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Michael Sciffer highlights the issues related to school segregation in Australia and challenges us to commit to the development of an Australian education system in which education exists for the common good, not individual advancement...

In May 2007 Prime Minister John Howard said that public education was a “safety net” for families who could not afford private school fees. The Howard federal government (1996-2007) transformed the structure of the Australian schooling system such that school segregation is increasing at the second-fastest rate in the OECD (O’Brien et al., 2023) to make us the 7^th most segregated system (Gutiérrez, 2023). The Howard government’s four policies to shift enrolments from public to private schools were:

1. Very large increases in federal government funding to private schools
2. Deregulating the creation of low-fee private schools
3. Starting a culture war against the values of public education
4. Targeting parental anxieties to pressure families to believe “school choice” is a requirement of good parenting

The outcome was to accelerate the shift of middle-income families from public to low-fee, government-dependent, private schools. This has changed the enrolment composition of public schools, residualising many traditional neighbourhood public schools.

In the years since the Howard government NSW public schools have shown very little growth, resulting in the public education system shrinking in relative size compared to independent schools. This has undermined the authority and prestige of the public system in educational decision-making.

In recent years, a concerning new trend has emerged of NSW public primary schools losing enrolment numbers as shown in Figure 1. From 2020 public primary schools have lost 27858 students while public secondary schools have only gained 3626 students (ABS, 2025). At the same time, Catholic and independent primary and secondary schools have increased by 16394 and 32605 students respectively.

Figure 1. Enrolment changes in NSW schools 2014-2024.

What is school segregation?

School segregation is the separation of students into different schools based on social characteristics such as socioeconomic status (SES) or class. Segregation is often measured by how unevenly socially disadvantaged students are enrolled across schools within an area or school system. In Australia, school sectors have very different socioeconomic enrolment profiles as shown in Figure 2. The public system over enrols low-SES students, systemic Catholic schools over enrol middle-SES students, independent schools over enrol high SES students, while selective schools enormously over enrol high SES students. As no school sector is representative of the community Australia’s schooling system is educating children with a skewed perception of society.

Figure 2. The 2019 socioeconomic profile of Australian secondary schools

Why does school segregation matter?

School segregation matters because it multiplies social disadvantages. The Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019) sets Australia’s schools the twin goals of educational excellence and equity. But research shows that segregation diminishes the capacity of schools to achieve academic excellence for socially disadvantaged students. The socioeconomic status of a student’s peers, measured as the average SES of a school, is just as important to their learning as the SES of their parents in predicting academic achievement. This is called the school compositional effect.

The school compositional effect is shown in Figure 3 from our research (Sciffer et al., 2022). It shows that both the SES of a student’s family and their school predicts academic achievement. Our research found that a low SES student in a low SES school was two times less likely to achieve minimum NAPLAN benchmarks than the same type of student in a high SES school.

Figure 3. Proportion of students achieving all NAPLAN benchmarks by family and school socioeconomic status

School composition influences more than academic achievement. It has negative effects on high school graduation and access to university (Chesters, 2019; Palardy, 2013, 2015) and social cohesion (Molina & Lamb, 2022).

What causes school segregation?

International research has shown a range of factors are associated with school segregation. In the US where most students attend public schools, neighbourhood segregation largely drives school segregation. This is less of a factor in Australia because of lower rates of income segregation and a much higher degree of school competition. Thus in Australia, more relevant factors are parental decision making, school marketisation reforms, and the enrolment practices of schools.

Parental choice is often identified as the cause of school segregation in Australia (Larsen, 2024; Munro, 2018). Blaming parents for school segregation makes sense in a free-market society that views people as consumers free to make decisions in their own self-interest. An alternative explanation is that Australian parents are driven by anxiety to protect their own children from the harms of a hyper-individualistic society. Where once the education of children was part of the common good guaranteed by government, it has been privitised to an artificially limited commodity (Astin, 1992). Many parents who “choose” private schools report they would prefer neighbourhood public schools but feel compelled to purchase private schooling because of the inadequate resourcing of public schools (Campbell et al., 2009).

School marketisation reforms have caused segregation in every country in which they have been implemented (Lubienski et al., 2022; Zancajo & Bonal, 2022). Governments have argued that school competition and choice will raise quality as it does for consumer products like cars and mobile phones. But school markets fail because they are constrained (Astin, 1992). When consumer products are popular, production is expanded to increase sales and profit, allowing more consumers to benefit from the product. Otherwise, a competitor will take market share. But when schools are popular, they cannot substantially increase enrolments because of physical and geographical constraints. Instead, they put up fees or drive up nearby housing prices. Popular schools are thus able to entrench their privilege over generations.

School market reforms increase the power of popular schools to choose their students. Enrolment and exclusion practices allow schools to select high achieving compliant students who are cheap to teach. This enables the marketing of high academic achievement and orderly learning environments without investing resources into teaching quality nor student wellbeing. The outcome is that Australian schools compete based on enrolment profiles, not teaching quality. This is exemplified in the media’s annual reporting of HSC results which predictably follow socioeconomic enrolment profiles. Selective schools come first, followed by high fee private schools, then low fee and comprehensive public schools. The only insight this reporting provides is as a class analysis of metropolitan Sydney.

Where to next?

