Susan is saying the same kinds of things I have been writing about. She argues: “Teacher education standards have become a crushing set of regulations.” What she mean by this is that increasing layers of regulations mandating what can be taught to our pre-service teachers make it almost impossible to include approaches that cultivate creativity.

She points out that there is no mention of either creativity or innovation in the teaching standards. We are not expected to teach our students how to be creative nor are we expected to be creative in the ways we teach.

This is really unfortunate given that the teacher education standards are supposed to identify the important elements of teaching; they are supposed to identify what good teachers do and thus help pre-service teachers learn what they need in order to be good teachers.

There are seven teacher education standards supported by 37 focus areas. Pre-service teachers have to demonstrate they can meet all of these and education courses must show how they teach all of these, and the assessments they use to demonstrate students have acquired them all.

There are 42 pages of documentation instructing those applying for course accreditation. The hours of work required to put this documentation together is huge and grows every day with every change in regulatory requirements. At UNE for example, in the School of Education, we have 1.5 academic positions and one professional staff position whose main responsibilities are the absolutely essential work aimed at ensuring the courses are accredited.

Susan noted that one submission of which she was aware amounted to over 1000 pages. I am sure should I find time to talk to my colleagues they would nod and reply with a similar figure for the UNE documentation.

I have argued before this high level of compliance does not lead to flexibility or encourage the development of critical thinking. In fact, it is sad to consider that creativity is often sidelined as something one might experience in a “creative arts” discipline. To me, creativity is something that might apply to the way one thinks about any issue and is a key part of critical thinking.

As an educator, creativity can be about the different ways one sets up student engagement in ideas, encourages dissention and supports student voice. We have no choice but to comply with these external standards, but we can resist the imposition on our own teaching, and explore ways we can support student reflection, creativity and critical thinking.