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Journal Category: For your Classroom

Virtual Reality Site Study: Migration Experiences (1945-present)

Paul Grover and Bruce Pennay emphasise the importance of students understanding Australian migration and doing migration History …

There is no majestic Statue of Liberty looking over the former Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre on the banks of the Murray River. There is no stone inscription: ‘Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.’ Yet, like America’s Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Bonegilla has come to represent the importance of immigration to the nation.

The Bonegilla Reception Centre was the largest and longest-lasting post-war migrant camp in Australia. At its peak, in 1950, it accommodated 7, 700 people, including 1,250 staff. Consequently, it had economic, social and cultural impacts on Albury and Wodonga, its immediate host community.

Children playing at Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre, 1957

Like New York’s Ellis Island, Bonegilla was once a noisy, crowded place that was bustling with new arrivals displaced from post-war Europe. But unlike Ellis Island, it was in ‘the middle of nowhere’ and only rarely caught public attention. Nowadays, Bonegilla is a place where people come to reflect on the impact of migration on Australia – and, perhaps even more importantly, on what it was like and is like to be a migrant. Teachers and students can find out more about this once busy migrant reception centre that had such a significant impact on Australia’s post-war immigration history.

Bonegilla Migrant Experience has a new online 3D virtual tour site study with online inquiry-based historical investigations which have been created by Charles Sturt University, in collaboration with the former Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre, for teachers and students in secondary schools. The Block 19 remnant of the Bonegilla Reception Centre is on the National Heritage Register as illustrative of post-war migration policies and the arrival experiences of 310,000 non-British displaced persons, refugees and assisted migrants, who came between 1947 and 1971.

The long history of migration to Australia is important for student knowledge and understanding about the dynamic nature of social, cultural and political change in Australia, and the key roles that individuals, groups, organisations and governments have played over time in shaping the rich multicultural map of contemporary Australia. Through the study of migration experiences students gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of the importance of migration in shaping the story of Australia from the earliest times to the present day, and the continuing influences of migration experiences upon the future of this country, this region and the wider world.

The History K-10 Syllabus: The Modern World and Australia – the globalising world: Migration experiences (1945-present) provides the opportunity for students to explore the significant waves of migration to Australia in the years following World War Two and to investigate changing government policies post World War Two and through the 1950s and 1960s. Students also ‘assess the contribution of migrant men and women to Australia’s social, cultural and economic development and Australia’s changing identity’ (NESA, History K-10 Syllabus, 2012).

One of the former World War Two army huts at the Bonegilla Camp that were converted into accommodation and recreation spaces for newly arrived migrants after World War Two – note the very spartan conditions

Walking through Bonegilla in a virtual reality tour

This 3D virtual tour is a recreation of this real-life heritage site as it exists today. The virtual tour allows students to experience a self-guided tour where they explore the buildings and examine the displays. The creators have included a teacher guide, hyperlinked buttons at key points in the tour with specially created YouTube videoclips, including an introductory Claymation story about the migrant experience, a picture trail with soundbyte podcasts on key events and experiences, and soundbytes from past residents telling their migrant experience stories. There is also a ‘quick guide’ pdf to explain the virtual tour layout and how to explore the 3D space.

Students can tour at their own pace and in their own time using a computer or Google glasses to explore the site and move from building to building. The 3D online virtual tour opens with the exhibition spaces, and then allows students to visit a variety of key buildings, including the accommodation huts, the recreation hut, the ablutions block, the employment office and the communal kitchen block. The 3D virtual tour is supplemented with a ‘Getting Started’ short video with views of the physical setting of the Bonegilla Migrant Experience Heritage Centre, guides for teachers and students and video of a drone flight over the whole site to establish the geographical context. Also included are original government propaganda films that allow students to examine how the migrant experience was ‘sold’ to potential European migrants, as well as original investigative reporting from the ABC film archives about what life was like in Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre.

Memory of the Reception Centre and its impact is carefully preserved in the Bonegilla Collection at the Albury Library Museum. The site itself is conserved by Wodonga City Council as a public memory place called the ‘Bonegilla Migrant Experience’. Both cross-border city councils worked in collaboration with Charles Sturt University to construct the virtual reality and inquiry investigations website.

Investigating Bonegilla – four inquiry-based historical investigations

The accompanying historical investigations include a set of four inquiry-based online investigations that open with key inquiry questions and provide hyperlink access to primary sources for students to examine and interact with. These investigations are well illustrated and easy to read in the ‘Issuu’ online magazine format. Students are provided with stimulus inquiry questions as they access primary source documents that include original newspaper accounts, magazine stories and even redacted secret intelligence reports from the time. They then use their historical investigations and research to prepare informed and evidence-based responses to the key inquiry questions for class exploration.

A sample page from the online historical investigations: this is from the investigation into the health scandal in 1949 when 23 babies tragically died at Bonegilla Camp within a few months of each other.

Each of the four online investigations uses a visual guide to show students how to find and use contemporary reports about how the Bonegilla site functioned and how people experienced the arrival and the reception centre itself. These inquiry-based investigations begin with the assumption that students are new to researching material in Trove and in the National Archives of Australia. Clear visual instructions show them how to search for specific reports or documents for their investigation, and intentionally leave open the prospect for teachers of further explorations in each cluster of newspaper reports or official files. This means the investigations not only help students locate selected items from these vast and valuable archives, but also increase awareness of the careful detective work required by historians when researching primary and secondary sources. The emphasis in these inquiry-based investigations is on students doing History, rather than being told History.

These carefully designed introductions to Trove and National Archives searches are a new development for students and teachers in using inquiry-based historical research in schools. The set of four online historical investigations helps advance students’ historical inquiry skills and endorses the observation made by the Australian History Association that Trove has had a ‘transformative effect on the capacity of historians to undertake research’.

Change and continuity

Investigation 1 presents and explores changes to the fabric of the Bonegilla migrant camp over time, as it served different cohorts of migrants. It allows students to examine and evaluate adjustments to Australian post-war immigration policies and practices between 1947 and 1971 and the reasons for these changes.

 

Immigration Department publicity photos show the crude mess arrangements used for the displaced persons and first cohorts of assisted migrants and, then, the ‘improvements’ made to the place in the 1960s to attract, or at least not deter, skilled migrants (National Australian Archives).

Troubled times

Investigation 2 is an inquiry-based investigation that invites students to find and assess the historical value of different newspaper and official accounts of a health scandal in 1949, when 23 newly arrived babies died. This investigation examines living conditions, welfare issues and health concerns in the migration experience for migrant families, and explores the reactions of the media, government and health officials.

A 1949 newspaper article critical of efforts by distressed parents to visit their sick children at the time when 23 babies died at the Bonegilla Camp.

Migration experiences

Investigation 3 explores the experiences of the migrants in the Bonegilla Camp and takes students to a variety of Trove and National Archives records, but also draws on migrant personal testimonies from the ‘Belongings’ archive, created by the former Migration Heritage Centre of NSW. It enables students to explore the verbal accounts that migrants have recorded of their arrival and wider migration experiences. It touches on personal stories like, for example, those of Romulus Gaita and his family at Bonegilla (of ‘Romulus, My Father’ fame) as well as the circumstances that led to the tragic death of a young wife in the Bonegilla Camp. This investigation allows students to examine these accounts and memories in order to develop historical perspectives on the migration experience using this kaleidoscope of personal testimonies.

Protest and riots

Investigation 4 focuses on the protests and riots that were a feature of Bonegilla in 1961. This inquiry directs students to the National Archives of Australia for different accounts of a riot by unemployed migrants in 1961. It, for instance, points visitors to a file containing a secret report prepared by ASIO on the incident, its causes and its aftermath. This redacted file has records that clearly indicate the long-term complaints from migrants who, because of an economic recession, could not be allocated the jobs they had been promised before they agreed to come to Australia. Throughout, however, it is centred on ascertaining government concerns regarding the influence that Communist sympathisers might have had in inciting violence.

Original films of the time are included for student study

The online resource package includes a set of two original films from the 1940s and the 1970s which portray the Bonegilla Reception Centre from different perspectives – from its inception to its final days as a migrant reception and processing centre. Both films ask students to consider the changes in the way the centre was represented to the Australian public, and also to potential and actual migrants. So, for example, students are asked to compare a short film made to attract northern European displaced persons to Australia with another that was made to reassure the Australian public about the benefits of the mass immigration program to allay fears of a migrant ‘invasion’.

Two additional short films from the period report on the way Bonegilla was improved to attract skilled assisted migrants in the 1960s. One is a government promotional film that purportedly shows how well Australia received the newly arrived migrants. Another is a retrospective, presented by a former migrant, made by the ABC ‘This Day Tonight’ television news team to mark the closing of the Bonegilla Reception Centre in 1971.

Final thoughts

This virtual reality and historical inquiry-based resource allows students to develop their historical understandings and skills as they carefully investigate and evaluate what the mass immigration program of the post-war years meant to the nation and to those who came from so far away hoping for a new life and new opportunities.

Dr Bruce Pennay is Adjunct Associate Professor at Charles Sturt University. He has been a heritage historian specialising in studies of rural and regional NSW and Victoria. He is currently interested in post-war immigration and host society responses to it. He has published books on Albury-Wodonga and its surrounds. He has completed heritage studies for country towns in the Riverina and on the Southern Tablelands. These heritage studies and subsequent museum engagements involved him in assessing significance of heritage items and museum collections. Bruce’s interests focus on two broad topic areas: the cultural heritage of the NSW/ Victorian border region; and post-war immigration history and heritage with particular reference to Bonegilla Reception and Training Centre in Wodonga.

Paul Grover is Lecturer in Education, Charles Sturt University. His career as a secondary school English and History teacher, and Head Teacher, extended over 35 years, before joining the university in 2011. He also worked with NESA for more than 15 years as a syllabus committee member, HSC examination Supervisor of Marking and Examination Assessor. Paul has authored, edited and contributed to secondary school History and English course books, resource books, tertiary textbooks and online learning resources for students and teachers, as well as contributing to the professional journals of the History Teachers Association of NSW, the English Teachers Association of NSW and professional websites.

Find A Place Where You Can Do Your Best Work

Julie Fendall is a classroom teacher currently in Sydney’s Blue Mountains. She has been a teacher-research assistant on the Schooling for a Fair Go project and an Honours student at Western Sydney University. For her Honours thesis, she wrote a study of Brooke Newton’s classroom. This article is an extract from that thesis. Brooke Newton is an AP in Sydney’s South-West. She was an early career teacher when her involvement with Fair Go began, both in a classroom being observed by Julie, but also later in Schooling for a Fair Go. In the latter, she was both a mentee and a mentor carrying out action research on her own practice. Brooke became involved in the Fair Go Program because she wanted to develop a deeper understanding of how to engage students and also because she wanted to continually reflect on her own practice to help every student succeed.

The classroom space: First impressions

1K’s classroom is found in a large multicultural public school located in the outer suburbs of Sydney. The room, located deep in the school grounds, is on the first floor at the end of an open-air veranda overlooking a grass playing field (see Figure 1.1).

          
Figure 1.1. The veranda entrance to 1K’s classroom. Copyright 2013 by J. Fendall.      

The classroom’s external windows and the walls lining the veranda are welcomingly decorated by smiling ‘student-faced’ buzzy-bees. These photographed student faces hover in the window adjacent to the bold statement “1K loves to learn” (Figure 1.2). The windows display numerous photographs of students engaged in a variety of learning activities and a number of work samples. The effect visually suggests that learning is the core business of this classroom.

 
                  Figure 1.2. 1K loves to learn. Copyright 2013 by J. Fendall.
                 Figure 1.3. Parent board. Copyright 2013 by J. Fendall

 

Tracking along the veranda wall, the display ends in a ‘Parent Board’ to communicate with 1K’s families (Figure 1.3). As expected, messages are displayed in the form of school notices and upcoming events. However, additionally, three sets of shiny white laminated posters attract attention. Each poster uses a sentence starter: ‘In writing we are learning… This is because…’ These notices display learning intentions to send a clear and important message home to 1K’s parents and families: in 1K, learning is explicit, purposeful and connected to the world outside the classroom.

