Some see school teaching as ‘enticing alternative’ to academia

When Elliott Child collected his doctorate in human geography, he was already rethinking his academic aspirations. It was 2021, coronavirus was lingering and university jobs were scarce. And research, the ticket to success in academia, was no longer his principal passion.

“I felt…I was probably better at the teaching side of things,” the Australian said. “I felt it was a more joyous experience. It allowed me to explore ideas in a freer way than sometimes research allows, when you have to go very deep on a narrow range of ideas.”

Like many doctoral candidates, he had worked as a tutor and a research assistant throughout his six-year PhD. “I really enjoyed teaching young people. I realised that…undergraduates are not all that much older, often, than students in secondary school.”

Three years later, Dr Child finds himself in a riverside Victorian town a stone’s throw from the New South Wales (NSW) border – and perhaps 13,000km from the University of British Columbia, where his PhD thesis explored mass interrogation in 20th-century US wars. These days, his subject matter is the humanities curriculum at Wodonga Senior Secondary College, where he has taught for the past two and a half years.

Dr Child is a product of Nexus, a La Trobe University programme for degree-qualified Victorian professionals – including pharmacists, engineers, applied mathematicians and journalists – who want to train as teachers.

Participants receive government-subsidised master’s places and up to A$14,900 (£7,550) in financial support on top of salary earned as part-time teachers’ aides in the first year of the degree, and paraprofessional teachers in the second year. Their programmes are tailored to the needs of the schools where they work, with mentoring and peer support stretching beyond graduation.

La Trobe says 94 per cent of participants have continued teaching after completing the programme, largely in disadvantaged rural communities. Now the scheme is making the jump across the border, with up to 30 NSW participants joining this month ahead of primary school placements in October.

La Trobe vice-chancellor Theo Farrell said the expansion marked an “important milestone” in the university’s efforts to address teacher shortages and improve student outcomes. “Nexus has been instrumental in preparing educators for regional, rural and hard-to-staff school environments.”

Dr Child said the support and “contextualisation” provided by Nexus had proven invaluable. “There was a sense of continuity and belonging…in my school community that helped me make sense of what I’d done in the past and what I could offer in teaching. That transition would have been probably more abrupt and I would have to have navigated it much more independently if I didn’t have that extra help.”

He said he missed research but had “no regrets” about leaving university life. “I’m very happy as a teacher.” His employment prospects had also improved markedly in the switch from North American academia, where early career positions in geography anecdotally attracted a hundred applicants per job, to regional Australian schools that often struggled to draw any applicants at all.

He said he would recommend the change to any academic, even just for a while. “I’ve learned so much about teaching practice and pedagogical strategies and innovations.

“The craft of teaching is front and centre in high school. If I went back into academia tomorrow, I would be a much better academic for having gone into teaching.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com