Systematic phonics in Australian teacher education
What primary teachers told my survey
A couple of weeks ago, I presented the main headlines from my recent survey of over a thousand teachers about their training.
In this post, I want to flesh out the answers from primary school teachers and their experiences of phonics.
According to the data I collected, there were 407 primary teachers in my sample. Of these, 178 trained in Australia and, of these, 65 trained in the last ten years.
Only a minority recalled discussing systematic phonics instruction as part of their training. Overall, it was 28% of primary teachers. For Australian primary teachers, this figure was 17% and for the more recently trained, it was 25%.
It makes sense that there would have been more discussion in the last ten years given the growing awareness around phonics and the pressure from a number of reports into teacher training. However, the idea that only a quarter of more recently trained Australian primary school teachers can recall discussing systematic phonics is deeply worrying.
Respondents who stated systematic phonics was discussed were then asked in what terms it was presented. They were asked to respond on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being strongly negative and 5 being strongly positive.
Based on the data, for all primary teachers, the figure was 3.27, suggesting a neutral/slightly favourable presentation. For Australian trained teachers, this figure was 2.46 suggesting a neutral/slightly unfavourable presentation. For more recent graduates, the figure was 2.28, suggesting a slightly unfavourable presentation.
So, if these figures are an accurate reflection of what happened on the participants’ training courses, the minority of teachers who were exposed to systematic phonics were given a slightly unfavourable impression of it.
This is despite repeated attempts to make universities focus on the science of learning (e.g. here).
Below are a sample of comments from teachers who indicated they trained in Australian in the last ten years:
“Overall it was an amazing degree (MTeach) but I did wish there was more practical literacy teaching instruction as we learnt the theory behind it but none of the practicalities.”
“Lots of theory, little that was practical in the courses. Practicalities came during placement.”
“My 4 years heavily embedded Piaget and Vygotsky's viewpoints and we had a whole subject just on running records.”
“Too much time spent learning content rather than how to teach it. No instruction around how to deliver effective explicit instruction (just told that we needed to do it as part of gradual release). No learning about phonics or phonics instruction. “
“The theory was minimally helpful. I spent my time planning massive over arching units of inquiry that were a load of rubbish “
“Whole word approach with f and p [Fountas and Pinnell] was taught”
It seems that respondents often had experiences with ideas that are somewhat at odds with systematic phonics teaching, such as running records or the guidance produced by Fountas and Pinnell.
I am not quite sure whether the academics who run teacher training courses will simply bat away every attempt to get them to adopt more evidence-informed principles or whether they are simply a supertanker that it takes a very long time to turn around. Either way, students are being shortchanged.
Delivering training primarily through an apprenticeship system is no panacea and is likely to be beset with many of the same problems as the university system. However, students can earn money while training this way. Unless there is a compelling case for the added value that university provides—a case not supported by my survey data at least—then apprenticeships become a compelling alternative.
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The supertanker analogy is indeed fitting. I believe the situation in Western Australia is telling. A younger colleague of mine shared that during his B.Ed programme, the lecturers were still focused on the WA Curriculum Framework. However, he graduated just before the Australian Curriculum was briefly introduced in WA. It highlights a significant disconnect between the academic environment and the practical realities of teaching that awaited him.
From your survey, it looks like nothing has changed.
I am quite concerned that the new Labour government in the UK will (once it has finished bashing farmers) remove the phonics check which is massively unpopular with teaching unions, here, esp the NEU. I suspect most primary teachers support phonics - though letters to the NEU magazine suggest a lot believe in balanced literacy and cannot see how phonics works - which goes back to your training point, of course.