23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Paper
The Cross-Sectoral Impact of Teaching Shortages: Initial Teacher Education, Teaching and Leadership
Jo Lampert, Fiona Longmuir, Jane Wilkinson
Monash University, Australia
Presenting Author: Lampert, Jo;
Longmuir, Fiona
This paper provides research in the connected areas of initial teacher education, teaching and leadership to present an integrated snapshot of how teaching shortages are impacting all three sectors in interconnected ways.
There is currently an international crisis in the education workforce, exacerbated by Covid (Ovenden-Hope, 2022). Unprecedented teaching shortages are impacting all levels of the workforce including Initial Teacher Education (where numbers are declining and the pressure is on to attract and support new teachers); in the teaching workforce itself (where attrition and the difficulty of replacing teachers who leave is at an all-time high); and in school leadership (where principals are pressured to staff their schools in these challenging conditions). In a crisis-oriented context this ‘perfect storm’ creates a policy context of ramped-up panic and competition in teacher recruitment practices. A cross-sectoral approach is needed for government to develop education workforce policy based on research from all three sectors.
Recruiting and retaining enough teachers to meet school needs has been challenging governments for many years. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Sustainable Development Goal 4.c is to ‘substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers’ to support an equitable education system (Ovenden-Hope, 2022). In Victoria, Australia, advertised teaching vacancies peaked at 2,600 in mid-September 2023 and by December some schools in the State were reported as receiving no applications at all for advertised positions. These teaching shortages, reported similarly throughout Europe (Lindqvist, 2022; Worth, 2023) affect some schools much more than others, with poorer, diverse metropolitan schools, regional, rural and remote schools impacted much more. The impact and risk for historically disadvantaged school communities is much greater when there is an inconsistent or transient teacher workforce and the pressure on school leaders to solve a problem beyond their control has increased. Despite a wide range of government initiatives including financial incentives, mentoring, leadership pathways and more to address a ’crippling’ problem (Caudal, 2022; See et. al., 2020), workforce shortages persist.
In combining research on the impact of teaching shortages in teacher education, teaching and leadership we are working towards a more consolidated approach to finding policy solutions to teaching shortages. Our method, bringing together and comparing findings from three large research projects is unusual in aiming to strengthen collaborations between teacher educators, teachers and school leaders to better understand the phenomenon of education workforce shortages and to propose partnership-based solutions.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedAs a first point into understanding teaching shortages, initial teacher education is considered in study one. Often focused on as an issue of teacher supply (Tatto, 2021), initial teacher education is both under scrutiny and the overwhelming focus of many government initiatives in both England and Australia. Gorard et. al.’s (2023) large-scale survey of undergraduates in England identified why people might or might not want to consider teaching as a career. Government initiatives to attract more people into the teaching workforce is the focus of a related Australian study providing insight into these initiatives and their impact over the past 20 years (Lampert et.al., 2021). This data demonstrate both the range and type of initiatives as well as suggesting the limited imagination of iterative attempts by government to fund the same sorts of strategies repeatedly, such as offering financial incentives with limited success. The Australian meta-analysis examined policies and was supplemented by interviews with key stakeholders and recipients of the initiatives to determine their impact.
In study two, a large research study in Australia examined teachers’ perceptions of their working conditions. In this project a total of over 8000 Australian teachers completed an online questionnaire in 2019 and 2022 respectively (Heffernan et. al.,2022; Longmuir et al., 2022). Questions invited Likert responses and open comments. These data show teachers’ satisfaction with their role, their perceptions of respect for teachers, their feelings of safety and their intentions to stay in the profession. The survey also invited participants to describe the types of challenges they encountered and their suggestions for changes to their working conditions.
