It could be worthwhile to disaggregate "education academics" as it's unlikely they all have the same beliefs.
The idea of a full-on no-holds-barred neoliberal approach to teacher training sounds extreme. Imagine this in other fields: we will decide which nurses and doctors to keep depending on who keeps the most patients alive. Teacher training most certainly is in need of reform but this suggestion, if serious, seems to be in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The "let the market decide" mantra has resulted in endless large scale policy failures (e.g., TAFE, childcare, aged care, tripartite education system - and that is just very recent Australian examples).
Surely one of the main arguments against neoliberalism is that social policy should not be organised in the same way as private industry.
I am not sure I agree with these arguments. I am no expert, for example, but I assume medical training is of some use to practising medics. However, that's not really the point. I am questioning whether the authors of the two AARE blog posts criticising AERO for being 'top-down' really are against top-down mandates in general, or just the ones they dislike.
Such a good point - schools and teachers are crippled by overregulation and such a narrow overton window, but the academics aren't railing against this - just trying to keep their power. I think that this is most evident in behavioural management. Here, most schools (even private schools where I am from) follow the academic orthodoxy despite suspension rates and rates of occupational violence being the highest on record. Somehow I don't think academics would be too pleased were individual schools to develop different approaches...
It could be worthwhile to disaggregate "education academics" as it's unlikely they all have the same beliefs.
The idea of a full-on no-holds-barred neoliberal approach to teacher training sounds extreme. Imagine this in other fields: we will decide which nurses and doctors to keep depending on who keeps the most patients alive. Teacher training most certainly is in need of reform but this suggestion, if serious, seems to be in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The "let the market decide" mantra has resulted in endless large scale policy failures (e.g., TAFE, childcare, aged care, tripartite education system - and that is just very recent Australian examples).
Surely one of the main arguments against neoliberalism is that social policy should not be organised in the same way as private industry.
I am not sure I agree with these arguments. I am no expert, for example, but I assume medical training is of some use to practising medics. However, that's not really the point. I am questioning whether the authors of the two AARE blog posts criticising AERO for being 'top-down' really are against top-down mandates in general, or just the ones they dislike.
To quote Hume, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them".
Such a good point - schools and teachers are crippled by overregulation and such a narrow overton window, but the academics aren't railing against this - just trying to keep their power. I think that this is most evident in behavioural management. Here, most schools (even private schools where I am from) follow the academic orthodoxy despite suspension rates and rates of occupational violence being the highest on record. Somehow I don't think academics would be too pleased were individual schools to develop different approaches...