{"id":3285,"date":"2012-07-05T16:45:48","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T06:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stumblingpast.wordpress.com\/?p=3285"},"modified":"2022-08-04T00:25:47","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T00:25:47","slug":"teaching-quality-discovering-the-teachers-role-in-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/2012\/07\/05\/teaching-quality-discovering-the-teachers-role-in-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Quality – Discovering the Teacher’s Role in Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Students<\/a>
The Monitorial System of education used to teach the masses in the nineteenth century. From, A Cyclopedia of Education: Volume 4, edited by Paul Monroe (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1918).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The phrase ‘teacher quality’ is “judgmental, simplistic.. and undermining of real teacher professionalism”, argued Melbourne high school English teacher, Peter Job, recently.\u00a0 The current debate about ‘teacher quality’ portrayed teachers as “static commodities like cars or vegetables”, he observed.\u00a0 Instead of ‘teacher quality’, he advocated the discussion should be instead focused on ‘teaching<\/em> quality’.<\/p>\n

Peter Job’s article on The Drum<\/a> website picks up on an issue that has been debated since the nineteenth century.\u00a0 Is teaching like following a recipe – copy it from a book, apply each step to any class and expect that a learned student will emerge at the end of the allotted (cooking) time?\u00a0 Is the teacher a mere implementer of previously approved teaching methods learned by rote and applied without modification to every pupil? Or does a teacher’s training, ongoing professional development, teaching experience plus professional judgement lead to better learning outcomes for their students?<\/p>\n

The Teaching Reading in Australia<\/a> researchers examined this issue from a historical perspective.\u00a0 Research Associate Professor Phil Cormack (School of Education, University of South Australia) compared two systems of education that emerged in Britain during the industrial revolution (‘Reading Pedagogy, ‘Evidence’ and Education Policy: Learning from History?’ downloadable at the Teaching Reading in Australia website<\/a>).\u00a0 The ‘monitorial system’ developed by Joseph Lancaster used the best performing students in a school to teach the other students by strictly adhering to a particular method of teaching invented by Lancaster and supervised by one head teacher in the large classroom.\u00a0 The purpose of this system was to enable mass education with the most efficient use of resources.\u00a0 There was no leeway to adapt the method of teaching to better suit particular students or to improve on it by innovation in the classroom.<\/p>\n

The other system of teaching highlighted by Cormack in his paper was developed by David Stow.\u00a0 He advocated the use of well-trained teachers in the school classroom and emphasised the importance of the relationship between the teacher and the pupils.\u00a0 He wanted the teacher to not only impart knowledge to pupils in the classroom but to help pupils apply that knowledge properly in their every-day lives.<\/p>\n

Both approaches to teaching in schools were widely implemented, but over time the practice of using properly trained teachers to exercise professional judgement in the classroom became the preferred model in the education system.\u00a0 Throughout the nineteenth century there were complaints about the inadequacy of an education that trained the children to memorise their reading books but left them ill-equipped to understand what they had read or the content of previously unseen text. In a paper written by the lead researchers on the Teaching Reading in Australia project and presented at a symposium, the comments of an American education reformer, Horace Mann, about this issue are quoted (see ”Re-reading the Reading Lesson:\u00a0 Episodes in the History of Reading Pedagogy’, pp 9-10, available for download from the Teaching Reading in Australia website<\/a>).<\/p>\n

There were many such complaints about students learning nothing more than to parrot the contents of a school reader during the nineteenth century.\u00a0 New South Wales school inspectors, J Gardiner and E Johnson made the following comments which were included in the Council of Education’s annual report of 1867:<\/p>\n

Speaking generally, it must be stated that the elements of reading are taught badly.\u00a0 The ordinary mistake is, to teach the names of the letters of the alphabet instead of the sounds of the letters.\u00a0 The time consumed in some schools before children even make this small progress ranges from six to twelve months.\u00a0 Teaching the alphabet is evidently regarded by many teachers as mere drudgery, and as so much lost time, if they are required to perform the duty.\u00a0 In many instances, therefore, this labour is delegated to monitors, whose time may be said to be wholly occupied in vain endeavours to obtain order.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The monitorial system was still popping up but as Gardiner and Johnson observe, that approach to teaching was not satisfactory.\u00a0 It is also interesting to note that in this supposed era of discipline, disinterested children misbehaved.<\/p>\n

The inspectors continue:<\/p>\n

Faults equally objectionable characterize the teaching of reading in most of the succeeding stages.\u00a0 Little effort is made to explain the meaning of the more difficult words; nothing is done to relieve the lessons of tediousness and monotony, but the pupils read again and again until their minds get so accustomed to the never-varying succession of sounds as to be apprehensive of little else.\u00a0 Children taught after this fashion, when stopped in the middle of a sentence, and asked to explain the meaning of some word, phrase, or allusion, seem to awake as from a dream, look in perfect bewilderment at the examiner, and seem utterly unable to realize what they are expected to do.\u00a0 This purely mechanical aspect which is imparted to the teaching of reading is the great defect that underlies the whole of the after teaching.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

