Understanding Schooling

An Introductory Sociology of Australian Education

Miriam Henry, John Knight, Robert Lingard, Sandra Taylor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134984930
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The problems of class, gender and race in the Australian education system are similar to those in the UK.

Chapter 1
Being a teacher

Those were the seven hardest years of my life. They were shared with a staff as dedicated as you might ever hope to find. And yet somewhere we failed, and failed miserably. I do not think that we were bad teachers–certainly our inspection reports were never unfavourable, and those that have remained in the service are now in senior positions. On the other hand, I do not think we were lumbered with bad children. It seems to me now that the failure, the miserable failure, was in large part inevitable, being built into the very structure of the situation in a way which I did not understand, and which none of us understood (Kevin Harris, Teachers and Classes, 1982, p. 2).

Teaching: the challenge

In the extract cited above, Kevin Harris recounts his experience as a high school teacher dedicated to helping working-class children improve their situation by diligent study leading to matriculation and university. But out of some 700 students whose progress through school he watched, fewer than 50 went on to the senior years and perhaps five graduated from university. Yet Harris himself had come from an impoverished working-class background, and (encouraged by his parents) had matriculated and entered a teaching (and finally a university) career.

His story encapsulates some of the major challenges which this book addresses. For example, despite a continued concern at the level of policy for equal opportunities for success in education for all Australians, many working-class children still fail to achieve as well as those from middle-class backgrounds. Reasons for success and failure will be addressed throughout the book, and possibilities for effective schooling are discussed in the concluding section. At this point it is important to note that many teachers share a similar background and commitment to that of Harris. In this chapter we focus on teachers as a group: What is it like being a teacher? What sort of people become teachers? How do they learn to teach? What is their social status? What major challenges face teachers today? Such questions are central to understanding teachers and their tasks. We commence with the experience of teaching.

Teaching: the lived experience

The experience of teaching shapes teachers’ attitudes and practice. It encompasses stress, continued challenge, and yet satisfaction and even joy at times. Adrian MacGregor (Weekend Australian, August 21–22, 1982) followed one young Queensland high school teacher through a school day. His description indicates something of the strain and challenge of being a teacher in a working-class state high school. He found noise, vandalism, lack of interest:

In this low-stream, low achieving class of grade nines, collars are undone and ties uniformly so loosened that the knots have disappeared below the V of their sweaters….

From the moment they jostled into two lines outside the classroom–‘Would you mind extinguishing that cigarette please’–their noise level has subsided from cacophony to mere din…. For thirty-five minutes there is a constant, nerveabrading background noise like that of an industrial workshop. On top of this comes [Ms. X’s] robot responses: ‘Turn around please…. Put your feet under the desk please…. Do you put your feet on the furniture at home?….’

Behind [Ms. X], boys crackle knuckles, open windows, shift, tilt and drum upon their desks and chairs, provoke each other with pencil prods and ruler raps, and talk.

Vandalism was common. For example, in the science laboratories, students would unscrew the power points, fill the gas taps with liquid paper or chalk, and filch the instruments or gear.

Except for the higher-stream classes, few students appeared to want to learn or knew how to study. Many worked sullenly, under constant supervision as the teacher patrolled the room. Lack of motivation and interest by students, coupled with continuing paperwork and preparation that was never complete, added to the strain. MacGregor’s teacher arrived at 7.30 in the morning, working through tea and lunch breaks marking, making stencils, preparing more work and talking with students who needed help. Then on arriving home she had at least two hours further work getting ready for the next day. If she didn’t prepare, she commented, she would be ‘slaughtered’ by her classes.

Yet there were moments of satisfaction. A ‘smart bunch of grade eights’ were ‘a dream’. They were quiet, polite and thoughtful. And students who ‘turn over a new leaf, mature, become interested’ helped to make the job worthwhile.

