Bob’s philosophy on Teacher Education
For a moment we need to go back to the beginning of first year of operation of the Mount Lawley Teachers College in its temporary quarters in Bagot Road, Subiaco. This was the old Further Education Centre which, despite fears expressed by the local primary school that on the same block of land the ‘bigger students might tend to trample on the younger ones from the school’, had operated quite smoothly through the first semester. The Education Ball was held on 9th May and the classes proceeded until 3rd July and, after barely a week-end’s respite, continued on into the second semester on 6th July. This rapid succession of the semesters was in part made possible by the continuous assessment process. There was no need for an extended process of conducting end-of- semester examinations so there was no delay to beginning the second semester.
“There is a good deal of agreement about what colleges involved in preparing teachers for primary schools should be doing” had been an introductory phrase used in the Foreword to the Mount Lawley Teachers College’s first ‘calendar’ or handbook, written by the founding Principal, Robert G Peter in February 1970. However, the first semester of the Mount Lawley College quite dramatically departed from previous traditions. Later in this Foreword, Peter reminded that primary school teachers were required to ‘teach all subjects of the school curriculum and at all levels’, grades one to seven. Consequently, it would be necessary to ‘build on the individual student’s secondary education and, where necessary, widen the range of knowledge to match at a much higher level the subjects of the primary school curriculum.’
Peter went on to claim this traditional aim in itself was far too narrowly framed and too focussed on the teacher merely as a skilled practitioner:
Encouragement and opportunity must be provided for the development of scholarly attitudes and the love of knowledge for its own sake.
It should be remembered that this new study program was also to be an extension to three years of the time-honoured two-year training course for elementary school teachers, extant for the whole of the previous portion of the twentieth century and beyond back into the nineteenth century. So here was an assertion of a potential to effect real change in the personal development of these would-be- teachers, themselves only several months out of secondary school. Apart from challenging the student teachers to ‘pursue their own interests in depth, the 1970 MLTC Calendar stated in its Foreword:
Our objectives in this area would be realised if students were to develop, not only a body of knowledge designed to help them understand and adapt themselves to the complex world in which we live, but also a grasp of the techniques of the scholar, a capacity to think constructively and flexibly of the issues facing mankind, and an appreciation of cultural and aesthetic standards and values.
We might detect in these lofty ideals somewhat less of the ecclesiastical origins of British teacher training and some echo of the beginning era of the United Nations after the second world war. It is perhaps no coincidence that Bob Peter’s immediately prior appointment to heading up Graylands College had been advisor to the Indonesian Government as part of a UNESCO program to provide emerging third world countries, with more direct assistance and a chance to exemplify the United Nations Charter in their educational and cultural programs.
When Bob Peter addressed the first intake group of MLTC students, echoing the College Calendar, he said that he wanted to ‘indicate, in general, what teacher education is concerned with and, in particular, the role of this College in the overall program.’
As the new Principal, he identified three areas of greatest concern—general education, professional education and personal qualities. He also made it clear that this was not at variance with general intentions of the teacher education system in Australia as evolved from its British (and for WA in particular) Scottish origins. Bob Peter, as a man who had served as distinguished member of the RAAF in the Second World War (to the extent of being shot down over Lake Constance and interred) had an outlook with none of the narrowness almost traditional among his fellow teacher educationists in Western Australia.
Perhaps many of those ‘teacher trainers’ lived up to their label too closely, having graduated from a State primary school to a State secondary school and on to a State teachers college without necessarily ever really leaving the stereotypical classrooms, authoritative teaching styles and limited expectations of their protégés.
As already mentioned, Bob Peter’s sojourn under the auspices of UNESCO might be expected to have encouraged a willingness to break out of a system of teacher preparation that had become depressingly self-serving in the light of newer educational psychology theory and the hope of more exciting and adventurous futures for the State’s modern school systems.