Substantial reforms to the structure of Australia’s schooling system are required if we are to achieve the goals of academic excellence and equity. While low SES students are excluded from academic excellence, Australia’s schooling system will continue to languish by international standards. To address school segregation requires confronting the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Australian education policy, between equity and competition. Segregation can only be addressed if there is a shared commitment to the education of all children and young people. That is, education for the common good, not individual advancement. Such a commitment would require:

• Every school being resourced from all income sources according to need, and
• Every school contributing to the learning of all social groups.

In such a system, there would be no need for families to jostle for schools. Families enjoy such a right with schooling systems in countries like Finland and Canada. These countries prioritise the common good in education. It will take a substantial and sustained struggle from public education supporters, in particular from the union movement, to refashion the schooling system to serve the effective functioning of a democratic society.

References

ABS. (2025). Schools. Australian Bureau of Statistics. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/education/schools/latest-release

Astin, A. W. (1992). Educational ‘Choice’: Its Appeal May be Illusory. Sociology of Education, 65(4), 255–260. https://doi.org/10.2307/2112768

Campbell, C., Proctor, H., & Sherington, G. (2009). School Choice: How Parents Negotiate the New School Market in Australia. Allen & Unwin.

Chesters, J. (2019). Alleviating or exacerbating disadvantage: Does school attended mediate the association between family background and educational attainment? Journal of Education Policy, 34(3), 331–350. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2018.1488001

Education Council. (2019). The Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration. Australian Government. https://www.education.gov.au/alice-springs-mparntwe-education-declaration/resources/alice-springs-mparntwe-education-declaration

Gutiérrez, G. (2023). Privatisation, School Markets and Socioeconomic Segregation: An International Overview. In V. Dupriez, J. P. Valenzuela, M. Verhoeven, & J. Corvalán (Eds.), Educational Markets and Segregation: Global Trends and Singular Experiences From Belgium and Chile (pp. 103–126). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36147-0_6

Larsen, S. (2024, December 17). More Australian families are choosing private schools – we need to understand why. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/more-australian-families-are-choosing-private-schools-we-need-to-understand-why-242791

Lubienski, C., Perry, L. B., Kim, J., & Canbolat, Y. (2022). Market models and segregation: Examining mechanisms of student sorting. Comparative Education, 58(1), 16–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2021.2013043

Molina, A., & Lamb, S. (2022). School segregation, inequality and trust in institutions: Evidence from Santiago. Comparative Education, 58(1), 72–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2021.1997025

Munro, K. (2018, August 19). School choice: Some parents are prepared to pay, but is society? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/aug/19/school-choice-some-parents-are-prepared-to-pay-but-is-society

O’Brien, L., Paul, L., Anderson, D., Hunter, J., Lamb, S., & Sahlberg, P. (2023). Improving Outcomes for All: The Report of the Independent Expert Panel’s Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System (p. 252). Department of Education. https://www.education.gov.au/review-inform-better-and-fairer-education-system/review-inform-better-and-fairer-education-system-reports#:~:text=PDF%20(13.35mb)-,Expert%20Panel’s%20Report,was%20published%20in%20December%202023.

Palardy, G. J. (2013). High School Socioeconomic Segregation and Student Attainment. American Educational Research Journal, 50(4), 714–754. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831213481240

Palardy, G. J. (2015). High school socioeconomic composition and college choice: Multilevel mediation via organizational habitus, school practices, peer and staff attitudes. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 26(3), 329–353. https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2014.965182

Sciffer, M. G., Perry, L. B., & McConney, A. (2022). The substantiveness of socioeconomic school compositional effects in Australia: Measurement error and the relationship with academic composition. Large-Scale Assessments in Education, 10(1), 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40536-022-00142-8

Zancajo, A., & Bonal, X. (2022). Education markets and school segregation: A mechanism-based explanation. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 52(8), 1241–1258. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2020.1858272

About the author

Michael Sciffer is a school counsellor in Armidale, having taught and counselled across many public schools in the Riverina and Northern Tablelands. He is a PhD candidate of Murdoch University and has published a range of research papers across diverse international journals. His research interests are in school segregation and compositional effects. In particular, the role of public policy settings in determining the social contexts of schools.

Dr Katitza Marinkovic Chavez, Phoebe Quinn, Nathaniel Barker and Prof Lisa Gibbs discuss new research and co-designed resources to support teacher wellbeing in the face of climate change…

Climate change is a wellbeing issue for students and teachers. In this article, we share insights from research into the challenges teachers face and what can help support their ‘climate wellbeing’, while also supporting student wellbeing and learning. We also introduce the Teacher Climate Superpowers resources, which have been co-developed with Australian teachers, to support them, their students and the planet in the face of climate change.

Climate change is a wellbeing issue for students and teachers

There is growing awareness of climate distress among students, with teachers playinga vital role in helping them navigate it. However, teachers’ own climate wellbeing is often overlooked, with limited research and resources to promote it.

We approach the notion of ‘climate wellbeing’ from a holistic perspective to better understand how people experience their wellbeing in the face of the various challenges presented by climate change.  Teacher climate wellbeing is important in its own right, as well as being necessary for teachers’ ability to support students and promote sustainable practices in schools.

Building on a Strength-Based Approach: Your Climate Superpowers

In 2022, we collaborated with over 70 young people to develop a resource to support young people’s climate well-being (Marinkovic Chavez et al, 2023). The resulting website, www.climatesuperpowers.org, centres on the idea of ‘climate superpowers’ that enhance personal and collective resilience.

