Autumn 2004

Talking English

You want standards? We got standards!

A national education project launched in 1999 allowed teachers of English and literacy to develop a set of standards that reflect the characteristics of the profession and transcend differences. But where to from here? KARREN PHILP reflects on the past, present and future of STELLA.

The chief mark of a profession is that it is responsible, and is recognised as responsible, for itself as the body to which the community entrusts its interests in one particular field...

A.D. Hope, poet and founding president of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE).

These words from Hope’s 1967 presidential address are now enshrined on the home page of the Standards for Teachers of English Language and Literacy in Australia (STELLA). They provide a more eloquent rationale for English Language and Literacy Teacher Professional Standards than those delegates voiced at the 1999 AATE/ALEA National Conference in Adelaide when the Australian Research Council funded project to develop them was officially launched.

The AATE forum at the 1999 national conference was a rather more cacophonous debate about the need for, and purpose of, professional standards. Many delegates were deeply suspicious of anything that smacked of economically rational performance indicators and checklists. They feared the sticks such a project might create, and predicted how such sticks might be used to belabour English teachers already bowed by the public perception that they were wholly responsible for what the headlines (fuelled by the National Literacy Plan, Literacy for All, DEETYA 1998) proclaimed as ‘declining literacy levels in our kids’.

Delegates were dismayed by the narrow and retrogressive definitions of literacy underpinning the National Literacy Benchmarks in the National Literacy plan. What if similarly narrow bureaucratic understandings were brought to bear when standards of English teaching were formulated? Therefore, the thinking that prevailed at the forum and on into the STELLA project itself was ‘if we don’t do it for ourselves, then we can be pretty damn sure that it will be done to us, and by those who don’t understand us!’ From the beginning then, English teachers wanted control and ownership of their own professional standards.

Over the three years (1999–2002), and with the help of AATE and ALEA, teacher panels were set up in different States. These groups of primary and secondary teachers worked with academic researchers to develop the STELLA materials: the standards statements, key words and questions and, at the heart of the project, an anthology of narratives written by practising teachers, and a small selection of audiovisual vignettes of English and Literacy classroom experiences.

When the English Teachers Association WA (ETAWA) Council interrogated drafts of the STELLA framework, we were chiefly interested in seeing the extent to which they reflected English teaching as opposed to ‘teaching’ per se. We were not convinced that inserting adjectives ‘English Language’ and ‘Literacy’ before each occurrence of ‘teacher’ or ‘teaching’ would result in the disciplinaryspecific descriptions promised by the project team. We spent several meetings transposing other adjectives, such as ‘macramé’ into draft standard statements. Where these alternatives worked as well as ‘English,’ we asked the project team for more specificity. As successive versions of the standards statements passed us by, we noted their ‘Englishness’ becoming more apparent, especially with the addition of some strong key words and questions at the elaboration level.

STELLA’s inclusivity

English teachers work in a multiplicity of contexts. The magic of STELLA is that it does capture the differences in approach needed to teach students to be ‘powerfully literate’ in an early childhood class and in a tertiary entrance class; in a small wheat belt classroom and in an electronic classroom. The capacity of STELLA to transcend the differences in the contexts of English and literacy teachers, to reflect what is characteristic of English teachers in all the contexts in which we teach, is most certainly a major achievement of the project. STELLA speaks to all English language and literacy teachers because the standards do not purport to ‘measure’ teachers against a ‘one size fits all’ concept of the ideal English teacher.

The ETAWA council discovered that it was the process by which we interacted with the standards, rather than the standards as and of themselves, that led to our increased understanding and appreciation of what we valued about the complexities of teaching English. The standard statements and key questions provoked each of us to articulate and demonstrate the ways we understood subject English.

‘STELLA has provided the opportunity for teachers to explore aspects of their practice in a sustained and genuinely critical way’ (Doecke & Gill, 2000/2001). The value of STELLA is in the invitation they extend to English language and literacy teachers to compare the stories that illustrate the standards with their own experiences.

When STELLA went live on the website, the value of an English and literacy teacher standard framework as an interactive professional development tool became most apparent. The STELLA materials operate on the web as an interrelated, hyperlinked whole—the narratives, key words, questions and standard statements invite English teachers to engage, reflect and compare to their own contexts and experiences.

The STELLA materials have been presented to our profession as a kind of professional development ‘map’ that teachers might use to guide their careers. They can provide a discussion framework for teachers engaged in professional learning about:

• what constitutes accomplished English and literacy teaching
• the extent to which context influences what we consider to be accomplished English and literacy teaching
• how aspects of our own practice inform notions of accomplishment.

Workshops and journal articles have been presented suggesting how the STELLA materials facilitate professional learning. Examples of such discussions have taken place at conferences and faculty meetings. The online discussion facility presents the opportunity to link teachers who are geographically separate.

Line managers will use STELLA when developing and implementing their professional management planning for English and literacy teachers. Professional management discussions that include the key words and questions from the standards will undoubtably help teachers plot their course across the territory. STELLA will benefit English teachers preparing portfolios of evidence to support career advancement.

Using STELLA as a tool for professional management leads me to the thorny issue of assessment for accreditation purposes. From the beginning of the project, English teachers have resisted the notion that standards be used for assessment and/or accreditation. This resistance is chiefly borne from an unwillingness to ‘hand over’ the standards to some other employing or accreditation body, such as any one of the teacher registration boards currently being set up around the country. The profession must continue to own its own standards, and will always be best placed to make determinations about the extent to which teachers achieve them.

In 1999, the vision was that the profession own its own standards. We wanted to be able to say to the teacher registration boards, to the employing sectors and systems: ‘You want standards? We got standards! And we know how to use ‘em!’ This vision has been realised. What is needed now is for the wide community of Australian English and literacy teachers to be given time and opportunities to read, reflect, interrogate and be challenged to situate their own experience of English teaching within the STELLA framework.

References

For a full set of the Standards for Teachers of English Language and Literacy in Australia and associated materials visit www.stella.org.au/

Brown, C & Chadbourne, R (1998). ‘W.A. Teachers Meet the U.S. Standards’, in English in Australia, vol 122.

Davidson, J & Perkins, R (2000/2001). ‘What Do We Value? Where Do We Stand?’ in English in Australia, vol 129130.

Doecke, B & Gill, M (2000/2001). ‘Setting Standards: Confronting Paradox’, in English in Australia, vol 129130.

Gill, M (1999). ‘If We Don’t Do It, Someone Else Will’, in English in Australia, vol 124.

Ingvarson, L (1998). ‘Professional Standards: A Challenge for the AATE?’ in English In Australia, vol 122.

Karren Philp has been an active member of the English Teachers Association (WA) for the past decade, and president for the last five years. She has been teaching English for 23 years.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au