Next to the classroom door sits a Science table that currently displays the silkworm box accompanied by a chart, “How to look after your silkworm” (Figure 1.1). The Science table is worth mentioning as an indicator of teaching and learning styles in 1K. The central teaching approach offers hands-on experiential learning opportunities. The table is covered in laminated white A3 paper for students to record their observations in black marker, encouraging thought and reflection through flexible learning spaces.

These noteworthy observations of the classroom’s physical presentation from the veranda offer a sense of what is important in 1K: students, learning, communication and community.

As I enter through the door, the room appears substantially larger than a standard classroom.  An expansive floor space spreads out towards the centrally located furniture (Figure 1.4). More correctly, there is a noticeable lack of furniture: three desks and six chairs. Questions spring to my mind about where the students sit to work.


Figure 1.4. The expansive open space in 1K. Copyright 2013 by J. Fendall.

Looking more closely around the room, attention is drawn towards the classroom edges, walls and windows. The spaciousness of the first impression is in complete contrast to the crowded walls. The surfaces are adorned with words, information, photographs of students, work-samples, post-it notes and black-marker comments on white, laminated paper. It is relevant at this point to re-consider the context of this classroom where every student has a language background other than English, and to be reminded that these Year 1 students are 6 to 7 years old. Within this context, the metalanguage used to support higher-order meta-cognitive learning experiences in the classroom seems extraordinary. A visitor to the classroom might mistakenly question the ‘wordiness’ of the crowded classroom walls for its English as an Additional Language/Dialect (EAL/D) students. But these are the students’ words: their work and their reflections.

There has been just a moment to consider the physical and structural learning environment in 1K before the bell rings and the school day starts. The teacher, Brooke, and the 23 students of 1K enter the classroom; their pace is comfortable, calm and purposeful. The classroom hums with student conversation and laughter and it looks and feels different already.

As standard practice in 1K, Brooke uses a visual learning goal to explain the lesson she is presenting to the students. She employs tools, such as traffic lights, to gauge students’ understanding of the task and provides students with marking criteria for self-assessment and peer-assessment to scaffold their learning.

Brooke’s final instruction is to “Find a place where you can do your best work” (Observation). Significantly, each student chooses where she or he wants to work.

Observations and interviews reveal that student choice is an integral component of 1K. Three students choose to sit at the available desks whilst the remaining students are either on the floor working with Brooke or have chosen to lie on the floor by themselves or in small groups (Figure 1.6). Two students collect a small soft couch and a beanbag and go outside onto the veranda (Figure 1.7). Four students find stools and a small table at the back of the classroom to work together. One student enters the tent, another lies outstretched from the green caterpillar tunnel (Figure 1.8). This small detail of choice in student placement within the classroom space speaks volumes of the teacher’s trust in her students and the students’ self-regulatory capacity to be responsible for their learning. Consequently, choice enables students to work independently or collaboratively whilst sending empowering messages of ability, place and control to the learners.

  
     Figure 1.6. Learning spaces: Open floor plan. Copyright 2013 by J. Fendall.

 


       Figure 1.7. Learning space: The veranda. Copyright 2013 by J. Fendall

 

  
    Figure 1.8. Learning spaces: Tent and tunnel. Copyright 2013 by J. Fendall.

iPad reflections

One student, who has completed the assigned task, moves to the reflection wall and takes an ‘iPad pass’ lanyard (Figure 1.9), places it over her head and approaches Brooke to ask, “Please, can I use the iPad?” (Observation, student comment). The teacher, without hesitation or further instruction, directs the student towards the iPad located on her desk.


             Figure 1.9. iPad pass lanyard. Copyright 2013 by J. Fendall.

Working in partnership with another student wearing an ‘iPad pass’, one student reflects on her learning whilst the other video records the reflection. “I felt proud of myself because I used adjectives and similes…” (Observation, student comment). After describing her learning, the students reverse roles and the second student conducts her learning reflection, and this is also recorded. The students watch their video clips with great interest, laughing and talking. This simple, high affective, high cognitive reflection system is a great example of an interactive self-regulatory learning resource. Replaying the videos act as reflection mirrors for students to see themselves as learners who think about, and reflect upon, their learning. In addition, the video files are stored in the students’ folders to share with their families at any given opportunity.

 “The kids in my classroom help me learn”

Beyond the classroom’s appearance as a physical, flexible learning space, Brooke’s considered pedagogical application of the MeE Framework’s ‘e’ngagement processes cultivated high affective spaces (see article by Geoff Munns on the MeE Framework in this Special Edition). When asked for their feelings towards their classroom, all of the participants became animated in their speech and expressed strong, affective connections to their classroom and their class. The students commonly identified themes of fun, friendship, aesthetics, space, ownership and choice (Fendall, 2014).

1K felt that friends played a key role in their learning, making connections between working with friends and improving their learning. One student commented, “When I work with my friends I concentrate and have more energy to write” (Fendall, 2014, p. 60). A second student linked his affective response to learning through peer-assessment: “I like working with my friends, they help me correct my work” (Interview, student E). Several students identified talking with their friends as an important part of their learning. This is significant as many teachers perceive talking between students as a distraction from learning. When describing his drawing, in which a large speech bubble hovers over the classroom next to a colourful rainbow (Figure 1.10), the student said, “I am talking to my friends because they get their ideas and they help me” (Interview, student B).


           Figure 1.10. Moving helps me learn because I can concentrate.
           Drawing artefact by student B. Copyright 2013 by J. Fendall.

Student interviews and drawing responses clearly indicated that 1K experienced their classroom as a community of learners, neatly expressed by one student as, “The kids in my classroom help me to learn” (Fendall, 2014, p. 67 Interview, student A).

Creative spaces and ‘e’ngaging experiences

At a glance, this case study classroom brings to mind the exemplary teachers who use ‘creative processes’ and design ‘creative spaces’ to facilitate imaginative, creative and high intellectual quality learning experiences for students in low socio-economic status communities (Cole et al., 2013; Orlando & Sawyer, 2013).  This classroom buzzed with activity, movement, and discussion. Observations suggested that 1K were engaged, confident, self-regulatory and reflective learners. At one level, the workings of this class appeared to be a straightforward task for the teacher. Yet, as another teacher, experienced in Fair Go pedagogy, observed: “An untrained eye would walk into that classroom and think ‘Oh, aren’t these kids wonderful!’ It doesn’t just happen like that. There is a lot of thought process behind each of those practices” (Fendall, 2014, p. 44). Those observations capture the image of ‘teacher as a conductor’, waving arms in time with the music so that, “the orchestra produces glorious sounds, to all appearances quite spontaneously” (Bransford et al., 2007, p. 1).

As the skilled classroom ‘orchestra conductor’, Brooke coordinates “a total environment where tools, spaces and mindsets are stimulating creativity and thinking” (Ferrari et al., 2009, p.  46). Students in 1K employed classroom systems (for example,  success criteria, traffic light cards, iPad reflections) and a range of developing micro-skills (a learning meta-language and taking on a learning disposition) to question, make connections, explore options and reflect on their learning, in an authentic way. These scaffolding features structured a high-operative space: where students as self-regulatory learners were given agency to remove scaffolding when they judged themselves to be ready. The interplay here is significant as students receive positive messages around voice, ability, knowledge, control, and ownership, and hence appear to understand themselves as independent, successful learners.

Brooke’s reflections on these experiences

I can remember in my first few years of teaching, whilst being involved in the Fair Go Program, I would drive home from work thinking about the different ways that I could encourage students to discuss their learning individually and with each other. Being a part of the research project inspired me to think deeply about each student in my class and the environment, that as their teacher, I needed to create in order to engage them in their learning.

During the time of this project I was continually challenged by my colleagues to think of creative ways to get each child to reflect on their learning and therefore reach a deep understanding of what was being taught. The experience taught me how to solicit feedback and to be open to alternative perspectives and ideas. The project enabled me to take risks and it guided my planning for student engagement. I learnt how to effectively evaluate the purpose and impact of each lesson I taught and I developed a greater understanding of what motivated each student to connect with the content.

The different practices I implemented as an early career teacher to create a classroom where student voice was not only encouraged, but celebrated have been ingrained into my pedagogy. Being involved in this project, as well as having my teaching observed for research, enabled me to build continual reflection into my daily practice and gave me the desire to actively search for and investigate the most effective ways to meet the learning needs of my students. It made me aware of the messages I was giving to students and highlighted to me the importance of building a classroom where the students and I played a reciprocal role.

The experience built my confidence to give a range of teaching ideas ‘a go’, since I always had the students at the centre of all of my decisions. Through the lenses of many colleagues in the project, I was able to broaden my understanding of how to engage students in their learning and it is an experience that I fondly look back on as foundational to my pedagogy.

References and Readings:
Bransford, J., Darling-Hammond, L., & LePage, P. (2007). Introduction. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 1-39). Jossey-Bass.

Cole, B., Mooney, M., & Power, A. (2013). Imagination, creativity and intellectual quality. In G. Munns, Sawyer, W, Cole, B., & the Fair Go Team, Exemplary teachers of students in poverty (pp. 123-135). Routledge.

Fendall, J. D. (2014). The creative space: Student engagement and creative learning [Unpublished Master of Teaching (Honours) thesis]. University of Western Sydney.

Ferrari, A., Cachia, R. & Punie, Y. (2009). Innovation and creativity in education and training in the EU member states: Fostering creative learning and supporting innovative teaching: Literature review on innovation and creativity in E&T in the EU member states (ICEAC). Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

Munns, G., & Sawyer, W. (2013). Student engagement: The research methodology and the theory. In G. Munns, Sawyer, W, Cole, B., & the Fair Go Team, Exemplary teachers of students in poverty (pp. 14-32). Routledge.

Orlando, J., & Sawyer, W. (2013). A fair go in education. In G. Munns, Sawyer, W, Cole, B., & the Fair Go Team, Exemplary teachers of students in poverty (pp. 1-13). Routledge.

‘It’s What Makes A Perfect Class’: Conversations In The Classroom

Rebecca Rivers graduated from Western Sydney University with a Masters of Teaching (Primary) and began teaching at Lansvale Public School. Whilst studying, Rebecca was introduced to the Fair Go Program student engagement frameworks (MeE) and became interested in applying these principles to her classroom. As an early career teacher, Rebecca was involved in the Fair Go Program’s Fair Go from the Get Go and continued this research to complete her Masters of Teaching Honours (First Class) for which she was awarded a Dean’s Medal for academic excellence. This article provides a summary of this research.

 

Introduction

Sitting in the first staff meeting of my second full year of teaching, I tackled my sleepy holiday brain to form three goals for the year ahead. Communication, Perspective, Enjoyment – three things I felt were lacking in my class the previous year and that had left a mark of guilt on my memories of an otherwise successful year. After all, as an ‘early career’, ‘new scheme’, ‘targeted graduate’, ‘inexperienced’ teacher, surely my passion and dedication should not be disintegrating already. Considering that the majority of the bilingual and multilingual students in my current Stage 3 class (in a south-western Sydney ‘priority school’) received tutoring outside school and were achieving Stage level outcomes, it would have been easy to be content with my teaching and feel comfortable that 29 students would pass through the year without a single head turning. However, it was clear to me that my students were capable of more than just passing tests, and as their teacher I was the number one factor influencing their experience of education (Hayes et al., 2006). Coupled with this was the widespread compliance that was clearly evident inside my classroom walls and which I understood needed to be challenged in order for my students to be substantively engaged and to reach their highest potential (Munns, 2007). This article is a first-hand account of how I responded to that challenge. It documents research exploring the relationship between the nature of classroom discourse and the engagement of learners from a low socio-economic status (SES) background community. As their regular classroom teacher, I implemented pedagogical changes with a focus on student engagement to encourage greater and more in-depth conversations with students about content, pedagogy and assessment.

