In Australia we have been talking about rates of attrition in the teaching profession for a long time. Yet when we focus on attrition we miss the bigger picture. The key issue is not just who is leaving and when, but how we can improve job satisfaction for teachers so that they can flourish within their role, not just survive.

There are decades of research on this theme and it’s certainly not a new idea—or a simple one to address.

What is new here though is that my team has analysed data from over two thousand Australian early career teachers. We’ve tried to untangle the ways in which satisfaction and attrition are linked to each other, and to preservice education and working conditions.

Yes, the findings do show a strong but unsurprising link between satisfaction and attrition. Far more important though are the findings that suggest ways in which teacher satisfaction might be improved.

To introduce some terms I will briefly describe what is often referred to in a faintly dehumanising way as the ‘teacher pipeline’ but which I will refer to as the ‘teachers’ journey’.

The teachers’ journey

Many things need to fall into place for a system to produce and keep high quality motivated teachers. People need to make a choice that they want teaching to be their vocation, and then those people need to finish their initial teacher education. These recently graduated teachers then need to get a job in a school, get registered, and make it through the first five years of teaching. At this point they will be in the sun-drenched, happy-ever-after territory of being considered an established teacher.

Anywhere along this journey we can find factors that will influence teacher satisfaction and attrition.

If teachers aren’t well prepared for the job, then it may be that we are setting them up to fail—their preservice education (their initial teacher education) might be influencing their future satisfaction.

If teachers get their first job in an environment where they are well supported, then this might help to shield them from the slings and arrows of the first few years of teaching. This early career support,in an ideal world, might look like having a helpful mentor, a quality orientation program, a reduced load in the first year(s) of teaching, and structured time to reflect on the job with peers.

Finally, there are factors that are relevant to the teacher’s current job—their overall job satisfaction and the factors that describe their perception of on the job conditions. These relate to the school as well as external factors and range from things like the quality of pay and the status of the profession (external factors), through to what is going on in the classroom, and relationships with students (inside classroom factors), through to relationships with parents, school leadership, and other teachers, and workload (outside classroom factors)—these are just some of the 17 variables we used in our study.

How this all fits together: our findings

For our study we used a regression analysis of data from 2,144 Australian early career teachers, adjusted for school sector, type, geolocation, socioeconomic status, and job security. Our study was a disaggregation of existing data from the 2010 Staff In Australia's School Survey . For those wanting details of our methods and findings please find the link at the end of this post.

We made significant findings from our analysis.

1. Teachers who feel they are not satisfied with their job are more than six times as likely to plan on leaving the profession.

While this association (between satisfaction with work and wanting to stay in that job) is unsurprising, having a statistic to back it up is meaningful. It is worth mentioning that, in previous studies, an intention to leave the profession has been shown to be a useful guide to actual attrition.

2.  No variable in preservice education was strongly associated with teacher satisfaction.

This suggests that trying to address teacher satisfaction through changes to their preservice education is unlikely to have success. However, when teachers felt that they had been prepared for “working with other teachers”, and for “using a variety of instructional methods for diverse student needs”, they were far less likely to want to leave the profession—but they were not more satisfied with their jobs.

3. Three kinds of early career support were associated with satisfaction in the job

• a helpful mentor,
• a helpful orientation program, and
• a reduced face-to-face workload.

Again, these are not surprising findings (they echo existing research from the past two decades) but the size of the sample gives us increased confidence that this holds true for Australian teachers. Of these, it is only having a helpful mentor that was also a strong factor in teachers being less likely to plan on leaving the profession.

4. Factors relating to job conditions most associated with wanting to leave the profession.

From strongest to least (only considering those variables with a strong effect size, out of 17 variables in total) were:

• The amount of clerical/administrative work required
• What teachers are currently accomplishing with students
• Opportunities for career advancement
• The value that society places on teachers’ work
• Relationships with parents/guardians.
• The amount of teaching expected
• Freedom to decide how to do the job
• Salary

Where to from here?