Underlying the surface manifestation of student indiscipline, MacGregor argued, were a number of factors external to the school. Here he cited such factors as declining respect for age and authority; problems stemming from an increase in the number of one-parent families and families with two parents working; the lowered influence of the churches; and growing youth unemployment which keeps ‘non-academic’ youth at school longer. He concluded that teachers were being forced to act more and more in matters relating to students’ personal and domestic crises which were once the province of the home and the church. However, while we agree that factors from the wider society shape or influence the conditions of schooling, we consider that such common-sense explanations for the problems of schooling as those offered above are often simplistic and sometimes quite false.

Some primary school teachers will protest that things aren’t like that in primary schools. Certainly, by and large, secondary schools do seem to experience much greater tension between students and ‘the system’ for a variety of reasons. Typically, primary schools are seen as nice places in which to be, showing a degree of pastoral care for their students who remain with one teacher (except for transfers or resignations) for at least a year. Secondary schools, by contrast, are more impersonal; they are much larger places; students move from class to class and teacher to teacher. Many teachers teach subjects, not people; students are more anonymous; and to be ‘known’ to staff and administration is often to be notorious. The pressure in schools which builds up in the later years to select ‘appropriate’ students for future tertiary courses and occupations adds to alienation and tension between teachers and students, particularly ‘low achievers’ or those facing unemployment.

But primary schools have their own pressures. For example, there are contradictions between progressive prescriptions for child-centred teaching and the reality of large classes, set syllabuses, and parental and principal’s expectations. Also, the pressures to return to an emphasis on basic skills in the context of the current economic situation cannot be ignored. (See Ryan, 1982b.) Moreover, teaching in the way required by the newer syllabuses demands greater preparation, concentration and dedication than more traditional methods. And successful teachers in ‘open’ settings have a more public performance than those in the seclusion of traditional classrooms. Teaching in primary schools may be rewarding but it is hardly easy.

Yet there is also what Bob Connell (1985) calls ‘the joy of teaching’. There is the pleasure of teaching a subject one loves; the personal relationships that can develop between teacher and students; the thrill of success with ‘slow learners’ or ‘discipline problems’; the challenge of teaching and keeping up with ‘good’ students; the past students who come up and talk with one in the street or those who have ‘made good’; the satisfaction of knowing a lesson has gone well.

Beyond these stresses and pleasures of teaching, there is also the multiplicity of tasks it involves. A teacher is often also a clerk, supervisor, counsellor, keeper of petty cash, entrepreneur, and more. Connell (1985) lists classroom activities from ‘chalk and talk’, supervising and correcting work, marking tests and keeping records, to keeping order, ‘having a joke’, resolving conflict and talking and working with other teachers. Outside the classroom there are sports days, excursions, carnivals, speech nights, plays, concerts, sports matches, workshops, clubs, dances, P and C meetings, playground supervision, counselling students and parents, and so on. And always, staff meetings. As we will see later in this chapter, the diversity of teacher work is one factor which inhibits its claims to professional status. But for now, it is more important to ask what sort of people choose to become teachers and accept all of this, and why do they do it?

Who are teachers?

Teachers constitute the largest professional group in Australia (White, 1976). In 1983 there were 187,497 of them. The great majority (78 per cent) taught in state schools; 47 per cent taught in primary schools (Karmel, 1985). In 1978, 56 per cent of all teachers were female, but the distribution of male and female teachers was distinctly skewed in that 68 per cent of primary teachers were female and 57 per cent of secondary teachers were male. Overall, women predominated in preschool, infants, primary and home economics areas while males predominated in academic secondary (particularly science and mathematics) and manual courses. Most teachers were fairly young and inexperienced: 51 per cent were aged 21–30; 75 per cent had taught ten years or fewer; 45 per cent had less than four years’ experience. The very great majority (89 per cent) came from English speaking backgrounds. 85 per cent were born in Australia and 7 per cent came from the UK. Approximately one-third did not belong to any professional organisation, including teachers’ unions (although state school teachers are generally more highly unionised than non-state school teachers, particularly those in the elite schools). Their involvement in community type organisations was much higher than their involvement in political parties or pressure groups. 21 per cent were university trained. Most young teachers, particularly in secondary schools, had at least three years training. 53 per cent had formal qualifications beyond pre-service training; 27 per cent had a bachelors’ degree outside of education while 12 per cent had a degree in education (Schools Commission, 1979; Bassett, 1980).

