AARE Pre-conference Workshop for Early Career Researchers
1 December 2019
My name is Charlotte, and I have a PhD. There was once a time when I didn’t know what to do with it. One day, if not now, you might be at that same point in time too. Today I’m going to tell you my story, and also do a little bit of work with you to help you figure out your answer to the question.
In 1999, I enrolled in a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Psychology, at the University of Queensland. Toward the end I realised no one in their right mind would see a 20-year-old psychologist, and no one not in their right mind should, so I enrolled in the dual degree with Education to become a science teacher (Physics and Biology). Fortunately, in my very first practicum, I was accidentally assigned to a Kindergarten class attached to a primary school. I dropped the dual degree, graduated with my BSc, and enrolled in a Graduate Bachelor of Education (Primary) here at QUT. Two years later I stepped into my first classroom at Cherbourg State School, with Chris Sarra as my first principal. I learned so much, and very quickly. From Chris and the wider teaching staff, I learned the value of high expectations, of valuing children’s backgrounds and cultures, and to bring family into the classroom if I expect formal learning to go into the home. These are lessons of value for every educator, not just educators of Indigenous children. From Chris I also learned about leadership: knowing yourself and the values you hold, knowing your team and the work that they do, advocating for others, and setting up systems so that your work continues long after you leave.
From there I taught both primary and secondary students for several years in Aurukun and Weipa, before returning to Brisbane. My experiences teaching in Cherbourg, Aurukun, and Weipa shaped my beliefs about access to educational opportunities. I left Aurukun very angry at the way that the vast majority of Australian systems and people continue to ignore the very real and ongoing impacts of colonisation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples right around Australia.
Back in Brisbane, I joined the Science Teachers’ Association of Queensland in 2007. Dr Tony Wright sat on the Executive Council. In 2009 he invited me to consider a PhD, and he became my supervisor. At the same time, a part-time job was advertised by CSIRO Education, for a project officer in the Scientists in Schools program, in which I’d participated. I had my first day in the role and started my PhD all in the same week.
Someone recently asked me what I had hoped to achieve with my PhD. Whether naivete or idealism, I never aimed to achieve anything with my PhD. I just loved learning. I hoped it would allow me to perform work that was meaningful to me, that I could be passionate about. That work was, and remains, the enabling of teachers, especially primary teachers, to think and teach well. So much of what I see today in education seems to work against this goal.
Measures toward increasing accountability and compliance have eaten into teachers’ time and energy for planning and developing worthwhile learning experiences for their students. In response, departments of education have provided extensive teaching and learning resources to schools, effectively dictating not only what is to be learned by students (the curriculum), but how it is to be taught (pedagogy). Because of the range of pedagogical and discipline-specific understandings and experiences across the massive cohort of teachers, these resources have had to be accessible and useful to the least-experienced, least-knowledgeable, and least-motivated of primary teachers, and targeted for students in the ‘middle’ of the spectra of interest, prior knowledge, and needs for learning science. The implementation of this top-down determination has had the effect of removing opportunities for primary teachers to develop the necessary pedagogical understandings to teach as well as weakening teachers’ capacity to cater to the needs and interests of their specific students in their particular context, effectively deepening the problem and deprofessionalising teachers in the process. Along with teachers’ autonomy to develop and enact plans for teaching young people, opportunities to develop the expertise through experience and reflection have all but disappeared. To quote Dr Peter Ellerton, Director of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the Critical Thinking Project, “if you have an idiot-proof curriculum, guess who’s going to end up teaching it?”
My PhD allowed me to work as a pre-service teacher educator, and I think I did that work well, most of the time. I embedded regular opportunities to discuss the work of teachers, the importance of critical thinking and decision-making, and professionalism in my classes. I believe many of my pre-service teachers found these opportunities useful. The sheer number of them still contacting me allows me to think that this work was meaningful to them, too. And I loved that work.
I’d like you to do some meaningful work with me now. Actually, you’re going to do the work with the person beside you. Turn to someone beside you; find a partner for this. If you don’t know each other, introduce yourselves.
Now, you’re going to have two very structured conversations. In the first conversation, one of you will be the speaker, and one the listener. In the second, you’ll swap roles and start again.
The listener is only allowed to ask “why” questions. If the speaker says they love to eat fried chicken, the listener should ask “why do you love to eat fried chicken?” The speaker has to answer the question as honestly and openly as they can. Then the listener asks about the speaker’s answer again… Try to get to at least five whys. When you’ve reached either a deeply profound and meaningful answer or gone as far as you can with your whys, you can switch roles and begin the second conversation. Let me know that you’re done with both conversations by turning to face the front.
The speaker obviously begins the conversation. Begin with an answer to the question “what work are you most passionate about?”
“So Charlotte, what work are you most passionate about?”
“I am most passionate about the work I do with teachers, working with them to develop their pedagogical expertise.”
“Why are you most passionate about the work you do with teachers to develop their pedagogical expertise?”
“Because teachers influence students’ dispositions, attitudes, and values through pedagogy, and must do so deliberately and mindfully.”
“Why must teachers do this deliberately and mindfully?”