Ideas from positive psychology suggest that intrinsic motivation in a job requires having opportunities for autonomy, competence, and relationships with other humans. The paper that my team published makes a few key points that, along with our findings outlined above, can be understood in this context.

1. It seems that reshaping preservice teacher education (yet again) would not be the most effective place to put our future efforts.

2. For all the studies that have been carried out about mentorship programs and their effectiveness, three out of ten early career teachers in Australia in our analysis either had an unhelpful mentor or had no mentor. Yes some states have since established a policy about mandatory mentorship programs, but for some beginning teachers (anecdotally) these can be just box-ticking exercises.

3. The fact that clerical/administrative burdens was one of the strongest factors considered in linking on-the-job conditions to intention to leave the profession suggests that this may be a place to look for improving teacher satisfaction. The literature suggests that administrative burdens have increased for teachers in the last decade. It is difficult for any study to conclusively show that reducing this administrative burden would improve teacher satisfaction; but it is a proposal that certainly passes the common sense test. Again, this is a point made by many scholars before me; but having solid data to back it up adds to the case.

Research using quantitative datasets, such as ours, can play a role in guiding policy; particularly when it backs up what decades of theoretical and qualitative research have already proposed.

Yet when looking at any dataset the paradigm within which one views it matters. My great hope, personally, is that policymakers across the country can adopt the paradigm of positive psychology, and ask questions about how teachers can be supported to flourish in their jobs—rather than the old paradigm, of asking how we can keep them in the profession. Maybe then we could start to truly transform the conditions within which teachers go about their vital work.

With thanks to my co-authors on the original article: Dr Marcela Cespedes, Dr Marc Clarà and Professor Patrick Danaher.

Dr Nick Kelly is a Lecturer in Interaction Design at the Queensland University of Technology, in the School of Design. His research focuses on the cognition of creativity, the support needs of preservice and early career teachers, and the design of online communities of teachers.

Download our full paper Early career teachers’ intentions to leave the profession: The complex relationships among preservice education, early career support, and job satisfaction

This article was originally published on EduResearch Matters. Read the original article.

5 min read

Pamela Snow, La Trobe University and Tanya Serry, La Trobe University

Being able to read means being able to make meaning from printed words. At a functional level, we read to get the message – such as how many times per day to take our medication – but in a literate society reading provides much more. A successful reader is someone who can access the thoughts, opinions, memories, theories, desires, experiences and feelings of others.

Reading is a transformative experience. But it is also a “biologically unnatural” process humans have been doing for only a brief time in evolutionary terms. Unlike acquiring spoken language, children need to be taught how the English writing system works and how to master the code for both reading and spelling.

The written English code

Written English is considered a code because letters and letter combinations (graphemes) represent spoken speech sounds (phonemes). The English alphabet has 26 letters, which represent 44 speech sounds. This means some letter combinations (graphemes) comprise more than one letter. For example, in the first sound of “ship” two letters, “s” and “h”, make one grapheme that represents the phoneme “sh”.

For beginning readers, being able to connect graphemes to their corresponding phonemes is not an intuitive, natural process.

Learning the complex code is best done through explicit and systematic phonics instruction. This involves directly teaching children to associate graphemes with their corresponding phonemes.

Instruction starts using a clearly defined (systematic) sequence of letters, starting with only a few correspondences reflecting simple code (such as single letters) and progressively moving to complex code, such as “ng” and “ough”, once mastery is achieved at each level.

Once children have learnt a few grapheme-phoneme correspondences, they will be explicitly shown how to segment words (containing only known correspondences) into their constituent parts and blend them together to decode and read the word. At this point, children will be able to read short decodable books.

Read more: Explainer: what's the difference between decodable and predictable books, and when should they be used?

All children must learn to decode. Without decoding skills, children could not read made-up words such as Harry Potter’s “quidditch”. Nor could they read unfamiliar names (of places such as Oodnadatta) or medication names (such as azithromycin) as these have no other cues to guide the reader to pronunciation.

