[English] Howard launches Donnelly

[brennanhayes]

Hello Lyle

Probably  wont be able to convince you and perhaps we'd better stop clogging
up the English discussion list with VIT matters but a couple of points

1. sorry that your friends have found VT's registration and or/discipline
procedures 'insulting and Kafkaesque'. From the inside they seem rigorous
and punctilious to a fault, and designed to protect the status of the
profession by addressing issues of qualifications, standards, fitness and
competence. And, more importantly controlled by teachers, not imposed by
bureaucrats. Which is the point I guess of being willing to pay for the
Institute as a guarantee of some independence.

2. The real issue concerning the Institute at moment is how and when to
'promote' the profession. What are professional matters which are VIT's
concern? What are industrial ones which are appropriately union concerns?
What are matters affecting the profession and what are matters affecting
individual teachers or particular sectors? What are matters affecting
individual teachers (the Orbost case)? It can't be seen to be going off pop
about every issue because they are demarcation lines that determine who
purports to speak for teachers, and, as a statutory body, rules that govern
its operations and jurisdiction, unlike the AMA which is more like the
doctors' union. 

3. The renewal issue is vital because it signals to all teachers that
professionalism requires it. It reinforces that professional learning is not
optional for people like us who like to belong to professional teaching
associations like VATE but a fact of the profession that keeps it vital and
relevant. What is important for active professional teaching association
members like yourself is to make sure that the process is meaningful and not
just a rubber stamping of things, a chance to really examine the nature of
the discipline and the changes influencing it, and the expectations
therefore of teachers teaching it.  God knows we are going to need a strong
voice from the profession abut what it stands for in the current political
climate. 

4. Finally the Newsletter. I realise it is to some people like a red rag to
a bull. To me it's just an information conduit, not a propaganda sheet. It
doesn't promote the Institute though it describes what it's been doing in
rather prosaic ways. If it promotes anything it's the work of individual
teachers. Though I agree with Stephen that an email list would be a better
way of getting info directly to teachers.



Regards

Terry


On 12/2/07 6:41 PM, "Lyle Stebbing" <lylestebbing at yahoo.com.au> wrote:

> Hi Terry,
> I accept some of your points but when you say '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' I find
> that I'm more discomforted by the absolutely insulting
> and Kafkaesque processes that my hard working
> colleagues have been put through by VIT. And that
> magazine remains a waste of my money. If VIT is
> working so hard for us, how does it find the time and
> money to publish such glossy and irrelevant trivia?
> And while I'm all for "pedagogical knowledge 'renewal'
> 'currency of
> practice, or 'maintained competence'" and agree that
> "Knowledge is dynamic and moves on", I cannot see how
> VIT has been relevant to that or to my professional
> conversations with other teachers.
> 
> Regards,
> Lyle
> 
> --- brennanhayes <brennanhayes at netspace.net.au> wrote:
> 
>> 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
>> 
> === message truncated ===
> 
> 
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