 

Researching using Fair Go ideas

This project was undertaken as part of the Fair Go Program. An action research approach was taken using qualitative methods of data collection and analysis – observations, focus group interviews, student-written reflections, and the researcher’s diary. The research utilised a number of themes that explore the relationship between teacher pedagogy and student engagement. First, it took up the Fair Go Program’s (Fair Go Project Team, 2006; Munns & Sawyer, 2013) definition of ‘substantive’ student engagement – high cognitive (thinking), high operative (doing) and high affective (feeling). This was a position that could also challenge student compliance. Second, the research focused on the nature of classroom talk as it impacted on the social and academic outcomes of the students. Cazden’s work was important here. She recognises that “the task for both teachers and researchers is to make the usually transparent medium of classroom discourse the object of focal attention” (Cazden, 2001: p. 4). Classroom talk was the specific research focus and this focus was located within ideas about student engagement, teacher pedagogy and Fair Go’s notion of the ‘insider classroom’ (Fair Go Project Team, 2006). The ‘insider classroom’ concept is from the overall MeE Framework (see the article by Geoff Munns in this edition) and focuses on the need for students to play a crucial role in the learning environment. The argument is that when an insider classroom is achieved, the messages being received by students are positive and lead to higher levels of student engagement (Munns & Sawyer, 2013). The aim of this research was to open up opportunities for conversations about learning to be the dominant classroom discourse, in the belief that this would challenge passive classroom compliance and increase student engagement.

 

The journey

The students who had walked through the classroom door on the first day were quiet, shy and identified ‘real’ work as sitting in silence, listening to the teacher and doing repetitive rote learning tasks. This classroom was not an ‘insider classroom’ and the students were not substantively engaged. In front of me sat 29 students whose idea of education, learning and their role as students needed to be challenged using the MeE Framework.

 

First steps: a shared focus on learning

The first step was to prove to the students that their opinion was legitimately valued. The students were asked to describe what they thought a good classroom looked like, sounded like and felt like. We then began to formulate a class philosophy that would act as a benchmark for students’ behaviour in class and replace the traditional set of rules. I also realised that my attitudes needed to be challenged. My own teaching philosophy aligned with ideas that ‘learning trumps behaviour’ (Munns, 2013: p. 47). However, I realised I had not articulated this to the students. Now, I allowed students to sit where they could ‘learn best’ and to talk to their friends whenever needed ‘for learning’. The students started to pick up on these engaging messages and one noted that, ‘She cares about our work’ (reflective journal entry). The students also started to make choices for themselves, take responsibility for their actions and play a role in the learning environment by no longer relying exclusively on me.

 

Blogging

I set up an online blog and the results were encouraging. The most withdrawn students in the class immediately became the most active on the blog, and all students began to be more open with each other and myself. They gave feedback on each other’s writing and encouraged each other to do their best. The blog gave me the opportunity to pose reflective questions on my own teaching and allowed students to respond openly in a forum that they were comfortable with. I was able to have ‘teacher inclusive conversations’ and provide students with a voice and control in their learning environment. It provided a back-door entry to encouraging student dialogue and forming an ‘insider classroom’.

 

Drama towards confidence

Using drama also played a major role in developing my students’ confidence to speak. Freeze frames, sculpting and questioning-in-role were used on numerous occasions to encourage talk and develop speaking and listening skills (Hertzberg, 2012). Through these activities it was evident that students were:

  • affectively engaged, as they smiled and laughed with each other,
  • operatively engaged, as they were actively involved, and
  • cognitively engaged, as they formulated ideas and discussed how to present them physically.

As one student wrote: ‘Things that could make me think harder is more freeze frames. Freeze frames make me think harder because they make me imagine and explain things’ (student reflective journal). As a response to comments like this, I integrated them into our regular reading cycle.

 

‘Teacher free’ lessons

 I began to think about how students might become more independent. On the first occasion, in what amounted to a handing over of control, I gave one student a whiteboard marker and set the class on the task of editing a poorly written sentence whilst I stood back and observed. What I saw was breathtaking. There was not a student in the room who was not focused on making the sentence better. The classroom was buzzing, noisy and productive. The lesson went on for twenty minutes before I stepped back in. It was truly amazing to observe the students cognitively, operatively and affectively engage in the task whilst undoubtedly receiving positive messages about their voice, control and ability. It was clear that in order for substantive conversations to take place, I needed to set up tasks with clear purposes that were understood by the students and which required them to talk to each other.  The success of this lesson dared me to hand over control more often to the students for sustained periods of time, and so I set them open-ended tasks where they had to look for solutions to problems. It would not be honest of me if I implied that in these sessions the class always ran efficiently or was a perfect picture of quality teaching. However, I have no hesitation in suggesting that every student listened to, engaged in, and participated in, conversations about the content and that they did so much more than would have been likely if I had taken the sole leadership role.

 

Group projects

Group projects also provided a successful framework for substantive conversations. Students worked in collaborative groups to research, plan and present information and were given choices about the content they investigated, the way they organised their group and how they presented their work. As the teacher, I needed to be continually engaging in ‘insider classroom’ strategies – substantive conversations with small groups of students, posing questions and problems before leaving them to continue the discussion. The change I observed was shy students, unwilling to participate, who became talkative and passionate learners engaged in tasks. Students’ feelings about themselves as learners (and teachers) shone through. Towards the end of the year, one student wrote in response to the question, ‘What is the most valuable advice that you can give to students who are involved in group projects?’:

 

My advice would be to work together, help each other and when someone has an idea you should listen and take their idea … give suggestions to the group. Don’t be shy or scared and let yourself speak clearly, and if someone is shy, help them talk and tell them to share their idea with the group. If you do that from now you will be a good and big part of your group (reflective journal entry).

 

Shifts in attitude

Over time, I continued to receive feedback from the students about their classroom. The change of focus was evident and students valued stronger outcomes from their education. There was evidence that students could see themselves using new skills for learning in the future: ‘The most important thing I learnt this week is to be prepared for something even if you’re not up for it’ (reflective journal entry). There was also a shift in the view of who was in control and who should dominate talk time. In response to the question, ‘How could changes to this week’s learning make you think harder?’ one student replied, ‘To talk more in class than the teacher talking all the time. So we can talk about the ideas in our heads.’

 

Results – engaging messages

What was learnt? As a result of the students participating in engaging experiences and being a part of an ‘insider classroom’, at the end of the year the conclusion was that engaging messages had been sent and received. These can be summarised in terms of the Fair Go ‘message’ framework concepts of control, voice, knowledge, ability and place as described below.

 

Control

The class, over time, demonstrated a highly focused and shared control, with respect to student responsibilities and participation. Students were given chances to think about, discuss and look after their own behaviour. They readily shared and worked in pairs, in groups and as individuals, with the choice of configuration being handed over to the students on numerous occasions. Students expressed their appreciation of being able to work together and make decisions: ‘She wants us to cooperate well with other people and wants us to share our ideas in our brains so she knows what we’re thinking about’ (student interview). In my classroom there was no break in the focus on learning over behaviour. ‘It never stops’, as one student put it (student interview). It was evident that by my taking a non-dominant stance during classroom discussions, I had communicated messages about control to the students, and in turn, these messages on control had given students more opportunities to talk and become engaged in their learning.

 

Voice

Within the school context, encouraging students to have a voice was initially a difficult task given some initial tensions between their parents’ views and my views on learning. It would be reasonable to conclude that many parents of the students in my class believed learning involved students quietly listening rather than collaborating and talking. Yet, all parents gave permission for their children to participate in the research. As the year progressed, the classroom discourse was characterised as ‘a series of conversations between students, their teacher and each other’ (observation notes) through mini-conferences, paired work, small-group work and whole-class discussions. In each of these situations, the students were encouraged to contribute and feel confident about sharing their opinions and ideas. The encouragement of talk in the classroom was indicated by students as being a point of difference between myself and other teachers. Critically important to the engaging message of ‘voice’, students commented that I listened to their opinions and made changes to classroom processes and tasks in response.

 

Knowledge

One student articulated in an interview, ‘Miss … doesn’t put everything … straight into one thing; she takes things step by step so we understand it more clearly, and she doesn’t just have one lesson on it, she has several on it’ (student interview). This statement, along with the observation that knowledge in the classroom was presented as something dynamic, suggests that the students were receiving engaging messages around knowledge. As increased knowledge is closely tied to high cognitive experiences, it is not surprising that the students initially had difficulty speaking about what they had learnt, considering their earlier opinions that hard work was not fun. This highlighted the need for me to make challenging, high cognitive experiences a focus in the classroom, and to encourage students to see the enjoyment they experienced when the work was challenging.

 

Ability

Through different levels of scaffolding, students of varying academic levels were able to participate in the tasks and feel capable. Higher-order, open-ended questions were used as extension tasks that provided students with an opportunity to explore the content more deeply and initiate new explorations. Through these tasks, students demonstrated knowledge and alternative learning strategies to each other.

 

Place

The atmosphere and appearance of the classroom became light and vibrant, with students’ work, advice and learning goals published on the walls. The students moved around the room comfortably and freely used resources according to their learning needs. Students had a sense of belonging in this classroom. As one student said, ‘I feel confident because sometimes your work is on the wall and when visitors come, you’re like, “Hey this is my piece of writing on the wall, I wrote that!”’ (student interview).

The changes implemented in my classroom throughout the year of this study resulted in an increased level of substantive conversation amongst the students. It would be reasonable to conclude that through the encouragement of a discourse-intensive environment, lessons became cognitively, affectively and operatively more engaging, and students’ mere compliance had been challenged. 

 

Conclusion

It is not uncommon for me to have people question my desire to change the processes and practices of my classroom when my students appeared to be working well, sitting quietly and achieving Stage level outcomes. However, as discussed throughout this article, my aim was to have students develop an attitude towards lifelong learning, to see themselves as independent, capable thinkers and to engage with their learning on a level that surpasses a focus only on the achievement of grades. My view is that it is only when this occurs that students will achieve their highest potential in social and academic outcomes. As a teacher, I value learning more than behaviour. At the beginning of the year I had 29 students who behaved wonderfully. At the end of the year I had 29 students who considered themselves learners and reflected on the year as being successful due to the experiences we had had together, the knowledge they gained and their ability to achieve learning goals. As one student wrote in a Christmas card to me: ‘I’ll remember the times we laughed, shared ideas and solved problems together. It’s what makes a perfect class.’

 

References:

Cazden, C. B. (2001). Classroom discourse: The language of teaching and learning (2nd ed.). Heinemann.
Fair Go Project Team. (2006). School is for me: Pathways to student engagement. NSW Department of Education and Training.

Hayes, D., Mills, M., Christie, P., & Lingard, B. (2006). Teachers & schooling making a difference: Productive pedagogies, assessment and performance. Allen & Unwin.

Hertzberg, M. (2012). Teaching English language learners in mainstream classes. Primary English Teaching Association Australia.

Munns, G. (2007). A sense of wonder: Pedagogies to engage students who live in poverty. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11(3), 301-315.

Munns, G. (2013). Learning and behaviour. In G. Munns, W. Sawyer, B. Cole, & the Fair Go Team, Exemplary teachers of students in poverty (pp. 47-51). Routledge.

Munns, G., & Sawyer, W. (2013). Student engagement: The research methodology and the theory. In G. Munns, W. Sawyer, B. Cole, & the Fair Go Team, Exemplary teachers of students in poverty (pp. 14-32). Routledge.

All About MeE: The Fair Go Program’s Student Engagement Framework

Geoff Munns has been involved as a researcher in all aspects of the Fair Go Program since its inception, when a research partnership was formed with the Department’s Priority Schools Program to consider what works for students and their teachers in schools in Sydney’s South West. His publications over the 20 years have been across all the Fair Go projects, and have primarily focused on the development and implementation of the student engagement framework in schools serving low SES communities. Here he has worked closely with teachers, academics and students, and has highly valued listening to and sharing their ideas. This article gives a brief introduction to the background and ideas behind the program’s MeE Framework, as a guide to understanding how it has been important for the work described in all the articles in this edition.

The articles in this Special Edition of the journal refer, directly or indirectly, to the MeE Framework. As explained in Katina Zammit’s history of Fair Go in this edition, this framework has been central to the research and associated teaching changes carried out under the Fair Go Program over its 21 years.

Small ‘e’ and big ‘E’ engagement” the ‘eE’ of the MeE Framework

A good place to start in understanding the MeE Framework is to go back to the earliest days of the research. When we set off to think about what would work in classrooms in low-Socio-Economic Status (SES) communities, we formed co-teaching and co-researching partnerships between academics and teachers in a number of schools in Sydney’s South West. These partnerships were supported by the Department’s Priority Schools Program. As the partnerships and projects developed, we began to observe that students were developing more positive relationships with their classrooms. Where previously there were patterns of opposition to challenging tasks, there was a ‘buzz’ around taking on hard work. Where compliance in low-level tasks was once the default classroom position, there was now a clear and palpable sense that students were becoming more engaged and eager to take risks in their learning. We talked about students being ‘in-task’ (positively involved in their learning) as opposed to being ‘on-task’ (just complying with teacher instructions).

