Journal Category: For your Future

Chris Bonnor ventures some key reflections about what true quality is in relation to schooling, leadership and connecting with parents …

 

Both before and after writing What makes a good school ? both Jane Caro and I had many opportunities to talk to parents. Most recently I delivered, in conjunction with the Origin Foundation, a series of seminars on the topic. It meant trying to blend my professional perspective with the priorities of parents. At the very least I learned that if we do this as teachers and principals we might better bridge this gap.

In talking to parents about good schools I am constantly haunted by the findings of much of the research about school choice. Research that considers what parents do rather than what they say identify two main drivers of school choice: the social composition of school enrolments (who will my kid sit next to?) and the level of student achievement (who will my kid aspire to be like?).

So instead I ask what exactly do good schools look like – and what do they do that makes them “good”. It is hardly an original activity but the diversity of views which arise on such occasions often surprises audiences of parents and can spark some nuanced conversations.

Then I suggest some of the questions which parents might ask of teachers at the schools they visit:

• What really sparks learning in kids? How do you ensure that all your students are engaged in what the school offers and does?
• How do you know if they are really learning for the long term?
• How often do teachers spend time in each other’s classrooms and reflect on their teaching? Are your teachers learners as well?
• Tell me your policy on (insert topic). Does it work and how do you know?
• What policies and practices do you feel are quite useless? How can you change these?

It would have done me good in my years as a principal to be invaded by parents asking these sorts of questions. If parents across Australia keep asking just the first three of these questions they would have a collective power to influence school change.

I advise parents not to ask superficial questions about homework (answer: we give them lots), bullying (answer: not in my school), misbehaviour (here?), drugs (what?). I urge them to ignore the school glossies, My School, the media, the local rumour machine – and visit the school to discover how and what they feel.

Jane Caro stresses that, as sources of information about schools, parents have a number of agendas, including the need to post-rationalise their own school choices. This means that common narratives about schools are rich with reasons to avoid some, while preferring others – the others especially including those which charge fees.

I suggest that it is possible to avoid these conversations by going straight to the real experts, the students. But parents have to think carefully and ask questions which require more than a yes/no answer. These might include:

• What do you like about your school?
• What parts are most worthwhile?
• What would you change if you could? Why?
• What do you want to be (not just do) when you leave school?

It is inevitable that parents cannot be experts on schools and education – and we need to work harder to familiarise them with some of the complexities of today’s schools. In the absence of that they rely on the media, their own dated experience and that of their own parents – who often pay the fees apparently necessary for their grandchildren to go to a “good school”.

In the process it is very useful to gently raise various issues and bust a few myths about schools. Here are a few suggestions:

1. There is a ‘shopping list’ of things that occasionally keep parents awake at night: student safety/wellbeing, bullying, homework, social media, substance abuse, discipline. Obviously schools need to address all these things but it helps to raise two issues: firstly schools cannot win these battles alone and secondly, what should be the priorities of schools and how should these be ranked?

2. Schools today can look quite different and this alone can challenge preconceptions. I like to ask parents to pass judgment on a range of school and classroom practices – and then showing them what the research suggests are most useful. Among the relatively useless practices are many prized by politicians, media and older generations. It is a fun thing to do.

3. Parents also want to know about the relative worth of public and private schools or schools with various labels. My preferred activity is to show them the levels of student achievement in public, Catholic and Independent schools which enrol similar students. As I unfold this on a PowerPoint slide there is always a collective intake of breath as the columns indicating student achievement rise to, wait for it, almost exactly the same level for each school sector.

As my colleagues at the Origin Foundation stressed the conversations at such seminars are useful it is always essential for participants to have something to take away with them. I was asked to come up with a paragraph of reflections about good schools, so it read something like this:

A good school will never think it is good enough. It will set improvement goals, monitor progress and let everyone know. If it falls short or stumbles it will say so – and improve. The people in a good school talk about learning, not just about results. They will know the interests of all students and help them develop aspirations. They will be proud of the triers, not just the trophies. They will know and tell you how, and if, learning is really happening. They will have strong values but will teach kids how to think and not what to think. Good teachers are those who can explain what they do, why they do it and how they know it works. And if it doesn’t work they won’t keep doing it. Just like the students, they will also be learners who will share their learning with their peers. They will know what they and their school stand for – and will make sure other things rarely get in the way. A good school has a good principal, but one who develops leadership in others, especially in students. They will foster the other ‘Rs’ – relevance and relationships. Finally, the people in a good school will like kids and believe that both they and the kids can really make a difference – for themselves and others.

Chris Bonnor is a former secondary principal and previous head of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council. He is a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development and co-author with Jane Caro of The Stupid Country and What makes a good school?

Chris Bonnor and Bernie Shepherd look at My School and find some new, surprising, and significant lessons for teachers and our system.

I must admit I had a privileged education. I went to school each day with the kids of shopkeepers and solicitors, the aspirant and the indolent. It was a country town and we all went to the local school, living out Henry Parkes’ vision by learning side by side. The teachers were terrific, still are – and the schoolyard represented the full social and cultural mix. As I say, a privileged education.

That doesn’t mean there was a golden age when all schools were creatures of their local community. After all, our schools were provided by a distant bureaucracy in the capital city. But they looked like the local community: we would see the same kids in the streets, in the clubs and maybe even in the churches. Fifty years later, the kids of shopkeepers and solicitors certainly go to different schools.

• Chris Bonnor

As former teachers and principals we have lived and worked through an incremental yet seismic change in our framework of schools. In more recent years we have progressively documented what has happened and why – and what our country must do to achieve a preferred future, rather than the unhappy one currently being created. Our main resource is the data which lies behind the My School website.

My School has never lived up to its hype but the data that ‘lies beneath’ the website is gold. Until now most available data has only allowed general analysis of schools: state by state, by sector and location. My School not only provides much more information but it includes a measure of socio-educational advantage (SEA) for each school’s enrolment.  This is presented as a numerical Index of Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA), as well as in four SEA “quarters” of the nation that are represented in each school.

We can now answer questions which have eluded us for years: which students go where, how are their schools resourced, what does it cost and who benefits? Then bigger questions: What sort of school system are we creating, are we winning the battles for equity and achievement, on current trends what will our school future look like? The answers provided will inform, excite and concern – and along the way, bust quite a few urban myths.

Students: who goes where?  

Around 73% of Australian students are in metropolitan schools, 24% in provincial and the remainder in remote or very remote schools. They are also spread unevenly across sectors: the graph below shows that 30% of students in government schools are from the most disadvantaged SEA quarter (Q1), the equivalent Catholic school figure is 14% and Independent schools 9%. As we indicate in Equity in Australian Schools , the proportion of Q1 enrolments in Catholic and Independent schools has dropped considerably since 2010. The schools which have the highest ICSEA value (average 1192) are government selective schools. They are followed, in approximate ICSEA order, by Anglican, Catholic non-systemic, Lutheran systemic, Catholic systemic, Christian and finally government schools. We have ended up with a social hierarchy of schools created around the extent of family advantage. It is almost as if we are creating or replicating social class through our schools. Certainly, the days are long gone when almost all students attended their local school: only 10% of today’s schools have an enrolment which reflects the socio-educational make-up of their local community.

