Deregulate to Improve Standards! Pardon? What?

[a_cubed]

Another example of the contempt with which people in business hold educators, at all levesl, came up in this Diverse Issues in Higher Education article. The most telling phrase was Change the Equation Board Chairman Craig Barrett’s statement that “suggested making sure that math and science teachers have mastery of their subjects, and that more is done to relax teacher licensing requirements so that accomplished individuals from STEM fields can teach math and science.” SO, the way to improve STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education is by removing licensing requirements which ensure that teachers know how to teach. Yes, that’s the way to get people who are good at these subjects to go into teaching and do it well. Of course the problems with teaching are all down to bad teachers who’re lazy layabout who don’t deserve the massive salaries they siphon from the public purse. Nothing about the problems particularly in STEM subjects is to do with the disparity between starting salaries and conditions for teachers (never mind what you earn after 20 years experience as a teacher, what does it cost to take the teaching qualification and what is your starting salary compared to what else you’re being offered if you’re good at STEM subjects). These CEOs, most of who undoubtedly claim to be proponents of  “free markets” refuse to see the free market conditions that constant pressure on teacher’s salaries compared to the private sector have been one of the significant problems in recruiting teachers to STEM subjects. Some teachers in those subjects are good, those who have a very strong vocation for teaching and are willing to put up with a lifetime earning capacity and in particular starting salaries much below what the private sector offers. Of course there are some problems here, in that teaching unions are generally unwilling to see a market price set for different subjects. But the claim that the bar to getting people who are good at STEM into teaching is the requirement to have a clue what teaching is (here’s a clue – it really does require more than just knowing the subject) is by removing the licensing requirements is just bizarre. Start paying teachers competitive salaries and make teacher training free for those who then go on to teach for five years (and provide teacher trainees with a decent income in their training years) and perhaps we’ll see an improvement in STEM teaching. Parachuting in subject experts who don’t know how to teach will do nothing to improve the situation on those who know how to teach but aren’t good at their subjects in the first place.

Of course this would all require those CEOs to be willing to pay higher taxes so they’re never going to support that obvious route.

Originally published at blog.a-cubed.info

Comments

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

While I have some sympathy with what you're saying, I have also seen what the licensing requirements in the UK do to trainee teachers because they're more about box ticking than about knowing how to teach - because the people setting up the standards frankly don't know how to teach or teach teachers at all.

Of the three close friends and colleagues, all with PhDs in STEM subjects and with substantial enthusiasm and extant experience teaching in universities, only one remains in teaching. That one was the one who went via the QTS route - qualified teacher status - that is used by independent schools and which has the least administrative overhead. He is still a teacher, is now head of physics (or science - not entirely sure) in his school and is doing very well.

The two others bounced off the PGCE training for several reasons. Firstly working conditions. People who are used to working in STEM subjects are used to having time to think. That doesn't exist in state schools. Indeed, much of what's required there seems to be crowd control rather than teaching. For those interested in their subjects and with a love for them, the converyor belt mentality of the state sector where exam results are more important than actual understanding is a huge demotivator. Worse still are the actual exams where you can see the answer the examiners want and can see that the actual right answer, with more subtlety and nuance, will be marked wrong. But worse than all of that is the bureaucracy which requires lessons to be taught to a restrictive formula that removes all chances for innovation in preparing the required formal lesson plans. And here is where things break even more - there are several different formal approaches to lesson plans with, in at least one case, those required by the PGCE body and those required by the schools and OFSTED, being incompatible. Two lesson plans thus had to be written for each lesson.

I have a fourth friend who, with a degree in history, tried to get a PGCE. He bounced off as well. The last straw came when he was asked, at short notice, to provide a fill in lesson for a teacher who was unexpectedly away. This lesson was observed by one of his assessors. With little time to prepare he decided to give an impromptu 40 minute lecture on some aspect of history, relevant to the class but form his own researches. At the end of a lesson which held the class enthralled, because he is very good at what he does, the observer told him, "That was fantastic. But you're not allowed to do it like that."

Yes, people need to know how to teach, but it shouldn't be formulaic, shouldn't be exam focussed (especially with the very poor exams we have in the UK) and should allow enthusiasm and innovation to come through. The current training system does none of these. Indeed it seems designed to exclude them.

