Study On Development And Implementation Of The National Professional Standards For Teachers In Australia

For nearly half a century,it has widely agreed that the improvement of education quality depends on the quality of teachers and teacher education.Teacher education reform in every country of the world focuses on improving teacher quality,especially development and implementation of teaching professional standards has become a major trend.But nowadays,how to solve the problem of “standard remaining on the shelf”,and how to build strong links between standard and action is still a difficult problem in the development and implementation of the standards.Based on the Standardization Theory and Teachers’ Professional Development,this paper uses the method of Document Research to investigate how to build links between standard and action in the development and implementation of teachers’ professional standards in Australia.Firstly,it illustrates the principle planning and dimension designing in the development of Australian National Teacher Professional Standards;secondly,it analyzes how the standards are implemented in each stage of teachers’ professional development;finally,it investigates the impact and lesson of the standard in Australia.The study finds that the Australian standard emphasizes on serving two purposes of quality assurance and professional learning,as well as the application of a generic standard for all teachers.By taking professional associations and institutions as the main body of research,also encouraging stakeholders of the standard to participate in the research,this ensures the scientificity and democracy of the standard research procedure.Following the vision of advanced teaching and performance-based,the final document contains three horizontal domains of Professional Knowledge,Professional Practice and Professional Engagement,and four vertical stages of Graduate Teachers,Proficient Teachers,Highly Accomplished Teachers and Lead Teachers.By way of standard-based assessment,the statement of standard need to describe teaching practice,and has both general and specific characteristics.This standard widely covered the whole career stage of teachers including: initial teacher education program accreditation and teacher professional assessment based on graduate teacher standard,national teacher registration based on proficient teacher standard,teacher professional learning and development based on the corresponding stage of teacher career.Teacher standard,teacher accreditation and teacher professional development constitute teacher professional development system which based on the National professional standard of teachers.Through the discussion on the impact of the standard,the Australian professional standards for teachers has received certain achievement,the strong link and coherence have been built among teacher standard,teacher accreditation and teacher professional development.However,it still faces some controversy and challenges in teacher accreditation and professional development,especially in using standard to facilitate professional learning of teachers.The experience of Australia standard draws our attention that we should: promote the construction of an integrated,standards-based system for teacher professional development;achieve collaboration and active dialogue among the various stakeholders;design professional development to encourage and guide teachers in continuously learning;focus on the validation and subsequent revision of the standards.