 SEA quarters distribution by school sector, 2014.  Source: My School

…and why? Much of this hierarchy can be explained by the strong link between choice of schools and family income. Much has been written and spoken about choice of schools – but essentially those who get choice are those who can pay school fees. This capacity to afford school fees is certainly limited to higher income families. In a forthcoming article we show how and where school choice operates if we compare school private income figures on My School with household disposable income figures provided by the ABS. In places like Goulburn and Orange, for example, two parent families on median incomes cannot choose a non-government school for any of their secondary age children. Those on median family incomes in Sydney’s wealthier suburbs can enrol six children in the lowest fee local Catholic or four children in the lowest fee local Independent school. It seems that conversations about school choice are somewhat an indulgence for the better off.

The better off are now … even better off. We’ve spent a few years talking about increasing funding for schools and students in need – but My School data about school funding shows that it is just that: talk. Yes, the funding has risen and disadvantaged schools do get more per student. But in My School, Gonski and the education market  we show that the increases in recurrent funding (2009-2013) for students in more advantaged schools have outpaced increases for the disadvantaged. The changes in funding by sector are even more unusual, as indicated in the graph below. The government sector enrols more higher needs students – but its funding per student, 2009-2013, has only increased by 12.8%. Increases to the Catholic and Independent sectors are 23.5% and 24.6% respectively. Clearly, by continuing to fund schools by sector, rather than on the basis of need, we are just widening the gaps.

Student achievement.  It might be possible to justify our weird and inequitable funding if student achievement levels were holding up or improving, but they aren’t. Most reports about student achievement refer to Australia’s international ranking and whether test scores go up or down. These create headlines as we lurch from one moral panic to the next. But there is a bigger problem that doesn’t attract headlines: when we track changes in student achievement by level of school SEA we find that student achievement scores have slightly risen in schools with higher SEA enrolments – but they have noticeably fallen in schools with lower SEA enrolments. This diverging trend, explained in Gonski, My School and the Education Market was also most noticeable in middle secondary school – and it is measurable even in the space of a few years. It isn’t hard to join the dots between the way we fill and fund schools… and how well our students are achieving.

The disadvantaged: in a class of their own. Perhaps this is the problem: by OECD standards Australia has a large proportion of disadvantaged students in disadvantaged schools. As others have shown such concentrations of low SEA and high SEA students in different schools impact on such things as school culture, resourcing, curriculum, teacher expectations – and it can elevate or depress student achievement. The Gonski review clearly pointed to the impacts of such concentrations, but things have worsened since the Gonski panel first sat around the table. We have found that the proportion of students from lower SEA families has continued to rise in more disadvantaged schools – and fall in the more advantaged schools. The disadvantaged are increasingly in a class…with their own peers.

School growth – and decline.  The concentration of the achievers and strugglers in different schools is impacting on school size and growth. My School shows that average school enrolments in higher SEA schools have risen; enrolments in lower SEA schools have fallen. The changes are not dramatic and there are always exceptions, but the trend is clear. Those with the means to exercise choice have moved to higher SEA schools – especially, but not only, to non-government schools. The search for a peer group perceived to be more desirable has long been a significant driver of school choice – and we know who actually gets this choice. Interestingly, there is much talk about parachuting the ‘best’ teachers into low SEA schools to improve the results. Fine in principle, but the ‘best’ students continue to head out the back door.

The slippery equity slope. The Gonski review published social gradients for various countries, showing the relationship between student achievement and level of advantage. Australia has one of the steeper gradients, indicating that we are a low equity country compared with other higher achieving countries. We used My School data to calculate equivalent gradients in Australia and have found that they have steepened in just a few years. For more information see Equity in Australian Schooling. The socio-educational standing of the school community seems to have had a greater impact on school performances in 2014 than it did in 2010; In other words, differences in education outcomes seem to be increasingly impacted by “differences in wealth, income, power or possessions.” The gradient was particularly steep and worsening for metropolitan and for secondary schools.

 

Good schools can be, and are, everywhere.  Far too often the word ‘good’, in relation to schools, really describes who goes there and not what the school does. ‘Good schools’ end up being those which can largely determine who enrols by setting entry tests, charging fees and even offering scholarships. My School enables comparison of schools enrolling similar students – although individual school comparisons are still problematic. But one of the stark findings of the data is that student achievement shows little variation between schools in different sectors serving similar students: the yellow NAPLAN columns on the graph below, are almost the same height for each group of schools shown (to enable comparisons the height for government schools in each group is set at 100). This similarity in achievement also holds true for HSC results in NSW, as illustrated in The public and private of student achievement. It doesn’t mean that all schools are the same – just that their quality doesn’t line up with any label. 

Money: feast and famine.   The graph above rewards a closer look. The green (government funding) and blue (total funding per student) columns are certainly not the same for each sector. Despite what is sometimes claimed, governments pay most of the operating costs of Catholic schools and a majority of the costs (on average) of Independent schools. When other funding is added, mainly through fees, the two private sectors are more highly resourced than are the public schools. In the past, concern about this was written off as the politics of envy. But think about it: If there is little sector difference in student achievement the excess spent on the non-government sector is a poor investment, regardless of who is paying – their students don’t do any better. In one calculation the excess involved each year is around $3.3 billion. Raising this matter isn’t about envy, it’s about efficiency and foregone equity. For more details see School funding and achievement – following the money trail

Our school future

When we started looking at My School data we were surprised at the extent of measurable change it showed over just a few years. The indicators of achievement and equity tell a story that will be with us for some time to come. In one sense My School provides a five year snapshot of what has been happening over decades – but like all incremental change it rarely creates a headline and impetus for action. The Gonski review was an exception, but over time the Gonski recommendations might just become a historical benchmark of what we should have done.

The school future it points to will be characterised by ever widening achievement gaps in a dysfunctional hybrid of public and private schools – all fuelled by ad hoc and regressive policy and funding. The current costs are high, particularly as a consequence of misdirected funding. The downstream costs are going to be higher as Australia struggles to pick up the increasing numbers of young people emerging – often far too early – from increasingly marginalised schools. Some states will do better than others and it will be interesting to see, in a few years, the extent to which NSW will benefit from its commitment to Gonski. The data will be there for all to see.    

In the meantime it is useful to ponder the ways in which teachers and schools might create a better future for all their students. What are the things that matter?

Good teaching and school leadership matters… Some might conclude that all these external problems, illustrated by My School data, mean that lifting student achievement is beyond the capacity of teachers and principals. But My School also shows that schools which enrol similar students aren’t all the same: differences arise, in part, from variations in the quality of teaching and school leadership. If teachers and principals don’t believe they can improve student outcomes, even against the odds, they are in the wrong profession.

… with the right support.  But those making decisions about schools have a responsibility to work on the problems that pile up on the other side of the school fence. Solving those beyond-school problems, especially in the way we provide and fund schools, is essential if we want to boost the effectiveness of teachers and schools. In the absence of long term solutions the effort being made, especially by teachers working with the strugglers, borders on the heroic.

Doing school better … matters.  Alas, heroism isn’t enough – we need to revisit the way we do school itself. More students, representing a range of ability levels, are struggling in schools which were designed in a different century. There is a gathering commentary which points to the deficiencies of mainstream secondary schooling. Too often, the structure, pedagogy and curriculum is just not engaging young people in learning – in school and for later life. In response, schools are adopting and adapting various intervention strategies – with some going much further to redesign the school around personalisation of learning, combined with other proven and linked strategies. The stand-out example, with the success record to match, is Big Picture learning.