There are seven superpowers: social, natural, cultural, political, built, financial, and human (Quinn & Marinkovic Chavez, 2022). The website includes a fun quiz to help students discover their main superpowers. Based on their personal strengths and interests (superpowers), students are invited to engage in different actions for climate learning, self-care, and social transformation. The website’s content and its design, including the interactive quiz and striking illustrations, were all shaped by co-designers aged between 12 and 25 years over a series of workshops (Marinkovic Chavez et al, 2023).

Climate Superpowers in the Classroom

After the Climate Superpowers website launched, we heard from many teachers interested in using it to support their conversations with students about climate change. However, given the many demands on teachers’ time, there was a clear need for classroom-ready resources to facilitate this uptake.

So, along with teacher and student co-designers, we created lesson plans, curriculum guides, and activity materials to discuss climate change in the classroom. These resources were aligned with the Australian Curriculum and made freely accessible via the existing website (see the Classroom Resources section of the website). This is an evolving set of resources, which is being refined and grown as passionate teachers and students experiment with activity formats in classrooms.

Throughout this process, we have encountered many dedicated teachers going above and beyond in their efforts to support students and sustainability in schools, often with very little recognition or resourcing. This highlighted an important area for further attention and support: teacher climate wellbeing.

New Insights on The Emotional Weight of Climate Change for Teachers

Previous research has shown evidence of teachers dealing with their personal concerns about climate change and experiencing feelings of anxiety, helplessness, guilt, and frustration (Hermans, 2016; Pihkala, 2020). Many have reported feeling unsure or underprepared to manage climate discussions without distressing students (Bleazby et al., 2023; Hopman, 2022) due to a lack of knowledge or access to information about the topic. However, research on teacher climate-related experiences is scant, and often narrowly focused on impacts on student learning.

With support of the Teachers Health Foundation and the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, we have been conducting further research to deepen understandings of current experiences of teachers in Australia, including challenges they are facing, strategies they find helpful, and changes they want to see in relation to climate wellbeing (students’ and their own). This project, called Teacher Climate Superpowers, aims to develop strategies to support teachers, school leaders, and the education system in holistically supporting climate wellbeing.

Across 14 qualitative interviews and four workshops with 56 teachers, we have heard about a wide range of wellbeing challenges, relating to teachers’ own thoughts and feelings relating to climate change, difficulties relating to student climate distress (e.g. anxiety, anger, hopelessness) or disengagement, systemic and resourcing issues, (e.g. curriculum and time constraints), tensions within some school communities (e.g. interactions with colleagues or parents, political disagreements), and environmental events such as bushfires, floods, storms, drought and extreme heat.

Teacher Climate Superpowers: a professional development resource co-developed with Australian teachers

Through the workshops and interviews described above, we have also been collaborating with Australian teachers to create a strengths-based, practically useful online resource. This Teacher Climate Superpowers professional development resource is specifically designed to support teacher climate wellbeingwhile continuing to develop the student-focused resources. The aim is to empower teachers by providing a structured space to explore, plan, and act on their climate wellbeing alongside their efforts to support students and the environment.

The Teacher Climate Superpowers resource is being piloted from May 2025. It is a choose-your-own-adventure kind of resource, with multiple possible modes of engaging with the content depending on each teacher’s preferences. This includes:

• webinars (live and recorded)
• a quiz, teachers can discover their personal strengths (superpowers) relevant to climate action and well-being.
• a guided reflection ‘action plan’ tool to help teachers promote their wellbeing, student wellbeing and learning, and planetary health. For each one of these three topics, teachers are invited to explore their personal challenges, existing strengths/resources/practices/successes, and plans for action going forward.
• interactive, self-paced modules that provide evidence-based strategies for addressing climate anxiety and stress, and opportunities for connecting with other teachers.

Teacher Climate Superpowers aims to be a useful professional development resource for teachers to connect to the latest evidence on student and teacher climate wellbeing.  It is meant to serve as a practical tool to deal with everyday challenges and promote in-depth reflection.

Invitation to participate in the Teacher Climate Superpowers pilot

We invite teachers working across Australia to join the Teacher Climate Superpowers pilot study between Terms 2 and 3, 2025. Participation is open to individuals as well as groups of teachers who want to engage as part of a school or teacher network.

Based on your feedback, we will continue refining the platform as a living and growing resource so it can effectively help teachers feel confident to discuss climate change with students and manage the impacts of climate change on their wellbeing.  Listening to teachers is crucial for this resource to meet the needs of both teachers and students effectively. Tailoring resources to teachers’ needs is essential to foster resilience and wellbeing within the education sector amid growing environmental challenges.

For more information about the Teacher Climate Superpowers 2025 Pilot, please contact Dr Katitza Marinkovic Chavez, marinkovick@unimelb.edu.au, or Phoebe Quinn phoebeq@unimelb.edu.au.

Follow this link to access Teacher Climate Superpowers: https://climatesuperpowers.org/teachers

The Teacher Climate Superpowers has components based on the Australian Curriculum, which can be used directly by a number of States and Territories. The NSW Teachers Federation and the Centre for Professional Learning are in discussions with the University of Melbourne to develop a NSW curriculum focus. The program is up and running but certain parts of the platform are still under construction.

