The realities of Teaching in the 21st century

Many teachers who become frustrated and/or alienated from their work do so
because they fail to grasp the institutional reality of the teacher’s life

Challenge #1: You may not always be held in the highest regard
People think teaching is a ‘cheap and easy’ option!

Challenge #2: Teaching is work

 Teachers are workers, teaching is work and that work is organized and
subject to workplace controls (Connell, 1985)
 Your capacity to do good, to affect change, to make a difference will
always be limited by the realities of institutional life.

Challenge #3: Teachers can feel alone or unprepared

Challenge #4: A changing policy environment

 Schools are becoming more regulated
 More legal, community, parental, systemic scrutiny of what teachers do.

Challenge #5: Geography

 WA is the largest and most ‘remote’ inhabited place on earth.
 Young and inexperienced are expected to go remote

Challenge 6: Conflicting demands…

 The teacher as disciplinarian
 The teacher as carer
 The teacher as academic
 The teacher as social worker
 The teacher as mediator
 The teacher as health care worker
 The teacher as researcher
 The teacher as learner

Challenge #7: The changing nature of knowledge

  The teacher was the knowledgeable authority in the classroom.
 Many students now already know more about some things (hacking, web
pages, Facebook) than teacher

Challenge # 8: Student social, physical and emotional health and

wellbeing

Challenge #9: Increasing student diversity

Challenge #10: The teaching workforce Productivity Commission

Schools Workforce Report November 2011

Challenge #11: The workplace Productivity Commission Schools

Workforce Report November 2011

Challenge #12: Expectations of the student-teacher

Research suggests that your expectations can be unreasonable:
 Education as a liberator or tool for salvation
 That you can change the inequities of past experience
 Any job with that many holidays can’t be that hard
 All schools and students will be similar to me and my experiences, so I will be able to
relate
 Because I am a parent I will be a good teacher
 Schools will be flexible around my needs
Challenge #13: Resilience
Approximately 25-40% of all teachers resign or burn out in the first 3-5 years of
teaching (Ewing and Manual, 2005).
Reasons:
 Workload
 A lack of on-the-job support
 Workplace conditions:
o Discipline problems in the classroom
o Poor administrative support
o Poor overall school culture
o Negative colleagues
o ‘I had no idea that some classes could be this bad’
o A multitude of pressures
o Anxiety over assessment and student results (Ewing and Manuel, 2005)
Strategies promoting resilience:
 Identify a like-minded mentor
 Avoid rocking the boat where possible
 Recognise contextual factors, at any given time 50% of your class may not want to be
there despite your passion. Devise strategies
 Persevere
 Reflect often and systematically
 Learn from mistakes