Critical Review of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers: Where are the non-Cognitive Skills?

Abstract

Teaching professional standards are considered an essential tool for teacher preparation, recruitment, development, and promotion. In Australia, this is known as the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST), a public statement of what constitutes teacher quality. The high-stakes nature of these standards shapes teacher practices and policies, influencing teacher preparation, selection and accreditation. However, these standards have strong criticisms due to their reductive function and lack of holistic representation of effective teachers. We used Bacchi’s (2009) “What’s the problem represented to be?” (WPR) approach to analyse the APST to contribute to understanding how teaching standards should be framed as they significantly influence selection, preparation, retention and accreditation for both pre-and in-service teachers. We outlined some policy recommendations based on the results of our analysis.