Teaching: a job that is never finished

The kids wear smartwatches, use AI tools such as ChatGPT to do their research and swipe through TikTok. They speak different languages and have various cultural backgrounds – classrooms have become very diverse. These changes open up great opportunities in education, but they are often portrayed as a problem by the media and politics. 

"Our system of education is currently operating as though we need to shield it from change. Take AI: it is viewed as this negative thing that we must ward off," says Susanne Schwab, who conducts research on school and education in the context of diversity and social inequality. She adds, "We are on the wrong path. When everything is changing, we do not need to build defenses but a beacon of sorts to help us navigate the changes. We no longer need factual knowledge, we need knowledge that provides orientation."

Creating an active and participatory learning environment

Policies, recommendations from pedagogical research versus the reality of the classroom often diverge from each other or at odds. "Reactions come too late, are too fragmented and too political," criticises Schwab. "Within all this complexity we are currently facing, children need to learn critical thinking and develop self-efficacy. We need teachers who, together with the children, can create an active and participatory learning environment to facilitate this. Teachers need to act as architects of learning and relationships, and they need to guide students through this complexity."

Diversity in the classroom

Schwab’s colleague Nele Kampa, whose research focuses on the quality of teaching in heterogeneous learning settings, also sees teachers facing growing challenges. She puts things into perspective: "Students have always been heterogeneous, even if diversity has certainly increased. In essence, heterogeneity means that students with very different starting points share the same classroom ‒ and that can, in fact, mean 28 different starting points in one class."

In her research, Kampa explores what teaching quality can look like in these diverse learning settings. "For example, the current state of research shows that open learning (an educational concept in which students have more control over their learning process) is generally not any more or less effective compared to other learning settings that are used in heterogeneous classes, because there just isn’t one singular teaching method that can act as a miracle solution. What we need are well-educated teachers with an extensive repertoire of knowledge, skills and tools to provide appropriate and adaptive teaching in a heterogeneous setting. Being a teacher is a very complex profession, which is why I think it's such an amazing one."

Rethinking learning

Susanne Schwab finds classes with traditional lecture-style teaching outdated, as well as the fact that there is still talk of 'multilingual children' and 'children with special educational needs.' "When will we stop considering individuality a problem and start appreciating the fact that all children are individuals? School is a social space and it needs to be designed accordingly. And by that I mean that actual architectural measures need to be taken." That means moving away from traditional teacher-centred instruction to more flexible learning environments that facilitate interaction and individual support – for example, by offering areas to which students can retreat or where teachers and students can sit down together in a circle.

According to the expert on school education, education is still heavily politicised, which she considers one of the main issues. As long as key decisions in the field are not based on educational but rather on political reasoning, it will remain difficult to fundamentally reform the system.

Lack of supervision and support

Nele Kampa notes that the role of teachers as educators has become a focus and much more present, especially nowadays. "That is why I consider educational science an important part of teacher education. However, I would not give it more weight than other areas – it is just as important as subject-specific knowledge and subject-specific didactics. We have these three equivalent pillars in Austria, which together serve to prepare students for the teaching profession."

Nevertheless, starting their careers is difficult for many graduates of teacher education programmes – the number of new teachers quitting is especially high during the first five years of working in the profession. "Many young teachers are completely overwhelmed at first and are often unable to apply what they learned during their studies in practice at school," says Kampa. "It is extremely important to ask for feedback and have time to reflect, especially during this phase. Teacher education students receive supervision and have sufficient time during their studies, which is unfortunately often not the case anymore when they start working at schools. It is important that new teachers receive a lot of support particularly during those first five years of employment to prevent a shortage of teachers in the long term. Current conditions at schools often don’t allow for that because there is simply not enough time."

Schools need more resources

Susanne Schwab has a similar view – policy failures are now taking effect. "The issue should have been addressed many years ago. Now that it has grown into a full-blown crisis, the solution of policymakers is to allow students to teach as fully-fledged teachers before they have even graduated. This is not the way to get the best-qualified people where they are needed the most," says Schwab. 

She adds, "Many young teachers who have not completed their training feel as if they are thrown in at the deep end, with no supervision and little support. That is going to have an impact on our future. It has to do with professionalisation and, furthermore, with the warranted question coming from well-educated teachers: ‘Why did I study for six years if others are allowed to do the same work without having completed the required degree?’" Schwab expects that the number of teachers quitting is only going to increase as a result.

 

Nele Kampa is currently leading a project dedicated to the topic of university students working as teachers in schools. Kampa and her team are investigating how teacher education students make decisions about their future teaching careers, the factors encouraging an early career start, as well as the workload and impact of an early career start on their studies. "In contrast to most other European countries, teacher education students in Austria are usually employed as regular teachers, which means they teach, work with parents, organise outings and excursions, attend all conferences and are even class teachers in classes preparing for the school-leaving examination," explains Kampa. Many students cannot reconcile this with their full-time studies and therefore take a long time to graduate. "I think that this is counterproductive and the data show this as well. Overall, it has a negative impact on studies, on how much I am able to take away from my studies and on how relevant I consider my studies."

Appreciation and challenges

Teaching was considered a highly esteemed career only a few decades ago. This reputation seems to be declining in the public perception today. Paired with the complex challenges schools are facing nowadays, the profession is only further losing its appeal and unfairly so, says Susanne Schwab. "Working as a teacher, you have the opportunity to bring about change that can last for generations. The impact may be small, but I still consider it significant – I certainly think a single teacher’s impact can be a big opportunity. Teachers need a multi-professional team on their side. School as a space for development has changed significantly and we are just way behind."

Continuous change has become an essential part of the job today. "Teachers and school systems need to be flexible, but school systems are also just systems, which are not very flexible by nature," says Nele Kampa. "That is why teachers need to be very open to change – and I know of no other profession where that particular competence plays such a major role. It has always been relevant, but it is becoming even more important, because the future is becoming increasingly harder to plan for than in the last 40 years."

Promoting the language of education

One topic that keeps coming up in debates surrounding the school system is German language support. Susanne Schwab is focusing on this topic in her current, large-scale study and believes that educational policy is currently moving in the wrong direction "Due to our segregated German language support measures, the gap among students with regard to German language proficiency is only going to widen again and this will also be reflected in future PISA results. We are only building more barriers this way. The very fact that children are not allowed to advance, are separated from their friends and have to change teachers after a single school year if they do not pass the initial language screening already significantly contributes to that.

This educational language barrier results in an age gap among children, which is a strong argument against German language support classes. Language learning works best when integrated into subject-specific teaching and among peers who serve as language role models. What nobody talks about is that language support is relevant for all students, because children with a lower socio-economic status benefit from additional support in the educational language as well."

No barriers to change

German language support is just one example of where research and politics diverge, as Nele Kampa knows from experience. "Educational policy and educational science are wired completely differently, least of all with regard to time frames. Educational policy-makers need fast answers, for example, on how to best deal with AI. If my answer is ‘Well, I have to do at least four years of research on that first’, they will not be satisfied." But what could be a possible solution to that discrepancy, to improve the situation? "Establishing a kind of forum for dialogue that ensures more communication between research, practice and educational policy would definitely help," suggests Kampa. 

Schwab appeals to policy-makers in educational politics, "We need to stop building this protective wall against change and stop creating an educational system for the past. The future is changing and that means we need teachers who can deal with change effectively as well as reflect on them critically. And this requires participatory work."