Money, how much and where it goes, matters.  If you trace the policy initiatives of successive governments over the last few decades you’ll soon find many relatively useless reforms. They tend to have in common a populist streak, a focus on what schools are apparently doing wrong and avoidance of what the evidence suggests. And they don’t cost much. We know enough about the real costs and benefits of school improvement and we know that properly targeted investment delivers. Gonski was forced to deliver equity through increased funding for all schools. In the funding-starved future there will be increased pressure to achieve those equity objectives by redistributing the funding that already goes to schools.

Finally, equity matters, more than we ever knew. The greatest achievement of the Gonski review was to shift the debate and irreversibly link the twin objectives of excellence and equity. The data from My School shows that in the immediate post-Gonski era the lessons are still to be learned by most of those who shape our school future. Never before has it been more urgent for teachers to step up to the mark and insist that the Gonski findings and recommendations remain front and centre until they are implemented.

Chris Bonnor and Bernie Shepherd

Chris Bonnor AM is a retired Australian principal, education writer, speaker and advocate. He has served as President of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council and is author of several books including The Stupid Country and What Makes a Good School, both written with Jane Caro. 

Bernie Shepherd AM FACE is a retired principal with a long career in teaching and curriculum development in Science and was the founding principal of the first public senior high school in NSW. He continues to be active in educational matters as a researcher, writer, consultant and mentor.

Dan Sprange and Geoff Munns present well-researched and proven means to engender deep engagement in your classroom…

‘Stop that immediately and get back to your work’

Picture a young student looking out a classroom window. A computer, books and pens are scattered around the desk. Hovering nearby, the teacher asks, ‘What are you doing?’ The student coolly answers, ‘Thinking.’ And then comes the punch line. ‘Stop that immediately and get back to your work.’ At one level this scene from an educational cartoon appears to be taking a gentle dig at both teachers and students caught in the ‘game’ of what counts in classrooms. At a deeper level, it asks questions around the importance and impact of classroom conversations.

It is this second level that is the focus of this article. The article is both theoretically and practically informed. First, it draws on research into student engagement undertaken in the Fair Go Program. Secondly, it utilises the Fair Go student engagement framework to analyse and describe observed classroom interactions across a number of school contexts in low SES schools in Sydney.

Teacher-student interactions

If we return to the cartoon and interrogate its punch line from both teacher and student positions, what questions about classroom discourse might be asked?

Is thinking not valued in this classroom?

Is important classroom work mainly signified by students just doing ‘stuff’?

What messages are both being given by the teacher and received by the students?

How will students respond to these messages in their current and future educational lives?

The central argument of this article is that these and similar questions are critical to the project of student engagement. All classrooms are characterised by a complex set of teacher-student interactions (Cazden, 2001). Research in the Fair Go Program (Munns, Sawyer & Cole, 2013) has shown that skilled teachers, who are committed to engaging all their learners, interpret and adjust these interactions to create environments that give students the capacity to fit in, believe in themselves and succeed as learners. These teachers understand that every classroom interaction has the potential to deliver a message that will orientate students towards, or away from, engagement and learning success. They stack their classrooms with messages that engage and deliver student connection to school.

Classrooms, student engagement and messages

That classrooms operate as powerful message systems (see, Bernstein, 1996) that can convince students that school and education can ‘work’ for them (or not), is an important aspect of the Fair Go research into student engagement in low SES communities. Put briefly, this research argues that thoughtfully and purposefully planned learning experiences at high cognitive, high affective and high operative levels, together with a carefully crafted ‘insider’ learning environment, can create pedagogical spaces in which students receive engaging messages. The research is also very mindful that the research literature shows significant numbers of low SES students soon learn in their classrooms that they are lacking in ability, have no voice, are not valued and are compelled either to accept or to struggle over the classroom spaces (Munns, 2007; Munns & Sawyer, 2013).

[i] The Fair Go position is that classroom messages are organised into five ‘discourses of power’: knowledge, ability, control, place and voice  

What does engagement sound like?

This article now considers what these five messages look and sound like at either ‘disengaging’ or ‘engaging’ levels. It draws on data first gathered during case study research into ‘exemplary’ engaging teachers, and, second, from extensive classroom observations undertaken while the first-named writer was a co-researching teacher (2008-2010), an Assistant Principal, a research mentor in the Fair Go research (2012-2014) and a DEC Teacher Mentor. These various positions provided important and rare opportunities to regularly witness and contribute to student learning across learning spaces, within and between schools. Furthermore, these opportunities provided access to a wide range of over 50 classrooms, and this offered insights into a clearer understanding of the nature of classroom interactions. In particular, observations revealed what classroom interactions commonly prevail, and these allowed an informed speculation about which words, routines and structures combine to deliver messages of engagement to students across multiple classrooms and school settings.

What follows are five tables across each of the discourses of power. The examples described in the tables do not provide messages that might be seen as especially engaging or disengaging when viewed in isolation. However, when combined with other messages over time, our suggestion here is that they build a complex web of interactions that have the potential to create disengaging or engaging learning environments.

Our combined theoretical, empirical and practical experiences show that some teachers are acutely aware of this message economy, and so are able to tune the messages of their learning spaces in ways that facilitate heightened levels of engagement. These teachers demonstrate particular sensitivity to students who are prone to disengagement and individualise messages to ensure all students (including those most vulnerable) receive engaging messages around knowledge, ability, control, place and voice on a daily basis.

Knowledge

The key pedagogical question

‘What counts as knowledge in the classroom and which students have access to useful knowledge that connects with their lives and fosters academic development?’

Strategies for implementation

• Students’ local knowledge an experiences are used and valued as a contribution to everyone’s knowledge and learning
• Frequent and serious conversations to show how learning has real life and immediate application

Disengaging messages
Classroom environment characterised by:	Can sound like:
Teacher dispenses knowledge and students respond for teacher judgement. Teacher is sole arbiter of what constitutes important knowledge. Knowledge is narrowly defined, decontextualised and developed inflexibly. Individual circumstances allow some students to have easy access to curriculum content while others are inadvertently excluded making them passive witnesses to knowledge. Discussions are dominated by a cycle of winning information from the teacher. Student assessment is disconnected and isolated from authentic learning.	[teacher] “…listen and I will tell you whether you are correct…” [teacher] “…that is the wrong answer...” [teacher] “…I told you this yesterday…” [teacher] “…just do what you think and I will give you the answers when I mark it…” [teacher] ‘’…we are not doing that now, we did measurement last week…’’ [teacher to another teacher] “…I have done this with them for five weeks and that group will never get it…”

 

Engaging messages
Classroom environment characterised by:	Can sound like:
Curriculum ideas are experienced by all students most of the time. Discussions allow varied contributions and ideas to be entertained before the class arrives at the best answer, understanding or solution. Ideas are developed together with teacher as co-learner. All students have access to powerful contextualised knowledge. Student learning is connected to larger purposeful ideas. Assessment is built into each learning sequence and logically captures each students place on their learning journey (Limited use of de-contextualised summative assessment).	[teacher] “…the first bit of your answer sounds OK, can anyone else help us improve it…” [teacher] “…can we trust this result? What else do we need to think about?…” [teacher] “..mmm interesting, I am not sure…tell me why you think you are correct…” [teacher] “…maybe we can see what the other group has come up with?…” [teacher] “…when I read this text I thought about why the author described the house in that way and realised those words made it feel haunted. I started feeling worried for the characters in the story. How did it make you feel…”

Key Message:

‘Curriculum knowledge becomes student knowledge when it is made accessible, contextualised and students have a hand in defining it’

Ability

The key pedagogical question

‘Which students feel they have the ability to complete tasks of high intellectual quality and gain competence as a result of teaching?’