As we thought about what was common across these classroom changes, it was agreed that they all shared important teaching and learning perspectives. These ‘engaging pedagogies’ had all been designed to encourage high-cognitive, high-affective and high operative responses from students – ‘thinking hard’, ‘feeling good’, ‘working to become better learners’. There were also observations that the engagement was as much about the ‘playing out’ in the classroom as the design of learning experiences. That is, if students were to become engaged in their learning, they all needed to see themselves as important members of the learning community, and to be recognised as all having important roles to play for the benefit of everybody in the classroom. They had to become ‘insiders’.

Another level of analysis suggested that four interrelated components were being used by teachers to develop what we termed ‘the insider classroom’, comprising a` student community of reflection, teacher inclusive conversations, student self-assessment, and teacher feedback. Now while each of these would be present in many classrooms, the Fair Go research proposed that there needed to be a particular shape to these processes to support the engagement project. This shaping can be seen below, where dot points represent the overriding idea (first dot point), the teacher focus (second dot point) and the classroom movement (third dot point) in each case.

Student community of reflection

  • A conscious environment of cooperative sharing of ideas and processes about learning.
  • Focus on substantive conversations encouraging student control and voice.
  • Movement away from compliance as a way of students responding to task completion and evaluation and towards shared ownership over all aspects of the learning experiences. 

Teacher inclusive conversations

  • Emphasis on sharing power with students; visibility that encourages sharing of classroom culture; promotion of thinking and opportunities for students to interact and share processes of learning.
  • Focus on learning, not behaviour.
  • Movement towards conversations about learning (shared, mutual, reciprocal).

Student self-assessment

  • Continuous opportunities for students to think about and express ideas about the processes of their learning.
  • Focus on cognitive, affective and operative aspects of learning and towards deeper levels of reflection.
  • Movement away from teacher as sole judge and towards students taking more responsibility for evaluation of learning.

Teacher feedback

  • Awareness of the power of written, oral and symbolic feedback on students’ self- concept as learners.
  • Focus on staged process: 1. the task (talking explicitly about achievement and what students have done that is right or wrong); 2. processes (helping students acquire processes and better ways of doing tasks); 3. self-regulation (encouraging effort and confidence and helping students to stay committed to the learning experiences).
  • Movement away from generalised and unrelated feedback towards feedback tied to investing more effort, more attention, or more confidence, into the task being undertaken.

The first part of the Fair Go student engagement framework was labelled small ‘e’ engagement. This is the ‘e’ of the MeE Framework, and is depicted in this diagram below. The planned experiences are in the centre circle; the insider classroom processes shown in the outer circle.

From this point the Fair Go Program then argued (drawing on research by Willis, 1977, and Bernstein, 1996) that, in concert, these small ‘e’ experiences and processes could send powerful messages to students that would encourage them to have a greater sense that school was a place that ‘worked’ for them, and education was a valuable resource that they could use now and into the future. This was the big ‘E’ engagement of the MeE Framework – ‘school is for me’. The messages were seen to be carried across what we termed ‘discourses of power’:knowledge, ability, control, place, and voice. Key ideas from the inner and outer circle of the ‘e’, then became elaborated as shown in the table below.

knowledge ‘We can see the connection and the meaning’
– reflectively constructed access to contextualized
and powerful knowledge
ability ‘I am capable’ – feelings of being able to achieve
and a spiral of high expectations and aspirations
control ‘We do this together’ – sharing of classroom time
and space; interdependence, mutuality and power with
place ‘It’s great to be a kid from …’ – being valued as an
individual and learner and feelings of belonging and ownership over learning
voice ‘We share’ – enjoying an environment of discussion
and reflection about learning with students and teachers playing reciprocal meaningful roles

Motivation: the ‘M’ of the MeE Framework

The final piece of the framework came about when we became increasingly aware that, despite the whole classroom pedagogical changes, there were still students who were falling ‘through the cracks’. Some still needed additional support and encouragement to take on board the small ‘e’ learning experiences being implemented in their classroom. A collaboration with Andrew Martin (then Western Sydney University, and later Sydney University and the University of New South Wales) helped us to understand the individual processes around what motivated students. His ‘Motivation and and Engagement Wheel’ (Martin, 2007, 2009) drew on research to highlight what helped and what got in the way of motivation, and these ideas were added to complete the MeE Framework. What helped was labelled ‘adaptive’ motivation, and consisted of self-efficacy, mastery orientation, valuing, persistence, planning, and task management. What got in the way of motivation was called ‘impeding’ and ‘maladaptive’ motivation, comprised of anxiety, failure avoidance, uncertain control, self-handicapping and disengagement. Key teaching questions for teachers coming out of these positive and negative processes around individual motivation are listed below, with the ‘adaptive’, ‘impeding’ and ‘maladaptive’ labels indicated in brackets.

  • What support is there for each student to develop a belief and confidence in their own ability to succeed at school, overcome challenges and perform at their best (self-efficacy)?
  • What individual encouragement is there for each student to focus on their own learning, solving problems and developing skills (mastery orientation)?
  • How is each student helped to see that school is useful, important and relevant (valuing school)?
  • Is there pedagogy that promotes persistence for each student (persistence)?
  • To what extent does teaching and learning foster key individual self-regulatory processes such as planning, monitoring, and study management for each student (planning, task management)?
  • How is there individual help for each student to overcome their own anxiety, take risks and have more control over their learning (anxiety, failure avoidance, uncertain control)?
  • How can there be practices that help each student manage or minimise maladaptive behavioural dimensions (self-handicapping, disengagement)?

The MeE Framework

This diagram is a summary of the ‘M’, ‘e’ and ‘E’ components of the MeE Framework

Qualitative research carried out across all aspects of the Fair Go Program into ‘e’, and quantitative analyses into ‘M’, both showed that ‘e’ (whole classroom processes) and ‘M’ (individual support strategies) can reliably work together to bring about a sense of – ‘school is for me’ – big ‘E’ engagement (Munns & Martin, 2013).

In the light of this continued research, the Fair Go Program co-researching academics and teachers use the MeE Framework as a critical tool as they think about what will work to encourage their students to have a stronger engagement with their classroom and school – a sense that ‘school is for me’. The articles in this journal illustrate how teachers and researchers drew on different aspects of the framework as they made important changes to the work being done in schools and classrooms.

References:

Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique. Taylor & Francis.

Martin, A. J. (2007). Examining a multidimensional model of student motivation and engagement using a construct validation approach. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77(2), 413-440.

Martin, A.J. (2009). Motivation and engagement across the academic lifespan: A developmental construct validity study of elementary school, high school, and university/college students. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 69(5), 794-824.

Munns, G., & Martin, A. J. (2013). Me, my classroom, my school: A mixed methods approach to the MeE framework of motivation, engagement, and academic development. In G. A. D. Liem & A. B. I. Bernardo (Eds.), Advancing cross-cultural perspectives on educational psychology: A festschrift for Dennis M. McInerney (pp. 317-342). Information Age.

Willis, P. E. (1977). Learning to labour: How working class kids get working class jobs. Saxon House.

History of The Fair Go Program: A Brief Overview

Katina Zammit is Deputy Dean and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, at Western Sydney University. She has been involved in the Fair Go Program since it began under the leadership of Geoff Munns, working with colleagues on School is for Me, Engaging Middle Years Boys in Rural Educational Settings, Teachers for a Fair Go and Schooling for a Fair Go. Similarly to other researchers, she has presented this work at conferences and published widely. Her interest in the ‘Insider School’ and engaging messages for teachers continues with the Leadership for a Fair Go project. In this article, Katina provides an historical overview of the projects that encompass the Fair Go Program.

Historical perspective, including development of engagement MeE

Teachers in Greater Western Sydney and academics at Western Sydney University (previously University of Western Sydney) have a focus on social justice and equity, for improving educational outcomes for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. I remember the beginning of the Fair Go Program and being invited by Geoff Munns to be a member of a team of academics working with teacher-colleagues who were implementing and evaluating changes in their classroom through a focus on student engagement. Each academic had their own area of passion: literacy, social studies and Human Society and Its Environment (HSIE), community connections, technology. Working with Helen Woodward, Geoff Munns introduced the Insider Classroom as a framework for teachers to use in both the planning of learning experiences and in the processes within a classroom that promote student engagement in learning. From the outset, teachers were positioned as co-researchers, a principle carried through all the projects that are encompassed by the Fair Go Program (FGP) (see Fig. 1, Fair Go Program Timeline).

The subsequent Engaging Messages for Students framework was conceptualised by drawing upon:

  • the initial work of the team, supported by the NSW Department of Education and Training’s Priority Schools Program (PSP). Our reflections on the teaching practices that promote student engagement in learning and that see education as a ‘potential’.
  • the research findings of others (such as Bernstein, 1990; Bernstein, 1996; Education Queensland, 2002; Haberman, 2010; Hayes, Lingard, & Mills, 2000; Newmann & Associates, 1996).

Initially, disengaging messages were identified around the discourses of power that are embedded in teachers’ classroom practices, (for example, with respect to students’ knowledge, ability, control, voice, and place). We focused on practices that teachers were using that interrupted or disrupted these negative messages around students’ knowledge, ability, and so on and thought about how to shift these to engaging messages to students. A result of this collaboration with the PSP was the book, School is for me (Fair Go Project Team, 2006), and other individual and co-written articles, papers and presentations.

The next Fair Go-related project was the Motivation and Engagement of Boys project, funded through the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training, which drew upon 15 sites, across Australia, identified as having successful educational outcomes for boys with a focus on low SES contexts (Munns et al., 2006). The project overlapped with School is for me, building on the initial two FGP frameworks.  Martin’s (2002) work on motivation and strategies to enhance individual students’ engagement in learning was adapted into the Fair Go Program’s pedagogical frameworks as an additional component for teachers to consider in designing the learning for their students. The Motivation and Engagement (MeE) Framework (focused around notions of Motivation, Insider Classroom and Engaging Messages), developed by Munns and Martin (2005), was used as a conceptual framework to analyse and describe the practices at these sites that contributed to the success of boys.

The MeE became the basis for the professional learning of teachers in both the 2007-2008 Engaging Middle Years Boys in Rural Educational Settings project and the action research each teacher undertook in their classrooms to improve boys’ engagement in learning (Cole et al., 2010). The project was funded by the NSW Department of Education and Training’s Priority Schools and Equity Programs unit and involved primary and secondary teachers in three regions of rural NSW: Riverina, New England and Illawarra/South Coast.

In 2008, the three-year Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project known as Teachers for a Fair Go began, in collaboration with the Department of Education and Training’s PSP. The project involved 28 teachers throughout NSW in PSP schools who were regarded by their peers as exemplary in engaging low SES students. The MeE Framework was deployed as the data collection tool to record observations of each class. The teachers and academic team worked together on cross-case analysis of the 28 case studies on negotiated themes. The main outcome from this project was the book: Exemplary teachers of students in poverty (Munns et al., 2013).

Following on from Teachers for a Fair Go, five primary schools in south western Sydney initiated the Fair Go from the Get Go project in 2010-2011 for new teachers working with the MeE Framework. With the support of academics from Western Sydney University, the new teachers decided on a question based on an aspect of the MeE Framework they wanted to investigate in order to improve their students’ engagement in learning through their teaching practices.

The project, Schooling for a Fair Go, while continuing the principles of teachers as researchers and focusing teacher investigations on an aspect of the MeE introduced a mentor-mentee model of professional learning. The mentors were originally drawn from teachers who had been part of the Teachers for a Fair Go project; they mentored another teacher at their school or a colleague in another school. The mentee later became a mentor for a teacher at another school as different phases of the project rolled out. In addition, in Schooling for a Fair Go, a number of schools focused on building the capacity of all staff to investigate their teaching practices. They used the MeE to frame individual teachers’ research with mentors or coaches working alongside. At the end of the project in 2014, 24 schools in south west Sydney had been involved. One of the outcomes from this project was the publication, Engaging schooling: developing exemplary education for students in poverty (Sawyer et al., 2018).