Why phonics works

Synthetic phonics instruction aligns with the two strongest and most well-regarded theoretical frameworks in contemporary reading science.

The first is the simple view of reading developed in 1986, which has more recently (2018) been reformulated as the cognitive foundations of learning to read. This holds that reading comprehension is made up of two mutually dependent and essential processes: being able to decode words and being able to understand what connected text means.

The simple view theory had provided valuable insights into the cognitive processes necessary for reading comprehension. Evidence also shows the model to be a valid means of sub-classifying children as “able readers”, “poor decoders” and/or “poor comprehenders”.

The second framework is dual route theory (developed in 2001). This refers to the fact some words readers encounter are already stored as recognisable letter strings in their long-term memory. We instantly recognise these words when we see them, through the lexical route.

But unfamiliar words need to be decoded, via a phonological (sound-based) route, using knowledge of how letters and letter combinations (graphemes) map onto speech (phonemes). As we become more skilled as readers, we access more words automatically.

Dual route theory aligns with cognitive load theory. This is the idea that there is only so much information a human brain can hold at any one time unless there is a dedicated and structured opportunity to practise and rehearse it.

In line with this, the workings of the English writing system are best taught explicitly and systematically, so beginning readers are not put into the unfortunate and unnecessary situation of being cognitively overloaded. The risk of cognitive overload is high when the code is shown to children in an unsystematic, unstructured way or, even more worryingly, if it is assumed children will intuitively understand the code simply by exposure to written text.

Read more: Explainer: what is explicit instruction and how does it help children learn?

Instruction should also include an emphasis on morphology (word building, such as happy, unhappy, unhappily) and etymology (study of word origins), so students recognise patterns and relationships between words.

Although knowing how to decode words is fundamental to becoming a reader, teaching children to crack the code should also be done alongside instructional practices that ensure rapidly expanding vocabularies and world knowledge, so children can bring language skills and background knowledge to the task of comprehending what they read.

Covering all bases

A significant proportion, close to 40%, of children manage to learn to read without explicit and systematic phonics instruction (or with phonics instruction of variable impact) due to a confluence of biological and environmental advantages. These children may receive less structured initial reading instruction that encourages them to use a variety of strategies, such as picture and context cues, before attending to the graphemes within a word.

Read more: Reading progress is falling between year 5 and 7, especially for advantaged students: 5 charts

The remaining 60% of children taught in this way are highly vulnerable to falling behind as readers. And the proportion of vulnerability increases with the level of disadvantage.

No teacher of children in their first year of school can reliably identify, in the first term, which children will struggle with reading and which will get there seamlessly. To wait until a year (or more) has passed and then try to back-fill and close this gap shows a poor understanding of the importance of making every day count in children’s early learning.

We should be teaching 95% of children to read successfully, so need to be using high-impact teaching approaches from the outset, with all children.

If not explicit and systematic phonics instruction, what is the teacher’s time being spent on? Teaching words from flash cards for children to learn as wholes without any analysis of what is happening within the word? Or promoting inefficient strategies (ironically those used by weak readers) such as trying to work out what “kind” of word might work?

Even more bizarrely (and unhelpfully), children might be encouraged to “get their mouths ready” to read an unfamiliar word. It is not a child’s mouth that needs to be ready for learning to read, but her brain.

We must provide and promote reading instruction approaches that ensure the overwhelming majority of children learn to read in the early years of school, regardless of their starting point.

Read the accompanying article on the the whole language approach to teaching reading here.

This article initially said the dual route theory was developed in 2012. This has now been corrected to 2001 and the reference updated.

Pamela Snow, Professor and Head, Rural Health School, La Trobe University and Tanya Serry, Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Children learn through play – it shouldn’t stop at preschool

Kate Noble, Victoria University

The transition from preschool to school is a big deal for many children and parents. Over the next few weeks, many preschoolers will take part in a transition program, designed by their teachers, to prepare them for school.

They’ll meet their foundation teachers, spend some time in a classroom and hopefully make some new friends.

