian schooling site termed ‘flexi schools’. The term describes a model of schooling outside conventional education addressing the needs of disenfranchised young people. There is an array of flexible schooling programs operating in Australia with the distinct aim of re-engagement (te Riele, 2007). Given the high numbers of Indigenous young people disengaging from conventional schooling and the disparity in educational outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous young people (Australian Government, 2013), it is not surprising that there are high numbers of Indigenous young people engaged in flexi schools (Shay, 2013).

AUSTRALIAN PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR TEACHERS

Standard 1: Know students and how they learn

Knowing how students learn in a low socio-economic school is an ongoing process of trial, error and reflection. Furthermore, teaching in low socio-economic schools means that teachers are more likely to come across diversity in linguistic, cultural and religious backgrounds. This chapter provides theoretical grounding to help pre-service and graduate teachers reflect on their own practice when learning how their students learn. In particular, it is critical that teachers understand that white privilege is often a barrier to the learning of all students, particularly in low socio-economic schools.

Introduction

The preceding vignette was Kristie's written response to an early professional placement experience in a school located in a low socio-economic area on the outskirts of Brisbane, Queensland. At that time, Kristie was a high-achieving student in her third year of a four-year Bachelor of Education degree. Because of her high academic achievement, she was invited at the end of her second year of study to participate in the National Exceptional Teaching for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS) program, an Initial Teacher Education program targeting high-poverty schooling, a sector that historically has difficulty employing and retaining teachers.

This chapter examines the personal reflections and experiences of several pre-service and newly graduated teachers who were involved in the NETDS program.

AUSTRALIAN PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR TEACHERS

Standard 4: Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

The pedagogical focus of this chapter relates to Standard 4, which acknowledges the importance of inclusive curriculum – where students’ and their families’ identities are visible within the teaching and learning content – for student participation and engagement. Additionally, this standard recognises the necessity of a safe environment to student wellbeing and academic success.

Introduction

The school experiences of same-sex attracted (SSA), transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) young people have received a great deal of attention in both the mainstream media and academic research in recent years. This increased awareness of the school-based marginalisation faced by some SSA and TGNC students, as well as the importance of supportive teachers, has prompted a number of Australian schools to adopt some degree of anti-homophobia education and to begin to make space for gay/straight alliances (GSAs) or ally groups. In contrast to a school environment historically characterised by the marginalisation and silencing of diverse sexualities and genders, this is a definite move forward.

AUSTRALIAN PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS FOR TEACHERS

Standard 1: Know students and how they learn

1.3 Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socio-economic backgrounds

This chapter will develop teachers’ knowledge of theory relevant to understanding the cultural complexity of the student populations of the schools in which they teach and of the broader community beyond. It will encourage them to rethink established practices around multicultural education and to avoid forms of cultural essentialising that can have repercussions for student learning.

Introduction

In writing this chapter I am reminded of the 2014 downing of flight MH17 in the Ukraine. This was a tragic event, but one that resonates with many of the themes to be examined here around culture, hybridity and globalisation, their impact on schooling and the preparedness of teachers and students to meet the challenges they pose, some of which I see encapsulated in the young student's comment that opens this chapter. MH17 was a Malaysian Airlines flight en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam. It was carrying 298 passengers and crew of varying nationalities, though predominantly Dutch, Malaysian and Australian. Some on board had dual citizenship. Many others were resident in various countries on a permanent or temporary basis. Passengers were travelling for various reasons: holiday, work, study, family reunion. The plane was also carrying the passengers’ luggage and various possessions, manufactured and purchased in numerous sites across the globe. Together with this, the plane ‘carried’ less tangible items: the expertise, for example, of those travelling to Melbourne for an international AIDS conference; the transnational contacts those and other passengers had forged in the pursuit of their work and travel. This global connectedness is, of course, repeated thousands of times over on a daily basis in journeys across the globe. Malaysian Airlines itself, while a national carrier, operates as a transnational business, having links with numerous airlines worldwide. This illustrates not only how globalisation operates through transnational flows of people, goods, services, capital and labour, but of culture itself: the complex entanglements of ideas, understandings and practices resulting in a hybrid mix that is characteristic of the everyday reality for many.