English literacy teachers’ identities and judgments in Australia: The shaping effects of policy in a particular national context

• Julie Faulkner & Jane Kirkby & Graham B. Parr
  As education policy makers engage in more and more fervent expressions of nationalist rhetoric about the distinct education offered in their country, they also clamour to outdo each other in aligning educational practice in their country with global education standards (as evidenced by performance in international tests such as PISA, PIRLS and TIMMS) (Rizvi & Lingard, 2009). This paradox is no more keenly felt than in the areas of English language, literacy and literature teaching, where globally standardised tests of literacy are now clearly mediating practices in primary and secondary schools and teacher education institutions (Kostogriz, Doecke & Illesca, 2010; Meyer & Benavot 2013; Nichols, Glass & Berliner, 2006). Across the world, English/literacy teaching communities are struggling to deal with the combination of standardised curricula, one-size-fits-all professional standards and accountability regimes that discourage independent professional judgement and instead encourage a compliance mindset with respect to prescriptive directives of what and how to teach (Allard & Doecke, 2014; Brass, 2015; Sahlberg, 2011/15; Smith & Kovacs, 2011).
  
  Some accounts of teachers’ practice suggest a disturbing trend toward de-professionalisation of English and literacy teachers across all educational sectors, as teachers feel less agency and autonomy in their everyday work. Elsewhere, there is emerging evidence that, because of a range of complex and embedded factors which can be mandated as policy, even wholesale changes in policy and curriculum do not necessarily penetrate deeply into teachers’ practice or sense of themselves as professionals. Even more encouraging, there is evidence of educators engaged in ongoing praxis projects that strategically speak back to these reforms, promoting teacher learning and collaboration but also authorising the voice of English educators in policy and curriculum debates.
  
  This symposium takes up these themes through papers that examine sites in three different sectors of English and literacy education in Australia - early years, primary schooling and secondary teacher education. The authors examine the ways that teachers and preservice teachers are positioned by a range of policy and government mandated curriculum, and the ways they negotiate the various tensions around professional identity, English literacy knowledge and pedagogy.
• Jane Kirkby & Anne T Keary
  This paper presents insights into how Early Childhood teachers engaged with and responded to the identified language needs of children in a vulnerable community. In Australia, the introduction of the ‘Early Years Curriculum Framework: Belonging, Being and Becoming’ (Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations for the Council of Australian Governments [DEEWR], 2009) and its corollary the ‘Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework’ (State of Victoria, Department of Education and Training [DET]), 2011 provided policy direction for Early Childhood teachers’ practice. These policies foreground five learning outcomes to support the holistic development of the child: children have a strong sense of identity; children are connected with and contribute to their world; children have a strong sense of wellbeing; children are confident and involved learners and children are effective communicators. In addition, both policies identify that intentional teaching is a key factor in promoting young children’s learning (DEEWR, 2009, DET, 2016).
  Language development in early childhood is critical to later transition to formal schooling (Dickinson et al., 2003; Scull, 2013). In a move to address transition concerns raised by local primary schools, and supported by Australian Early Development Census data (2015) for the local area, a screening agenda was initiated in 2015 by the Early Childhood management in 3 kindergartens located in disadvantaged areas. This exercise involved Allied Health Early Childhood professionals and produced results that showed a significant number of children were developmentally vulnerable in the communication domain.
  We collected interview data and planning documents from 7 teachers across 12 months to examine how participating teachers reflected on their current practices in light of the screening results and the curriculum frameworks. Their data, along with interview data from another setting that followed a similar screening process, enabled us to examine the tensions teachers feel when trying to incorporate new understandings into existing interpretations of curriculum policy.
  In this study, teachers’ interpretation of the frameworks is strongly focussed on identity and well-being with less confidence shown in using intentional teaching (Epstein, 2014) to support and extend oral language (communication).
  Intentional teaching requires ‘a blended approach’ (Epstein, 2014). In the Victorian context, teachers are expected to “plan for opportunities for intentional teaching and knowledge building.” (DEEWR, 2009, p. 15), further guided by the implementation of an ‘integrated approach’ (DET, 2016, p.17, see Diagram 1.). These three approaches to fostering learning in the early years -child directed play and learning, guided play and learning and adult-led learning – provide opportunity for teachers to become intentional in their planning and implementation of learning experiences through careful monitoring and documenting of children’s learning (DEEWR, 2009,p.15). This study identified that teachers were uncertain about how to support children’s language development through intentional teaching.
  