The field of school leadership is reflected in study three, an ongoing project examining the emotional labour of government school principals who have been invited to contribute a short anonymous testimony – written or audio - about a critical incident that has occurred under their leadership in relation to one or more key stakeholder groups, e.g., teachers, executive staff, students, parents, community, and/or system personnel. They have been asked to reflect on the emotional impact it has had on them as principals as well as key learnings from the incident. Over 170 testimonies have been gathered, reflecting a broad diversity of schools, ranging from rural, remote, urban, low to high socioeconomic status as well as a diverse range of principals – from those in their first three years to those who have been in the role over 20 years.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsHistorically, while all in the ‘business’ of education, the fields of Initial Teacher Education, teachers’ work and educational leadership have largely operated in research, policy and practice siloes. The climate of teaching shortages makes it apparent that responses and strategies that take a more holistic, aligned approach must be adopted if sustainable, long term solutions are to be found. Our combined research raises new questions that we suggest can only be addressed by more integrated thinking about these challenges, such as deeper considerations of the relationship between teacher attraction, teacher preparation and teacher attrition. For instance, if teacher attrition is in part due to a lack of safety and low morale (study two), how might this be addressed in Initial Teacher Education (study one) If school leaders are experiencing an intensification of their emotional labour (study three), how is this related to teachers’ work stress and in what ways could this be seen as a systemic issue that goes beyond individuals or their roles? Currently, solutions often prioritise improving preparation or capacity building programs for teachers and school leaders, but these individualise responsibility for the problems to educators and divert attention from broader issues. They do not fully account for the broader social and policy conditions that teachers and school leaders report contribute to their intentions to leave the profession, such as increased monitoring and reporting of their everyday decisions, or increasing incidences of disrespect from students, families and the media. Further, questions of diversity across the teaching profession intersect with issues of workforce health and sustainability. An expanded understanding of how and where the intensities and challenges are being experienced by different groups of teachers and school leaders at a time of workforce shortages is needed internationally.
ReferencesCaudal, S. (2022). Australian Secondary Schools and the Teacher Crisis: Understanding Teacher Shortages and Attrition. Education and Society (Melbourne), 40(2), 23-39.
Gorard, S., Maria Ventista, O., Morris, R., & See, B. H. (2023). Who wants to be a teacher? Findings from a survey of undergraduates in England. Educational Studies, 49(6), 914-936.
Heffernan, A., Bright, D., Kim, M., Longmuir, F., & Magyar, B. (2022). "I cannot sustain the workload and the emotional toll': Reasons behind Australian teachers' intentions to leave the profession. The Australian Journal of Education, 66(2), 196-209.
Lampert, J., McPherson, A., Burnett, B. & Armour, D. (2021). Research into initiatives to prepare and supply a workforce for hard-to-staff schools. Commonwealth Department of Education: Canberra Australia.
Lindqvist, M. H. (2022). Teacher shortage in Sweden: time to take action? Education in the North.
Longmuir, F., Gallo Cordoba, B., Phillips, M., Allen, K.-A., & Moharami, M. (2022). Australian Teachers' Perceptions of their work in 2022. Monash University.
See, B. H., Morris, R., Gorard, S., & El Soufi, N. (2020). What works in attracting and retaining teachers in challenging schools and areas? Oxford Review of Education, 46(6), 678–697.
Ovenden-Hope, T. (2022). A status-based crisis of teacher shortages? Research in Teacher Education 12(1), pp. 36-42.
Tatto, Maria Teresa. (2021). Comparative research on teachers and teacher education: global perspectives to inform UNESCO's SDG 4 agenda. Oxford Review of Education, 47(1), 25–44.
Worth, J. (2023). Short Supply: Addressing the Post-Pandemic Teacher Supply Challenge in England. National Foundation for Educational Research.