Strategies for implementation

• tasks are positive and allow all students to demonstrate what they know and can do but also challenge them to learn more

• students are encouraged and helped to see the connections between working well, thinking hard and feeling good

 

Disengaging messages
Classroom environment characterised by:	Can sound like:
Teacher has fixed view of ability and low expectations of some students. Students freely articulate negative judgement on the ability of others and themselves. Busy work rather than differentiated variations on whole class activities are given to lower achieving students. Some students are constantly being asked to work beyond their ZPD [Zone of Proximal Development – the scope of what a learner might achieve with guidance] and are therefore considered incapable of learning.	[teacher] “…I have already explained this to you 3 times, how many more times do I have to explain it?…” [teacher] “…how many times do I have to go through this with you?” [student] “…I can’t do it, I can’t even read…” [student] ‘’…I am so bad at this…’’ [teacher] ’’…just colour in the picture and we will go through the answers later…’’ [student about another student] “…she can’t do it, she always gets it wrong…” [teacher to another teacher] “…I have done this with them for five weeks and that group will never get it…”
Engaging messages
Classroom environment characterised by:	Can sound like:
Teacher seizes every opportunity to showcase the emerging understanding of students with vulnerable views of their ability. Regular feedback given about progress. Growth and commitment to learning is prioritised over outright achievement. Growth and learning commitment is acknowledged with high emotion by the teacher. Differentiated activities allow every student to work in their ZPD, be part of whole class learning and accomplish something everyday. Language of achievement level, rather than ability, is used by teacher when discussing students. Students have recognisable learning aspirations. Student grouping used to ensure more consistent success.	[teacher]  ‘’…that is an extraordinary insight about that character, I think I might have to call mum tonight and tell her all about it…’’ [teacher to parent in phone call] “…he was having trouble doing subtraction with trading, however this week it just clicked and he can do it. Please tell him that you and I are impressed with the progress he has made. He is racing ahead…” [teacher] ‘’…that is a clever bit of thinking, do you mind if I share what you just said with the rest of the class…’’ [student] “…I can’t do it, I can’t even read…” [teacher] ‘’…Yes you can. I have seen you do a similar one before. How could we start it?…[teacher scaffolds]’’ [teacher] ‘’ …it does not matter if you cannot spell that word right now, you have an amazing idea which you need to write down so you can share it with others…’’

 

Key Message:

 ‘It is easy to believe in your ability to learn when you are given regular opportunities to succeed, those around you witness your success and your teacher believes in you’

 

Control [ii]

Key pedagogical question:

‘Who is in control of the teaching space in the classroom shared between the teacher and the learners?’

Strategies for implementation

• struggles over student behaviour are let go by teachers

• students get chances to think about, discuss and look after their own behaviour

 

Disengaging messages
Classroom environment characterised by:	Can sound like:
A constant fight for control between teacher and some students. Constant use of teacher power to gain compliance with tasks and school routines. Focus on compliance with routines and tasks rather than learning response.  Regular use of learning time to emphasise teacher student hierarchy. Classroom time is taken up with excessive management talk. Procedural engagement valued over actual student learning.	[teacher] “…I don’t care, that is the way it has to be done and you will do it now…” [teacher] “…if you don’t do as I say…” [teacher] “…well done Ali you are sitting up the straightest and have the neatest desk…” [teacher] ‘’…that is not what I asked you to do….you will do it again until it is correct…” [teacher] ‘’…I have told you three times and I am still waiting for you to fold your arms…’’
Engaging messages Classroom environment characterised by:	Can sound like:
Shared social space with learning focussed student/teacher talk. 4:1 Balance between acknowledgement of achievement and correction of behaviour (this ratio may be different in the first 4 weeks of T1 while routines are being established). Flexible approach to how tasks are completed to ensure learning occurs. A desire for student learning response trumps compliance with pre-determined idea of how task should work. Teacher uses engaging curriculum rather than control to motivate students. Low emotion and non-verbal devices used for corrective instruction. Creative orientation back to learning rather than stopping learning to exercise teacher control.	[teacher] “…doing it that way may not work but have a go and tell me what you find out…” [Selective attending, ignoring off task behaviour then teacher immediately acknowledges pro-learning behaviour] “ …look I think David has noticed something important…” [Low emotion correction of behaviour with non-verbal devices then as soon as student demonstrates they are making progress with task (however small) high emotion teacher acknowledgement about learning is given] “…excellent start to your topic sentence Fatima maybe we can read yours out when you are done…” [teacher acknowledges student next to student who is not learning] ‘’…thank you Houda you are looking at me so I know you are listening…”

 

Key Message:

‘Constant exercising of teacher power distances some students from school, learning and the curriculum’

Place

Key pedagogical question:

‘Which students are valued as individuals and as learners, on what bases, and to what group and individual effect?’

Strategies for implementation

• within the full range of learning activities students are helped to make constructive connections with their own real world

• continuous and positive affirmation about the importance of all learners within their own community

Disengaging messages
Classroom environment characterised by:	Can sound like:
One size fits all approach. Class has unintentional social divide between ‘learners’ and ‘non-learners’. ‘Non-learners’ aspire to unproductive positions (places) within the classroom. ‘Non-learners’ constantly seek the attention of teacher and peers to establish and maintain the unproductive position they have identified for themselves. Identified ‘learners’ unintentionally allowed to contribute to the belief that the ‘non-learners’ cannot learn. Some students not proud of their school, where they live or their place in the classroom.	[student about other student] “…he is always naughty and he never does his work…” [teacher] “…you have not done any work again…” [teacher] ‘’…why do you always have to be the class clown?…’’ [teacher] ‘’…you need to learn what respect is…’’ [teacher] ‘’… you can do this sheet while we finish this activity …’’ [teacher] ‘’…you never have a pencil and should have organised that before you came to school …’’ [teacher] ‘’…you can just go on the computer while we do this…’’ [teacher] “ … if you keep this up you’ll never get out of this place”
Engaging messages
lassroom environment characterised by:	Can sound like:
All students see themselves as learners and take ownership of knowledge. Students are proud of their school and class and can see themselves as fitting into their learning community. Despite different achievement levels the teacher finds ways to ensure all students contribute to classroom learning. Every student has examples of their learning on the wall. Students view learning as an essential part of life.	[teacher] ‘’…James you have been a great leader for your group, the class needs your group to show us how you worked that out…” [teacher] “…remember last week you were very unsure about how to work it out, but this morning you just described the number pattern perfectly…you have got it. Well done…’’ [teacher] ‘’…Yousef’s group has given us a vital clue! Where would we be without your information Yousef?…’’ [teacher] ‘’…what would we do without your ideas?…’’

Key Message:

‘Every student needs to see themself as a learner and if a social space is not made for them in their learning community they will attempt to define themselves in other less productive ways’

 

 

Voice

Key pedagogical question:

‘Whose voices are given credence within the teaching spaces (content, ways of learning, assessment of learning) in the classroom?’

