A peer-group program encouraged more student teachers to take up their professional placements in rural and remote schools. This post reflects on the project management lessons that would help organisations to attract professionals into regional jobs.

The following post summarises my team’s recent report.

Background

There are not enough quality teachers in geographically isolated schools. Research shows that teachers are less motivated by financial incentives, which is why current government programs have limited success with recruiting new teachers.

Students are busy and overwhelmed in their final year of their teaching degrees. They don’t have the time or motivation to research new schools in faraway places.

The cost of temporary relocation is also a turnoff. Many students rent or pay mortgages, and the idea of paying for a secondary place away from home while they take up a rural and remote teaching placement is unappealing.

The idea of going to a new place is also daunting. They do not want to be isolated and vulnerable.

My colleagues identified the following behavioural biases that prevent student teachers (‘pre-service’) from doing their placements in rural and remote schools:

• People prefer to stick with what’s familiar (status quo bias). Our team provided research about rural and remote schools to students, via hyperlinks in personalised emails inviting them to consider these placements
• Universities have cumbersome processes that turn people off trying rural and remote placements (friction costs). Students sometimes need special permission to choose rural and remote placements. Our team simplified the application and sign-up forms.
• Students skim the list of schools (familiarity heuristic). They choose schools that sound familiar, which is rarely outside of metro areas.
• Placement software lists rural and remote schools last (order effect). The default setting is to displaying the list of schools according to geographic distance, ensuring that rural remote schools are always at the end. As the list includes over 200 choices, student teachers stick to schools at the top, which are nearby. We promoted benefits of rural and remote schools and put them higher on the list.

My colleagues ran three randomised control studies in partnership with three universities. These trials successfully increased the number of student teachers doing their final year placements at rural and remote schools.

I took over as manager of the scale-up (scaling is when we take an intervention that’s proved effective in a research study and expand it to new groups and settings). I worked with our partner agency to implement the findings from our three previous trials in new universities and schools. We decided to group together the individual interventions into a new peer placement offer, which increased the number of student teachers in geographically isolated schools in New South Wales.

What We Did

We worked with a total of six universities to place students in rural and remote priority schools.

The original trials involved three universities. We re-visited them and found that the interventions were no longer running. This is due to change of staff, and established processes. We worked with them and the three additional universities to change their practices and embed our intervention into their routine business-as-usual.

How We Did It

My agency partner and I visited the six universities, to remind them, or show them, the outcomes of the previous trials. We met with senior Executives as well as course coordinators. We worked with their placement officers to implement the new peer placement offer.

Peer placements: I designed a behavioural poster and slideshow to promote the benefits of going to a rural and remote school as a group, with peers from their course. The communications focused on a message of how peer placements are “Better together” (social support). My agency partner coordinated a weekly allowance to make the peer placement more attractive. She also managed a group accommodation booking (reduce friction costs). Universities were visited by Regional Director or Principals from rural and remote schools, to promote the benefits of the experience and to answer questions (messenger effect).

Timely and personalised communications: we provided each university with an email template that included a behavioural message. Student teachers were encouraged to “Make a difference” by considering a rural and remote place (motivation). The ensured the universities set up reminder messages about the peer placement offer via software or newsletter (timeliness).

Simplifying research and using influential messengers: Our email template included hyperlinks to the local school website and regional tourism sites, to promote the benefits of relocating to an exciting new place (removed the hassle factor). We also included Teach NSW videos of student teachers in the region, to show how teaching in a rural and remote school had benefited their professional development (messenger effect)

The template posters, email text, slideshows, and other materials that we provided could be tailored by each university, such as by including their logo or other relevant information.

What We Found

We tracked over 800 individual clicks on links in the emails sent by the six universities, showing the high interest in the initial peer placement offer.

In the first six months, we recruited 55 pre-service teachers to complete their final year placements at geographically isolated schools. All of them said they would consider taking up long-term employment at a rural or remote school in the future.

We received positive feedback directly from the student teachers, who emailed with enthusiasm about their peer experience in rural and remote schools.

‘I had a fantastic experience, learning so much in a good school with welcoming staff an students. The placement also opened my eyes to the potential of teaching rurally in the future.’

– Student from the North Shore, metropolitan Sydney

Our project partner said:

‘One quote from a PST [pre-service teacher] who went rural is, “It’s the best thing that has ever happened to me!” All have been overwhelmed by the support and welcoming that they have received from rural communities.’ – Department of Education.

The Department of Education has since expanded our intervention across New South Wales. The Department is also exploring an expansion into new faculties requiring professional placements, such as nursing, medicine, and beyond.

Read our report.

How Social Science Helped

• Methods: combined results from previous research to create a new opportunity
• Behavioural science design: messaging and layout of marketing materials optimised interest