23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Paper
The SEN Industry – The Case of Germany
Vera Moser1, Benjamin Haas1, Ellen Brodesser2, Monique Rettschlag2, Elena Galeano-Weber3, Rebecca Aissa3
1Goethe Universität, Germany; 2Humboldt Universität zu Berlin; 3DIPF Leibniz Institut für Bildungsforschung und Bildungsinformation
Presenting Author: Moser, Vera;
Haas, Benjamin
In Germany, the definition of special educational needs was developed by special education teachers by the end of 19th century (Garz et al., 2022). Since then, the formal process of detecting and defining special educational needs has not changed significantly since the focus still remains on the characteristics of the pupil rather than on the characteristics of the teaching. In addition, special education has expanded both nationally and internationally, both in terms of professionals and schools: In Germany, the proportion of special needs pubils in each age group has risen from around1 % in 1900 up to now 8 % today (Dietze, 2019; Moser, 2023). This has been characterised as an “extension of the disability zone” (Felkendorff, 2003) as well as an effect of the “SEN industry” (Tomlinson, 2012), which continuously privileges dominant interests of stratification. Being labelled with special educational needs is closely linked to processes of social exclusion in mainstream classrooms as well as in special schools (Tomlinson, 2012, 267ff; Slee, 2019), understood as an ‘uneven distribution of opportunities‘. The empirical research project “FePrax” (funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research 2021-2024) therefore focuses on the justification of this labelling process. The project involves researchers from the Goethe-University Frankfurt, the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education and conducted 50 case studies of special educational appraisals and connected counseling interviews with parents in 2022 und 2023.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe research project includes documentary analysis and expert interviews of regulations on the definition of special educational needs within 5 German states (Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia), a content analysis (including machine learning methods) (Kuckartz, 2018) of 50 written special educational appraisals, and a content analysis of 50 counselling interviews with parents. The analysis was guided by a research-based deductive category system. The framework for data analysis was the ‘chain of reasoning’ approach (Gläser & Laudel, 2009).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsBased on 50 case studies, the process of defining special educational needs within a network of mainstream and special education teachers, local schoolboards and parents could be reconstructed as a mixed, but non-transparent agenda of management reasoning (e.g. Cook et al., 2023) and pedagogical counselling (Anastasov & Ristevska, 2019). Overall management and bureaucratic logics seem to dominate this process, which is critical under a power perspective.
Also with regard to the long-term consequences, the diagnostic criteria are not always reliable, neither from a pedagogical nor from a psychological point of view. These findings will be embedded in similar research, e.g. the Austrian study „Evaluierung der Vergabepraxis des sonderpädagogischen Förderbedarfs (SPF) in Österreich“ (Gasteiger-Klicpera et al. 2023), and finally will be implemented in a power-critical discussion about social change within the inclusion agenda.
ReferencesAnastasov, B. & Ristevska, M. (2019). The Role of the Counselor in the Pedagogical Counseling Process, DOI: 10.20544/teacher.18.06, 54-59.
Cook, D.A., Stephenson, C. R., Gruppen, L.D. & Durning, S.J. (2023). Management Reasoning: Empirical Determination of Key Features and a Conceptual Model. Acad Med. 2023 Jan 1;98(1):80-87. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000004810. Epub 2022 Dec 22. PMID: 35830267.
Dietze, T. (2019). Die Entwicklung des Sonderschulwesens in den westdeutschen Ländern. Empfehlungen und Organisationsbedingungen Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt.
Felkendorff, K. (2003). Ausweitung der Behinderungszone: Neuere Behinderungsbegriffe und ihre Folgen. In C. Cloerkes (Ed.), Wie man behindert wird (pp. 25-52). Heidelberg: Winter.
Garz, J., Moser, V. & Frenz, S. (2022): From record keeping to a new knowledge regime: The special school pupil as a new pedagogical object in Prussia around 1900 Paedagogica Historica. DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2022.2119089.