A child reads and makes certain mistakes; he is told to read again; he reads again, and falls into the same errors; he is ordered to read again; and this process is continued ad libitum. <\/em><\/p>\n

J Gardiner and E Johnson, ‘Report of the Council of Education Upon the condition of the Public Schools for 1867’, p. 127<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The mechanical teaching and learning process was failing to engage either teacher or student.\u00a0 The teacher regarded teaching the mechanics of the alphabet as “a drudgery”, while the students failed to understand what they read and were so bored they misbehaved.\u00a0 The relationship between the student and the teacher, seen as crucial for successful learning in the classroom by the Teaching Reading in Australia researchers, was in great need of bolstering.<\/p>\n

There were many reasons for the unimaginative and boring learning programs that stifled learning in most New South Wales classrooms.\u00a0 In the latter part of the nineteenth century voices from within the education system identified the poor standard of training received by teachers as one of the reasons for the poor state of learning in the colony’s schools.<\/p>\n

Most teachers were trained under the ‘pupil-teacher’ system in New South Wales during the nineteenth century. Many started this training when they were fourteen.\u00a0 The training took four years.\u00a0 It entailed teaching a class full-time under the eye of an assistant teacher taking classes in the same room.\u00a0 Before and after school, the pupil-teachers would be given classes by the headmaster.\u00a0 Once a year they would sit for exams.\u00a0 It was exhausting work.\u00a0 The teenagers started the day by having a class with the headmaster, then spent a full day trying to discipline pupils who were almost the same age as they were. After school they had more classes with the headmaster then went home and prepared lessons for their pupils the next day.\u00a0 The quality of the training was not good (Austin 1972, p. 247).<\/p>\n

By the end of the century more and more voices of concern about the quality of teacher training were being raised from within the education system (see for example the work done by Margaret Hodge and Harriet C Newcombe<\/a> to address this issue).\u00a0 It was increasingly recognised that teaching needed to be regarded as a profession with the requisite pre-service training covering the latest research about how children learned, teaching practice as well as advanced education in the subjects that they were expected to teach to school students. A speech by Professor Francis Anderson<\/a> at the Annual conference of the Public School Teachers of New South Wales in 1901 was the catalyst that sparked reform in teacher education in that state.\u00a0 The Sydney Teachers College<\/a> was established and New South Wales recognised the professional bearing of teachers in the classroom.<\/p>\n

Without doubt there have been significant advances in the educational standards and outcomes of New South Wales schools that can be attributed to the professional work of teachers.\u00a0 As with any profession, there will always be need for ongoing improvement.\u00a0 Progress will not be made by criticising the entire teaching workforce.\u00a0 Rather, discussion that considers the views of teachers and eschews short-cut, simplistic ‘fixes’ is more likely to support the education system to address the issues that need addressing.<\/p>\n

Further Background<\/h2>\n

I always try to refer to articles and books in my posts which should be easily accessible by the general reader.\u00a0 For a more comprehensive reading list, please refer to the bibliographies in the articles and books below.<\/p>\n

Austin, A G, Australian Education 1788-1900:\u00a0 Church, State and Public Education in Colonial Australia<\/em>, (Carlton, Vic:\u00a0 Sir Isaac Pitman (Aust) Pty Ltd, 1972).<\/p>\n

Campbell, Craig and Geoffrey Sherrington, ‘Education’<\/a>, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008.<\/p>\n

Cormack, Phil, ‘ Reading pedagogy, \u2018evidence\u2019 and education policy: Learning from history? <\/a>Australian Educational Researcher<\/em>, 38(2), 2010, 133-148.<\/p>\n

Green, Bill, Phillip Cormack and Annette Patterson, ‘Re-Reading the Reading Lesson:\u00a0 Episodes in the History of Reading Pedagogy’<\/a>, Teaching Reading in Australia, 2010.<\/p>\n

Job, Peter, ‘Teacher quality’ and the myth of educational failure’<\/a>, The Drum, 25\/6\/2012.<\/p>\n

Trethewey, Lynne and Kay Whitehead, ‘Sowing the Seeds of a Pre-Service Model of Teacher Education in the Early Twentieth Century’<\/a>, Australian Journal of Teacher Education<\/em>, 28(1), 2003, Article 4.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“…nothing is done to relieve the lessons of tediousness and monotony, but the pupils read again and again until their minds get so accustomed to the never-varying succession of sounds as to be apprehensive of little else” remarked two New South Wales school inspectors in 1867. In this post I look at two different approaches to teaching in the nineteenth century and the emergence of post-school professional education for teachers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,28],"tags":[43,106,139,182,194],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Yvonne Perkins","author_link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/author\/yvonne\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3285"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7173,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3285\/revisions\/7173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}