Coburg… can you clarify this for me.
back in the 80s the pathway to secondary teaching was a non education 3 year Bachelor degree plus 1 year G Dip Ed. Which is the route my Science contemporaries took some with a 4 year honours degree. (My Di Ed offer is filed away somewhere but it was more of cover all bases… apply to P S, put in a MSc application as well as a range of corporates)
now I see Dans offer is for 4 year reaching degrees. Are these on top of an undergraduate degree or instead of? Is the G Dip still availabl.e?
do the 4 year Ed degree students have to take units in other faculties in the subjects that they are interested in? Or is it all this how to teach chemistry?
i think it’s a brave decision at 18 to say teaching is the way you want to go in life.
I believe the 4 year degree is a Bachelor of Education, which will have credits equivalent to Science/Arts undergrad degrees, as well as a teaching practicum and qualification.
In my experience, teachers who come from these degrees often have woeful content knowledge (though this is obviously a generalisation), and end up being relegated to teaching junior (primary school or 7-9) ... or maybe teaching English....
The other pathway is a stand alone bachelor degree (3 years - which is sometimes followed by some real world industry experience) and a 2 year qualification in teaching (usually Masters level - though in some cases can be a diploma).
I've been mentoring Teacher candidates for 10 years now (I started mentoring in my first year because no one else wanted to), and had two this year. There are two massive issues I'm seeing in new teachers coming through.
1. The students doing teaching specific courses, (and even some stand alone courses) have horrible content knowledge. I've had Teacher Candidates tell me they don't know what CRISPR is (in the year 12 Biology course), because their teaching degrees really only cover Science
teaching rather than Science
learning and doing. Not only do teaching degrees teach science content badly, the uni's offering teaching degrees are also very fast and loose with what qualifies as a teaching method. I've had Teacher Candidates
who have studied and worked in homeopathy come in with a Biology Method. Same with people who have done IT degrees coming in with Maths methods.
2. No teaching degrees adequately cover behaviour management. The vast majority of a teaching specific qualification (whether it's a masters/diploma/bachelor) is academic. And to be frank, pure wank.
You spend months looking at learning theory, developmentalism, educational theorists, effect sizes of certain interventions, rubric and assessment effectiveness, and are lucky if you get a passing comment about how to deal with the kid who throws a chair at you. Don't get me wrong, learning theory is useful, once you are established and looking to build on your practice. But as a starting teacher, it's decontextualised, abstract, and genuinely impossible to implement before you have effective classroom management. Theoretically, you get this in your placements, but the idiots running the uni's pile on assigments that need to be completed during their placements. I've had student teachers break down crying (frequently) after a class, and while I'm trying to guide them on how to deal with the little *smile* who was trying to turn the bunsen burner into a flamethrower, they're suddenly asking me how to incorporate 3.1 of the AITSL standards in a lesson to complete a presentation they have to give next week.
Teaching should be a little more like medicine, where you spend a year as a Teaching student, or an apprenticeship where you spend a few years under the direct supervision of a qualified teacher. In an ideal world, this would come
after you have developed a specialisation in a field, developing skills/knoweldge that are actually useful to impart (hence actually being a teacher and not a babysitter). It seems odd to me that so many have only briefly interacted with the content they're supposed to be teaching.
Some teachers will argue that you don't need to have that knowledge, you just need to be able to pass on the desire and ability in students to develop it themselves. This is absolutely true
as well, teaching is a profession that requires many attributes. In my experience, the best teachers are the ones with high level content knowledge, and are able to explain it clearly, and simply, while developing strong rapport with their classes. More research is coming out to that effect recently, as is the shift away from things like 'constructivist learning' and back to the 'explicit teaching' of the old days.
