Inquiry into Effective Strategies for Teacher Professional Learning – Victoria
OK, I’m off for 15 minutes of freewriting.
Today I want to discuss the beginning of the Victorian government inquiry into PL for teachers. The report is very long and I have only read the first 40 or 50 pages.
Some of the things I have noticed in the first part of the document are:
- The committee is made up of men only
- All committee members are politicians and not educators
- Education systems overseas which were investigated are: Finland, Scotland and Ontario, Canada.
- The report values professional development for teachers
- The report recognises that the paths to professional learning are varied.
- The report accepts the use of the term PL instead of PD and defines both terms. The report describes PD as activities and frameworks in which PL for educators can occur.
- As far as I can see now, the report is aiming to put PD activities and PL into measurable packages and to achieve some level of control over the learning teachers are doing.
- This control relates to quantity (something which is already accepted practice in Victoria – 100 hours), who is authorised to provide PL , ways in which educators record their PL, etc.
- Probably the two most worrying points I have read up to now are
- The link being made between teacher learning and student outcomes.
- The discussion of quality teachers instead of quality teaching, as discussed in the article by Parr.
I think it will be important for me to continue reading the report and read others like it.
As far as I know there is no such report here in Israel and I don’t even know how to look for one. Maybe through the Department of Hadracha. I will check.
The report is very new, dated February 2009 and I am happy that GP recommended it to me. As he said when I was preparing my proposal for application, the international setting is very important.
Here in Israel, as in Austarlia and all over the world it seems, everyone is examining Finland as a result of their high results on the Pisa examinations. I wonder how relevant the comparison is.
