Entering Teaching after being in a competitive, adversarial environment

If you have come from an adversarial environment, where being the best means rising through the ranks and increasing your earning capacity you are in for a rude shock when you become a teacher.  

Teaching has a flat management structure where seniority is the main mechanism for increasing wages and retaining staff.  There have been multiple pushes to change this over time, (L3CT, Senior Teacher come to mind), but for the vast majority teaching a class seniority is it. There is some competition for ATAR and 11/12 classes.  There is little to compete against to be noticed for the few promotional positions outside of teaching in Student services/Admin, Head of Department, Deputy/Associate Principal and  Principal.

AITSL attempted to provide a framework for personal growth in the AITSL standards and to my mind it gives the best indication of where education (and a lot of industry) is trying to go.  Rather that competing (or being adversarial) with your peers, the current movement is to "one" team where everyone seeks continuous improvement.  As continuous training is expensive, knowledge sharing is the main lever used within the organisation to drive continuous improvement.  This is not possible if knowledge sharing is restricted through a competitive environment where restricting knowledge gets you ahead.

The AITSL standards have this embedded.  A graduate teacher is learning how to teach. A competent teacher teaches well. A highly accomplished teacher mentors other teachers.  A lead teacher is contributing to the community and the education sector.  It firmly puts the skills and task of teaching a classroom well in the competent level.

This can leave the competitive person from industry scratching their head.  "I'm a better teacher than them, I should be promoted".  "Look at what I have done, why should they get the promotion." "It must be that someone is doing a hatchet job on me in admin, I am better than others being promoted."  "I have not been personally developed this year.  The lack of development is holding me back."

None of these things are about knowledge and skills sharing. There is a skill to developing others and this is the desired skill in Leadership.  Mentoring and sharing takes more effort than doing it yourself.  Doing it yourself is not the preferred option if the goal of the task is to empower others.  

The insight is that the knowledge is not yours, but belongs to the organisation.  If you choose not to share and martyr yourself doing it yourself, you are withholding information the organisation has paid to develop.   Once teachers let go of ownership of what is "theirs" and realise that sharing is productive, it takes away a burden, is uplifting and creates that team environment the envy of organisational cultures. The effort in sharing and developing something collaboratively is required and worthwhile.  It becomes a pleasure watching others grow through what you have contributed and surpass what even you can currently do, encouraging you to seek further growth.

Often in the corporate world, forming cliques, being obstructive and putting the knife into an underperforming colleague is ok to gain promotion.  Identify their weaknesses, expose them and assume their role.  Very 80s.  Today, we don't do this.  Evidence is used to identify areas of investigation, we consider the evidence, work together to apply measures to attempt to rectify known issues and measure the results.  In teaching few staff are ever removed, the importance is to retrain and support them if they are underperforming - it is expensive to train a teacher (four years of university plus three years of graduate level performance), losing staff to what is now recognised as workplace bullying is poor management.

And here's the rub, if you are not visibly contributing to organisational growth (or are actively obstructing it) you will not be seen as a highly accomplished teacher (no matter how good you are in the classroom).  You may be seen as a competent teacher, but will not be considered for leadership as you lack the skills to lead a team effectively and will be a drain on the Leadership team preventing issues that you are causing, requiring constant "management" and restricting growth of the organisation. 

I try and help those making the transition to the new paradigm as I had to when I entered the profession.  It's not always easy and becomes a fairly repetitive discussion until it sinks in. The "one organisation" model aims to promote those that can work with others well for the betterment of the organisation, leading to organisational growth.  Being able to be collegiate and collaborative is the key that opens doors.

Measuring Performance of Upper School Courses

Participation, Retention and Achievement are three measures I look at in Upper school to measure the health of our Learning Area.  These summary statistics should not be treated as a goal or KPI, but instead as a way of identifying areas of investigation for improvement.  All too often summary statistics hide the actual situation found if an investigation into raw data is done thereafter.  With relatively small samples the summary statistics may not be reliable or valid.

1. Participation (Course Entry)

How many students enter a course?  It is not compulsory to do a Mathematics course in Year 11 and 12, they can opt out if they wish.  My belief is that all students should complete Mathematics courses in Year 11/12 as a life skill.  Any number lower than 100% indicates that improvement can be achieved.

To keep it simple, I check RTP for the course at the end of S2 and count total students.  The total number of students in the cohort is found in schools online or SIS. Divide these and you have the participation number. Participation should be measured at the end of each year of Upper School.  Participation data should be compared with standardised testing data (NAPLAN, PAT etc) to validate participation results.

This is a measure of the success of creating an appeal to enter the course.  Factors impacting participation could include past performance, lower school pathways, reputation for success, teachers in lower school, teachers in upper school, how well the course is sold to students, course counselling techniques, course counsellors, trends in careers post schooling.

2. Retention (Course Completion)

Are students staying in the course from the beginning? Students are able to change out of the course if they wish. Students swapping and changing courses is not optimal. Any number lower than 100% indicates that improvement can be achieved.

Again, to keep it simple I check RTP for the course at the end of S2 and count the withdrawn students. Participation numbers are found in (1.) above. Divide these and you have the retention number.  Retention should be measured at the end of each year of Upper School.

This is a measure of success of the Upper School Course, course recommendations, teaching methods and course counselling.  Factors impacting retention could include mental health of students and the teacher, teaching pedagogy, student ability, lower school preparation, parental support, resilience and the difficulty level set for the course.

3. Achievement

Are students achieving at the level expected for the course?  Students need to achieve a meaningful result for the course to be worthwhile. For Methods and Specialist the mean is 65 for an average student, Applications is 55 for an average student.  In each case about 57 will contribute to a 70 ATAR score. C grades or higher for General students are useful for demonstrating competence.

To measure achievement I count how many students in RTP are achieving above 57 and divide it by the retention rate (2.) including withdrawn students.  I also calculate the Mean result for both years (without withdrawn students) and check the exam results in both semesters. If there is a large deviation from other assessment scores it provides an avenue for investigation.  It is also important to check the SAIS Year 12 report to check school vs external exam results. If students need recounselling this is done at the end of S1 and S2 Year 11 and at the start of S1 Year 12.

This is the end goal, how many students performed within the expected parameters of the course after completing the course.  Factors impacting achievement could include study skills, exam preparation, engagement with schooling, student motivation, course counselling/ability, cohort strength, work ethic,  extracurricular activities, sickness/mental health/misadventure, 5th/6th course bias and teaching pedagogy.

With these three measures, the health of a course can be established.  It is important to not only look at achievement as it can hide strategies that fail the student interest test - such as counselling students out of courses to boost achievement figures (low retention rates) where standardised testing indicates that students should pass.