Based in schools involved in the final stage of Schooling for a Fair Go, the Leadership for a Fair Go project is in its infancy. It expands the focus from teachers per se to consider the processes that a leadership team in a school employ to build an Insider School that promotes and embeds Engaging Messages for Teachers in their leadership practices (Zammit, 2017). The initial findings from Leadership for a Fair Go suggest that schools that adopt an Insider School disposition also promote teachers as researchers through their whole school practices and can often ignite further passion around teaching practice.

Acknowledgements

Members of the Fair Go Team at Western Sydney University would like to acknowledge the contributions of Professors Mark McFadden and Susan Groundwater-Smith, who were critical friends at important stages of the research  program: Mark during the development of the ‘e’ student engagement frames and associated discourses of power, and Susan at a number of critical points of Teachers for a Fair Go and at the beginning of Schooling for a Fair Go.

References:

Bernstein, B. (1990). The structuring of Pedagogic Discourse: Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 4. London: Routledge.

Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. London: Taylor & Francis.

Cole, B., Mooney, M., Munns, G., Power, A., Sawyer, W., & Zammit, K. (2010). Engaging Middle Years Boys in Rural Educational Settings. . Retrieved from http://researchdirect.westernsydney.edu.au/islandora/object/uws:26941.

Education Queensland. (2002). Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study, Coorparoo.

Haberman, M. (2010). The pedagogy of poverty versus good teaching. Phi Delta Kappan, 92(2), 81.

Hayes, D., Lingard, B., & Mills, M. (2000). Productive Pedagogies. Education Links, 60, 10-13.

Martin, A. (2002). Motivation and academic resilience: Developing a model for student enhancement. Australian Journal of Education 46(1), 34-45.

Munns, G., & Martin, A. (2005). Its all about MeE: A motivation and engagement framework. Paper presented at the Annual conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Sydney.

Munns, G., Arthur, L., Downes, T., Gregson, R., Power, A., Sawyer, W., Singh, M. Thistelton-Martin, J. & Steele, F. (2006). Motivation and Engagement of Boys: Evidence-based Teaching Practices. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED536215.pdf (for the main report) and https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED536198.pdf (for the appendices).

Munns, G., Sawyer, W., Cole, B. and the FairGo Team (2013). Exemplary Teachers of Students in Poverty. London: Routledge.

Newmann, F., & Associates. (1996). Authentic Achievement: Restructuring Schools for Intellectual Quality. San Francisco: Josey Bass.

Sawyer, W., Munns, G., Zammit, K., Attard, C., Vass, E., & Hatton, C. (2018). Engaging Schooling: Developing Exemplary Education for sSudents in Poverty. London: Routledge.

The Fair Go Project Team (2006). School is for Me: Pathways to Student Engagement. Sydney: NSW Department of Education and Training.

Zammit, K. (2017). Re-envisioning education through a whole school approach to leading student engagement: The insider school. Paper presented at the Re-Imagining Education for Democracy, University fo Southern Queesnland, Springfield.

Critical Literacy in English and History: Stages 3 & 4

Kathy Rushton and Joanne Rossbridge explore the important concept of Critical Literacy. They explain why it is essential for teachers (in both primary and secondary classrooms) to use critical literacy to ensure student engagement, to teach our students how to properly analyse all text and to allow them to develop a wider view of, and critical understanding of, the world . . .

The aim of critical literacy is a classroom environment where students and teachers together work to (a) see how the worlds of texts work to construct their worlds, their cultures, and their identities in powerful, often overtly ideological ways; and (b) use texts as social tools in ways that allow for a reconstruction of these same worlds.

Luke (2000) Critical Literacy in Australia: A matter of context and standpoint. Journal of Adolescent and Adult literacy. Vol. 43/5 448-461 p.453

Teachers in the middle years, Stages 3 & 4, are supporting students in their transition from the primary to secondary years. This transition often requires students to interrogate more challenging texts and respond to and compose more sophisticated texts of their own. Teachers, therefore, need to develop their own critical analysis and curation of texts for use in the classroom and to develop a range of appropriate teaching and learning strategies to support the development of critical literacy for their students. The theoretical perspectives that inform this perspective relate to issues of race, gender and ethnicity and also how these issues impact on language choices.

Designing learning with a critical literacy perspective

Defining critical literacy can be facilitated by reviewing the four reading resources (Freebody & Luke, 1990) particularly the Text Analyst role which supports students to question and analyse texts. Students can be supported in the development of critical literacy if teachers are able to identify links to critical literacy in English and History Syllabus documents. These links can then be exemplified for students by, for instance, elaborating on cross curriculum priorities and general capabilities.

In practice teachers can analyse features such as context, author background, date and place of publication and then support their students to discuss different perspectives and contestability. This is most easily done in a modelled reading lesson accompanied by strategies to support students before, during and after reading. Before reading, viewing and analysing images can support the development of field knowledge and provide a starting point for developing vocabulary related to the subject. Strategies such as verbal ping pong, which is often used to develop debating skills, can engage students in developing arguments for or against a topic as an initial strategy for developing field knowledge or following a modelled reading to elaborate on aspects of the topic. Similarly, a drama strategy such as conscience alley can be used before, during or after reading to help develop empathy for a character, historical or imaginary, when they face a critical event. (Dutton et al, 2018; Rossbridge & Rushton, 2011 & 2015)

By encouraging a focus on language choices, students are also supported in their analysis of perspectives. Some students may find that they are excluded from the texts which they are required to read or produce in the school (Bishop, 2003). Alton-Lee (2000) exemplifies this by reporting an incident in which a teacher in New Zealand accidentally excluded an Indigenous student “from the ‘we’ of the classroom” (p.26). It is easy to see how this situation could be replicated in any English or History classroom if the texts that are used do not analyse the “we” and identify the perspective from which they are written. For instance, texts written from the perspective of Aboriginal Australians may position non-Aboriginal readers as visitors to sites or ceremonies or as outsiders or invaders in events from the past rather than as actors ‘discovering’, ‘describing’ or ‘evaluating’ the same sites and events.

Selecting texts to develop critical literacy

If texts are viewed from a critical literacy perspective, a range of texts can be selected to represent a variety of perspectives in contemporary Australian society. Especially in History, texts should be considered in terms of contestability and empathetic understanding as well as how they develop and challenge understandings about contemporary issues and the past. To support students to engage critically in response to texts, teachers can identify, deconstruct and analyse language features to support critical analysis. In particular questioning perspectives based on context, author background, date and place of publication will support this process. In this way students will be supported to describe and assess the motives of individuals and groups within historical contexts and in literary texts. Supporting students to develop the ability to interpret, explain and identify perspectives in a range of texts in both English and History will support the understanding of subject matter and literacy. Intercultural understanding will also be supported through comparison of texts especially those written from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective. The table below suggests some questions which could be used to interrogate and analyse a text and to develop the role of the Text Analyst.

Table 1. (click here to view table)

Guiding questions for selecting and curating texts: Developing the Text analyst role

How do you interpret the perspective of this text?

How does the context of the text differ from your own context?

What assumptions does the author make about the audience?

What perspective is assumed by the author?

Who do you think might disagree with the author’s stance? Why?

Is the text relevant to contemporary Australia? Why?

Is the text authoritative or does it explore the subject and allow you to think critically about it?

Whose voices are silent or whose interests absent?

 Working with texts to develop critical literacy

Developing a critical literacy approach to teaching is truly dependent on the curation of a range of texts that define perspectives such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander or Asian perspectives and texts which also promote intercultural understanding. To develop empathetic understanding, teachers can identify and compare features from a range of texts. A sequence of teaching and learning strategies to support critical responses to texts can also be developed by critically analysing perspectives and making connections. Reading and writing in the subject area will also be supported if the critical literacy practices outlined in the English and History Syllabus documents and the cross-curriculum priorities and general capabilities are properly considered.

Writing from a critical literacy perspective

Writing is a way of investigating perspective and interpretations of History and responding to ideas and representations in texts in English. After exploring multiple texts across the English and History subject areas with a focus on historical events and perspectives, students can then be supported in writing. Of great importance is the establishment of a context for writing. As when reading form a critical literacy perspective, writers will also need to consider the identity or role of the writer, the audience, the mode of publication, the time of writing and the values and beliefs of the time. This will determine whether the writing is to be imaginative or more informative or argumentative as well as the overall purpose of the text. A focus on historical content might be based on significant historical events or significant individuals. Consider the contextual choices below and how they might construct different perspectives and empathetic understanding regarding the subject matter.

(click here to view table)

Subject matterTime of publicationAuthorAudienceMode of publication
early contact between Indigenous people and the colonisers1788journalistcolonisers in the Sydney areanewspaper article
daily life of a free settler1795female free settlerwriter/family discovering diary 125 years laterdiary
friendship between an Indigenous British child2020Australian authorchildren in contemporary Australiacomic or picture book

These contextual features will influence the language choices of a text. Any shift in these features will impact on the text features. Consider how a newspaper article about early contact between the Indigenous people and the colonisers would differ when published in 1788 compared to 2020.

Once a clear context for independent writing is established, teachers will need to think about similar texts to use as models to show students how to develop a critical literacy response through written language. Models for writing may be selected from those texts that students have already investigated from a critical literacy perspective or models can be written by teachers. Students will need to see such models and be guided through how text choices create or challenge a particular perspective. This will involve an explicit focus on language choices. For example, if writing an historical narrative, a focus could be placed on choices related to whose voice is included, how people are named and described and who is constructed as an actor or sensor (Rossbridge & Rushton, 2015). After modelling students could then participate in a joint construction where the writing process, development of ideas and talk of language choices is handed over to students with the teacher taking on the role of facilitator. The teacher will need to continue to support students in thinking about how their choices construct a particular perspective often through thinking aloud during the text construction. Once students are confident with discussing texts using modelled metalanguage they may move in to independent construction. The provision of clear criteria around perspectives and empathetic understanding will support them in drafting and reviewing their texts with a critical literacy approach.

References:

Alton-Lee, A. (2003). Quality teaching for diverse students in schooling: Best evidence synthesis.
Wellington: Ministry of Education. Retrieved from http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/series/2515/5959

Bishop, R. (2003) Changing Power Relations in Education: Kaupapa Māori Messages for “Mainstream” Education in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Comparative Education, 39, 2, (27), 221-238Retrieved from  http://www.jstor.org/stable/3099882.

Dutton, J., D’warte, J., Rossbridge, J. & Rushton, K. (2018) Tell me your Story. PETAA: Sydney

Freebody, P. & Luke, A. (1990) Literacies programs: Debates and demands in cultural context. Prospect,5.pp /7-16

Luke, A. (2000) Mediating Adolescent Literacies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 43:5,448-461

Rossbridge, J. & Rushton, K. (2015) Put it in Writing. PETAA: Sydney.

Rossbridge, J. & Rushton, K. (2011) Conversations about text 2: Teaching grammar using factual texts.

Newtown: PETAA

Kathy Rushton has worked as a literacy consultant, ESL and classroom teacher with the DoE (NSW), and in a range of other educational institutions. She is interested in the development of literacy, especially in socio-economically disadvantaged communities with students learning English as an additional language or dialect. Kathy is currently a lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney.

Joanne Rossbridge is an independent literacy consultant working in both primary and secondary schools and with teachers across Sydney. She has worked as a classroom and ESL teacher and literacy consultant with the DoE (NSW). Much of her experience has involved working with students from non-English speaking backgrounds. Joanne is particularly interested in student and teacher talk and how talk about language can assist the development of language and literacy skills.

Collaborating Critically and Creatively In Visual Arts

Karen Maras (UNSW) argues that Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) should be a fundamental part of all Visual Arts teaching. She provides us with the findings of a collaborative research-based professional learning program (carried out by Karen and public school Visual Arts teachers) developed to make CCT an integral part of Visual Arts classrooms. . .

Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) is regarded as an important attribute that students need in order to adapt to a dynamic and rapidly changing world of work and life in the 21st century (ACARA, 2020). CCT is one of eight general capabilities nominated in proposals for curriculum reform in New South Wales (NESA, 2019) and as an area to strengthen in recommendations for the further development of the Australian Curriculum (Commonwealth of Australia, 2018). General capabilities are proposed by policy-makers and researchers in the area of educational measurement as a means for improving students’ academic achievement in all subject areas (Education Council, 2019; Griffen, McGaw, & Care, 2012).