As Principal of Graylands Teachers College in the late 1960s, Bob Peter was well positioned, not only to take on the task of critically scrutinising the traditional teacher education practices of that ‘temporary’ expansion of WA training at Graylands, but also to plan the syllabus for the new Mount Lawley Teachers College. In his address to his first students in February 1970, he focused on what he termed their ‘general education’ had dire need to avoid:
‘a narrow frame, no matter how realistically it might be attuned to the needs of the schools is not enough. Encouragement must be provided for the development of scholarly attitudes and the love of knowledge for its own sake, not only for its relationship to the classroom.’
Thus, the syllabus finally evolved for the new Mount Lawley students, was enshrined with the intention to offer courses “in which the students pursue their own interests in depth as far as this may be achieved within the limitations of time and facilities”. ‘Time’ had escaped one of its greatest limitations, the old ‘two-year course’ and ‘facilities’ were just then catching a mammoth wave of federal government generosity in the funding of tertiary education, especially in the conceptual creation of the ‘colleges of advanced education’, still a little further off at that moment as a tertiary system concept complementing the traditional Australian universities.
Therefore, the historic images of teachers’ general education recorded in British literature were ready for revolutionary change. Goldsmith’s mildly satirical depiction of the village schoolmaster in The Deserted Village as seen by the villagers—‘and still they gazed and still the wonder grew, that one small head could carry all he knew’—or Dickens’ trained schoolmasters ‘lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles like so many pianoforte legs’. Perhaps with Mount Lawley College it is interesting to note the degree of forward thinking, which lay behind the emphasis on ‘general education’ even in campus buildings and facilities design, as well as the actual components of the syllabus. Here again for further emphasis, as quoted previously in this chapter, is Bob Peter’s new concept of a teachers college as it evolved for Mount Lawley campus:
Our objectives in this area would be realised if students were to develop, not only a body of knowledge designed to help them to understand and adapt themselves to the complex world in which we live, but also a grasp of the techniques of the scholar in the capacity to think constructively and flexibly of the issues facing mankind and an appreciation of cultural and aesthetic standards and values.’
Such laudable hopes and aspirations also ought to be considered in the light of mid-twentieth century events—rampant nuclear testing and atomic brinkmanship in global politics, conflicts or very serious nature in Korea and Vietnam and the chill shadows, such as the ‘cold wars’ in eastern and western Europe, the rising threat of the Communist revolution in China and the tottering of old colonial dominations in Africa and South America.
The newly recruited staff of the Mount Lawley College, by their comparative youth (and certain multicultural origins), reflected this restless world to a greater or lesser extent. Led by Bob Peter, the excitement of a surge of psychological and educational research increasingly taught in Australian universities by newcomers from the United States, Britain and Europe was another factor contributing to a readiness for change in teacher education. Possibly for the first time, the teacher education practices were being exposed to fresh theoretical stances, enlightened by advances in learning theory, new research in areas such as the teaching of reading and mathematics, new emphases on research-based physical education and early childhood education, a renewed focus on multiculturalism (including Indigenous and Islander studies), study of foreign languages and linguistics and a greater emphasis on Australian studies generally in social sciences and literature.
Once again, as Bob Peter explained in the first Mount Lawley Teachers College ‘Calendar’, the second objective of the new institution in preparing students for the Western Australian primary schools was Professional Preparation—‘equipping the teacher to meet the immediate needs of the classroom’1. Top priority was to be creating situations, as he put it, ‘in which children wanted to learn and do learn.’ Such an aim clearly reflects Bob Peter’s own background in educational theory, as it was then known, but also the powerful informing voice of psychology especially learning theory as it was developing then, as an applied science. Elaboration of these objectives in his speeches to students went on to mention group learning, reliance on new learning materials “providing remedial support for the background and challenge for the gifted and assisting children to cope with social and emotional problems.”
All these were formidable objectives for those student teachers in 1970 preparing to be professionals and Bob Peter insisted on a program of studies whereby students were familiarised with child growth and development, methods of learning and teaching, motivation and personality study, the process of curriculum development, classroom organisation and management, general and specific guidelines for the efficient treatment of primary school courses and actual experience in practical teaching. Additionally, it was maintained that graduates should be well fitted ‘to make a significant contribution to the development of the profession’.