Strategies for implementation

• students are given lots of time, opportunities and tools to reflect on, assess and drive classroom learning

• classroom talk becomes more like a series of conversations between students, their teacher and each other

Disengaging messages
Classroom environment characterised by:	Can sound like:
Classroom discourse dominated by high achieving students and teacher. Only immediately correct ideas can be entertained in discussions. Excessive pursuit of the correct answer over student connection to knowledge. Some students are not prepared to share their ideas about what is being learnt because of fear of failure and excessive teacher judgment. Teacher is sole arbiter of what is correct and understanding is not regularly debated.	[teacher] ‘’…not the correct answer…’’ [teacher] ‘’…come on, this is not hard. I don’t know why people don’t have their hands up…’’ [teacher] ‘’…No. How could that be correct? You just need to think harder?…’’ [teacher] ‘’…the same hands keep going up, why is it always the same people?…’’ [teacher] “…I have corrected your work and written the answers in red…”
Engaging messages
Classroom environment characterised by:	Can sound like:
Students have something to say about their understanding and are more prone to spontaneous substantive discussion about learning and their knowledge. Students express ideas without fear of failure or immediate teacher judgement. Balance between teacher and student talk. Opportunities for student self reflection and self-assessment. All students have regular  opportunities to discuss emerging ideas and use teacher and peers in reciprocal processes to assess their learning progress. Teacher uses a variety of questioning techniques to promote student discussion.	[teacher] ‘’…We have three different answers for that question. Which one is best and why?…’’ [teacher] ‘’…Okay you think group one explained it best? Can you tell them what they did really well and what they could improve on…’’ [teacher] ‘’…tell me what operation you used first and why…’’ [teacher] ‘’…can you explain why you did it that way?…’’ [student] ‘’…I am not completely sure but this is how I worked it out…’’ [teacher] ‘’…OK he said the answer is in the middle, is there anyone who can add to that or tell us the next step?…’’ [teacher] “…tell us why you know you are correct…” [teacher] “ … how do we know? Can we trust that? How can we be sure?

 

Key Message:

‘It is hard to develop and reflect on your own ideas if you don’t believe your peers think they are valid and your teacher regularly tells you that you have the wrong understanding’

Final words

The research underpinning this article draws attention to classrooms as complex discursive spaces, and stresses that the pathways to student engagement invariably involve long journeys through curricular, pedagogical and relational territories. The article has highlighted one critical aspect of this long journey, and, in so doing, hopefully invites teachers to consider what ‘sounds like engagement’ in their own classrooms.

 

Dan Sprange Principal, Hannans Road Public School

Geoff Munns Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Western Sydney

 

References

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

Cazden, C. (2001) Classroom discourse the language of teaching and learning. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

Munns, G. (2007) ‘A sense of wonder: Student engagement in low SES school communities’. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11: 301-15.

Munns, G. (2013) ‘Learning and behaviour’, in Munns, G., Sawyer, W. & Cole, B. (Eds), Exemplary teachers of students in poverty. London: Routledge.

Munns, G. and Sawyer, W. (2013) ‘Student engagement: The research theory and the methodology’, in Munns, G., Sawyer, W. & Cole, B. (Eds), Exemplary teachers of students in poverty. London: Routledge.

Munns, G., Sawyer, W. & Cole, B. (2013) Exemplary teachers of students in poverty. London: Routledge.

 

 

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Wayne Sawyer investigates how we can produce high levels of learning for our students …

During 2013 -2014 I have been privileged to be part of a team – along with English Education consultant Jane Sherlock and Joanne Jarvis, Principal of Engadine High School – delivering courses for the Federation’s Centre for Professional Learning on Lifting Achievement for Years 7-12. In this work, I have reported on findings from a series of my research projects and associated publications since 1997. The projects and associated key publication details are:

• Successful teaching in the NSW HSC (Ayres et al, 2000);
• Exceptional schooling outcomes in Years 7-10 in NSW (AESOP) (Sawyer et al, 2007);
• Motivation and engagement of boys: Evidence-based teaching practices. (Munns et al, 2006);
• Engaging middle years boys in rural educational settings (Cole et al, 2010);
• Teachers For a Fair Go: A study of teachers who ‘make a difference’ to students in poverty (Munns et al, 2013).

Broadly speaking, the first three of these projects concern effective teaching, ie drawing links from teacher classroom practice to student outcomes. The other two are concerned with student classroom engagement and the conditions for successful engagement created by a teacher’s pedagogy. In this paper, I will report on one area that has been a central interest for systems in the last few years, viz. the issues of intellectual quality and intellectual challenge. In NSW government schools one of the three ‘dimensions’ of the Quality Teaching Model of pedagogy has been ‘intellectual quality’ (NSW DET, 2003). I have written elsewhere about this issue with relation to English teachers in low SES contexts (Sawyer, 2014), but will here range more broadly.

Given that the most recent of these studies was a study of successful engagement in schools in low SES communities, one should expect any relevant findings about intellectual quality to be positioned, then, as a key factor in engaging these students. In fact, the larger Fair Go research program at the University of Western Sydney, in which the Teachers for a Fair Go project sits, works with a model of classroom engagement (the MeE framework – see Munns & Sawyer, 2013) in which ‘high cognitive’ classroom work is a central feature. That research project worked with 28 teachers across NSW who had been identified by their peers as highly successful at engaging students from low SES communities with their education. Thus, among other aspects of engagement, we were investigating whether high cognitive work was a key part of the engagement in their classrooms. Put starkly, was intellectual challenge a key part of these teachers’ success at engaging students? It was. In conceptualising engagement across the years pre-school to Year 12, high cognitive classroom work was manifested in two key ways:
• classroom experiences were intellectually challenging, and,
• teaching and learning were the focus of sustained and ongoing classroom conversations.

To deal with the latter issue first:  there was an explicit focus in classrooms on the topic of teaching and learning itself and a valuing of the process of learning, as well as the content knowledge itself. Teachers would explicitly focus on questions such as
‘How did you get there?’ ‘What was your process?’ and the classrooms were marked by reflection on: what students ‘now know/can do/have discovered’; what strategies were used to get there; what students found challenging, and what students needed more practice in, or help with etc. One could run a perfectly well functioning, even higher-order-thinking classroom, without this conscious reflection on the processes of learning but this was not the case with these teachers and these classrooms, where teachers took time to have conversations about learning over and above lesson content, and which we believe contributed strongly to the cognitive work of the lesson.

However, it is specifically the notion of intellectual challenge on which I want to dwell here. The Fair Go classrooms valued higher order thinking, problem solving, problematising knowledge and analysis. Research and experimentation were common activities and students were encouraged to question their conclusions (‘How did you work that out?’ ‘Did anyone have a different conclusion?’ ‘Would anyone do it differently?’ ‘Are there other ways of looking at this?’). This developed what we have termed a ‘culture of inquiry’, sometimes in terms of set tasks (‘inquiry learning’) but also, and importantly, in terms of the prevalence that teacher questioning had, and also the forms it took (‘What do we know about …?’ ‘What can we tell about …?’ ‘What would happen if …?’). Judicious questioning was a key strategy creating this culture of inquiry. On occasions, we would refer to teachers’ habits of ‘relentless questioning’. Students were encouraged to question their own conclusions, to think critically and to appreciate a range of perspectives on a topic. This work in these classrooms created a particular disposition towards knowledge, viz that some knowledge is open to challenge, but that all knowledge is open to interrogation.

