Teacher education policy to improve teacher quality: Substantive reform or just another hurdle?

Abstract

Mounting criticism suggests that the recent introduction of a 'gatekeeping' test to improve the quality of teachers in Australia -the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE)-has had limited success in achieving its aim. Shaped by a discourse of inputs on how teacher quality might be achieved ('quality in, quality out'), LANTITE was to address the apparent decline in the quality of Australian teachers by reforming how candidates were being admitted into initial teacher education courses. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of 2,013 LANTITE scores, alongside the qualitative perspectives of 109 final year teacher candidates, to argue that LANTITE does little to change who gains admission into initial teacher education but is instead an ineffective mechanism for improving quality and a costly hurdle for candidates.

Addressing Preservice Teacher’s Reasons for Mathematics and Test Anxiety

“…Further to the well-researched existence of mathematics anxiety in PSTs, from our own experience conversationally and experientially, it is evident that there is also quite a lot of angst amongst PSTs about sitting the Mathematics LANTITE test. Recent research has also confirmed this (Barnes & Cross, 2020;Hall & Zmood, 2019;Hilton et al, 2020;Wilson & Goff, 2019). Despite the fact that over 90% of students pass the LANTITE on the first try, and most of those that fail the first time eventually pass (Barnes & Cross, 2020), it is clear that extra stress is put on students through the testing process.…”

“…If they don't pass, they can't graduate or be eligible to work as a classroom teacher (Department of Education, Skills & Employment (DESE), 2021). There are some doubts to the validity of the tests (Barnes & Cross, 2020), and whether they measure what they are purported to measure (Hall & Zmood, 2019).…”

Digital twins and the terminology of “personalization” or “personalized learning” in educational policy: A discussion paper

“…Acknowledging that there are various arguments supporting the quality of teachers as capable professionals, and numerous calls for smaller class sizes and better conditions (Barnes and Cross, 2020; Churchward and Willis, 2019), this paper considers how the inconsistent use of the key terms “personalization” with “personalized learning” confuses the narrative about quality teachers and masks the implications of this suggestion. Claims that teachers are in a deficit and need technological solutions are predicated on a chimeric understanding that education cannot engage people that personalize learning promptly with teaching (Gore, 2021).…”

Dialogic theories, literacy practices and initial teacher education

“…In this paper, we argue that literacy plays a key role in the ontological and epistemological development of quality teachers, beyond the way it is currently conceived as either a hurdle requirement for successful completion of an ITE program (Barnes & Cross, 2020) or as a set of skills to support students to develop content knowledge across the disciplines (Scott et al, 2018). We contend that literacy is central to teachers' professional becoming (Matusov et al, 2019) and explore how a dialogic approach to teaching can support pre-service teachers' professional meaning making.…”