“They must do this so that students can explore the dispositions, attitudes, and values – and thinking – that best help them achieve their desired future, both individually and socially.”
“Why must students do this?”
“Because, to quote John Dewey, ‘a society with too few independent thinkers is vulnerable to control by disturbed and opportunistic leaders. A society which wants to create and maintain a free and democratic social system must create responsible independence of thought among its young.’”
“So, your work is toward a society in which there is a free and democratic social system?”
“Yes, that is why I do what I do!”
Now, before we move on, write down the meaning of your work to you somewhere – in your notebook or on your phone. We’ll come back to it soon.
I finished my PhD in late 2017. What did I do with it? I was invited to fill a role at CSIRO Education and Outreach, arguably Australia’s largest provider of professional learning and support for teachers of science. In this role, I developed teacher professional learning programs, curriculum resources, and assessment and feedback mechanisms for students, as well as an evaluation design for tracking the progress and success of these activities. It was work that I was passionate about, that I saw as valuable to helping teachers to think and teach well. That’s what I was doing when Naomi called to invite me to give this talk today, and the reason she invited me. Unfortunately, my role was cancelled at the end of July due to a little-known policy restricting the number of staff that federal agencies such as CSIRO can employ.
In August, when Naomi called me to ask what my job title was, I didn’t have a job, but I had enrolled in my MBA and set up a consultancy business (that is, I’d registered an ABN). That’s why on the program you will see me listed as “Consultant, Dialogic Education Services.” I hope to use Dialogic Education Services to open up spaces for teachers to perform their most meaningful work: teaching. I will do this through advocacy, the creation of professional learning opportunities, the facilitation of professional dialogues, and the setting up of online platforms for discussing their practice. I also hope to help schools and teachers to evaluate their own practices and culture without the pressure of compliance. I will be starting by providing opportunities for primary teachers and secondary teachers teaching out of field to extend and enhance their understanding of science. Dialogic Education Services uses a social entrepreneurship model, which means it will never make more money than it needs to operate.
In September, I started in my current role as a researcher with the Critical Thinking Project. I was lucky*. The offer arose in a confluence of the right expertise (in thinking dispositions), skills (in empirical research), experience (in teaching), and good timing. It came from people I had met from across schools and disciplines doing similar work. That’s one of the few pieces of advice I’d offer to you today: network. Get to know people outside your field, and outside your university, as well as inside it. Network at AARE, network overseas, network in airports, or network online. You never know where opportunities to perform work that is meaningful to you will come from.
Most PhD candidates desire an academic career. It’s deeply unfair that I am not one of them yet hold an academic role. However, more than 60% of PhD graduates end up in non-academic roles. For some of you, the very idea might be a tragedy. I’d argue that it’s not. It shows that the expertise, skills, and capabilities we develop from our PhD experiences have value right across society.
Indeed, this is what the research of renowned ‘Thesis Whisperer’ Professor Inger Mewburn and her collaborators Will Grant and Hannah Suominen have found. This team developed machine learning software to assess job ads published on Australia’s biggest careers website over a period of time and analysed the key selection criteria of each and every one for what Inger calls “nerdiness.” They found that 25% of all job ads on this site were seeking employees with high levels of expertise or research skills, to a degree of nerdiness equivalent to a PhD. Over 80% of these ads did not mention a PhD as a qualification. Inger and her team have developed a platform that identifies job ads that might be relevant to PhD candidates and graduates. It’s called PostAc, and you should contact your graduate school to find out if it’s available to you.
As a PhD you can always get a job. It is a highly valued qualification in any field, particularly where you have practical experience. Recruiters recognise this.
Some of you may be thinking “if not academia, then what?” You’ve got your statement of your work passion sorted out and written down. By the way, it’s not a final statement, but it gives you something to mull over and revise. Now, you are going to into a statement of the impact you’d like to have. For example, if your passion or meaningful work is about enabling school leaders to achieve transformational change in their schools, perhaps your impact statement is something like “Australia’s education systems graduate students who are independent learners, critical thinkers, and productive citizens.” Think of an impact statement as a kind of vision of the future that you’d like to see come true.
I invite you now to brainstorm three or four necessary or enabling conditions for that impact to be achieved. Then, help your partner by coming up with one or two for their impact, and invite them to come up with one or two for you.
This is a kind of logic tree. So far, the kinds of conditions you’ve described are probably not outcomes you can control though. But you can do things that help those conditions come into being. And there are lots of different ways you can do that. So, for the next step, you can think of those things!
I’m hoping that in this process you will see that you don’t need an academic role to achieve your impact. Indeed, you might find that there are non-academic roles out there that will better help you to do so. Your PhD will help you to get that role, and to perform it well. And, as best as I know to tell you, that’s what you do with a PhD.
*Feedback from Adam K: “I think you are short-changing yourself in this section. You are a person who has the courage to take risks and move careers. In doing this, you have taken opportunities and developed networks that others would have said ‘no’. You have developed a broad set of skills that has opened up a range of pathways. Timing and opportunity is part of it, but you need the courage and skills to back it up, which you have.”