It was questioning which led students towards higher order thinking, as well as creating an intellectual space for student voice. Student-student discussion was a dominant feature of lessons, either in pairs or larger groups. Students were sometimes asked to create questions for others to answer/investigate, and the culture of inquiry was a shared culture, with students working together and teachers ‘down there with them’ and seen to be also seeking answers to problems.

Of course, explicit instruction also occurred. Modelling was an important strategy, used widely by both teachers and student-peers. Vocabulary was also a pre-thought-out focus in lessons, whether it was developing vocabulary, exploring word meanings or focusing on key terminology (including the spelling of such terms). ‘Explicitness’ in this context refers not only to instruction, but also to clear articulation of content, goals, key concepts and criteria for achievement. All of these were foregrounded by teachers. ‘Transparency’, ‘visibility’ and ‘lucidity’ are important synonyms for this foregrounding work. Such foregrounding and lucid task analysis creates the sense of security which assists students towards independence.

Teachers drew on, and made links to, student lived experience and funds of knowledge, often through this questioning. They were also careful to draw out, or make explicit, the links between existing student knowledge and experience and new knowledge. Teachers also made strategic and judicious use of resources, including ICT, which tended to be integrated into rich tasks and which were largely not used as an add-on or stand-alone. Student engagement was on occasions initiated and sustained through ‘hands on’ experiences with ICT.

The general thrust of this work strongly reflects findings from earlier work. But before I turn to this, it is salutary to remind ourselves why what I have been saying so far about this teaching in low SES classrooms is actually worth saying, ie why would we expect anything other than high cognitive work in schools?:

in response to standardised testing of the sort now pervasive nationally in Australia, low SES schools are particularly susceptible to concentration on the ‘basics’. Since public perception of schools based on league tables particularly disadvantages low SES schools, the consequence is a focus on ‘performance’, rather than ‘achievement’ (Teese & Lamb, 2009)

poor districts …offer stripped down drill-and-practice approaches to reading and math learning, rather than teaching for higher-order applications…
…critical thinking and problem-solving; collaboration…effective oral and written communication; accessing and analyzing information; curiosity and imagination. The kind of curriculum that supports these qualities has typically been rationed to the most advantaged students in the United States (Darling-Hammond, 2010: 52-54).

This emphasis on intellectual challenge was manifested in other studies around effectiveness. In the project, Successful teaching in the NSW HSC (Ayres et al, 2000), we investigated the work of teachers who were consistently achieving outstanding HSC results with students in contexts where these results were atypical of those cohorts. Success based on external exams could easily be sought in skilling and drilling examination practice, but, again, this was not the case with these teachers. The key common factor in their pedagogy was an emphasis on having students think, solve problems and apply knowledge. Simply reporting back knowledge or practising formulae outside of the context of application was unusual. Teachers strongly saw their role in the classroom as challenging students, rather than ‘spoon-feeding’ information. Teachers made deliberate, clear decisions to deliver new information efficiently and to spend the bulk of class time using and applying knowledge. Part of this was another clear distinction in their planning about using class time in ways that exploited the community of the classroom – thinking about what things are best done while there was a group available, as opposed to what could be done individually at home. Class time was, as much as possible, for applying knowledge, reasoning, independent thinking, solving problems and groupwork. In one observed Maths lesson, after deriving a formula that was new to the students, the teacher first assured himself that students understood the new formula, then, rather than setting them practice exercises on the new formula, he instead set them a problem to solve in groups which involved using the new formula at some point. As he walked around speaking to the groups, his clear intention was to obtain as many possible ways to the solution of the problem as he could. In a class of 25 or so students working in groups, three different routes to the solution were found and these were demonstrated to the class by students chosen from the appropriate groups. Students were then set a series of exercises on the new formula for homework. This lesson epitomised well what we saw often – efficient delivery followed by application, higher order thinking, problem-solving and using the resources of the classroom as a community. These approaches were so common as to be seen by us as fundamental to the outstanding examination successes these teachers were achieving.

Maths teachers also epitomised a related set of pedagogies around problem-solving itself. Apart from encouraging students to seek a variety of solutions to a problem, they could be seen:
• complicating solutions by reversing the elements of a question (‘What if it had said….instead of ….?’ What if I changed this bit here?’);
• spending time having students face, and talk through aloud, the particularly difficult aspects of a problem or even beginning with difficult problems rather than simple ones when working on a new concept;
• encouraging inductive reasoning by using practical problems from which students derived concepts, or having students induce formulae from specific examples.

Similar approaches from two different Ancient History teachers included:
• supplying students with pictures of the Palace of Knossos and asking them to deduce the purpose of the palace before any information was supplied;
• supplying students with a list of ‘Sayings of Greek Women’ and asking them to suggest the values inherent in the society that would produce such a list.

Nor is it the case that these practices were confined to students undertaking the most challenging courses in a subject. The example of the Palace of Knossos just quoted was in a class studying what was then the General Ancient History course. Similarly, in the AESOP project (eg Sawyer et al, 2007) which studied groups of highly effective teachers in Faculties, ‘lower ability’ students in English, for example, were not confronted by a sole diet of functional literacy, pen and paper activities, comprehension and vocabulary work, but engaged with IT, media, drama and  poetry, just as higher streamed classes did.

In both the Motivation and engagement of boys project and the Rural boys project, the focus was explicitly on success with previously disengaged boys. Those who care to download the Case Studies Report from Munns et al (2006) will find in the schools which we termed Amber, Azure, Cyan, Heliotrope, Indigo, Ochre, Olive, Russet, Sienna, Vermilion, Cerise and Teal that challenging projects and problem-based learning provided opportunities for students to investigate big ideas and to engage in solving real-life puzzles. These types of experiences encouraged processes of exploration, discovery, investigation and problem-solving. Meaningful projects and investigations connected to their everyday worlds were effective ways of engaging these students in literacy and numeracy. They positioned boys as experts and enabled boys’ real-world knowledge to be transferred to academic knowledge – and, at the cost of repetition, it needs to be remembered, these were sites where previously disengaged boys were now doing well

In the Rural boys project, one site implemented a forensic science investigation based on a MANSW publication, The case of the mystery bone (Clarke, 1996). Data were collected from the students through a survey about attitudes to mathematics. Students reported mathematics as irrelevant to their lives and of little interest; they wanted more practical, hands-on activities. The MANSW unit involved the students in hands-on activities, independent and pair tasks, problem-based learning and extensive use of ICT. Throughout, the students formally evaluated the unit using a Plus-Minus-Interesting (PMI) inventory, followed by discussions of how the unit and learning could be improved. Interestingly, there were no minuses recorded on the PMI inventories by the students throughout the unit, nor at the conclusion. The boys expressed appreciation of the more active learning experiences and opportunities to voice their evaluations and suggestions for learning.

