[English] Howard launches Donnelly

[brennanhayes]

Hello Lyle et al

I'd better state straight way that as well as being a long standing member
of VATE Council I'm also a member of VIT Council and was on the MACVIT
committee that recommended the establishment of the Institute with a brief
to engage in advocacy, professional learning and professional standards to
enhance the professionalism of teachers.

VIT actually does more 'defending' of the profession that it is given credit
for, though defending and being seen to be defending may be two entirely
different things.  It is a bureaucracy after all, and bureaucracies work in
cumbersome ways. It did speak against Howard's description of  state schools
as value free zones and  against the Age's giving the Melbourne Grammar's
silly statement about state school teachers being second rate airplay. The
first comment was published, the second  was not. The pity is that the
Institute does not have the media clout of Glyn Davis, the Vice Chancellor
of the University of Melbourne  whose Australia Day speech to the Victorian
Parliament ( extract in Age) in praise of teachers and their crucial role in
producing good citizens with its focus on the work of teachers at Debney
Park Secondary college ought to be laminated and stuck on every fridge door
in Australia.

VIT is also working through other state and territory state/territory
standards and registration bodies to try to ensure that the coming debate
about the national curriculum is conducted with due concern for teacher
professionalism and integrity. Though the prospects are bleak. At the
moment, for Howard, 'national curriculum=teacher bashing=wedge politics'.
With '' not uniformity but higher standards' as the conservative mantra. I
would also assume that VIT and the other standards bodies might use the
hastily announced Senate enquiry into academic standards in school education
as a context for arguing their case about teacher professionalism. It is in
VIT's interest to do so since any attack on teacher professionalism is, by
implication an attack on the Institute's credibility since it underwrites
that professionalism through its registration processes, its standards of
professional practice and its codes of ethics and conduct.

And I for one don't underestimate the promotion and enhancement of the
profession the Institute does through its registration and disciplinary
procedures. if I were still in a school I'd take professional comfort from
the fact that the colleague on one side of me is properly qualified  to
teach, and the one on the other side is a fit and competent person to teach.
Worth paying $64 in my book to have some control over those processes

Which brings me to my final point. I hope teachers are going to use the VIT
registration renewal process for experienced teachers in its 2008-13 cycle
to have a sustained professional conversation of the kind Mary Mason has
alluded to in contributions to this list about what  discipline  knowledge
and pedagogical knowledge 'renewal', or 'currency of practice, or
'maintained competence' might mean for the English teaching profession.
Knowledge is dynamic and moves on.

Regards


Terry Hayes


On 12/2/07 2:32 PM, "Lyle Stebbing" <lylestebbing at yahoo.com.au> wrote:

> Surely no one is surprised about Howard's comments,
> nor his support for Donnelly. Howard's attacks on
> teachers are a totally predictable part of his policy
> of undermining state education and creating a fully
> privatised system that promotes conservative values.
> However, what is equally appalling is the failure of
> the VIT to defend teachers against these frequent
> attacks. What does this body do with the fees we're
> forced to pay - apart from producing its pointless and
> vacuous magazine? It does nothing to support teachers
> or education in the way that the AMA defends doctors.
> VIT is a disgrace and teachers should be loudly
> condemning it.
> Regards,
> Lyle
> 
> --- Mary Mason <mary.mason at geelongcollege.vic.edu.au>
> wrote:
> 
>> I think standards are important and these should be
>> linked to curriculum
>> which is conceptual in nature. The problem is that
>> we have curriculum
>> where the outcomes are often descriptive rather than
>> conceptual. We have
>> worked at our school on standards which are linked
>> to curriculum maps
>> but the outcomes are couched in the big questions
>> students might need to
>> understand about that unit, the concepts and
>> theories  in which they
>> need to demonstrate understanding, the grasp of
>> specific metalanguage
>> with which students  can fluently talk, and the
>> thinking processes,
>> procedures, and literacies students  have to grasp.
>> Then the teacher has
>> to invent a generative topic which allows students
>> to do these kinds of
>> things - to tinker and speculate, to make mistakes
>> and retrieve them.
>> That is the only way they will understand: by doing.
>> We are working
>> towards a pedagogy where students  have to
>> demonstrate understanding. It
>> is very difficult to bring about this kind of change
>> though . I want to
>> go back to what I said before. If the government
>> really wants to improve
>> the education of students, it must provide and
>> mandate continuing
>> education for teachers. We know that it is teachers
>> who make the
>> difference. Such professional development must be of
>> the highest quality
>> and should deal with both discipline renewal by
>> discipline experts and
>> pedagogical renewal by Education experts. It should
>> be built into
>> registration renewal. In one state of America there
>> is an insistence of
>> teachers having a Masters after so many years of
>> teaching. Perhaps VATE
>> and other interested parties can lobby Kevin Rudd
>> about this radical
>> suggestion. Isn't it incredible that I say radical?
>> I say it because it
>> will be so expensive but all this business about
>> reducing fees at
>> university or making more kinder places available,
>> worthy as they are,
>> do not deal with the central problems of the
>> learning of students.
>> 
>> Cheers
>> 
>> Mary
>> 
>> Mary Mason
>> Director of Teaching and Learning
>> 
>> ph: (03) 52263157
>> mob: 0402022012
>>>>> stephen at melbpc.org.au 02/09/07 8:37 PM >>>
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> It's interesting that when interviewed on Radio
>> National today,
>> the writer, Donnelly, was at pains to speedily back
>> away from
>> suggestions of a National Curriculum, (Quote: "one
>> size does
>> not fit all"). However he was strong about his
>> claims that OBE
>> (Outcomes Based Education) instead of proscribed
>> Academic
>> Curriculums is a disaster for Aussie education, and
>> he asserts
>> that several States are now backing away from,
>> "Outcomes Ed"
>> apparently because of the difficulty / effort in
>> reporting outcomes.
>> 
>> And you know from 32 years with the Ed Dpt, I must
>> say that one
>> tends to agree with him. It's much easier to teach
>> to a curriculum
>> and report thereby, rather than also have to set
>> curriculum guided
>> by complex lists of hoped-for outcomes, and then
>> ponder if they've
>> been met and then to also have to ponder to what
>> standard they've
>> been met, if they were. To me, reporting under OBE
>> is horrendous.
>> 
>> But, which approach is better pedagogically I think
>> is difficult to say.
>> 
>> Apologies if in saying this I step on any strongly
>> held opinion. And if
>> so, I for one would love to hear your opinions re
>> OBE v Curriculum.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Stephen
>> 
>> At 07:04 PM 9/02/2007, Mary writes:
>> 
>>> I can only feel despair when I read such terrible
>> comments. If John
>> Howard is as ill-informed about other topics as he
>> is about education,
>> roll on Kevin Rudd. This is lamentable as are the
>> ideas of  Kevin
>> Donnelly. What I object to  is the simplistic
>> positioning by Donnelly of
>> critical theory. I have always felt that Literature
>> can be both
>> critically appraised and enjoyed for its values. I
>> might be able to see
>> Lawrence's positioning of women but I can still
>> enjoy and value the
>> wonder of Sons and Lovers and perhaps enjoy it more
>> because it is born
>> out of a human and cultural context.
>>> 
>>> Mary Mason
>>> 
>>>>>> scott.bulfin at education.monash.edu.au 9/02/2007
>> 3:37 pm >>>
>>> Forgive me folks, but after throwing up all over my
>> letterman sweater
>>> and copy of Dumb and Dumber, I did a quick
>> linguistic analysis of
>>> this 'advertisement' late last night. A good one
>> for the kids perhaps?
>>> 
>>> Standards (9)
>>> 
>>> Choice (7)
>>> 
>>> Parents (7)
>>> 
>>> Commonsense (3)
>>> 
>>> fads (3)
>>> 
>>> testing (3)
>>> 
>>> accountability (2)
>>> 
>>> robbing children (2)
>>> 
>>> unabashed supporter (2)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Speeches
>>> 
>>> 08 February 2007
>>> 
>>> TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
>>>  THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP
>>> DUMBING DOWN BY KEVIN DONNELLY BOOK LAUNCH,
>>> PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA
>>> 
>>> 
>>> E&OE*
>>> 
>>> Thank you very much Sandy, Kevin Donnelly, Julie
>> Bishop, my other
>>> parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. I
>> am delighted to 
>>> accept the invitation to launch this book, both
>> because I've greatly
>>> respected the author as an individual and I've
>> greatly admired his
>>> persistent campaign for high basic standards (1) in
>> Australia's  
>>> education system. For too long, the education
>> debate has focussed
>>> exclusively on inputs and quality, on money spent
>> on student-teacher
>>> ratios and the like. And this was the territory
>> staked out and  
>>> defended fiercely by education producer groups, by
>> the state  
>>> education bureaucracies, curriculum designers and
>> the teacher unions.
>>> Now, as a government, we will yield to nobody in
>> defending our record
>>> so far as the provision of resources to education
>> is concerned. But
>>> the point that Kevin has made and the point I make
>> today has been, 
>>> and continues to be, to open up the education
>> debate and to focus it
>>> more squarely onto quality. And our great challenge
>> as a nation is to
>> 
> === message truncated ===
> 
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