Teachers’ salaries may be relatively low compared with the incomes of self-employed or entrepreneurial professionals (e.g. doctors, lawyers, dentists). However, by comparison with most wage earners teachers are relatively well-off. The ABS data for May 1983 showed average weekly earnings for male employees of $361 and $244 for adult females. But male teachers averaged $423 and females $359. By comparison, male clerical workers averaged $350, sales workers $298, tradesmen, production and process workers and labourers averaged $337, waiters and bartenders received $187 and caretakers and cleaners averaged $224. For women, with a generally more restricted range of occupations, clerical workers received $248, sales workers $172, women in trades and production-process workers averaged $248, and women in service related industries (e.g., cooks, barmaids, hairdressers, cleaners, etc.) averaged $178. Given the information on class background of teachers to be considered shortly, and the relative paucity of female-related occupations for more educated women, the attraction of the teaching profession to women and upwardly mobile working class people is understandable.

Until recently, due in part to factors addressed in the previous section of this chapter, the rate of attrition of teachers from the profession was pretty high. Thus McArthur (1981), in a long-term survey of 800 beginning teachers in Victoria from 1972, found that 279 had resigned by 1978. Considering that he could not trace about 10 per cent of the sample, this represents some 36 per cent in all. However the current economic situation with a ‘tight’ job market has cut the resignation rate substantially.

Now while figures may be boring, this evidence suggests some serious problems in teaching in Australia. For instance, there is clearly a need to retain more teachers in the profession. There are too few older or more experienced teachers. There is a gender imbalance by level of schooling, subject area and promotion positions. (See Sampson, 1985.) There is a high degree of Anglo-cultural homogeneity in the group. It looks as if many teachers have little or no experience of life outside schooling. It could also be said that many teachers are relatively conservative (‘safe’ people) showing little concern for political or social activism and not so much for unionism. It also seems that many teachers lack any considerable degree of professional preparation or formal qualification, a fact which bears on their claims for professional status. Compared with say doctors, dentists, architects or lawyers they could be seen as less qualified.

Certainly Australian university students in education faculties are more socially conservative than students in engineering, law and medicine (Anderson and Western, 1970). Their social backgrounds also differ from students in the more prestigious professions and this is even more so for student teachers in colleges. Thus Coulter (1975) found that 40 per cent of male Dip. Eds. sampled at Monash University were from low socio-economic status backgrounds. Berdie (1956, cited in Encel, 1970) found that 74 per cent of Victorian Teachers College entrants came from homes where the fathers were unskilled, semi-skilled or skilled workers, in sales or clerical work, or small businessmen and farmers, whereas only 57 per cent of university graduates came from these categories. Bassett, Berdie and Pike (cited in Encel, 1970) all noted the degree to which teachers’ children were likely to become teachers. Clearly, then, teaching provides an avenue of social mobility for children of working-class families, of which more will be said shortly. In his most recent study of Australian teachers, Connell (1985) noted that amongst the sample from whom his case-studies were drawn were ‘the son of rural labourers, the daughter of a coal-miner, the daughter of a cook, the son of a machinist’ and ‘the daughter of a country carpenter’.

However, this situation may be undergoing some degree of change. Anderson and Vervoorn (1983) note the effect of the abolition of teacher scholarships which has limited the recruitment of working-class people into teaching. Similarly, Kevin Harris (1982) notes that the increasing respectability and occupational status of teaching has led to a trend to greater recruitment from the middle class.

Here the relative status of teaching as an occupation is significant. In her survey of the relative prestige of occupations in Australia, Ann Daniel (1983) found that of 160 occupations, secondary school teachers ranked 58th and primary school teachers ranked 70th. School principals were higher, in 24th position. On a seven-point rating scale from highest status (1) to lowest status (7), the figures were 3.5, 3.8 and 2.6 respectively. The list was headed by occupations such as judge, cabinet minister, medical specialist, barrister, church leader and professor. However, GPs, architects, dentists and solicitors also rated higher in the prestige scales than teachers. The list concluded with such poorly esteemed occupations as barmaids, domestic workers, and seasonal labourers.