For this purpose it would be necessary for students to acquire a significant background of educational practice—history of education, the development of major educational aims and ideas, identification of the ‘great educators’ the philosophy of education, administration, research findings and comparative educational studies of the systems operating in other countries. This sounds like a tall order indeed—maybe the prospect of the new three-year training course had encouraged such enthusiasm? However, Peter argued that such understanding of the profession of teaching and appreciation of the future teacher’s background to his or her profession would be a potential source of “inspirational ideas without which the teaching profession would stagnate.”
The third area identified for development of the student teachers in the new Mount Lawley College was ‘personal qualities’. It was argued by its Principal that ‘some teachers still fail because they lack certain vital qualities of personality.’ This statement was qualified somewhat by the observation that
‘all good teachers are not all cast in the same mould.’ Nevertheless Peter claimed that ‘teachers’ effectiveness is related to the initiative, vitality and enthusiasm’ brought to the job. Additionally, understanding of and sympathy with children, as well as insight into human relationships would be welcome. Finally, apart from a sense of professional purpose, general qualities such as ‘compassion, tolerance, confidence, friendliness, poise and integrity, and a desire to serve others’[p.7] could be highly valued. Such a list might seem today to be almost a qualification for sainthood but at least the new institution was aiming to inspire the highest results.
The third and final area of development which Bob Peter regarded as integral to the program of teacher education proposed for the new Mount Lawley College students, was ‘personal qualities’. Once again, this focus reflected Peter’s own background (in psychology in particular). It is perhaps worth quoting the essence of this prescription in full:
Despite a wealth of knowledge, both general and professional, some teachers still fail because they lack certain vital qualities of personality. What these qualities are is problematical because good teacher are not cast in the same mould. But it can be assumed that a teacher’s effectiveness is related to the initiative, interest, vitality and enthusiasm he brings to his job; to find understanding of our sympathy with children and their developmental needs; to the insight he has into human relationships and his skill in applying this knowledge to his sense of professional purpose; and to general qualities such as compassion, tolerance, confidence, friendliness, poise, integrity and a desire to serve others.
Although it may seem that the masculine bias in these words of Bob Peter may seem deliberately offensive by today’s standards, it should be recognised that at that time even the Commonwealth Style Guide available to all in government service advocated to continue the traditional paternalism of subsuming the feminine gender of pronouns under the masculine supposedly for the sake of simplicity.
It would seem, then, that the overall objectives of the new Mount Lawley Teachers College sought a balance between first extending the general education of their recruits (almost entirely seventeen-year- old school leavers), then providing a ‘state of the art’ professional preparation and finally a fostering of personal qualities seen at the time to typify the ‘modern’ primary school teacher’s role— to extend (under a ‘benign’ public or governmental intervention) the upbringing by parents of their children.
To this end, the college’s units of study selected for student teachers for the first year of their course were foundation subjects, such as written expression (extending basic competencies in grammar with higher level skills), oral expression, music and drama (sufficient to cultivate children’s latent interests and talents in self-expression via confidence in their own explorations), physical and health education, science and mathematics, the social sciences, the visual arts and educational technologies. These were background areas extending the future teachers’ knowledge a long way beyond what they had achieved in their own high school studies. Of course there would also be a significant number of weeks of practical teaching experience in schools. This would both satisfy their natural desire to be in the learning environment in which they expected to spend most of their working lives but also help student teachers to begin the huge challenge of developing actual teaching skills.
In the final two years of the course, which at that stage were seemingly a long way off, students would continue their theoretical studies in Education but also explore and develop special areas of interest matching their talents and potential, such as in art and crafts, history, geography, environmental studies, computing, Aboriginal and intercultural studies, creative writing, music, drama, physical education, community languages, religious education, film-making, museum studies, aeronautics, adult and community education, journalism and public relations, educational administration and many others. What was not known was just how prolific these diverse areas would actually become as the Mount Lawley College moved beyond its first or foundation year.