These children’s education has so far focused on play-based learning. This means they’ve learnt through exploring and playing, supported by skilled early childhood educators.

But they’re about to enter a world of formal learning. Although play-based learning does happen in schools, there tends to be a stronger focus on instruction.

The current system isn’t working for many students. One-quarter of children who start school aren’t developmentally ready for this transition and levels of mental ill-health among children are concerning.

Read more: More children are starting school depressed and anxious – without help, it will only get worse

Many educators and researchers argue more play in the early years of school could better support children’s transition and learning. Parents think so too. In a recent survey, 93% of parents acknowledge the benefits of play and 72% said the first years of school should focus more on play-based learning.

If we’re genuinely committed to improving outcomes for all children – and we know play benefits learning – we need to better integrate play-based learning into schools’ formal learning structures.

How do we learn through play?

Increasing play-based learning in schools means changing how we think about playing. When many of us think about play, we probably think of free play, which is unstructured and directed by children, usually without adult involvement.

Play-based learning, though, is more usefully conceived as a spectrum, with free play at one end and teacher-guided, playful learning at the other. In between are a variety of methods either entirely based on play, or incorporating elements of it.

Read more: Preschool benefits all children, but not all children get it. Here's what the government can do about that

For example, a skilled educator can help children discover new ideas when they play with water. The educator might encourage children to playfully experiment with water tubs and toys in a way that allows them to develop their own hypotheses about how water behaves in certain situations and why.

The educator could work with the children to test their hypotheses, questioning and talking to them about what they observe during their play.

Play-based learning in the early years of school can significantly improve kids’ language and social connections. Research shows the impact of play-based learning extends into other areas of development too.

High-quality play-based learning can:

• strengthen neural pathways associated with learning
• enhance well-being
• improve memory and organisational abilities
• teach children self-regulation and problem-solving skills
• encourage creativity and critical thinking.

Quality depends on warm and responsive relationships with skilled educators and an environment that facilitates exploration and learning. It also involves a developmentally appropriate learning program.

The skills children learn through play equip them to engage with formal, academic learning. When children start to develop and harness these skills, research shows they’re better able to cope with the demands of formal learning and thrive later on in school.

And when more than 70% of children don’t get the recommended amount of physical activity, play is even more essential.

Read more: Let them play! Kids need freedom from play restrictions to develop

Many researchers and educators believe less play – inside and outside the classroom – may be contributing to rising levels of anxiety, depression, and challenges related to attention and self-control. For children experiencing high levels of stress or other forms of disadvantage, play can be a vital antidote.

The links between disadvantage, poor health, changing lifestyles, and inequality are, of course, complex. But there is good evidence to suggest how we approach education in the early years – particularly in relation to play – is an important part of how we address these challenges.

Australia’s school system downplays play

The Australian Early Years Learning Framework guides educational programs for children aged 0-5. It complements the Australian Curriculum, which guides learning throughout primary and secondary school.

While complementary, the frameworks take quite different approaches to play. Play is a fundamental component of the Early Years Learning Framework. In contrast, the curriculum’s focus on academic performance has extended formal learning to the early years of school and even preschool, despite the fact play-based learning is far more appropriate at these ages.

There are a few policy options that can support more play-based learning in the early years and ensure it is integrated into education in the middle years of childhood and beyond. These options include:

• starting school later (either by changing legal starting ages or parents electing to start their children later)
• more or longer breaks for play during the day
• extending play-based approaches into the early years of school
• integrating more play-based learning into existing approaches.

Read more: Which families delay sending their child to school, and why? We crunched the numbers

Increasing school starting ages by law would involve governments and parents meeting the significant cost of an extra year of early education and care. Research shows most parents want less break time at school, and schools are already finding it difficult to adequately cover the curriculum in the time they have.

While some policy options are likely to gain more traction than others, there is strong support for increasing play-based learning in schools. This will require teachers, governmentsandfamilies to all be on the same page about the benefits of play for children’s learning.Kate Noble, Education Policy Fellow, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.