Neither of these latter two examples should be taken as an argument that essentialises boys or their learning preferences. An elaborated discussion of that issue can be found in many sources, including a literature review in Sawyer et al (2009). My argument here is not about that issue, but about intellectual challenge, which, I am arguing, is both effective (HSC study, AESOP study) and engaging (Motivation and engagement of boys, Rural boys) not least for students in low SES communities, often seen as disengaged from schooling, and who historically receive very disengaging messages about their ability, not least from the media. Sometimes this challenge is contained in specifically problem/project-based work, sometimes it is contained in the culture of inquiry established by a teacher as the classroom norm. I want to leave the final message to Linda Darling-Hammond (2010:55):

Decades of research have shown that teachers who produce
high levels of learning for initially low-and higher-achieving
students alike provide active learning opportunities involving
student collaboration and many uses of oral and written
language, connect to students’ prior knowledge and experiences,
provide hands-on learning opportunities, and engage students’
higher-order thought processes, including their capacities to
approach tasks strategically, hypothesize, predict, evaluate,
integrate and synthesize ideas.

Professor Wayne Sawyer is Director of Research in the School of Education at the University of Western Sydney. Before joining UWS, he was a public school Head Teacher in Western Sydney and is the author/editor of over 30 books on education.

References
Ayres, P., Dinham, S. & Sawyer W. (2000).  Successful senior secondary teaching   Quality teaching series, #1, Deakin, ACT : Australian College of  Education.
Clarke, D. (1996). The case of the mystery bone: A unit of work on measurement for  Grades 5-8. North Ryde: Mathematical Association of NSW.
Cole, B., Mooney, M., Munns, G. Power, A., Sawyer, W. & Zammit, K. (2010).  Engaging middle years boys in rural educational settings. NSW Department  of Education and Training – Equity Programs and Distance Education  Directorate. On-line.URL:  http://www.lowsesschools.nsw.edu.au/wcbcontent/uploads/psp/file/myrbrepo…
Darling-Hammond,L. (2010)The flat world and education NY:  Teachers College  Press.
Munns, G., Arthur, L., Downes, T., Gregson, R.,Power, A., Sawyer, W., Singh, M.,  Thistleton-Martin, J. & Steele, F. (2006).  Motivation and  engagement of    boys: Evidence-based teaching practices. Canberra: Australian Government
        Department of Education, Science and Training. On-line.URL:
http://www.deewr.gov.au/schooling/boyseducation/pages/publications_con ferenceswebsites.aspx
Munns, G. & Sawyer, W. (2013) ‘Student engagement: The research methodology  and the theory’, in G.Munns, W. Sawyer, B. Cole and the Fair Go Team  Exemplary teachers of students in poverty London and New York: Routledge,  pp. 14-32.
Munns, G., Sawyer, W., Cole, B & the Fair Go team (2013) Exemplary teachers of  students in poverty. London & New York: Routledge
NSW Department of Education and Training Professional Support and Curriculum 
           Directorate (NSWDET) (2003) Quality Teaching in NSW Public Schools :
           Discussion Paper. Sydney: State of NSW Department of Education and
           Training Professional Support and Curriculum Directorate. Online. URL:
           https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/proflearn/docs/pdf/qt_EPSColor.pdf
Sawyer, Wayne (2014) ‘English teachers, low SES students and intellectual
           challenge: Cases from Australia’, in A. Goodwyn, L. Reid & C. Durrant (eds)
           International perspectives on teaching English in a globalised world. London
           & New York: Routledge, pp. 156-167.
Sawyer, W., Brock, P. & Baxter, D. (2007) Exceptional outcomes in English
           education: Findings from AESOP. Teneriffe: Post Pressed.
Sawyer, W., Singh, M. & Zhao, D. (2009) ‘Boys’ literacy: Negotiating the territory’,  English in Australia, 44:3, pp. 19-28.
Teese, R. & Lamb, S. (2009) ‘Low achievement and social background:
  Patterns, processes and interventions’. Discussion paper prepared for the NSW
Department of Education and Training Low SES symposium, May.Online.  URL:
http://svc112.wic025v.server-web.com/wcb-content/uploads/psp/file/Resources/low_ses_discussion_paper_v1.pdf

Susan Groundwater-Smith examines what all children and communities are truly entitled to …

This article initially addresses the relationship between notions of entitlement and equity as economic arguments. It goes on to suggest that in providing a decent education for Australia’s school children the two closely related concepts should transcend the oft-cited fiscal case, that sets the level of government spending and taxation, and that such concepts have social and moral consequences. Thus consideration is given to a prime purpose of schooling being to develop active and informed citizens as argued for in the Melbourne Declaration and that teachers, along with their pedagogical roles, have a capacity, through their classroom practices, to assist young people in building their ‘participative capital’.  It is argued that this can be achieved when children and young people have a greater voice in their schooling experiences and become advocates for their own learning.

Key words: Entitlement, equity, social justice, inclusion, active citizenship, participation.

Introduction

In April, 2012, the then shadow Australian Treasurer, Joe Hockey, delivered an address to the Institute of Economic Affairs, The End of the Age of Entitlement,  (Hockey, 2012). The address was seen as a watershed moment that was to inform economic planning specifically in relation to Hockey’s first budget as Treasurer in May, 2014. His argument was based upon the notion that the nation can no longer afford to pay for the range of social transfers and services that were expected by the majority of tax-payers.

The problem, as he saw it, was that “entitlement is a concept that corrodes the very heart of the process of free enterprise that drives our economies” (p.3). He suggested that there has been a persistent belief that “one person has a right to a good or service that someone else will pay for [Hockey’s emphasis]”(p.4). He quoted alternative South East Asian experiences such as those of Hong Kong where a sense of government entitlement is low. “You get what you pay for” (p.7) and went on to put the case that with a lower level of entitlement, businesses and individuals will be free to be successful. He indicated that basing provisions upon a notion of entitlement was to create an intergenerational fiscal handicap for decades to come. At no point in the sixteen page manifesto is there reference to the notion of  ‘equity’ as understood within the field of education.

‘Equity’ is a slippery term (Groundwater-Smith, 2011). For most practitioners in education it is associated with concepts allied to social justice; that is to say that it is fair and reasonable for members of a given society to have their needs met in relation to those resources and opportunities that will enable them to achieve what Amartya Sen (2009) calls “wellbeing”. In particular, citizens may become self actualised through participation in education and the range of social activities that will enable them to manage their daily lives. Indeed, it is this very concept of equity that is enshrined in the National Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, known as the Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008) that makes a plea among other things for young Australians to become active and informed members of society.

• Goal 1 Australian governments, in collaboration with all school sectors, commit to promoting equity and excellence in Australian schooling.
• Goal 2 All young Australians become successful learners, confident and creative individuals and active and informed citizens. (MCEETYA 2008).

Problematically, the Melbourne Declaration is silent on the globally influenced, market-driven structural inequalities that have been seen to perpetuate much of Australia’s educational equity concerns. Such concerns do not appear to find a place in current school reforms (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Reforms, for example, giving schools greater responsibility for self-management; high stakes testing and public ranking of school performances  as  manifest in the MySchool website, are seen to lead to increased competitiveness; all of which feed into a performance culture that may not benefit low performing and high needs students.