Gasteiger-Klicpera, B. et al. (2023). Evaluierung der Vergabepraxis des sonderpädagogischen Förderbedarfs (SPF) in Österreich. https://www.bmbwf.gv.at/dam/jcr:5e6b7a7b-606a-448e-b0ca-07a84f419b4d/spf_eval.pdf
Gläser, J. & Laudel, G. (2009). Experteninterviews und·qualitative Inhaltsanalyse als Instrumente rekonstruierender Untersuchungen (3. Aufl.). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Kuckartz, U. (2018). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung (4. Aufl.). Weinheim: Beltz Juventa. https://content-select.com/de/portal/media/view/5aa7b788-bfd0-4912-a0df-6955b0dd2d03?forceauth=1
Moser, V. (2023). Profession, organization, and academic discipline. Differentiation of a special education science in Germany since 1900. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 55 (4). DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2023.2248213
Tomlinson, S. (1985) The Expansion of Special Education, Oxford Review of Education, 11:2, 157-165, DOI: 10.1080/0305498850110203
Tomlinson, S. (2012) The Irresistible Rise of the SEN Industry, Oxford Review of Education, 38(3), 267-286. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2012.692055
23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Paper
Public Education in Democracy, or “Democratized” Education: Between the Philosopher´s Stone and Learning
Susana Oliveira1, Olga Ribeiro2
1Lusofona University, Portugal; 2Lusofona University, Portugal
Presenting Author: Oliveira, Susana
This study reflects on the role of education in contemporary society, the understanding of its relationship with democracy concept beneath neoliberal ideals, and its relationship with the teacher role in education. It begins with a reflection on two documents: i) David Hare’s playscript “Straight Line Crazy” (2022), within the character Robert Moses argues that “the cure for democracy is more democracy” (p.11) ii) and António Gedeão´s poem the “Philosopher´s Stone” (1955).
Democracy and public education are two concepts linked to every human being equal right to education. The use of it by political ideologies, imply changing their meaning to legitimate political actions, and the school role in contemporary society (Giroux, 2022; Biesta, 2022; Prange, 2004a).
Changes made by neoliberal ideologies, through the OECD, on education, puts public educational systems at risk: i) with education on the role to satisfy the social and economic needs, transforming the students in consumers; ii) with standardized pedagogical methodologies, and assessment systems to rank education quality and efficiency; iii) with curriculum being reduce to fit on the language of learning; iv) and teachers assuming the role of specialized instructors on learning (Biesta et al., 2015; Säfström & Biesta, 2023, Prange, 2004a).
Education theory and research has been developed to validate constructive theories, evidence, and effectiveness in education, through its technical and culture dimensions (Prange, 2004a), to legitimate the neoliberal ideology to transform education as a resource to anticipate the economic and technological future for society (Giroux, 2020; Biesta, 2006, 2007b; 2022, Säfström & Biesta, 2023).
However, theory and educational research, can be of prior importance if used to help teachers and other education professionals to critically understand the implications of their action and what is asked of them by policy makers. (Biesta, 2007; 2021). To act critically towards agency, teacher must be able to be teacher, not to act as technicians specialized in learning, doing what they are instructed to do (Biesta et. al., 2014; Giroux, 2020). They must put education on the move, not by eliminating the risk, but by bringing the world, and new knowledge to the students (Prange, 2004a; 2004b; Biesta, 2022). Education has the duty to resist the pedagogy of learning (Prange, 2004a), to fulfill its democratic dimension, defended by critical pedagogues as Freire (2021, 2023), Giroux (2022). Theory of Education must contribute to the beginning of a new paradigm education, that may reborn the intrinsic relational exchanges between society and education (Biesta, 2022; Säfström & Biesta, 2023) and develop a culture of critical conscious and emancipation as argued by Freire (2021, 2023).
This study purpose is to contribute to the theory of education with an epistemological and critical perspective of neoliberal versus critical pedagogy: Education servitude to society demands, or a humanist view for democratic and social participation through education of hope and emancipation, by studying the words used to legitimate ideologies: such as autocracy, being autocracy, or as autocracy through democracy.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis paper starts with a critical reflection with a speech analysis (Orlandi, 1999) of Robert Moses (Hare, 2021) character about democracy, and the analyses of Gedeão´s (1955) poem. One wrote on a neoliberal context and the other on an autocratic regime, followed by the analysis of these concepts through the spectrum of political ideologies, and the critical paradigm. As Carvalho (1995) wrote, the choice of words, the rhythm, and formal organization, is the writer´s answer to a specific social experience, transforming poetry on a social document, that as Orlandi, (1999) argues, enables an epistemological approach to the ideas exposed.
