Data is key to diversification

11 November 2024

It is broadly understood that teacher cohorts should reflect local populations. Evidence shows it’s beneficial for student outcomes, filling skills shortages through attracting broader populations into needed pathways and for addressing teaching shortages, such as those affecting TAFE. However, a lack of data impedes informed changes to policy and its implementation.

While there are a number of recent studies on the need for diversity amongst the teaching workforce at a schools level, the lack of available information in vocational education is proving problematic.

A University of Melbourne policy paper Seeing Ourselves at School: Increasing the diversity of the teaching workforce by Associate Professor Suzanne Rice, Dr Alice Garner and Professor Lorraine Graham highlighted the lack of research and data available in an Australian context, recommending further investment in local research.

“Our review confirms the importance of researching the conditions that will facilitate building a diverse teacher workforce in Australia. Much of the available research focuses on recruiting and retaining teachers of colour in the United States. We simply do not know enough about these issues in the Australian context and we need investment in locally-based research,” the paper says. “Similarly, investment in longitudinal research to understand the career trajectories of Australian teachers will pay dividends in building our understanding of and responding to our local contexts.”

In vocational education delivery, access to facts and figures is even more spartan. The reality is that data on diversity amongst TAFE teachers and vocational educators across the board is not collected or collated by government, employers, or research institutions – something the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) identified at its 2024 No Frills Conference and has pledged to address. This lack of information leads to policy decisions being limited to general and traditional assumptions of who the TAFE workforce is, rather than looking into what it should be and how to appropriately address it.

Researchers who have been looking into barriers to women entering male-dominated trades, as well as those exploring attracting and engaging traditionally low-participatory populations – such as those with disability or those in remote and very remote regions – to education and the workforce, and those who are looking at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation identify a number of common needs for students and educators alike. Findings from the University of Melbourne paper mirror those of a two-year qualitative study at Victoria University on Women in construction trade training: barriers to participation for example, which found attraction of new cohorts is not enough if the spaces people are coming into aren’t set up for them.

“Efforts to attract a more diverse cohort into teaching will be fruitless if the culture that minority groups encounter in schools feels unwelcoming, foreign, or hostile. Without efforts to create environments in which employees from diverse backgrounds feel valued and supported once employed, the recruitment and hiring of individuals who are members of marginalised social categories is unlikely to be successful,” the University of Melbourne paper says.

The AEU in submissions to government has also identified the need to convey not only the importance of policy to improve diversity through attraction and retention in concert with properly funded TAFE, but to ensure culturally and physically safe workplaces and learning spaces in vocational education and training (VET).

Developing a blueprint for the VET workforce

In a submission to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations requesting feedback to the public consultation paper on Developing a blueprint for the VET workforce, the AEU identified cultural load and safety as being paramount for diversifying workplaces.

To attract and retain First Nations teachers and other education staff to TAFE and vocational education workplaces, employers must ensure that First Nations staff feel culturally safe in their workplace and teaching environments. Setting up peer-to-peer support, ensuring that First Nations workers are not overburdened with cultural load just because they are First Nations and seen as the only people to always have responsibility for First Nations-related matters in the workplace.

Recognition that the responsibility and burden for educating staff on cultural matters should not fall upon staff from a particular background unless identified as part of their job function is step one.

For example, asking an Aboriginal member or Torres Strait Islander member of staff to carry arrangements for NAIDOC Week, or an English as an additional language member of staff to arrange Harmony Day or other multicultural day activities when it is not part of their day-to-day duties is an additional burden – and typically unpaid work – assigned to them because of their culture, nationality or identity.

Why inclusion matters

The University of Melbourne paper found that: “Any measures taken to develop a workplace that creates positive spaces for teachers from minority or diversity groups are likely also to lead to improved attraction and retention of teachers across the board” and cautions that “failing to consider the importance of a diverse teaching workforce may be ignoring actions that could provide longer-term, sustainable answers to the challenge of staffing”. Its recommendations to attract and retain a diverse teacher workforce in schools provides a good starting point for vocational education too.

Although there are nuances, generally approaching solutions and considerations from a First Nations perspective can work to address needs across a range of priority groups – whether it be for women, people with disability, or people from underrepresented cultures and communities – and forms a strong starting point for approaching inclusive practices.

Some examples include:

Recognise identity strain and educate non-First Nations staff about how to reduce this.
Recognise that cultural load exists, is real and is a burden.
Recognise cultural load in job descriptions and compensate for it.
Consult with First Nations staff on how to minimise cultural load while increasing cultural safety.
Allyship: share principles and practice and make use of networks.

Improving workplace inclusion

In workplaces, the University of Technology Sydney Jumbunna Institute’s Gari Yala (speak the truth in Wiradjuri language) report identified the following 10 steps as important for workplace inclusion.

1. Ask Aboriginal staff and Torres Strait Islander staff about how it is to work there. Listen to what you are told with an open heart, however uncomfortable this may be.

2. Ensure any Aboriginal-related work and Torres Strait Islander-related work is led and informed by Aboriginal peoples and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples. This means engaging with Indigenous people both inside and outside your organisation.

3. Develop principles for your organisation that guide how Indigenous community engagement and employment should work in practice.