Generally there is agreement that transparency is important and schools should be accountable to all students, parents and the wider community, but it is the mechanisms that have been adopted can be seen as often-times crude and ill-considered. Thus when Bragg (2014: 312) quotes Hartley on the pitfalls of marketization and its consequences for those who are struggling and marginalized we can identify the inherent inequities in the process:

       It is important to raise questions about those who can and cannot shop,
       the hidden and not so hidden exclusions of consumer culture, and the
       demands it makes on us. Hartley rightly suggests that one risk of a marketised
       system is that schools and teachers ‘hesitate to educate those children whose wherewithal cannot
       be relied upon to produce a good return’ (Hartley, p123).

But, all of this is not to say that we cannot re-claim equity as a personal, professional and community value – and that it should be more than an aspiration, but an entitlement; but this is a difficult and challenging matter, particularly for today’s educators.

Equity – beyond the economic argument

To be clear, there can be no question that meeting the needs of citizens has economic implications. Increasingly, the developed world has had its attention drawn to the gap that exists between the rich and poor. The OECD report, Divided we stand: why inequality keeps rising (OECD, 2011) indicates that the gap between rich and poor has widened with particular reference to inequality in wages and salaries. It is argued that where there are disparities in educational provisions then access to decent wages and broader social conditions will vary accordingly. This has been shown to be of particular concern in the United States, but now is increasingly on the agenda in Australia.

Not only that, but with poor, or inadequate access to education being able to be fully participative and included in society becomes limited with diminished opportunities to have a voice that can influence decision making across a range of enterprises. In its paper, Deep and persistent disadvantage in Australia, a Productivity Commission staff working paper (McLachlan, Gilfillan & Gordon, 2013) the claim is made:

• There   is   strong   evidence   to   show   that   education   is   the   key   to   improving   life   chances.  Education  not  only  provides  skills  and  the  capacity  to  learn,  it improves  a   person’s  employment  prospects  and  earning  capacity.  The evidence also  points  to  a   relationship   between   education   and   better   health   and   social   cohesion   and   reduced   crime.  In  contrast,  poor  educational  achievement  increases  the  probability  of  poorer   employment  prospects,  lower  lifetime  earnings  and reduced  ability  to  participate  in   society (McLachlan et al, 2013: 17).

As Reid (2012:11)  reminds us education is a public good, for the public good and for the renewal of the public. If equity, within the terms of social justice and inclusion, is to have meaning for us as members of the education profession then its pursuit is a significant and ongoing challenge.

Many decades ago the Whitlam government identified education as the cornerstone for equity and as such provided an opportunity to strive for a fair and just society (Reid, 2012). Whitlam argued that society as a whole was diminished when its citizens are denied a decent education. Gilbert, Keddie, Lingard, Mills and Renshaw (2013) saw the Whitlam years as a period that “systematized federal involvement around equity in the schooling agenda” (p.27).  Through the Disadvantaged Schools Program (DSP) that focused not only on the improvement of fundamental skills, but also upon making school more engaging and enjoyable for young people facing challenging circumstances, Australia experienced, albeit briefly, an era of promise and possibility. However, it has been suggested that there was an insufficient public discussion of what constitutes a ‘just society’ and ‘democratic citizenship’ and broad-band equity programs such as the DSP in the long run became subject to short term political vagaries.

Participating in our society – the voices of children and young people

Although economic growth is not independent of social and community development, it can be argued, then, that inclusion and participation is the route to the achievement of equity and the building of human and social capital. We can take the former, human capital development, to mean a nation’s investment in its people for the purposes of economic growth, a matter much discussed. Social capital is concerned with building those social bonds that enable the connection of individuals to the society of which they are members. These purposes are irrefutable, but missing from the discussion are the ways in which both are enriched and enhanced by the participation of citizens, that is the participative capital that can be identified and nurtured through education. In this sense ‘participative capital’ relates to the capacity of members of society, citizens, organisations, to have a sense of agency and engagement in the making of decisions that affect them (McMurray & Niens, 2012).

While such agency can and does exist within families and the community, nowhere is it more able to be manifest than in the nation’s schools. From the early years on it is possible for educators to create conditions whereby children and young people can take part in the activities of not only the classroom, but more broadly of the school, its management and organization. In effect school students have it within themselves to be advocates for the conditions of their own learning, not only that, but there exists an imprimatur that can legitimate such a role.

It has been noted by Mockler & Groundwater-Smith (2015) and Groundwater-Smith, Dockett & Bottrell (2015) that the most ratified United Nations Convention has been that associated with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990) whose Article 12 states that ‘Children have the right to say what they think should happen when adults are making decisions that affect them, and to have their opinions taken into account’. The convention has been signed off by the Australian Federal Government and thus the voices of children and young people have been legitimated. But that is not sufficient for us to be able to claim that they have truly been heard.

How schooling can ensure that the voices of students are heard

Of course it is incumbent on all teachers to pay attention to the views and perspectives of their students; after all they are the ‘consequential stakeholders’ in the education process (Mockler and Groundwater-Smith, 2015). However, if we have as a goal enhanced equity in the processes by which students ‘buy in’ to their education then working with those young people, whose voices are rarely heard and whose access to participative capital is constrained and limited, becomes an important and challenging task. Some years ago, Richard Teese (2006:151) made a plea for schools facing difficult circumstances, as a contribution to equity, to “experiment and innovate in the interests of the children attending them and the system as a whole”. He saw such schools as “vehicles of system renovation” an ambition that has only been partially realized.

Even so, we have examples of the extraordinary work that teachers of students in such challenging and often difficult circumstances, both economic and social have undertaken (Munns, Sawyer & Cole, 2013). Under the auspices of the Fair Go project, a research project carried out in New South Wales, participating teachers saw that their mission was to find ways of giving their students a fair chance. The project itself sought to identify a group of exemplary teachers across the stages of schooling and to investigate with them their professional and pedagogical orientations to practice, particularly in relation to their responsiveness to their students’ needs, expectations and aspirations. All of the teachers in the study saw that encouraging and developing student voice is an essential requirement for their engagement in their learning. Threaded throughout the book are examples of ways in which teachers consult with their students and engage with them in productive dialogues about learning; what is being learned, how it is being learned, how practices may be developed and improved.

There now exists a considerable literature regarding the ways in which student voice has an increasing role to play in the development of participative classroom practices (see for example, Mayes, 2013). It is often characterized as a special form of participative action research (PAR) that acknowledges the agency of children and young people in contributing in meaningful ways to decisions that affect their lives. Such contributions not only require students to be consulted but also for them to be enabled to analyse inquiry outcomes and recommend action. In effect there are now efforts leading to a form of shared governance where teachers and learners work collaboratively to co-construct the learning and the learning outcomes, thus contributing effectively to a meaningful form of equity (Groundwater-Smith, 2011).

Conclusion

Thus this discussion has moved from an economic concept of entitlement, as spelled out by the Australian treasurer, to one of entitlement to participate as active and informed citizens, in particular as students in our schools. If, as Teese suggests this may lead in the longer term to more equitable outcomes, is yet to be fully tested. Nonetheless, it may be seen, in spite of facing a ‘long walk’ to equity that persistence may well win the day if we take our inspiration from Nelson Mandela (1995)

• I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger for my long walk is not ended.

Susan Groundwater-Smith is an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney and a Visiting Professor at the University of Waikato. She has had an extensive career in teacher education.

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