  References
  Australian Early Development Census (2015). 2015 AECD National Report. Retrieved from https://www.aedc.gov.au/resources/detail/2015-aedc-national-report
  Dickinson, D., McCabe, A., Anastasopoulos, L., Peisner-Feinberg, E. & Poe, M. (2003). The Comprehensive Language Approach to Early Literacy: The Interrelationships Among Vocabulary, Phonological Sensitivity, and Print Knowledge Among Preschool-Aged Children. Journal of Educational Psychology , 95 (3), pp. 465–481.
  Department of Education and Training (2011, 2016). Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework. Retrieved from http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/childhood/providers/edcare/veyldframework.pdf
  Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and Council of Australian Governments. (2009). Belonging Being Becoming: The Early Years Framework for Australia. Retrieved from http://files.acecqa.gov.au/files/National-Quality-Framework-Resources-Kit/belonging_being_and_becoming_the_early_years_learning_framework_for_australia.pdf
  Epstein, A. (2014) The intentional teacher: choosing the best strategies for young children’s learning. Washington D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children.
  Scull, J. (2013). Assessing Language for Literacy: A Microanalysis of Children's Vocabulary, Syntax and Narrative Grammar. International Education Studies, 6 (1), pp.142-152.
• Julie Faulkner & Jane Kirkby
  The second paper asks questions in relation to the place of engagement and skill development in young writers, and how teachers might be best positioned to encourage rich language practice in primary classrooms. The introduction of the language strand in the Australian curriculum represents an imposed curriculum change. It is also exemplifies a significant shift for teachers who have little or no prior experience of grammar (Harper & Rennie, 2009). The weight of curriculum and professional expectation exerts its own pressure on the teachers’ engagement with language and writing. In turn, this impacts on their sense of teacher identity and capacity to engage primary-aged students with the practices of writing (Myhill, Jones & Watson, 2013).
  We explore, as a case in point of this process, the trajectory of our collaboration with a primary school teaching cohort around language and writing pedagogies. Our study investigates the role of planning and support for teachers taking on elements of curriculum and pedagogical change. While their students’ standardised test results in reading, writing and language conventions were relatively strong, school leaders were concerned that the teachers, many of whom were recent graduates, were developing a technicist approach to teaching writing. Our study surveyed teachers’ existing language knowledge, borrowing from Love, Macken-Horarik and Horarik (2014). We aimed to discover if these teachers felt confident in their understanding of the structures and functions of sentence and word level grammar. Moreover, an overarching aim was to encourage these teachers to emphasise the pleasures of writing as a meaning-making process and not just an accumulation of technical skills.
  Using a range of professional learning processes, we worked alongside teachers to critique existing approaches to teaching, build their own linguistic content knowledge and examine a range of pedagogical practices to enhance learning opportunities for students. Positioning the teachers as writers we explored, amongst other resources, the role of mentor texts, writer choice and agency, the curriculum cycle and targeted feedback. Working in year level teams with researchers, teachers evaluated the affordances of approaches implemented for their particular students, in addition to their own professional learning as early career language and literacy teachers.
  
  References
  Harper, H. & Rennie, J. (2009). 'I had to go out and get myself a book on grammar': a study of pre-service teachers' knowledge about language. [online]. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy; 32(1), pp. 22-37.
  Love, K., Macken-Horarick, M. & Horarik, S. (2014). Language knowledge and its application: A snapshot of Australian teachers’ views. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 38(3), pp. 171-182.
  Myhill, D., Jones, S. & Watson, A. (2013). Grammar matters: How teachers’ grammatical knowledge impacts on the teaching of writing, Teaching and Teacher Education 36, pp.77- 91
• Graham B. Parr & Scott Bulfin
  Standards-based education reforms have been powerfully mediating the work of school-based English teachers for more than a decade, with varying consequences (e.g., Allard & Doecke, 2014; Brass, 2015; Sahlberg, 2011/15; Smith & Kovacs, 2011). The teacher education sector initially appeared to be insulated from more prescriptive reforms, while teaching practices in the schooling sector were increasingly shaped by standardised testing regimes and globally derivative professional standards (Diamond, Parr & Bulfin, in press; Nichols, Glass, & Berliner, 2006). In recent years, though, governments have turned their focus on standardising initial teacher education (ITE) programs as well. In Europe, this standardisation was initially encouraged through the adoption of the Bologna protocols which institutions used to audit their curriculum and assessment offerings (van der Wende, 2008). The influence of these Protocols quickly spread internationally (Higher Education Ministers in the European Higher Education Area, 2010), paving the way for the globalised standardisation of curriculum and practice in ITE that has followed. Government policies have accelerated the standardisation of ITE curriculums and practices through a range of accreditation protocols and accountability regimes.
  However, many teacher education institutions across the world are speaking back to this standardising imperative in ITE in ways that challenge the logic underpinning standards-based reforms and yet still prepare future teachers for the intellectual and professional challenges of working in this standards-saturated world. This paper reports on a secondary English pre-service teacher education program in Australia that is creatively speaking back to these mandated reforms, through a range of praxis-based strategies, including online forums, digital video cases and critical autobiographical writing. Using Bakhtin’s (1981) and Cavarero’s (2000) conceptions of language, narrative and identity, we present and critically inquire into samples of students’ writing generated in this English methods program and online dialogues between students and lecturers promoted by the production by the pre-service students of digital video cases about their teaching practicum experiences. The research advocates for such praxis-based strategies. It is argued such praxis-based strategies can help prepare pre-service students to strategically negotiate their classroom practices and professional identities and continue to grow as professionals throughout their career, or else face the prospect of a professional life characterised by compliance and conformity to existing norms.
  
  REFERENCES
  Allard, A., & Doecke, B. (2014). Professional knowledge and standards-based reforms: Learning from the experiences of early career teachers, English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 13(1), 39-54.
  Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.
  Brass, J. (2015). Standards-based governance of English teaching: Past, present, and future? English Teaching Practice and Critique, 14(3), 241–259.
  Cavarero, A. (2000). Relating narratives: Story and selfhood. London: Routledge.
  Diamond, F., Parr, G., & Bulfin, S. (in press). University-school partnerships in English pre-service teacher education: A dialogic inquiry into a co-teaching initiative. Changing English.
  Nichols, S., Glass, G., & Berliner, D. (2006). High-stakes testing and student achievement: Does accountability pressure increase student learning? Education Policy Analysis Archives, 14(1). Retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v14n1/.
  Sahlberg, P. (2011/2015). Finnish lessons 2.0: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? Second Edition. New York and London: Teachers College Press.
  Smith, J. & Kovacs, P. (2011). The impact of standards-based reform on teachers: the case of ‘No Child Left Behind’. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 17(1), 201-225.
  Van der Wende, M. (2008). Rankings and classifications in higher education: A European perspective. In J. Smart (Ed.), Higher Education (pp. 49–71). New York: Springer.