Generating enabling conditions to strengthen a research-rich teaching profession: lessons from an Australian study

ABSTRACT

The increasing datafication of teachers’ work and schooling practices as evidenced through various metrics of student testing and school improvement measures have continued to grow unabated across many OECD Countries. Such practices have been fuelled by global competition for league tables such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) with ‘big data’ having a major impact on how teachers are expected to gather, analyse and report data. For schools in Australia, the turn of the millennium has heralded the ‘high stakes’ data trend and the roll-out of standardised testing. This paper reports on an Australian study’s findings, against such a backdrop, to explore the impact and challenges of an overly data-rich environment for educators, teachers and system leaders and what might be the enabling conditions to move towards a more research-rich teaching profession. The findings suggest that perhaps standards and data are not the enemy for teachers, rather it is standardisation and the datafication of students that creates an amplification of the effects of institutional rankings and league tables. Enabling conditions are offered to adopt a more comprehensive and inclusive view of what counts as research and who conducts research, key to enabling a mature teaching profession.

KEYWORDS:

• research literacy
• research-rich
• teaching profession
• data

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the three funding bodies for their financial support of this work, namely the Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA), Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) and the Australian Council of Deans of Education (ACDE). I would like to acknowledge all my fellow team members of the Strengthening a research-rich teaching profession study. Professor Joce Nuttall, Professor Barry Down, Professor Sue Shore, Professor Annette Woods, Professor Martin Mills, Dr Katherine Bussey. I would also like to thank Professor Ian Menter (Oxford University), who was a member of the BERA-RSA Inquiry steering committee and later became a critical friend to the study and was crucial in its early conceptualisation and design. We also thank the many teachers, teacher educators and academics, system leaders, and teacher education students who gave their time, perspectives and trust to the research team. Finally, I would like to thank the members of the reference group and the associations who they represented for their support of this research.

I would particularly like to thank Professor Martin Mills for advice in finalising this paper and to the reviewers for their very helpful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simone White

Professor Simone White is the Associate Dean (International and Engagement) in the Faculty of Education at QUT, Australia. She is a leading expert in teacher education and the best ways to prepare teachers for diverse contexts. Her research is focused on the areas of teacher education policy, professional experience and teacher learning.