In short, while teaching is lower in status and remuneration than the more prestigious occupations, it has sufficient prestige to make it attractive to those from lower social class backgrounds for whom it is both affordable and reachable. However, restrictions on the availability of higher level occupations consequent on the current economic recession are leading to a greater influx of middle-class people, more particularly males, into teaching. Also, as noted previously, teaching remains attractive to middle-class women and daughters of professional families by reason of the combination of the relatively limited range of ‘respectable’ traditional occupations for women, the relatively low wages of most other female occupations, and the traditional ascription of caring and nurturing roles to women.

Lortie’s (1975) survey of American teachers found that they offered similar reasons to those reviewed above for choosing teaching. Many were attracted by the opportunity to work with children or youth: they valued interpersonal relations. Many others upheld the theme of service to society or of helping children and youth. Others wanted to continue in the school context which they had experienced till then as students. Material benefits such as money, prestige and security of employment were attractive as were the relatively fewer working hours and working days. For women he found that teaching was seen as suited to ‘wifehood and motherhood’. Other teachers found it offered time for further study or extra work of other sorts. For males from homes of low social status and economic insecurity, teaching offered security and social mobility. For women, with fewer job opportunities than men, teaching salaries were attractive. Some people ‘second chose’ teaching because socio-economic or other constraints blocked them from the career they really wanted (e.g., wanted to become a doctor but couldn’t afford it); others came to teaching from some other career. Lortie also stressed the status quo supporting, conservative nature of many teachers reflected in many of the reasons they gave for choosing teaching. He pointed out that all of this clearly implies the self-selection of certain types of people to teaching, the consequence of which, we would suggest, is too often a group of people who are reluctant to question much of what goes on in schools.

Becoming a teacher

It is a truism that many beginning teachers move from progressive ideals about teaching inculcated by college or university pre-service training to authoritarian, custodial and distrustful practice in classrooms. Why is this so?

Typically, explanations focus on the contrast between pre-service socialisation and in-service experience. Pre-service socialisation into the teaching role tends to provide an idealised image of teaching and students which beginning teachers, due to their limited contact with the reality of schooling, cannot adequately test. However, Bartholomew (1976) suggests a further source of confusion for teacher trainees in the disjunction between the liberal rhetoric and the often conservative practices of teacher education. Additionally, discussion, presentation and analysis of teaching methods and styles normally occur in the college setting at some distance in time and setting from schools and classrooms (and here we would assert the essentially artificial and inadequate approach of most so-called micro-teaching). Too often this preparation tends to be inadequate and ineffective so that the ‘reality shock’ (Whiteside et al., 1969) of the initial teaching experience leads many beginning teachers to reject their college preparation. Certainly, a number of studies show a major shift in the attitudes of beginning teachers so that ‘idealistic, humanistic and progressive attitudes to schools and children are replaced by realism, conservatism, toughmindedness and custodialism’ (McArthur, 1981, p. 3).

Such an attitude has been characterised as a ‘pupil control ideology’ (Willower et al., 1967). It involves a rejection of the more humanistic orientation to learning and students and those concepts of a more democratic and open classroom climate which are promoted (at the level of rhetoric any rate) in many college courses and in much of the literature on pedagogy and ‘principles’ of education. (For further discussion, see Smith, 1979, and Atkinson and Delamont, 1985.)

Robert Elliott (1980) found that student teachers had considerable difficulties in coming to terms with the transition from college to the realities of their teaching. The disjunction between college preparation and classroom reality, Elliott suggests, means that beginning teachers tend to question all the college-constructed ‘network of ideas’ about teaching activities. Consequently they are left with only the ideas and practices of their more experienced colleagues and their past recollections of schoo...