Reference list

Bleazby, J., Burgh, G., Thornton, S., Graham, M., Reid, A., & Finefter-Ronsebluh, I. (2023). Teaching about climate change in the midst of ecological crisis: Responsibilities, challenges, and possibilities. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 55(10), 1087-1095. DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2023.2211260

Hermans, M. (2016). Geography Teachers and Climate Change: Emotions about Consequences, Coping Strategies, and Views on Mitigation. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 11(4), 389-408.

Hopman, J. (2022, 12 December). Supporting teacher emotions through rolling crises. https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/supporting-teacher-emotions-through-rolling-crises 

Marinkovic Chavez, K., Quinn, P., Gibbs, L., Block, K., Leppold, C., Stanley, J., & Vella-Brodrick, D. (2023). Growing up in Victoria, Australia, in the midst of the climate emergency. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01650254231205239

Pihkala, P. (2020). Eco-Anxiety and Environmental Education. Sustainability, 12(23). https://doi.org/10.3390/su122310149

Quinn, P. & Marinkovic Chavez, K. (2022). ‘What am I supposed to do about all this really bad stuff?’ Young people identify 7 ‘superpowers’ to fight climate change. The Conversation, 11 November. https://theconversation.com/what-am-i-supposed-to-do-about-all-this-really-bad-stuff-young-people-identify-7-superpowers-to-fight-climate-change-193620

About the Authors

Dr. Katitza Marinkovic Chavez

Katitza Marinkovic Chavez is a psychologist and Research Fellow in Participatory Methods at the Disaster, Climate and Adversity Unit in Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Her research focuses on empowering children and young adults to articulate their strengths in advocating for climate action, and has co-developed with young people the Your Climate Superpowers website. With Phoebe Quinn, Katitza led the Young People’s Climate Superpowers project, and co-leads the Intergenerational Justice Stream of the Climate Collaborative Action for Transformative Change in Health and Healthcare (CATCH) Lab.

Phoebe Quinn

Phoebe Quinn is a Research Fellow in Disaster Recovery at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Her work focuses on disaster resilience, community wellbeing and social justice, and the development of strengths-based resources relating to disasters and climate change. Phoebe’s research is firmly oriented towards informing policy and practice, and exploring how democratic innovations using digital technologies can support community decision-making around disasters and climate change. With Katitza Marinkovic Chavez, Phoebe led the Young People’s Climate Superpowers project, and co-leads the Intergenerational Justice Stream of the Climate Collaborative Action for Transformative Change in Health and Healthcare (CATCH) Lab.

Professor Lisa Gibbs

Lisa Gibbs is a Professor of Public Health and Director of the Disaster, Climate and Adversity Unit in Melbourne School of Population and Global Health and Academic Lead for Community Resilience and Public Health in the Centre for Disaster Management and Public Safety. Her research focuses on disaster recovery and resilience particularly relating to the interplay between individual and community level outcomes. Professor Gibbs also leads a range of research studies relating to child health, wellbeing, and citizenship. Prof Gibbs also leads the Teacher Climate Superpowers project, to co-develop resources with and for teachers to promote teacher wellbeing in the context of climate change.

Nathaniel Barker, MPH

Nate, an educator and holder of a Master’s in Public Health, is deeply committed to climate education. In his role, he has been part of the Teacher Climate Superpowers project, collaborating with fellow educators to co-create effective and tailored resources informed by evidence and lived experiences. Nate’s research has focused on exploring teachers’ experiences of well-being in the face of climate change, a crucial aspect of equipping educators to address this pressing issue.

In a world-first study Dr. Sally Patfield and Dr. Leanne Fray look at the importance of student aspirations and how they can be nurtured in public education…

While careers advice largely takes place in the later years of high school, young people begin to form ideas about their futures starting in the early years of primary school. How those aspirations take shape, what factors influence them, and what challenges they face in achieving their goals were some of the key questions at the heart of an Australian-first, decade-long study by us and our colleagues at the University of Newcastle.

When we first spoke to Dahlia* in 2016, she was a high achieving Year 11 student with aspirations to become a criminal psychologist. A young Aboriginal woman passionate about social justice, Dahlia had ambitions to create a different kind of future for First Nations people through reform of the criminal justice system.

However, the following year during Year 12, Dahlia suffered from severe mental ill health. Five years later, we spoke again with Dahlia who told us how the pressure of Year 12 had caused her to drop out of school:

It was just a burn out, like, I was just so overwhelmed. I felt like I was so pressured to do the best and I felt like I wasn’t the best […] then I’d get anxiety about not being as good as everyone thinks I am […] that’s why I really wanted to do this interview, because I wanted to put it out there that high school is not the be all, end all […] getting that high [Year 12] mark isn’t the be all, end all.

Dahlia’s story is just one from the thousands of interviews we conducted as part of the Aspirations Longitudinal Study, which began in 2012 and is continuing today, providing comprehensive insights into the factors which shape the career and educational aspirations of Australia’s young people – and how these aspirations actually eventuate. The insights produced by this research have significant implications for teachers, schools and communities.

The Aspirations Longitudinal Study

The Aspirations Longitudinal Study began as an ARC (Australian Research Council) Linkage Project in 2012, led by Laureate Professor Jenny Gore AM and the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre at the University of Newcastle.

The study sought to understand the way in which students from Years 3 to 12 think about the post-school options available to them, what factors shape their choices, how possibilities might be opened up or closed off, and the impact teachers, families and society can have on the pursuit of their goals.

