Interview: Senator Deborah O'Neill on World Teachers' Day

Interview with Senator Deborah O’Neill, Co-Chair of the Australian Parliamentary Friends of Education Group, on World Teachers’ Day.

Senator Deborah O’Neill at the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, September 2020.

Senator Deborah O’Neill, an IPNEd Founding Member, is an Australian politician who has been a Senator for New South Wales since 2013. She is the Co-Chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Education group and, prior to becoming a parliamentarian, was a teacher and lecturer.

This World Teachers’ Day IPNEd is speaking with Senator O’Neill about her dual experience as a parliamentarian and a teacher, and the vital role of both as advocates for a quality education for all.

World Teachers’ Day in 2020 celebrates “Teachers: Leading in crisis, reimagining the future”. Whilst the daily activities of a parliamentarian and a teacher are quite different, both roles embody leadership. How has your experience as a teacher and lecturer influenced your style of leadership and advocacy in the Senate?

“Teachers always must have a carefully crafted teaching and learning plan and they need to make sure that plan is a plan for successful learning every day for every student. It’s a position of enormous trust granted by the community to all teachers and it demands enormous dedication, personal resilience, generosity, forgiveness and hopefulness. The leadership in the classroom required is to point out the destination professionally and confidently, secure buy-in by the student and enable success. This iterative process only works with a currency of trust and it is built on the democratic belief in the rights of every learner to achieve learning everyday. When the plan goes awry, great teachers are adaptive and never lose their cool. They innovate, they cajole, and they never lose hope in their students or project of educations as a public and private good. 

I think my style of leadership and advocacy in the Senate echoes that same process. Preparedness, mindfulness of the entire community, dedication to the tasks that fall to you, resilience, generosity, hopefulness and the capacity to forgive and see our common humanity across the many labels and practices that actually call on us to divide to vote. And always – there is the call to service in the public interest and for the common good. Different contexts, same complex and wonderful challenges of human interaction – and ever full of possibility.”

Effective and complementary partnerships between educators and parliamentarians is crucial to ensuring that education systems are high quality, equitable and well-financed. What do you see as the biggest strength in partnerships between teachers and parliamentarians in ensuring that education systems build back better in the recovery from COVID-19?

“Covid-19 has opened to parents, the world over, the challenging world of making actual formal learning happen at home. Its been an awakening to the high level of skill, care and capacity that teachers actually have. Everyone who went to school seemed to think they knew what teaching was all about, Covid lock down has shown many of them how challenging that job really is. I think there is a new respect for teachers. With that awakening I think Parliamentarians, especially ones who worked, parented and ‘schooled’ at home will be open to a richer more informed and respectful conversation with educators. 

The capacity building we’ve all experienced in using technology in different ways has suited some learners and we should be mindful of how that difference can be harnessed to connect learners across the physical boundaries that have limited us to date. Bullying for many students has reportedly reduced.  Some parents have discerned mental health improvements in their kids learning at home with support from educators. Covid-19 has opened a window to new ways of doing things and forced us to experiment. If our goal is to enable the best possible learning experiences for all students we need to gather the evidence, make the assessments about what worked for whom and apply the lessons to the future shaping of learning in our very diverse communities across the globe.”

The shift to distance learning during the pandemic has led to many teachers leveraging education technology to ensure continued learning, which hasn’t been without its challenges. What do you think are the opportunities and barriers associated with education technology?

“Opportunities: innovative modes of engagement and digital skill development; opportunities for mastery learning and individualised programs and attainment for different stages of learner readiness that are not arbitrarily tied to student age, class group, gender, physical capacity; new learning communities that are not geographically confine; reduction in real life social bullying for some students, group work that blends socially distant groups with less performativity pressure than might exist in classroom settings.

Barriers:  Loss of the access to ‘being’ in community; loss of connection with ‘natural’ peer cohort; social isolation; loss of incidental learning; loss of social and cultural experience, growth and development; socio-economic digital divides amplify other socio-cultural disadvantages; programs designed for business application adapted to old notions of ‘school’ use – we need at purpose built (not adapted) evidence informed, culturally informed and learner/stage appropriate programs that are excellent, able to be used intuitively by digital natives, programs for learning that use all the sociological, psychological and pedagogical prowess we can muster; possible increase in online bullying.”

The Parliamentary Friends of Education Group has played an important role in raising issues relating to education higher up the political agenda in the Parliament of Australia. As Co-Chair of the group, how do you ensure that the voices of key education stakeholders outside of parliament, such as teachers, are included and heard within the Group?

“We facilitate interaction for our fellow parliamentarians and their staff with leaders in the various fields, sectors and stages of education.  We alert our colleagues to new research about the sector and how government decisions are impacting the sector.”

IPNEd, as a global space for shared knowledge and advocacy, will work to ensure that the best practice for education globally is disseminated amongst its members. From your experience as a teacher, lecturer and parliamentarian, what lesson can you share that you believe is vital to building equitable and quality education systems worldwide?

“We, who have become accustomed to the ubiquity of public education sites in our communities, need to remember that education, like democracy is fabulous – but fragile.  We must take care of it everyday. Buildings don’t make learning happen, and programs don’t make learning happen, it is a deeply human encounter based on a belief in the fundamental dignity of every human person and their democratic rights as part of a community to develop the skills necessary to give them freedom and fulfilment. 

For those places where buildings where learning happens are few and far between – we must redouble our efforts to ensure education for all.  Literacies for the 21st century are literally at hand – in a mobile, never has the time for sharing quality, peace building, talent enabling education been more accessible to so many.  Like teachers in classrooms, let us as leaders make sure we leave no one behind.“

To find out more about World Teachers’ Day, please visit UNESCO’s website.