The AITSL [Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership] should expand its
functions to include provision of leadership in national research on teacher education
effectiveness, to ensure that the Australian teaching profession is able to continually
improve its practice.This is profoundly encouraging. Of course much will depend on the level of
political support that the recommendations get—and we know politicians change
and move on. However, what has been provided here is a clear evidence-based
report that offers an overall strategy for transformation and improvement.
45.5 Conclusion
As we see in the TEMAG report, it remains crucially important to enquire into the
relationship between educational outcomes and the nature of teacher education and
professional development. This remains a greatly under-researched and underex-
plored aspect of education. We may have someprima facieevidence now that
enquiry-oriented teaching is strongly associated with more successful education
systems, but we still not really understand why that is.
Trust, respect, conditions and salary are all important and can play a part in the
recruitment and retention of teachers who can make a big contribution and improve
young people’s life chances. The standing of the profession is likely to improve as the
research and practice communities move closer together. Research literacy should be
an entitlement for all teachers and should be developed throughout their careers. In the
same way that other professions develop their expertise, this is likely to be best
achieved through ever closer working with researchers and university-based col-
leagues who can ask the right questions and support teachers in identifying answers.
Making connections in the way suggested in the TEMAG report is crucial to
positive development. We see here an opportunity to enrich and indeed embed the
relationships between policy, practice and research. We see a commitment to
critical reasoning as an underlying principle for teaching and for education, a
commitment that is endangered in England, as demonstrated by Furlong’s recent
analysis (Furlong 2013 ).
It is very reassuring to see examples of researchers and policymakers seeking to
learn from each other without blindly imitating. Education systems and teacher
education systems each have their own histories and trajectories and each seeks to
meet the needs of a distinctive culture and society at particular points in time. So the
connections are important—global connections and internal connections—in all
three overlapping worlds of policy, practice and research. Through such connec-
tions, we can seriously seek to transform our world—both locally and interna-
tionally—through education.
45 Making Connections in the UK and Australia—Research, Teacher... 675