In the first year of the study, students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 from 64 government schools in various locations across NSW undertook a survey about their career and educational aspirations. The students repeated the survey over four consecutive years which enabled us to follow students throughout their schooling, providing a range of views from Years 3 to 12, matched with NAPLAN data and other socio-educational data. We also undertook interviews and focus groups with students, teachers, parents, and community members.

In total, the study collected more than 12,000 survey responses and 1,000 interview and focus group transcripts and paved the way for ten additional studies which looked at everything from the aspirations of Indigenous students and students from regional and remote Australia, implications for the VET and Higher Education sectors, to the impact of bushfires, floods, and COVID-19 on the formation and pursuit of young people’s aspirations.

This year, we have returned to several of the schools involved in the original study to conduct a follow up study to understand how student aspirations might have changed over the decade since we first began collecting this data.

Key insights

Analysis of this data produced a number of important insights that are extremely relevant to teachers, school leaders and careers advisers, as well as education system leaders, policymakers, tertiary and higher education providers, and university staff developing community outreach programs.

Some of our findings are intuitive – we still see stubborn and highly gendered aspirations among young people. Males are more likely to aspire to careers such as Engineering, Defence, Sports, and STEM disciplines. Female students are more likely to aspire to careers such as Nursing, Teaching, Social Work and the Arts.

But many of the findings really challenge common assumptions about how students decide what they want or don’t want to pursue after school.

For instance, we found that Indigenous students have very similar career aspirations to their non-Indigenous peers, however teachers often perceive a difference. Interestingly, where the aspirations of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students really diverge is among the highest achieving students – where Indigenous students are significantly less likely to aspire to a university education career path than their non-Indigenous peers. For Indigenous students, the path to higher education often involves navigating complex intersections of racial, socioeconomic, and cultural barriers—challenges that are typically not experienced by non-Indigenous young people.

We also found that aspirations for university among students in regional and remote communities are often shaped by the presence or proximity of university to their community. While governments and universities often emphasise scholarships and other financial incentives for rural and remote students, cost is just one factor impacting young people’s desire to pursue higher education. Distance, job opportunities closer to home and emotional attachment to their communities are often of greater concern.

Starkly, another key finding of our research was that young people who don’t have parents who have been to university often discount the possibility of future study at a very young age when compared to their peers with university-educated parents. Those students without university-educated parents who go on to higher education are often referred to as ‘first in family’ students. These students sometimes fall into multiple equity categories – more likely to be Indigenous, live in a regional or remote area, and attend a relatively disadvantaged school – but they also face the unique challenge of navigating towards a new and alien environment. Our research calls for specific policies and supports for these students.

Translating these findings into practical applications for teachers and the wider community

In 2018, following the completion of the major arm of the Aspirations Longitudinal Study, the Australian Government commissioned the development of a professional development course to translate these research findings into practice.

Aspirations: Supporting Students’ Futures is a free, online self-paced course for teachers that unpacks the evidence-base produced during the longitudinal study. It provides a framework and practical strategies for teachers to understand how aspirations form and the role they can play in nurturing the aspirations of students from diverse backgrounds, with applications both within and outside the classroom.

On the back of the positive reception to this course, we also developed a second course,When I Grow Up: Supporting Children’s Aspirations, which is a free online course designed specifically for parents, carers and community members. Like the first course, it also provides evidence-based approaches for nurturing the educational and career aspirations of young people, with a particular focus on life outside of the classroom.

The Path Travelled

Thankfully, Dahlia’s story, which we began this article with, is a happy one. After leaving high school before the HSC, Dahlia took up a series of retail and hospitality jobs in her local community. But when she came across an advertisement for an Aboriginal traineeship at a local Indigenous pre-school, her passion to work with First Nations Australians was reignited. She completed her traineeship before entering university to study a combined degree in primary and early childhood teaching.

While her original career aspirations changed, the underpinning desire to create systematic change remains a driving force for Dahlia:

There’s such a push now for formal schooling to start early. But those first five years, just being able to be a kid and enjoy your childhood is just so important. I really want to give our Goori kids a chance to do that… I’m very passionate about culture so I do a lot of language and songs and dance in my practice so that these kids have culture in their lives and feel connected before they start school.

Dahlia’s story – like those of the many other young people we’ve spoken to over the course of the past 10 years – emphasises the need for all of us to understand how young people’s aspirations form, what values and beliefs drive them, and what supports – both at an individual and systemic level – we need to provide to enable them to achieve their goals.

*Names have been changed

About the Authors

Dr Sally Patfield is a lecturer in the School of Education and member of the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre at the University of Newcastle. Her research focuses on issues of equity and social justice across formal schooling and higher education, particularly in relation to educational and social inequities connected to social class, rurality, first-in-family status, race, and the changing nature of the education system.

Dr Leanne Fray is a senior lecturer in the School of Education and member of the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre at the University of Newcastle. Leanne’s research focuses on improving educational outcomes for students from complex backgrounds. Her work is centred on the impact of professional development in specialised school contexts, the effects of COVID-19 on teachers and students, and student education and career aspirations. Leanne leads the Primary Literacy team at the University of Newcastle.

Misty Adoniou explains why evidence based learning is not a new phenomenon. It has always been a part of a teacher’s pedagogy and is used in every classroom every day…

The Federal government committed $34.6 million in the 2024 Budget ‘to make evidence-based curriculum and student wellbeing support and professional development materials. In July NSW launched a ‘revamped’ curriculum that is ‘clear, evidence-based and carefully sequenced’. (NSW Government, 2024)

Who can argue? We all want our children taught by methods that have evidence behind them. Yet these political pronouncements, and the accompanying media frenzy, seem to imply that up until now this has not been the case.