Definitions of CCT abound. They are typically expressed, however, as generic statements describing sets of capabilities that can be integrated in learning, teaching and assessment. ACARA (2020) defines CCT as ‘two types of thinking’ that support ‘complementary dimensions to thinking and learning’ including the mastery of cognitive skills such as concept formation, theory construction, metacognitive reflection and higher order thinking. A CCT learning continuum describes how these skills articulate at different levels of learning. The Department of Education New South Wales also subscribes to this definition of CCT, further distinguishing them as separate skills in their advice to teachers (DOE, 2020).

The Report

While Visual Arts teachers and policy makers are confident that the development of CCT is fundamental to learning in the subject, to date there is limited research or advice that makes explicit the links between syllabus content in Visual Arts and pedagogical strategies teachers can use to promote the development of CCT in the classroom. To progress the challenge of understanding more deeply the relationships between CCT and learning and teaching in Visual Arts, Ms Kathrine Kyriacou, Dulwich Hill High School, in partnership with Dr Karen Maras, School of Education UNSW Sydney, designed a collaborative research-based professional learning program to investigate the role and place of CCT in teaching and learning in Visual Arts.

This initiative, Teaching and assessing students’ critical and creative thinking skills in Visual Arts Years 7-10, was awarded the inaugural Creative Innovation Grant funded by the Learning and Teaching Directorate, NSW Department of Education in 2019. The aim of the project was to develop teachers’ understandings of the theoretical bases of critical and creative thinking in Visual Arts and explore how this understanding could be applied in the classroom to enhance students’ CCT. A group of five early career and more experienced teachers, from a range of metropolitan and remote rural public schools, collaborated with a researcher in this Visual Arts professional learning program through online and face-to-face meetings. The project comprised four parts which supported the group to move from theory to practice and back again.

Phase 1: Professional learning workshops

The investigation of research on CCT in Visual Arts was grounded in the premise that CCT in Visual Arts is a domain specific capability (Maras, 2019) and takes the form of practical and conceptual reasoning (Brown, 2017/2005). The group took a deep dive into learning about empirical research, focussing on the cognitive and conceptual dimensions of students’ reasoning in art. They learned how students develop increasing autonomy in their reasoning and thinking in art as they learn to work with frameworks of meaning and the practicalities of reasoning about artworks, artists, audiences and subject-matter as they grow older (Brown & Freeman, 1993; Freeman, 2011, 2010, 2004; Maras, 2010, 2018a, 2018b). These studies show that, as students develop, they gradually acquire reasoning skills that support them to organise sets of critical claims, or facts about art, and use these recursively to create and represent intentional points of view about relationships among agencies in the artworld. Recursion in reasoning is the means by which we learn to engage in the processes of concept formation, theory development and metacognitive reflection (Fleischer-Feldman, 1987). These skills underscore CCT (Maras, 2019).

Through further investigation of the cognitive constraints on reasoning in art, the teachers learned how CCT relies on mobilising Visual Arts syllabus concepts in students’ thinking and reasoning in their learning (Maras, 2018a). This phase of the project concluded with an investigation of how concepts, derived from frameworks of meaning and value, in conjunction with the core concepts of artist, artwork, audience and subject matter within the Visual Arts Syllabus, provided a rich array of possibilities that could be strategically engaged, in the classroom, to support the development of CCT. CCT was, therefore, understood to be at the heart of learning in the domain of art.

Phase 2: Curriculum construction

Each teacher then applied their new understandings of CCT to the design of a lesson sequence. The aim of the lesson sequence was to support students to engage in concept formation, theory building and metacognitive reflection as a function of their critical and creative reasoning and thinking about art. To achieve this aim, the sequence addressed nominated concepts from the Years 7-10 Visual Arts Syllabus (2003) to augment an existing program of work implemented in Stage 4 or 5 Visual Arts. Lesson sequences featured activities that engaged:

  1. one or two key concepts derived from one Frame
  2. particular relationships between agencies of the artworld they wanted students to explore in depth (Conceptual Framework)
  3. pedagogy promoting critical reasoning exchanges and the formation of a point of view about art
  4. examples of artworks by one or two artists, and
  5. a body of resources that would be used as prompts to extend students’ critical reasoning exchanges about artwork meanings.

Group discussions of pedagogical strategies that would best support students to engage in recursive reasoning exchanges (that promoted the sharing and clarification of critical claims and the creation of different points of view about the meaning and value of artworks) supported teachers to develop their lesson sequences.

Phase 3: Curriculum Implementation

Each teacher then implemented their own lesson sequences in their schools. They engaged formative and summative assessment strategies to evaluate levels of student engagement in CCT. As would normally occur in their practice, the teachers assessed artworks, art writing and observations of students’ classroom exchanges to make an evaluation of how successful reasoning strategies, and associated pedagogies, were in promoting students’ engagement in CCT.

Phase 4: Evaluation

The teachers participated in individual and group reflections about their experiences in the project. They were invited to reflect on what they learned about the relationships between CCT, Visual Arts content and the role of recursive reasoning in promoting CCT in students’ creative exchanges and performances. They also reflected on the challenges they perceived in the design, and implementation, of teaching strategies that they had envisaged would enhance CCT in the classroom and the way these challenges could be addressed. Discussions in this phase of the project were recorded and transcribed for research purposes in accordance with UNSW Human Research Ethics and State Education Research Approvals Process (SERAP) approvals. The results of this component of the project will be addressed in greater detail in articles published in peer reviewed research journals in accordance with these ethical clearances. A summary of key insights gained about the role and CCT in Visual Arts teaching and learning follows.

Reflections and learnings

The outcomes of this project were multi-layered:

Student engagement in CCT

When working with students to make critical claims and using these claims to create new points of view in their reasoning, the teachers commented on the ways these two types of thinking functioned in an integrated way rather than as discrete types of thinking. They observed, when engaging in whole class in recursive reasoning exchanges in which particular concepts were made more explicit, that they were largely surprised by the responses of their students. For example, they observed that:

  • many students gradually gained confidence in working with the practical and conceptual structure of reasoning, with more students actively contributing to these investigations of art
  • the discussions were more lively than usual with an increase in peer-to-peer exchanges as claims were debated and collectively evaluated
  • students of all ability levels generally appeared to enjoy these exchanges and, when encouraged to reflect on their learning in previous lessons, appeared to be more confident in expressing their points of view in more coherent and reasonable terms, evaluating their own stance in relation to others’ views, and representing these ideas in written accounts.

On the whole, while some teachers acknowledged their own need to continue exploring strategies to engage all students in whole-class and small group exchanges, they were confident that the calibre of students’ CCT and the representation of these in oral and written accounts had improved.

Pedagogical strategies for developing CCT in Visual Arts

Strategies that were effective in prompting students to extend their reasoning about artworks, when building critical judgements and constructing explanations of their own artmaking, involved providing information about the circumstances that informs the production of an artwork or situates the development of an artwork within conventions of practice. This involved asking students to explain and interpret source material including:

  • images of the artwork in context of site, or with audiences and artists
  • extracts from critical reviews and historical accounts
  • statements by artists and audiences
  • extracts from documentaries or video clips on the artist and their practice.

Teachers also commented that, by orientating their teaching to targeted concepts, they felt more engaged in the reasoning exchanges in the classroom and intervened in reasoning exchanges by students more often and with greater strategic purpose. For example, they felt greater confidence in offering counter views or issuing provocations to adopt alternate views to prompt students to explore different kinds of critical claims. They believed that these kinds of interventions promoted the development of critical claims that supported students to develop higher order thinking and metacognitive reflections about their thinking.

Teacher autonomy through collaborative learning

Teachers reflected on ways their understanding of syllabus content and strategies (for engaging with particular concepts that built, over successive investigations, toward the creation of more substantive and reflexive forms of thinking about art in the classroom) had developed and deepened. Paramount in these individual and collective reflections were claims that the teachers:

  • deepened their own knowledge of Visual Arts syllabus content (frames, conceptual framework and practice) and how to apply this in the design of learning activities sequenced to build increasingly more complex ideas
  • had developed greater confidence in knowing how to adapt their pedagogy to further enhance the development of students’ CCT in their classroom practice,
  • felt initially challenged by the research and theory, but through revisiting the literature several times and then working with their peers in collaborative and open discussions of how the theory applied to classroom practice, these feelings abated.

They all remarked that they enjoyed learning with peers and that the exchanges about subject specific issues and ideas left them feeling reinvigorated as professionals. There was consensus among the group that professional learning opportunities that specifically addressed their subject expertise, and facilitated links with other teachers in different schools, was of great value to their own development as teachers.

Conclusion

The apparent alignment between students’ engagement in sustained, practical, and conceptual reasoning about art, points to the centrality of CCT to learning and teaching in Visual Arts. While teachers’ observations and reflections, on their lesson sequences and pedagogical strategies, revealed some interesting insights into the nature of teaching and learning CCT, these are provisional findings that require confirmation in the form of further research. Extending this initial investigation to delve more deeply into these issues could entail implementing a similar project across a broader range of schools in which data could be collected in the form of observations of classroom exchanges between teachers and students and evaluations of work samples. One thing was crystal clear. The benefits of research-informed teacher professional learning that addressed a general capability, in the terms of the discipline content and pedagogy, was the key factor for the teachers involved.

Acknowledgements

All members of this project would like to thank Ms Connie Alves, Principal, Dulwich Hill High School of Visual Arts and Design for her support. We would also like to acknowledge the wonderful support received from DoE Creative Arts Advisors Julia Brennan, Cathryn Ricketts and Nicole McAlpine in the development of the project and the resources herein.

References:

Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (ACARA). (2020). General capabilities in the Australian Curriculum. Retrieved 20 April 2020  from http://v7-5.australiancurriculum.edu.au/generalcapabilities/overview/general-capabilities-in-the-australian-curriculum

Brown, N.C.M. (2017/2005). The relation between evidence and action in the assessment of practice. In N.C.M. Brown (Ed.). Studies in philosophical realism in art, design and education, (pp. 243-260). Switzerland: Springer.

Brown, N.M., & Freeman, N.H., (1993). Children’s developing beliefs about art as a basis for sequencing in art education, Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference, https://www.aare.edu.au/data/publications/1993/brown93025.pdf

Commonwealth of Australia. (2018). Through Growth to Achievement: Report of the review to achieve educational excellence in Australian schools. Retrieved 20 April 2020 from https://docs.education.gov.au/documents/through-growth-achievement-report-review-achieve-educational-excellence-australian-0

Department of Education (DOE). (2020). Creative thinking. Retrieved 30 April, 2020 from: https://docs.education.gov.au/documents/alice-springs-mparntwe-education-declaration

Feldman, C. F. (1987). Thought from language: The linguistic construction of cognitive representations. In J. Bruner & H. Haste (Eds.), Making sense: The child’s construction of the world (pp. 131-146). London: Methuen.

Freeman, N.H. (2011). Varieties of pictorial judgement. In E. Schellekens & P. Goldie, (Eds.), The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology (pp 414-426). Oxford University Press.

Freeman, N.H. (2010). Children as Intuitive Critics. In C. Milbrath & C.Lightfoot (Eds.), Human Development (pp.185-206). NewYork: Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis.

Freeman, N.H. (2004). Aesthetic judgment and reasoning. In E. W. Eisner & M. D. Day (Eds.), Handbook of research and policy in art education (pp.359-378). Mahwah, New Jersey: Laurence Erlbaum Associates.

Griffen, P., McGaw, B., & Care, E. (2012). Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills. Dordtrecht: Springer.

Maras, K. (2019). Reconciling critical and creative thinking capabilities and critical practice in Visual Arts education: a work in progress. Australian Art Education, 40(2), pp. 262- 276.

Maras, K. (2018a). Mind, language and artworks as real constraints on students’ critical reasoning about meaning in art. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 37(3), pp.530-540.

