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Session 2. AITSL: Teacher Standards and Career Stages
Objective. Describe how the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers are organised, compare them with your school's observation or appraisal documents, and draft plain-language growth descriptors that start a conversation about evidence.
Most appraisal forms grow by adding lines each year until nobody knows what they are for. The AITSL standards offer a different picture: seven standards, three domains and four career stages, written so that a teacher can see what stronger practice looks like. In this session you place your own observation or appraisal form beside that picture and decide, as a leader, which topics are missing and how to start honest conversations about evidence.
Key ideas
What AITSL publishes
- AITSL is the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. Its Australian Professional Standards for Teachers have seven standards, grouped in three domains: Professional Knowledge, Professional Practice and Professional Engagement. Each standard has focus areas, and each focus area has descriptors for four career stages: Graduate, Proficient, Highly Accomplished and Lead.
- AITSL says the standards set out what teachers should aim for at each stage so they can improve their practice, and that they define the evidence needed for registration and for Highly Accomplished or Lead certification. They are a published document of one system, written for its own registration rules.
The seven standards in plain words
- Professional Knowledge: 1 know students and how they learn; 2 know the content and how to teach it. Professional Practice: 3 plan for and implement effective teaching and learning; 4 create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments; 5 assess, provide feedback and report on student learning.
- Professional Engagement: 6 engage in professional learning; 7 engage professionally with colleagues, parents and carers and the community. Notice how much of this resembles what your school already asks, and where your documents say nothing: that difference is what the mirror shows.
Career stages as a growth path
- The same standard is described at four levels, so a teacher can see what stronger practice looks like in the next stage. This is useful for senior leaders: it turns 'be better' into a shared description that teacher and mentor can discuss with real lesson evidence.
- A stage is not a rank for a person. It is a description of practice. Use it to ask 'Which evidence do we have for this descriptor?' and 'What could we try next?' If a stage becomes a label, teachers will hide weaknesses, as the case study shows.
Comparing with local expectations
- Local teacher requirements come from national law, ministry regulations and the school's own forms. Stay general unless you have the document in your hand. Compare topics, not wording: Where does your form deal with knowing pupils, content knowledge, safe environment, feedback, professional learning and work with parents?
- Then ask what AITSL assumes that your school cannot: time for peer observation, small classes, a registration body. Adapt the idea, such as one short evidence conversation per term, and leave the machinery behind.
Four career stages in AITSL
Standards, focus areas and descriptors
Each AITSL standard is divided into focus areas, and every focus area has a descriptor for each of the four career stages. For example, Standard 5 is about assessing, giving feedback and reporting. Its descriptors say what that looks like for a graduate and for a lead teacher. The result is a ladder that uses the same topic at every step, so the conversation can be about 'what comes next' and not about a label.
Notice what the structure does not do. It does not give a lesson script, a score or a ranking of teachers. It describes practice and defines the evidence that Australian bodies use for registration and certification. When you borrow it, borrow the structure (topic, stage, descriptor), and keep the evidence rules for your own legal framework.
Using descriptors as a conversation, not a score
The best use of descriptors is a short conversation between a teacher and a mentor about one piece of evidence: three marked notebooks, a lesson plan, a message to parents. The teacher says which descriptor the evidence shows. The mentor asks what a next step could be. Neither of them adds up ticks.
Scores change behaviour fast. If a sheet says 20 ticks are needed, teachers will teach to the sheet and hide weak lessons. A descriptor used as a mirror invites the opposite: bring something imperfect and talk. As a leader, protect that space by keeping developmental conversations separate from any formal national appraisal.
Examples from the classroom
Counting what the form covers
Scene. In a school in Tashkent, Deputy head Jasur marks which of the seven AITSL standards appear in the school's 2-page observation form. He finds lines for planning (Standard 3), order in the room (Standard 4) and marking (part of Standard 5), but nothing on professional learning (6) or work with parents (7). He does not rewrite the form; he adds one question per term on each missing topic.
Insight. A mirror shows which topics are missing, and a small addition can answer it without rebuilding the system.
Descriptors in a staffroom
Scene. Dilnoza, a Grade 4 teacher in Fergana, brings three marked notebooks to a 20-minute talk with her mentor Malika. They read their own three-line descriptors for feedback. Dilnoza says her comments are mostly ticks; Malika asks which pupil would benefit from a written next step. Dilnoza chooses six pupils and agrees to bring the notebooks again in three weeks.
Insight. Descriptors work when they start a conversation about real evidence and one next step.
When the sheet became a score
Scene. At a large school in Samarkand a head introduces a 28-line sheet in the autumn and tells staff that fewer than 20 ticks means 'below expected'. By December two experienced teachers refuse to be observed and a new teacher cancels a lesson. The head withdraws the score, keeps the topics and restarts with voluntary 15-minute visits and a mentor.
Insight. Turning descriptors into a score damages trust; their value is in the conversation.
Common pitfalls
- Treating a career stage as a rank for a person instead of a description of practice.
- Copying Australian wording into local documents without checking the national curriculum and regulations.
- Using one sheet both for support and for formal judgement, so teachers hide problems.
- Adding the seven standards on top of the existing form without removing anything.
Hold Your Appraisal Form Beside AITSL
- Trios (10 min): read Table A in the Activity Kit aloud, one standard each in turn. Using your school's teacher observation or appraisal form, mark with a pen where each standard appears, even in part.
- Trios (15 min): fill Table B, the gap table. For each of the seven standards write a short quote from your form, mark 'covered', 'partly' or 'not covered', and name one piece of evidence a teacher could show (for example a marked notebook page or a parent message).
- Whole group (10 min): each trio names the two standards least covered. Collect them on the board. Discuss: is the gap real (our teachers do this, the form just does not ask) or a true gap in practice? Who would decide?
- Part B, pairs (15 min): choose one gap. Using Table C, write three plain descriptors of your own for a 'starting', 'secure' and 'leading others' teacher in that area. Use your own words and a local example, for instance 'gives feedback on written work in Grade 5 Uzbek'. Do not copy AITSL's sentences.
- Alone (10 min): write your leadership task from the Kit. Decide who you will ask to test the descriptors and which lesson evidence you will use.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which standard is least visible in your forms, and is that a true gap or only a missing question?
- How did writing three levels in your own words change how you see 'good' in that area?
- What would make teachers trust descriptors rather than fear them?
Reflect
- Which of the seven standards does our appraisal talk about least, and why?
- When did a score or label last make a good teacher less honest with me?
- What stage descriptor would help a new teacher in my school next month?
Try it tomorrow
- Mark which of the seven standards appear in your current observation or appraisal form, and circle the two least covered.
- Choose one standard and write, in your own words, what a starting, secure and leading teacher would do in your school.
- Ask one teacher to bring three pieces of evidence and ask: 'Which description does this show, and what is the next step?'
Further reading and links
Use the seven standards and four stages as a mirror for topics and a conversation about evidence, not as a score, and write growth descriptors in your own local words.