But of course, our children have always been taught through evidence-based methods. All teacher education degrees are evidence-based. Departments of Education have always used evidence to develop curricula and provide professional learning for teachers.

Teacher Education has been an academic discipline for over a century. That is about 50 years longer than Macroeconomics, 60 years longer than Cognitive Psychology and 75 years longer than Media Studies.

To be a member of the ‘academy’, the field of Teacher Education fulfils the requirements of being a science. This means conducting studies under defined conditions to ensure validity, reliability and accuracy, and submitting those studies for peer review to have them questioned, clarified, rejected or accepted. This is how knowledge is built in the sciences – including in Teacher Education which has about 130 years of this scientific knowledge building behind it.

The NSW and Federal governments have both declared initiatives to make curricula ‘evidence-based’. Yet, the national Australian Curriculum we have today, and which is taught in some form or other in every Australian school, including NSW, drew on a huge evidence base from domestic and international studies, and several years of research consultations with academics and educators before it was finally released in 2011. It has undergone many reviews since then, making changes in response to new evidence from research studies in curriculum, teaching and learning. The latest review was in 2021, and we are now at Version 9 of our national curriculum. We have always had evidence-based curricula – it has always been the task of the various federal, state and territory curriculum authorities to ensure this.

Victoria’s Education Minister announced in June 2024 that his Department will mandate ‘evidence-based teaching and learning’ from 2025.

Victoria has always provided evidence-based teaching and learning guidance for its teachers, most recently in 2018 with its ten High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS) highlighting clear goals, structured lessons and explicit teaching as its top 3 strategies. These were developed from researcher John Hattie’s evidence base gathered in his synthesis of 800 meta-analyses of research studies on school achievement.

So if we have always used evidence-based practices and curricula in schools, what are these most recent pronouncements about?

Why give this public impression that our teacher education faculties, education departments, school leaders, and teachers have been operating for decades on a whim, rather than on the evidence?

Why? Because ‘Evidence-based teaching’ is actually being used as shorthand for ‘the approach I favour’ or  ‘the approach that worked for someone I know’, or even ‘the approach I have a vested interest in’.

And too many of those advocating for these ‘evidence-based practices’ either misunderstand, or deliberately misrepresent what evidence is.

This is what evidence is NOT.

Evidence is NOT proof.

Evidence is NOT static or absolute.

Evidence is NOT neutral.

Evidence IS contextual.

Evidence IS open to interpretation.

Evidence is not neutral. Studies are designed to gather evidence within a theoretical paradigm. Both the goals and the methods of the study are informed by a theory. If the informing theory of learning is behaviourist, where learning is deemed cognitive and moderated by repetition and reward, the research study will look for different evidence than a study situated within a social constructivist theory, where learning is deemed social and moderated by interactions with expert others in the pursuit of meaning.

Evidence is contextual. Each research study context has multiple variables: historical context, socio-economic context, cultural context, situational context, the number, age, gender, social and economic status, the cognitive and emotional wellbeing of the participants.  Evidence gathered in one context is not proof similar evidence will be generated in another context.

Indeed the contextual variability of classrooms is a nightmare for clinical scientists, whose methods are highly dependent upon controlling variables. It is impossible to recreate classroom conditions in a lab. And even when studies are conducted in classrooms, it is impossible to control the variables and replicate the conditions from one classroom to another.

However we have always known this challenge. Researchers reviewing data sets or conducting clinical experiments are not the only people gathering evidence to inform teaching practice. Teachers gather evidence every hour, every day, in every classroom in Australia. Teachers are scientists.

It is why teacher education institutions train teachers in the scientific method. Over their 4 year degree, primary school teachers are taught how to conduct their own studies, gathering evidence from their own classrooms to build robust evidence-based practices that work in their contexts for their students. They plan and record these studies in a document called a lesson plan – the equivalent of a lab report – for every lesson they conduct.

The lesson plan starts with a learning goal – or hypothesis – which describes the learning that will occur in the lesson. These goals come directly from the government mandated evidence-based curricula.

The plan then states how achievement against the goal will be measured e.g. through observation, collection of work samples, interviews, testing etc

Materials and resources required to achieve the learning goal are listed.

Conditions for the learning are described with time allocations, and organisational structures for the lesson. E.g. in pairs, whole class, self-assigned groups, teacher-assigned groups and how much time will be allocated to each task

The plan describes how the teaching will deal with known variables. E.g. audio support for learning impaired student, supplemental written and visual instructions on task cards for student with autism etc

A method is given – a sequential and detailed account of what will occur during the lesson to achieve the learning goal. The method is shaped by the informing theory for the lesson.

An assessment is conducted of the students’ achievements against the learning goal and the results recorded.

Finally an evaluation occurs – a discussion of the results. Was the learning goal achieved – by whom? Why did it work or not work? Were there limitations? What adjustments need to be made for the next lesson?

Teachers conduct this scientific gathering of evidence with every planned lesson they teach, as many as 6 per day. Teachers spend all day every day building evidence-based teaching practices. Yet their voices, and their findings are strangely absent from these most recent and most earnest evidence-based directives from government.