Maras, K. (2018b). A realist account of critical agency in art criticism in art and design education, International Journal of Art & Design Education, 37(4), pp. 599-610. DOI: 10.1111/jade.12206

Maras, K. (2010). Age-related shifts in the theoretical constraints underlying children’s critical reasoning in art, Australian Art Education, 33(1), pp. 20-28.

New South Wales Educational Standards Authority (NESA). (2019). Nurturing wonder and igniting passion: designs for a future school curriculum. NSW Curriculum Review – Interim Report. Retrieved October 24, 2019, from https://nswcurriculumreview.nesa.nsw.edu.au/pdfs/interimreport/chapters/NSW-Curriculum-Review-Interim-Report.pdf

New South Wales Educational Standards Authority (NESA). (2003). Years 7-10 Visual Arts Syllabus. Retrieved April 30, 2020, from https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/creative-arts/visual-arts-7-10

Dr Karen Maras is a senior lecturer specialising in curriculum development and change, teacher education and visual arts education, School of Education, UNSW Sydney, Australia.

Her research interests are focussed on the theoretical foundations of students’ critical and conceptual development in art learning and the implications of this for developing concept-based approaches to learning progression, curriculum and pedagogy more broadly. A key focus of this work is the role reasoning plays in the practical and conceptual dimensions of knowledge construction and learning through dialogic exchange in the classroom.

In response to global imperatives in education, Karen has recently commenced a program of research focussing on the extent to which general capabilities logically articulate in reasoning as a basis for learning and teaching in specific subject disciplines, and Visual Arts in particular. This work informs a recent collaborative project Teaching and assessing students’ critical and creative thinking skills in Visual Arts Years 7-10 involving UNSW and Dulwich Hill Visual Arts High School and funded by the NSW Department of Education Creative Innovation Grant, Learning and Teaching Directorate ($25,000).

Karen’s contributions to teacher education are complemented by her ongoing involvement in state and national curriculum reform, previous classroom teaching experience in schools and leadership roles in professional teacher associations at state and national level.

Karen-Maras-For-Your-Classroom-Semester-2-2020Download

Leading with Heart in PDHPE

Amy Harriman explores some strategies for developing collegial and collaborative leadership both within a PDHPE faculty and at a whole school level . . .

As I write this, amidst the chaos of COVID-19, there is a persistent air of uncertainty in our homes and schools. I watch, as my colleagues navigate this period of unrest, in awe at the resilience and comradery that our profession has shown. I scroll through various social media platforms and take note of the very public acknowledgment from our wider community; resounding echoes of support and respect for teachers, branded ‘essential’ during this pandemic. It has catapulted us into a steep learning curve, richer for the professional learning. The online PDHPE networking space is flooded with professional learning ideas, reviews and messages of support. Led by some of our most ardent public educators, the collective message that ‘we are not alone’ is reassuring. The authentic leadership displayed is unquestionable.

No doubt, what has emerged from this time is not only a renewed trust and belief in our teachers, but the emergence of a new thinking around the definition of effective school leadership.

In many ways, some out of practical necessity, our teachers have stepped up as educational leaders. We have had to be resilient, agile and reflective. We have assessed each step, mindful of our decisions, and their wider impact. Our clear goal: to effectively support quality teaching and learning in an unpredictable time.

It is important we don’t lose sight of the invaluable learnings this period has provided us. We need to cultivate these insights, taking forward what has worked and can be applied to great effect in the future. What shifts in thinking and pedagogical practice have occurred? What can we learn from other teams’ success? Taking the time to reflect on our experiences should ensure we sustain the momentum we need to continue to make our profession stronger and more effective in driving improvement in our schools beyond 2020.

We are part of a system – not a single faculty.

The last few months have affirmed the importance of relationships and connectedness. We are stronger, better practitioners when we connect, share and learn. Effective schools are built on strong relationships within, and beyond, the school gates. This makes two-way communication and meaningful dialogue with your colleagues critically important. The best leaders encourage an open flow of ideas, throughout the school, to harness creativity in exploring and devising solutions and improving practice. Furthermore, such cross-faculty interaction creates a culture that assists in breaking down the walls that separate teachers from one another, freeing teachers from the silos we can see emerge.

Joining your PDHPE professional associations, such as Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation (ACHPER), and engaging meaningfully in what they offer, is a good start in establishing links with wider networks. This is just the foundation. Consider exploring opportunities for cross-faculty initiatives within your school and make genuine efforts to connect with schools, both within your network, and beyond, to develop reciprocal and sustainable relationships. Reaching out with a healthy curiosity can spark some of the most innovative, impactful initiatives and supports the notion of ‘working smarter, not harder’, by way of collective efficacy.

Connect the day to day to the big picture.

Take the time every day to acknowledge that what you do is part of something bigger. Schools are busy places, and with so many competing demands, it is easy to lose sight of our real purpose. Contextualising your teaching is essential if you want your work to connect with your students and the vision of the school.

As we approach the end of a second year of NSW PDHPE syllabus implementation, it is critical to establish time to reflect on, and thoroughly evaluate, the success of your programs with your team. As part of your evaluation, consider the practices you have embedded to support genuine connections with your students and with broader school priorities. Are your colleagues speaking the same language when promoting the PDHPE propositions that underpin our syllabus? Consider the extent to which you and your colleagues are engaging with goals set to improve literacy, numeracy or in promoting holistic wellbeing. How well do the central themes, scope and intentions of your programs align with wider school practices and priorities? What role does authentic student agency play in your decision making?

As a faculty leader, I need to ensure, before we undertake any new or revised initiative, that we know how we are going to measure our success. Student voice plays an integral part in this process. So knowing the questions we want to ask our students and knowing what we want to measure are key to ensuring our work is having impact and connecting with our students.

PDHPE teachers are well placed to meaningfully connect curriculum with broader school wellbeing programs and initiatives. Aligning wellbeing initiatives, such as your school’s wellbeing policy and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) targeted programs including Be You, with your work in the classroom is rewarding for everyone. It reinforces important messages, yielding greater impact and reminds students you are part of a team on the same page, collectively invested in improving their sense of connectedness and personal wellbeing.

Walk your talk

Modelling the behaviour you want to see is powerful in influencing positive change, practices and in building strong relationships. Effective school teams are built on trust, which is developed by nurturing honesty and demonstrating integrity in the classroom and in staff communication. Cultures with high trust can see comradery and staff wellbeing improve, even in the most challenging of times, due to relationships forged in adversity.

Belonging to a PDHPE faculty often means being heavily invested in whole school projects including sporting programs and other wellbeing initiatives that demand your time and energy, often leaving you feeling drained. This can leave us vulnerable to poor health and, potentially, burnout. Think about the initiatives in place to genuinely nurture staff wellbeing and promote a sense of team. My faculty currently lead a High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) session for our staff one afternoon each week. It is 45 minutes of weight training and cardio but the time spent together, and the relationships formed, have strengthened our sense of team and role modelled our commitment to staff wellbeing.

Essentially, the PDHPE syllabus aims to provide opportunities for students to “value and appreciate influences on personal health practices and demonstrate a commitment to lead and promote healthy, safe and active lives for themselves, others and communities” (NESA, 2018, p.13). We want to practise what we champion in our classrooms. For this reason, we need to prioritise self-care so we can maintain our health and wellbeing. So too, ‘walking your talk’ with your colleagues is critical in supporting and promoting healthy practices. If you insist on colleagues maintaining a work-life balance, exemplify this behaviour through your own actions – particularly after work hours.

Cultivate an intellectually humble mindset

‘We don’t know what we don’t know’. This often-repeated reassurance, offered to early career teachers as they navigate their first years of teaching, remains invaluable advice for all of us, regardless of our experience. Maintaining a healthy self-awareness of our cognitive limitations supports us to engage more constructively with our colleagues.

Resnick (2018) describes intellectual humility as “being actively curious about your blind spots”. Being responsive to reason, and remaining honest about our development opportunities, allows us to be open-minded and receptive to a multitude of possibilities.

Role-modelling a humble open-mindedness will set the tone for a safe learning space in our classrooms and our staffrooms. This is particularly the case when teaching sensitive content in PDHPE. These lessons rely on teachers creating safe, supportive spaces where students are comfortable sharing varying points of view, values and beliefs. By way of modelling a humble mindset, teachers set the tone in making these lessons a success.

Remember, people matter most.

Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”

Our capacity to lead is dependent on the relationships we build around us. Getting to know people, their strengths, and what gives them purpose, is essential in becoming a leader people want to follow. What makes you an even more effective leader is both knowing how to leverage people’s strengths and providing guidance with a mindful heart. Listening to my team’s concerns through the COVID-19 period has been a window into more than the anxiety we have experienced in ensuring continuity for learning for our students. It has been an insightful revelation of the strengths we possess in adapting to an unpredictable series of changes and challenges. Although we have been physically distanced, ironically, by way of consistent communication and support, this period has brought us closer.

Being part of a PDHPE team offers real opportunities to lead faculty, whole school and systemic initiatives. Synonymous with high energy, the PDHPE team is one of the more visible faculties in a school. We need to make sure that leadership is distributed among teachers, enabling opportunities to develop valuable skills. Where there is resistance, carefully consider how to better organise teams to allow teachers to lead in more fulfilling roles or tasks. Approach this from the position that everyone has a strength they can contribute. Validating the unique qualities and experiences teachers offer is powerful in making people feel valued and knowing that their contributions matter.

In times like these, we have the chance to seize the opportunity to grow as leaders and professionals. We have a once in a generation opportunity to reimagine the way we teach and lead. By taking time to learn from each other, self-reflect and grow, we have a chance to authentically lead, and build, stronger teams, classrooms and communities together. In the end, the degree to which you build, and inspire, your people to optimise personal growth is the best measure you have to judge your success as an authentic leader.

References:

NSW Education Standards Authority (2018). ‘Personal Development, Health and Physical Education K–10 Syllabus’. Sydney. NSW Education Standards Authority. p13.

Resnick, B. (2020). ‘Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong’. Vox. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/4/17989224/intellectual-humility-explained-psychology-replication. Accessed 6/7/20.

Amy Harriman has 14 years’ experience as a curriculum Head Teacher in NSW Public Schools. She is currently Head Teacher PDHPE at East Hills Girls Technology High School in Sydney. In her former role, she led the NSW K-10 PDHPE syllabus development project as Senior Curriculum Officer with the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA).

Technology Subjects Years 7 -12 Update – 2020 – Semester I

Alexander Stewart discusses the Technological and Applied Studies (TAS) courses in Years 7 -12 and brings teachers up to date on the changes and issues involved. . .

Between 2019 and 2020 Technological and Applied Studies (TAS) teachers in NSW have begun implementing eight new syllabuses which is the most significant release of new syllabuses in NSW since 1999. These new syllabuses include advanced technologies and Australian Curriculum content resulting in the need for TAS teachers to develop new programs, scope and sequences, assessment strategies, and to update their resources.

Technology Mandatory Years 7-8 Syllabus

The new Technology Mandatory Years 7- 8 Syllabus (2017) was implemented with Year 7 in 2019. In 2020 it will also be delivered to Year 8. This new syllabus has seen a significant change to Technology Mandatory content delivery in schools. The content has been adapted from the Australian Curriculum and includes the context areas of Agriculture and Food Technologies, Digital Technologies, Engineered Systems and Materials Technologies.

The introduction of computer programming (or coding) in Digital Technologies, using a general purpose programming language, has been a focus of the media and teacher professional learning. There is some concern the Digital Technologies’ outcome related to data, its representation and transmission has been overlooked in the noise about coding.

Many schools have used the new syllabus as an opportunity to refine their existing teaching and learning practices or to introduce wholescale change. The digital technologies content is the most significant change to this syllabus and requires almost all TAS teachers to undertake professional learning to adequately cover the outcomes and content. TAS teachers do need to be conscious of the fact that it is only being taught to Stage 4 level and not to Stage 6.

Years 7-10 Technology Syllabuses

In 2020 TAS teachers have begun implementing revised Years 7-10 Technologies syllabuses including Agricultural Technology, Design and Technology, Food Technology, Graphics Technology, Industrial Technology, Marine and Aquaculture Technology, and Textiles Technology.

All syllabuses include updated content and examples, of which many include advanced and emerging technologies. The Life Skills content in each syllabus has been aligned to the regular course content and the related Life Skills outcomes are included with the Stage 4/5 content to reinforce this alignment. The representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures has been strengthened in each syllabus and an interactive glossary has been provided to clarify key terms.

