Curios of the week #24

Clippings, endnotes and other ephemera

Image via AI

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Unpedestrianisation.

I had never come across this concept before. It seems against the times to take an area that had been paved and rid of cars and make it back into a roadway. Yet this is what is happening at the Bridge Mall in Ballarat. The mall has been a pedestrian zone since way before I arrived here in 2010.

I know some of the traders are not happy and the construction work, at least, seems to have led to a drop in foot traffic.

Why would the council this? The town planners must have their reasons. Perhaps a new algorithm outputted significant economic gains from the project. But it’s still really weird.

This week’s curios include research bearing good news, an op-ed from The Times, the fall-out from a Centre for Independent Studies report and much more.

Video campaign of the week

Stunned and insulted by reports that Australia is, ‘years behind in initial teacher education reform efforts,’ and that the, ‘science of learning [is] starkly different to most university courses which often [teach] student-directed learning,’ one plucky teacher trainer has decided to fight back. That teacher trainer is Dr David Armstrong.

Standing before what appears to be a porthole, Armstrong gestures to the foliage to demonstrate that he is in Australia before letting us know that he’s not going to take it any more. Instead, he is launching the ‘Teacher Ed Talkback’ campaign.

“Recently, teacher education… has faced a chorus of criticism by politicians, the right-wing media and right-wing think tanks and individuals.”

Wait. What?

I have seen a lot of criticism of teacher education. And this criticism appears valid, because much of it is poor. I am contacted by trainee teachers on a regular basis telling me their tales of woe and their frustration with what they see as a waste of their money. But they don’t strike me as particularly ‘right-wing’ individuals. In fact, politics is never mentioned.

But perhaps I am talking to the wrong trainees. After all, in this video, Armstrong has all of his trainees agreeing with him, as evidenced by them chanting a choral response together…

Yes, that is a bit weird.

Shadowy right-wing think tank of the week

The trigger for Armstrong’s valiant fightback seems to have been the release of a well-received report by the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS). I like the folks at the CIS. They helped organise a researchED in Sydney last hear and they are charming company. They also happen to be right in most of their education advocacy.

Summarising the available evidence, the authors of the report, Glenn Fahey and Rob Joseph found:

“Several Australian studies have indicated little or no alignment between ITE offerings and evidence-based teaching practices.”

For example

“…a 2021 CIS analysis of 90 mathematics units from the Bachelor of Education (Primary) courses of 31 universities found there is virtually no evidence of ITE where explicit instruction is clearly emphasised. Of those universities, 27 clearly emphasise constructivist approaches, while 4 are either ambiguous or emphasise a range of teaching approaches.”

Which is pretty bad. Fahey and Joseph go on to propose reforms to reshape the teacher training market that mirror those in England.

What is the response to this detailed critique? Boo! Hiss! Right-wing! etc.

I cannot help think that if trainers like Armstrong could prove the CIS researchers arguments wrong then they would do this instead. Either that, or they live in an ideological bubble so hermetically sealed that they think merely labelled something as right-wing is enough to win the argument. Even Labor politicians are unlikely to fall for that.