Every time an educator hears the term ‘evidence-based’ practice it is incumbent upon the educational scientist within each of us to ask:

Evidence of what?

Why was it generated – what question were they seeking to answer?

How was the evidence gathered – what was the informing theory?

Where was it generated?

When was it generated?

Who were the study participants?

This allows us to firstly decide whether it is a practice we need to trial in our own context – is it solving a problem that we have, and secondly understand its limitations due to contextual differences and the possible need to make adjustments to its implementation.

For example, let’s say the proposed practice or program has evidence it improves decoding skills in 6 year old monolingual urban students with language delays.

A target school’s testing shows their 6 year olds have good decoding skills but their 10 year olds have poor comprehension skills. Thus there would be no reason for the school to trial the proposed evidence-based practice as it does not address their issue.

Another target school in a low SES regional area has 6 year old multilingual students with poor decoding skills. The school may trial the practice but make adjustments for the fact that the evidence base is for a student cohort in a different location and with different language needs.

If the practice is shown to also be effective for their cohort they should report the results to their peers so the entire education community can learn from their study. Equally, if it is found to be ineffective for their cohort, they should drop the trial, and report the results. They should not continue blindly with an evidence-based practice which is ineffective in their context or irrelevant to their needs simply because it has been ‘mandated’.

This is actually what evidence-based practice means. Trialling evidence-based research in your own teaching context, seeing whether it works and being agile and informed enough to adjust the practice, or reject it, when it isn’t working. 

We can only hope that our Education Ministers have understood this. Their words and actions so far suggest they haven’t.

References

NSW Government Media release (July 24, 2024) Landmark new primary school curriculum to drive better education outcomes

https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/landmark-new-primary-school-curriculum-to-drive-better-education-outcomes#:~:text=The%20Minns%20Labor%20Government%20is,receive%20the%20best%20education%20possible.

Premier of Victoria media release (June 2024)Making Best Practice Common Practice In The Education State

https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/making-best-practice-common-practice-education-state

About the author

Misty Adoniou is an Adjunct Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESOL at the University of Canberra, and a Principal Fellow at Melbourne Graduate School of Education. She has received numerous teaching awards, including a National Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning and the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence.

She was a lead writer for the national English as an Additional Language Teachers Resource which accompanies the Australian Curriculum. She was a contributing writer for ACARA’s Language Learning Progressions. She also wrote the Federal government’s Orientation curriculum for newly arrived adult refugees.

She believes in the advocacy power of professional voices and the importance of professional associations in corralling that strength. She has served as the President of two national teachers associations – TESOL Greece, and the Australian Council of TESOL Associations. She is currently on the board of Directors of TESOL International, an affiliation of 105 teachers associations around the globe.

She currently works directly with schools, overseas and around Australia, leading professional learning in the teaching of spelling, grammar and writing.

Professor Jenny Gore shares the history of the use of Quality Teaching Rounds in NSW public schools and explores the positive impact of the approach on student outcomes . . .

Lost in the growing call in NSW for a “back-to-basics” approach to curriculum, teaching and learning is recognition of the complex, intellectual work teachers do in every lesson to ensure relevant, meaningful, and powerful learning experiences. More than ever, in the face of growing classroom complexity, burgeoning workloads, budget constraints, high stress and burnout, the realities of teachers’ work should be recognised.

Our research on Quality Teaching Rounds professional development provides such recognition. It supports teachers by building morale, efficacy, and collegiality while simultaneously improving the quality of teaching and lifting student academic achievement.

The Quality Teaching approach

More than 20 years ago, Associate Professor James Ladwig and I were commissioned by the NSW Department of Education to develop an evidence-based pedagogical framework to improve teaching quality across the state. Drawing on a wide body of research and hundreds of hours of lesson observations, the Quality Teaching (QT) Model was born (Ladwig & King, 2003). The Model addresses three key ideas:

1. Intellectual Quality: Developing deep understanding of important knowledge
2. Quality Learning Environment: Ensuring positive classrooms that boost student learning
3. Significance: Connecting learning to students’ lives and the wider world

Under these dimensions sit 18 elements based on evidence of teaching practice that improves student outcomes. Launched in 2003, the QT Model has been the Department’s framework for teaching since. But creating a framework is never enough to change practice and impact teachers and students. We needed a powerful way to support teachers to embed the Model in their everyday work.

A series of research studies between 2009 and 2012 developed and refined the approach to professional development we call Quality Teaching Rounds, or QTR (Bowe & Gore, 2017). QTR brings teachers together to learn from each other and improve their practice. Any four teachers form a professional learning community (face-to-face or online) and then observe, analyse and discuss one another’s lessons using the QT Model across four days of professional learning.

QTR treats teachers as professionals and builds on what they already know and do. Importantly, it doesn’t dictate particular teaching methods but focuses attention on improving pedagogy to make a difference where it matters most – ensuring high quality student learning experiences.

Improving the quality of teaching

In 2014–15, with funding from the NSW Department of Education, we undertook the first randomised controlled trial on QTR. This trial set out to investigate the impact of QTR on the quality of teaching, teacher morale, and sense of recognition and appraisal. The trial, which involved 192 teachers from 24 NSW government schools, found significant positive effects on teaching quality for primary and secondary teachers, those in metropolitan and rural locations, regardless of their years of experience. Importantly, these effects were sustained six months later (Gore et al., 2017).

