Australian Legal Studies & Civics Teacher Confidence Survey 2025

The special Rule of Law Education Centre, Australian Legal Studies & Civics Teacher Confidence Survey2025 was conducted online on Thursday February 27, 2025 to Tuesday March 3, 2025, with a cross-section of 411 teachers across Australia. Recipients were contacted via The Rule of Law Education Centre Mailing List and Facebook Groups for Teachers where teacher completed an online survey.   

The Teachers were asked the following 8 questions and were sent free resources for completing the survey:  

1. “How long have you been teaching Legal Studies and related subjects (such as Commerce, Civics and Citizenship) for?” 
2. “What is your teaching qualification?” 
3. “As a part of your teaching qualification, did you undertake any formal training specifically for the teaching of Legal Studies, Commerce or Civics?” 
4. “How confident are you in teaching a wide range of legal and civic concepts?” 
5. “If you did not respond ‘Extremely confident’ to question 4, what impacts on your confidence to teach legal and civic concepts? Please select all that apply.” 
6. “What would help you to feel more confident in teaching these concepts? Please select all that apply.” 
7. How often do you: 
   • Use the internet to get news of events (including social media) 
   • Watch the news on television 
   • Listen to the news on the radio 
   • Get news from podcast services 
   • Read about current events in a paper or using an online newspaper 
   • Talk to your students about political and / or social issues 
   • Enable your students to engage in debate about social or political issues 
8. Are there specific topic areas in Legal Studies, Civics or Commerce where you would like to see more professional development, classroom resources available or any further comments you would like to add?

Years Teaching & Differing Needs

The number of years respondents had been teaching legal studies or a related subject (Commerce, Civics and Citizenship) revealed that over a third (36%) of respondents have only been teaching for 1-5 years and a quarter (26%) have been teaching for more than 16 years.

Regarding teaching qualifications, 45% of respondents have a Bachelor of Education as their highest qualification. In comparison, 22% of respondents have a Master of Education.

When asked, as a part of your teaching qualification, if they undertook any formal training specifically for teaching of Legal Studies, Commerce or Civics, respondents were evenly split with 52% having undertaken formal training specifically for teaching Legal Studies, Commerce or Civics compared to 48% of respondents who have done no formal training for teaching Legal studies, Commerce or Civics.

Teacher Confidence in Varying Content Area’s

The survey also looked at teacher confidence regarding civics and citizenship. In the survey, over 50% of respondents feel very or extremely confident in teaching a wide range of civic and legal concepts.

Of respondents who are not extremely confident in being able to teach a wide range of subjects (about two-thirds), there were two main reasons as to why they lacked confidence:

• Over 36% of respondents revealed they had not received any formal training in the areas they have been teaching or had limited exposure to the civics concepts they are now teaching. As a result, they have been learning on the job. 
• The next most relevant explanation was that teachers found that current contemporary issues make it difficult to facilitate respectful debate in the classroom.

This need for greater teacher training is further underscored by responses to what would increase their confidence. T33%t found that more education in fundamental civic and legal concepts would boost their confidence and 32% found having more skills to guide respectful discussions and debates would boost their confidence.

News & Information Sources

Over 50% of respondents use the internet, including social media and read online newspapers daily as their source of news. Interestingly, nearly half of respondents hardly ever or never get their news from podcasts.