Hare (2022), and Gedeão´s work, served as the moto to develop a critical discussion between two different perspectives for democracy, education purpose and the role of teachers: i) on neoliberal ideal; ii) and the critical pedagogy perspective. It is a qualitative, epistemological study, based on a critical paradigm (Bloor et al., 2006.; Cecília De Souza et al., 2018; Taylor et al., 2016), with a content analysis (Bardin, 2011) of published documents on democracy, social change (Giddens & Sutton, 2021), education (and its purpose) (Biesta, 2022, 2016), teacher agency (Biesta et al., 2015; Priestley et al, 2015), and critical thinking (Giroux, 2022). Its goal is to develop a review on the use of words to legitimate ideologies, by turning them in new conceptualizations absorbed culturally as common sense.
The content analysis will focus policy documents for education, from Scheichler (2018), and OEDC (2020), and Giroux (2022), Freire (2021) and Biesta’s (2022) ideas for the democratic public education. These concepts will be organized through data mapping, to enable a comparative analysis.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIt is the goal of this study to build an approach to what is the concept of public democratic education with neoliberal ideology and the concept developed by critical pedagogues and theory in education scholars, previously referred, and with it contribute to the development of a new conception of publicness in education.
ReferencesBardin, L. (2011). Análise de Conteúdo (1a). Edições 70.
Biesta, G. (2006). Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for Human Nature (1o). Routledge.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2007a). Bridging the gap between educational research and educational practice: The need for critical distance. Educational Research and Evaluation 13(3), 295-301.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2007b). Why ‘what works’ won’t work: Evidence-based practice and the
democratic deficit in educational research. Educational Theory, 57(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.2006.00241.x
Biesta, G., Priestley, M., & Robinson, S. (2015). The role of beliefs in teacher agency. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 21(6), 624–640. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2015.1044325
Biesta, G. J. J. (2016). The Beautiful Risk of Education. Routledge.
Biesta, G. (2020). Educational Research: An unorthodox introduction (2a). Bloomsbury.
Biesta, G. (2022). World-Centred Education: A View for the Present (1o). Routledge.
Bloor, Michael, Wood, & Fiona. (2006). Keywords in Qualitative Methods.
Carvalho, R. (1995). O texto poético como documento social. (pp.VII-VIII) Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
Cecília De Souza, M., António, M. &, Costa, P., & Lusófona De Educação, R. (2018). Fundamentos Teóricos das Técnicas de Investigação Qualitativa. In Revista Lusófona de Educação (Vol. 40).
Freire, P. (2021). Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving the pedagogy of the oppressed. (4a). Bloomsbury).
Freire, P. (2023). Education for critical consciousness. (3a) Bloomsbury.
Gedeão, A. (1955). Movimento Perpétuo. Retrieved january 2023, from Biblioteca Nacional: https://purl.pt/12157/1/poesia/movimento-perpetuo/pedra-filosofal.html
Giroux, H. (2020). On Critical Pedagogy (2a). Bloomsbury.
Giddens, A., & Sutton, P. W. (2021). Globalization and Social Change. In Sociology (9a, pp. 109–150). Polity
Hare, D (2021). Straight Line Crazy. (p. 11) Faber & Faber Limited
Hizli Alkan, S., & Priestley, M. (2019). Teacher mediation of curriculum making: the role of reflexivity. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 51(5), 737–754. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2019.1637943
OECD. (2020). Back to the Future(s) of Education. OECD. https://doi.org/10.1787/178ef527-en.
Orlandi, E. P. (1999). Análise de discurso: princípios & procedimentos. Pontes.
Prange, K. (2004a). What kid of teachers does the schools need?: The relationship between profession, method, and teacher ethos. European Education, 36(1), 71–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/10564934.2004.11042351
Prange, K. (2004b). Bildung: a paradigm regained? European Educational Research Journal, 3(2), 501. issue 2). https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2004.3.2.5
Säfström, C., & Biesta, G. (2023). Introduction: The publicness of education. In The new publicness of education; democratic possibilities after the critique of neo-liberalism (1st ed., pp. 1–7). Routledge.
Schleicher, A. (2018). World-Class: How to Build a 21st-Century School System (1o). OECD.
Taylor, S., Bogdan, R., & DeVault, M. L. (2016). Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods (4a). Wiley
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