AITSL’s Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APSTs) are being formally reviewed for the first time since their adoption more than fifteen years ago. The APST descriptors underpin many aspects of Australian K-12 teacher practice. The review is an opportunity to shape the future of the Australian teaching profession that you shouldn’t ignore. If educators don’t have their say in this review you will be living with the consequences of that choice for a substantial period of time – and so will Australian kids!
The Standards are not simply statements sitting quietly on an AITSL website. They are part of the infrastructure of Australian education. (If you’re a Castlereagh Statement signatory or supporter, this is a crucial chance to address your concerns.)
They shape:
- initial teacher education and university accreditation;
- teacher registration and progression from Graduate to Proficient;
- Highly Accomplished and Lead Teacher certification;
- professional learning, appraisal and development processes.
What appears in the Standards eventually appears in university programmes, accreditation requirements, professional learning plans and classroom expectations. (AITSL) The APSTs occupy a strategically important position across the profession.
The current consultation closes on 7 August 2026. AITSL estimates that the survey will take approximately twenty minutes. (Complete the AITSL Teacher Standards Review survey here.)
Those twenty minutes matter.
This review is about much more than updating language.
It asks a deeper question:
What do we believe an Australian teacher should be?
AI forces educators to consider their purpose and what they value.
Generative AI is not simply another digital tool arriving in schools.
It is changing how knowledge is produced, how students demonstrate learning, how assessment operates and how teachers understand their own professional role.
The Castlereagh Statement calls on Australian education to value what matters, connect learning across sectors and equip every Australian to engage with AI confidently, critically and creatively—with human flourishing, rather than technology, at the centre. (The Castlereagh Statement)
Those aspirations must be visible in the Standards that define our profession.
Teachers, and educators, who understand the messy realities of AI-disrupted classrooms need to contribute to the APST review. So do school leaders, teacher educators, researchers, pre-service teachers and others who care about the future of Australian education.
To NOT take part in the review process is taking a position.
It’s to signal acceptance of the status quo of Australian education or it’s to cede responsibility for the future directions of Australian K-12 teaching to someone else.
Possibly someone less knowledgeable and less well-informed about AI than you, a reader of this blog.
Without thoughtful responses from those who understanding the realities of the coming wave of AI, the Australian teaching profession risks being defined by those poorly placed to recognise the fundamental challenges which face teachers in the AI age… or by those with vested interests in other (perhaps narrow) agendas.
Complete the AITSL Teacher Standards Review survey here.
APSTs Beyond AI: Compliance—or Professional Expertise?
There is already growing prescription around what beginning teachers must be taught and what universities must demonstrate through accreditation.
The revised APSTs will inevitably influence those requirements and expectations. The revised APSTs will likely go some way towards a definition of the role of teacher.
The APST review raises some concerns in my mind as to a narrowing understanding of what it means to be a teacher. As you read the APST review survey, I think we need to reflect and make some decision about what we value most.
For example, I think we must therefore decide whether we want Standards that encourage compliance with a narrow collection of mandated practices – or Standards that recognise teachers as knowledgeable, reflective and context-responsive professionals.
Evidence matters – but we must make professional judgements about what evidence to use, what evidence is included and omitted, and what evidence points to. Let’s make sure that the APSTs define teachers as those who are widely engaged professions.
Explicit direct instruction matters – but so does guidance fading. The expertise reversal effect is real. We need to know when our students are working as novices and when they have accumulated enough skill and knowledge to operate in ‘explorer mode’. Let’s ensure that the APSTs empower teachers to individualise their learning experiences, tailor those experiences to their contexts. Relationships matter. Let’s ensure we prioritise the development of teacher professionalism that allows flexibility and responsiveness to context.
While measurable outputs and ‘markers of successful’ achievement matter, so does the process of engaging with knowledge. While ‘good grades’ matter, so does a growth mindset, responsible risk-taking, innovation, creativity, and productive struggle. Having things explained to students matters, but so does thoughtful teacher-guided inquiry. While fidelity across classrooms may be enhanced by prescribing some standards of professional practice, teacher autonomy and professional judgement matter also.
The APSTs can support excellence in teaching practice. The APSTs can enhance that status of the profession. The APSTs can support the wellbeing, growth and learning of students. The APSTs can reflect the very best in current insights into learning. We face a challenge. There are some who act as though ‘how learning best happens’ is a settled debate. It’s not. I suspect that the definition of learning itself is not yet a settled debate. Therefore, we face a key challenge when we review the APSTs.
The challenge is not to select one approved method and impose it everywhere. It is how to best provide an infrastructure of understandings about teaching that prepare teachers with a broad pedagogical repertoire and the wisdom to respond to the particular children, communities and contexts in their care.
Complete the AITSL Teacher Standards Review survey here.
Applying an AI lens to the APSTs
You do not need to be an AI specialist to contribute to the APST review.
You just have to reflect on what you consider to be a well-educated person in an age of AI… and how we might work towards that goal via the AITSL APSTs.
Here’s a few ideas that you might draw on responses. You might like to consider them as you write responses to the open-ended survey questions,
Thought 1: The Teacher Standards should explicitly recognise AI literacy as a distinct and essential professional capability. Teachers need to understand the possibilities, limitations, biases and ethical implications of AI, and be able to help students engage with it critically, creatively and responsibly.
Thought 2: The Standards should protect and strengthen teacher professional judgement. This will be essential in an age of AI. They should draw on evidence without reducing effective teaching to a narrow list of prescribed practices that cannot respond adequately to different learners, disciplines, contexts, and a rapidly changing technological capabilities.
Thought 3: The Standards should describe teaching as relational, ethical and deeply human work. In an age of increasingly powerful AI technologies, teachers must be recognised not simply as deliverers of content, but as architects of learning, builders of community, role models of innovation, and cultivators of student agency, discernment and human flourishing.
Adapt these ideas. Add your own classroom experiences. Name what is missing. Describe the profession you want future teachers to inherit – and don’t forget that future will be infused with increasingly powerful AI technologies.
Complete the AITSL Teacher Standards Review survey here.
Twenty Minutes for the Future of Teaching
This is one of those moments when professional voice can become professional agency. Don’t miss the moment. Don’t ‘walk past the Standards’.
Please do not leave the definition of Australian teaching to somebody else.
Complete the AITSL Teacher Standards Review survey here.
When future teachers look back at this moment – the moment AI began reshaping education – what will our Standards reveal?
That we reached for greater prescription and compliance?
Or that we had the professional courage to articulate a richer, more human vision of teaching?
You can view the full set of APSTs for every career stage via this file:
You can view the Castlereagh Statement via: The Castlereagh Statement – The Castlereagh Statement.
Disrupted History 