And more than pay rates, PGCE fees etc. what needs to change in schools is working conditions. More teachers, fewer hours in class, more time to think and prepare - oddly something that is not dissimilar from a university.

And don't get me started on the nonsense that does into the training of university lecturers where I come from.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

The problem here is not that the licensing requirement is wrong. The problem is that the standard expected of all teachers, whether going through training or already on the job, is wrong. Yes, that's a big problem. Both of my parents were primary school teachers and my mother (who retired in the mid 90s) reckoned that the biggest mistake made in her working life as a teacher was the introduction of the National Curriculum which is the framework within which almost all the crap you talk about came about. I also agree with you that the workload of teachers (and academics, but we're talking primarily about school teaching here) has been pushed up and up in an effort to gain "efficiency" (a meaningless word when what your output can't be measured in the same context as the costs). But this all comes down to the same point. The CEOs seem to think that sweeping away licensing requirements to allow good STEM people to teach would solve the problems in education. They wouldn't because the problems in education first and foremost come down to the resources available for it, including having enough teachers AND paying those teachers well enough to make it a decent alternative to private sector work. I know no one in the public sector who really goes into it for the money (despite the recent Economist blog post using some great statistics (i.e. bigger than damned lies) to imply that some public sector workers in the US are vastly overpaid, underworked and over-represented). There is generally a willingness to take less money for a more rewarding job in other ways - hell, I'm an academic so I've made this choice myself. The trouble is, and this is where the free market thinkers ignore being hoist by their own petard, is that these other benefits have been whittled away by the issues you talk about, while the salary has been generally ever-further depressed compared to the private sector. SO, I agree with you about all this, but the end result is still the same. If you want good education, first you have to pay for it, and you have to allow the good people you then recruit to do the job you recruit them to do. Unfortunately when you pay peanuts you get monkeys, and when most of the people you have are monkeys, the other idiot apes (the ones in power) will attempt to fix the problem by restricting the freedom of the monkeys. It doesn't work, but just furthers the death spiral.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

Separate post on education training of lecturers.
About education training for lecturers. I've seen good and bad examples of this directly and heard of some truly awful ones. The course I took at Reading was generally very good. One or two modules were bad, I gave feedback on them to the course director and she was generally good enough at her job that I believe she did something about it - I didn't have the time or energy to follow up since I'd already done it. At St Andrews I went through a small course teaching module that was required for all PGs who would be teaching. That was great for those in the arts and humanities (and incidentally stood me in good stead later when I shifted my focus on teaching and research to information ethics from computer mathematics). However, requiring students teaching Maths or computing (as I was) or Physics, Chemistry, Biology, was utterly pointless. But again partly we come down to resources. They had to tick the box of teaching a course on small group teaching. There were more arts, humanities and social science PGs to teach than scientists (because of the mix of the University as a whole and because they used PGs for a larger portion of the teaching like that). SO, it was utterly pointless and I gave them detailed feedback on exactly what was needed for science PGs. Again, I'm not sure if they did a good job, but I certainly got the impression that the course runners were listening and would try within their restraints to fix it. However, some of the people who took the Reading course with me resented being required to be there. I already knew more about education than any of the other lecturers taking the course at Reading (see above about both parents being teachers) but I put effort in and got a lot out of a mostly well thought through course. However, some of them objected to being required to even think about teaching - they had become academics in order to do research and even thinking about teaching, let alone being exposed to good theoretical concepts and practical approaches, was anathema to them. There are a lot of lecturers who are very poor at their jobs in the modern mass higher education system. When all students were in the top few percent of the ability range, they could cope with poor lecturers. These days, not so much. Again, the requirement that new lecturers should learn (and have teaching available that helps them learn) how to teach isn't the problem. A box-ticking approach put forward by a targets-driven government and implemented by research-bigot (*) senior academics and managers at Universities leads in many cases to a waste of time.

(* research-bigot - those with the idea that only research matters in a University, that anyone who spends time making sure they're teaching well is an idiot for diverting time from their research, the idea that promotion even to Senior Lecturer and not Reader should be based on research outputs and not follow the actual guidelines of the institution... You can tell I came up against quite a few of these in my previous post, can't you.)