4. Don’t focus on getting Indigenous people “work-ready”. Focus on your organisation’s readiness to employ Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

5. Recognise identity strain and educate non-Indigenous staff about how to reduce this.

6. Recognise that cultural load exists, is real and is a burden. Recognise it in job descriptions and compensate for it.

7. Consult with Aboriginal staff and Torres Strait Islander staff on how to minimise cultural load while increasing cultural safety.

8. Build better careers for Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples by supporting career development and leadership development.

9. Take action to address workplace racism.

10. Look to high-impact initiatives that evidence-based research shows increase Indigenous employees’ wellbeing and retention. These include formal career development programs, mentoring and support, anti-discrimination training and celebrating days and weeks of significance for Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Attracting a diverse teacher workforce

Adapting from a school to TAFE setting, recommendations from Seeing Ourselves at School offer practical guidelines for attracting a diverse workforce:

Develop a long-term, proactive, inclusive vision of the teacher workforce. This vision and its enactment through strategy will be better for equity, better for schools and better for students and parents. While the current teacher shortages understandably create urgent policy pressures, systems need to expand their policy focus beyond immediate supply and demand issues and consider where they would like to be in terms of the diversity of their school workforce in 10 years’ time.
Strengthen and extend strategies and programs that support the achievement and retention of … students in minority groups. This is foundational to increasing the representation of people from minority groups in teaching.
Pilot Grow-Your-Own programs, especially those that target support staff and others already working in or with hard-to-staff [areas]. Such people already have a demonstrated interest in these schools and commitment to their communities.
Ensure consistency of funding after the successful pilot stage to enable program development and refinement and to evaluate impact over time.
Develop teacher residency programs, or target existing programs, to recruit members of minority groups, incorporating well-resourced induction and mentoring for participants that support successful career entry.
Where relevant, modify or expand current scholarship programs to target minority groups. Additionally, financial support for ITE school placements is currently a topic of discussion in Australia. The diverse groups that are the focus of this paper are likely to be strongly and negatively impacted by the completion of unpaid placements [placement poverty]. Moves to provide them with financial support, or augment supports already in place, are likely to have a positive impact on their recruitment and retention into teaching.
Implement more nuanced monitoring of workforce profiles … so that policy makers understand how well the teaching workforce represents the broader population and the population of students ...
As an example of what can be done, Brookings Institute researchers in the US have developed several indices of teacher-student parity that compare the population of teachers to the student population across relevant demographic domains. Data that underpin these types of comparisons are important to collect and analyse so that policy makers can be better informed about where progress has been made, and where it has stalled.
Review recruitment policies and practices for bias and hidden barriers, for example, regarding assumptions about students with disability. Anti-discrimination and inclusion policies should be explicitly articulated in recruitment materials. Initial teacher education providers should also evaluate the inclusivity of their entry requirements and teacher preparation curricula, we note that some institutions have commenced this journey.
Ensure teachers from minority groups are active agents in the policymaking process and are safe from the consequences of disclosure.

Retaining a diverse teacher workforce

Similarly for retention, recommendations from Seeing Ourselves at School can translate to TAFE settings:

Provide additional induction and mentoring support for teachers from minority groups as they enter the profession, and targeted support across their professional lifespan. This acknowledges the extra challenges faced by those moving into teaching from minority groups. It will also be important to build pathways to leadership positions for these entrants, thereby providing role models for all teachers and students.
Encourage (but do not mandate) staff to undertake cultural awareness training. Ensure this training has been co-created with representatives of underrepresented groups and is an ongoing process.
Build support networks of minority-group teachers across different departments ...
In collaboration with tertiary education providers, build cultural awareness among existing and training teachers.
Recognise underrepresented groups at both school [campus] and policy levels as experts with important knowledge from whom much can be learned.
Work to promote members of minority groups into leadership positions to provide role models, highlight the importance of diversity and generate cultural change.

Stemming teacher shortages

Additionally, AEU TAFE members identified the following actions as effective to attract and retain vocational education workforce roles as a whole:

Increase pay and allowances.
Reduction of workload – identified as biggest reason for members leaving.
Better and more supportive management.
More administrative and technical support.
Simplified compliance documentation.
More time to meet and work with colleagues delivering the same or similar qualifications.
More support to access professional development including the gaining of teaching qualifications.

More research needed

The Australian Education Union is partnering with Deakin University, the Australian Secondary Principals’ Association and Australian Council of State School Organisations for a study on diversity among schoolteachers. The study will investigate why the teacher workforce does not mirror the diversity of Australia’s First Nations and multicultural population through snapshot surveys, targeted interviews, focus groups, case studies and stakeholder workshops. Recognising a lack of diversity in the teaching cohort, the Attracting and retaining a culturally diverse teacher workforce study notes that in Australia there is “stark discrepancies existing between the cultural diversity of the general population, the student population and the teaching profession”. It posits that diversifying the teacher workforce may “help enhance the sustainability of the workforce. It can also foster a more inclusive and supportive learning environment, leading to social, emotional, and academic benefits for students”.

The Seeing Ourselves at School paper concludes, “the starting point is clear … workforce diversity needs to be understood and valued as a key component of a quality education system by policy makers, school leaders and school communities”. The same is true for TAFE.

By Michelle Purdy, AEU Federal TAFE Project Officer

This article was originally published in The Australian TAFE Teacher, Spring 2024