The key changes for each syllabus are outlined below:

Agricultural Technology The Agricultural Technology syllabus content has been restructured to provide greater clarity for teachers. The syllabus retains the Core A and Core B structure The topics of Introduction to Agriculture and Agricultural Systems and Management, however, have been added respectively. The outcomes have been amended to allow schools the flexibility to deliver either Plant or Animal Enterprises in Core B.

Design and Technology

This syllabus has been amended to provide greater alignment with the new Technology Mandatory Years 7-8 course. The context areas now include Agriculture, Digital Technologies, Engineered Systems, Food Technology, Information and Communication Technology, and Materials Technology. The content has generally remained unchanged in the syllabus revision.

Students undertaking the 100-hour course are required to complete a minimum of 2 context areas and 2 -4 units of work. Students undertaking the 200-hour course are required to complete a minimum of 3 context areas and 4-8 units of work.
Food Technology This syllabus has been restructured to remove the core topics from both the 100-hour and 200-hour courses to provide schools with greater flexibility when delivering to vertically streamed classes. As a result, the number of focus areas to be studied has been increased to 3-4 in the 100-hour course and 6-8 in the 200-hour course.
Graphics Technology In this syllabus some option modules have been removed to reflect changes in graphics technology. In the 100-hour course students are now required to study both core modules of Computer Assisted Design (CAD) and Instrument Drawing, and 1-2 option modules. In the 200-hour course students now study a total of 4-6 option modules in addition to the core modules.
Industrial Technology

Of all the Technology syllabuses, this syllabus had the most significant changes to the outcomes, content and module structure. Wherever possible the 50-hour modules have been combined into 100-hour modules to simplify course programming. The number of focus areas have also been reduced from 11 to 8 by removing Ceramics, Leatherwork and Polymers. The remaining focus areas have been updated to include contemporary content with examples that include advanced technologies.

Students are still permitted to study two focus areas for the award of their RoSA. More focus areas may be studied if school resources and timetables allow, but only two focus areas can count toward a student’s RoSA.
Marine and Aquaculture Technology This Content Endorsed Course has been updated to include contemporary content and examples. The structure of the course is unchanged.
Textiles Technology This course has been updated to include contemporary content and examples. The structure of the course is unchanged.

Years 11-12 Technology Syllabuses

Assessment and Reporting

NESA has updated the Assessment and Reporting documentation for the three courses that involve production of a major project: Design & Technology, Industrial Technology and Textiles & Design. Advice on managing project work is now included for teachers who are teaching students with disability. The assessment and reporting documents can be found on each Stage 6 Syllabus homepage on the NESA website.

HSC Marking

Several TAS courses have experienced difficulties filling HSC marking positions. TAS Teachers are encouraged to apply to mark both written and practical HSC examinations. The professional learning from HSC marking a subject you have been teaching to Stage 6 is invaluable for improving your content knowledge. If you haven’t been HSC marking the ‘Meet the Marker’ sessions NESA offers for teachers to learn about HSC marking processes are worthwhile.

In 2020, NESA workshops have been organised (See EndNote [i] for more details.)

SHAPE

The SHAPE exhibition features a selection of exemplary Major Projects from HSC Design and Technology, Industrial Technology and Textiles and Design students from the 2019 Higher School Certificate examinations. (See EndNote[ii] for details of the exhibition.)

TAS Teacher Shortage

Many TAS faculties across NSW are struggling to find teachers to fill permanent, temporary or casual vacancies, with many schools no longer offering one or more TAS subjects due to a lack of qualified TAS teacher. One way to help alleviate this issue in the medium term is to promote TAS teaching as a career path to your students. The following universities offer courses that will accredit teachers to teach Technology subjects:

  • Australian Catholic University
  • Charles Sturt University
  • Southern Cross University
  • University of Newcastle
  • University Of NSW (Art & Design)

Additionally the NSWTF Industrial Arts Special Interest Group (IASIG) has been campaigning about this issue and plans to continue this campaign in 2020. [iii]

Syllabus Implementation Support

The DoE through the TAS curriculum website [iv] and various yammer groups has been progressively uploading resources to assist teachers in implementing these revised syllabuses. Teacher associations, private providers and other teacher networks have been providing professional learning, support and resources to help implement these syllabuses. The NSW Teachers Federation’s CPL is also providing a professional learning course covering most TAS courses on 30 March.

In 2020 there is a lot of revision, updating and opportunity to develop strong teaching programs with teaching resources reflecting contemporary technologies and teaching practices in our schools.

References and EndNotes:

[i] 

HSC workshops In 2020, the following workshops have been organised (with registration link below):

Design & Technology:

21 March – Tamworth, 23 May – Port Macquarie, 19 September – Rosehill

Industrial Technology:

4 April – Coffs Harbour, 2 May – Wagga Wagga,

https://www.educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/teacher-accreditation/how-accreditation-works/teacher-accreditation-information-sessions

 

[iiSHAPE exhibition – The SHAPE 2019 exhibition opens at the Powerhouse Museum, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences on 29 February 2020 and closes on 3 May 2020

SHAPE 2019 will travel to the Glasshouse Gallery in Port Macquarie in 2020. There will be a student workshop on Friday 22 May 2020, with a Design and Technology professional learning session for teachers on Saturday 23 May 2020.

– The SHAPE 2019 exhibition opens at the Powerhouse Museum, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences on 29 February 2020 and closes on 3 May 2020

https://www.educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/about/events/hsc-showcases-and-events

[iii] For more details about the IASIG check the NSW Teachers Federation’s website. This Special Interest Group meets once a term in Federation House, Surry Hills and members can join a meeting via video conferencing. If interested contact the Federation’s Wagga Wagga office to speak to the officer in charge of the SIG.

[iv]  https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/key-learning-areas/tas

From 2020 Alex Stewart has been appointed as Head Teacher TAS at Pendle Hill High School. Previously he has been a Senior Curriculum Officer with NESA and before that worked for nine years as Head Teacher TAS/VET at Carlingford High School. He has been a HSC practical marker for Industrial Technology since 2012. In 2019 Alex presented for SHAPE hosted by the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences on Industrial Technology Major Projects and co-hosted a live video conference for regional and remote students. He has taught a range of TAS courses with a passion for Industrial Technology – Electronics, Graphics and Timber.

 

 

 

Crafty Students in Advanced English

Steve Henry reflects on how to encourage Stage 6 English students to be more confident as writers…

Like most English teachers, I’ve become accustomed to student negativity about their own abilities. If I tell a student at the start of the lesson that we are going to write a story, then the common response is ‘I can’t write stories.’

So it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise that when I asked my Year 12 class to come up with a metaphor to describe themselves as a writer, the responses were universally negative. One student saw their “writerly” self as the Captain of the Titanic, another pictured themselves as a bird with no wings. There was a ‘sea of grief’; there was a student who saw their efforts to write as being like an attempt to cross a busy road. Then I asked them to turn their metaphors into poems. One of the boys, Justin, came up with this:

Newton’s Law of Motion and Writing
A young writer at rest
Will remain at rest
Unless enacted upon
By a force of panic

This was an Advanced English class: most of them had been through eleven years of formal English education where they’d been asked to write and edit countless stories, experiment with genre and form and analyse and respond to novels, short stories, poems and films. I wondered whether I would receive the same response if I wandered into a Stage 5 Woodwork class, or if I asked the Year 12 Art class to consider themselves as artists.

And like most English teachers who have been working their way through the new syllabus, I have wrestled with the Craft of Writing, wondering how best to teach it and how to prepare the students for the HSC, and feeling inadequate on both counts.

The more I thought about it, the more I saw that this module does not so much represent a simple change in the content of the course as a deeper shift in the way the students should approach English as a whole, particularly in Stage 6.

We must now ask the students to think of themselves as artisans; as students of the craft. This might then change the way they view texts in other modules.

The previous iteration of the Stage 6 syllabus did not make this demand, allowing students, for the most part, to adopt the armchair position of the critic, rather than setting them up at the workbench of the participant.

Whether it was that I had become tired of the old course or whether it was because it was simply inadequate in the nourishing of student creativity, I prefer the new syllabus. I have enjoyed the gradual shift in thinking that I have seen in the students and have relished the chance to re-calibrate my own approach. And what became clear to me was that Module C could not, and should not, be contained within one quarter of the Year 12 course. For, if we are asking the students to stand up and consider themselves as writers in one Module we can’t simply ask them to resume their seats for the other three. Thus, the setting for most of Stage 6 English becomes the workshop rather than the lecture theatre or the art gallery. The eye of the artisan becomes an important lens through which to view other aspects of the course.

Below are some ways in which a student might become more confident about their skills as a writer across the Stage 6 syllabus.

Year 11: Reading to Write and the Multimodal

The platform for this change is set in Year 11. The Reading to Write common module requires students to engage in ‘judicious reflection on their skills and knowledge as writers’, drawing the spotlight away from the texts so that they can, in turn, become a source of light and inspiration for the students’ own writing. Its place as the opening unit of Stage 6 is significant as it aims to re-introduce the students to the toolkit of the writer, exposing them to a variety of textual forms and inviting them to experiment with their own writing; privileging their writing over endless analysis.

I suggest that teachers ask their students to think of themselves as writers at the start of Year 11 instead of posing that question at the start of their HSC year.

The mandated multimodal task can then also be seen in a slightly different light. Rather than the constant questions of what a multimodal task actually is, or what is the best way to approach it, the real question becomes how to get the students to see its use as a natural step forward in their craft. The multimodal task gives them greater agency in the construction of their response. It requires them to thoughtfully balance an understanding of their purpose and content with the various creative possibilities presented by the interplay of the modes.

Textual Conversations

I had not given much thought to the move to Textual Conversations in Module A until I connected it with Module C.

Initially, I regarded it as a cake with essentially the same ingredients, of text and context, that had simply been renamed. But when viewed through the lens of Module C, the idea of a ‘conversation’ between an older and newer text takes on a different hue. The syllabus asks the students to consider the process of reimagining and reframing a text, or aspects of a text, which is exactly what they have been doing since they set foot into the workshop of Reading to Write. It not only invites them to reconsider the way a text resonates with older texts, but it also includes them in the organic and creative re-shaping of a text that can occur with time and shifts in context.

Viva Voce

Ever since Extension 2 was introduced in 2001, I have thought that the Viva Voce was the most authentic and ‘enjoyable’ task on the assessment calendar for Stage 6, but haven’t really been able to work out a way to replicate it in the other courses. This year, at the end of Term 2, we ran a viva voce (mandatory but non-assessable) task in Advanced English, with each student having the chance to discuss the purpose, form and language choices of a suite of writing that they would submit for the portfolio task (our main Module C task). In each interview there was that familiar note of authenticity as the students explained from where their ideas had come, or the role of research and workshopping in the shaping of their work. It was the moment that they finally showed themselves as hands on, ‘crafty’ students involved in developing pieces of writing that reflected their own values, interests, thoughts and creativity.

Final Thoughts

Several years ago, I began setting aside an hour or two each weekend specifically for imaginative writing. Truth be told, I head off to the local shopping centre, buy a coffee and two cinnamon donuts and sit in a quiet corner and write. It quickly became one of the most enjoyable moments of my week, something to which I’d look forward. But it also changed the way I read books, as a particular passage in a Winton or Mantel novel can often stop me in my tracks, forcing me to ponder its magic. Now I have to have a pen with me as I read, to underline a startling metaphor or circle a description of place.

This is how I would like my students to engage with the craft of writing, both their own and others. And while there is the ongoing debate about whether Module C is best taught as a stand-alone, or as an integrated unit, I have formed the conviction that it offers them the tools and skills and thinking that will be very useful for them at every step of the Stage 6 journey through English.

Steve Henry is currently Head Teacher of English at Cherrybrook Technology High School and has taught senior English for the many years. Steve is currently the Supervisor of Marking in the Texts and Human experiences module. He has been involved in writing study guides and articles for the Sydney Morning Herald and the ETA on a range of HSC topics. Steve has a love for creative and innovative writing and is the presenter on Richard III/Looking for Richard for the ETA’s online learning project in partnership with Edrolo.

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