What Good Teachers Need

[Eriny]

Interesting article from the Age: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/lessons-about-teaching-after-years-at-a-school-of-hard-knocks-20110201-1aceq.html

It's by a teacher who is talking about the label of a 'good teacher' and how such supposed teachers are limited by their realities - a lack of training and mentoring, a lack of research and in many cases in the public system, a lack of resources.

Much of the public debate about national student achievement concerns this question of good teachers. Good teachers seem to be those in good schools; bad teachers are those in bad schools. We are all the dumber for this simplicity. The discussion implies that a good teacher is someone who is able to overcome student disadvantage brought about by parent poverty, parent attitude and education, and who is also able to defeat adolescent ennui and abolish the isolating label ''nerd''.

Of course, it is naive to believe that there will ever be equality between schools. But what Australia must face is that the educational apartheid that the nation practises has allowed the gap between rich and poor schools to grow so vast that it signals to students in disadvantaged schools that they are second-class people. That signal promotes loss of will in the majority. It is hard to feel confidence in your ability when your students feel like this, and when mentoring is not taken seriously.

I don't know that much about teaching as a profession, but I think that the argument is at least plausible, if not insightful. I also think that good teachers do flood the public system (though I can't really compare this with the private system since I never went to a private school). What do you think? What is/are the cause(s) of Australia's educational problems (specifically its inequities)?

[MuggedByReality]

    That reminds me about how I'm conflicted over performance related pay. As any economist will tell you: incentives matter. However, rewarding teachers solely based on results would be rather rigid, not taking into account a teacher's ability to interest and inspire students in ways not discernible through results; also, as mentioned in the above quotes, classes vary in aptitude, prior knowledge and willingness to learn.

[Eriny]

I have a similar opinion to yours about performance based pay. Also, I think that while it's very easy to tell a very good teacher from a very bad teacher, all the teachers in the middle of that would be pretty difficult to tell apart unless you were actually in the class.

Another problem people seem to have is that the ATARs required to get into teaching is really quite low and think that we should be encouraging the highest scoring graduates to go into teaching. I also agree with this to some extent, and I think it would help us put more value on teaching if salaries were higher and getting into it were more competitive. But at the same time, smart people don't necessarily make very good school teachers. I remember having a teacher who was very smart and extremely helpful and knowledgable if the students wanted to learn. Unfortunately, he wasn't very good at actually controlling a class. That said, I think the best teachers are both smart and can control a class.