We also found participation in QTR had significant positive effects on teacher morale and sense of recognition and appraisal, and our qualitative data showed it improved collaboration among teachers, boosted beginning teacher confidence, and rejuvenated experienced teachers (Gore & Bowe, 2015; Gore & Rickards, 2021).

Our theory of change was supported by these findings. Improve the quality of teaching to improve student learning. But we needed to test the causal link between QTR and student achievement.

Funded by a $17.2M philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation, the Building Capacity for Quality Teaching in Australian Schools, 2018–2023, remains unprecedented in the Australian education research landscape for its investment, scope, and ambition. The project also received funding and support from the NSW Department of Education, the Australian Research Council, and the University of Newcastle.

Through three interrelated activities – research, scaling, and setting up a sustainable business model – we set out to comprehensively explore what QTR could do for schooling in Australia (Gore et al., 2023).

Australia’s largest education randomised controlled trial

Between 2019 and 2023 we conducted a series of randomised controlled trials to investigate the impact of QTR on student and teacher outcomes in a range of contexts. These trials are the “gold standard” for research because voluntary participants are randomly allocated to either “intervention” (in our case QTR) or “control” (PD as usual) groups.

Randomised controlled trials are common in medicine. But they are much rarer in education because they typically involve “clustered” groups (students within classes within schools) and, therefore, require really large samples of teachers and students to account for this complexity. The need to collect data ourselves, using ACER’s progressive achievement tests (because NAPLAN data wasn’t fit for purpose due to the two year interval), made these trials hugely expensive.

Our first trial in NSW involved almost 500 teachers from 120 public schools and was the largest randomised controlled trial in Australian education. In total our four trials in this program of research involved 1,400 teachers and 14,500 students from 430 schools across New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.

As well as experimental evidence in the form of randomised trials, the program of research included case studies, longitudinal research (where we tracked teachers over the five years of the study), and evaluations of a partnership model for whole-school engagement in QTR which focused on improving outcomes for teachers and students in disadvantaged schools.

No other school-based intervention has been so thoroughly tested in Australian schools or amassed such a comprehensive body of evidence.

QTR improves student outcomes

These trials replicated the results of the 2014–15 study, demonstrating that teacher participation in QTR improves the quality of teaching, teacher morale, sense of recognition and appraisal, and school culture. For the first time, we also tested for, and found, increased teacher efficacy.

Most importantly, three of the four trials in the Building Capacity project produced robust evidence of positive effects on student achievement. Excitingly, we found these results were stronger in disadvantaged schools, signalling the potential for QTR to help narrow pervasive equity gaps (Gore et al., 2021; Harris et al., 2022; Povey et al., 2023).

Our studies compared students’ scores on progressive achievement tests in mathematics and reading. Across the four trials (including one conducted by the University of Queensland and one by ACER to provide independent replication), we tested students in Term 1 to provide a baseline score and then again in Term 4 after their teachers had participated in QTR (intervention group) or completed their usual PD (control group).

While we didn’t see an identical set of results in every study, three of the four trials produced statistically significant positive effects on student learning. These improvements ranged from two-to-three months’ worth of additional achievement growth in mathematics and reading for the students whose teachers participated in QTR compared to teachers who didn’t.

Education research is messy. Mixed results are common in education given the complexity of conducting research in schools. An analysis of large-scale education randomised trials in the US and UK found that only one quarter of trials produced a statistically significant result. For example, a trial of Dylan Wiliam’s formative assessment program found improvements of one month’s growth, however, these improvements were not statistically significant.

Achieving significant results in multiple trials is especially rare and even more remarkable considering the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that QTR professional development is “distal” from the student achievement measure – meaning, we changed teachers’ pedagogy and improved academic achievement, rather than a “proximal” intervention focused specifically on the instruction of mathematics or reading.

Importantly, these results were amplified by the qualitative insights of teachers and principals throughout the project. These rich qualitative data enabled a deeper understanding of how, why, and under what conditions QTR is effective (Gore et al., 2023). Here are just two examples:

“Long after the QTR process is done, I don’t think I’ll ever not think about these 18 elements to some level as I go through my practice. Even now when I start thinking about planning the next area or planning the next unit, I will run through the things in my head like, “How am I going to make sure I’m inclusive? How am I going to make sure that I look at different cultural knowledge? Where can I draw on the kids’ background knowledge?” I just find it’s going to be beneficial and helpful long term.” (Ava, teacher in a metropolitan secondary school)

“QTR is the vehicle through which we can achieve our school’s goals. It’s not the end point. It’s enabling that professional learning, that reflection, that dialogue to happen. And that’s going to improve our knowledge of students, improve explicit teaching, improve lesson planning. That’s going to improve all those elements that sit underneath the QT Model. That’s all going to be what we achieve through Rounds.” (Gwen, principal in a metropolitan secondary school)

What next?

Thanks to the funding provided in the Building Capacity project, teachers across Australia can access QTR through our non-profit social enterprise, the QT Academy.

The Australian Government has also provided funding for 1,600 teachers to take part in a free QTR workshop between 2023 and 2026 as part of the National Teacher Workforce Action Plan (Department of Education, 2022). The Strengthening Induction through QTR project aims to improve the morale, confidence, job satisfaction, and retention of early career teachers across Australia (Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, 2024).

Our partnership with Cessnock High School, one of the most disadvantaged schools in NSW, led to the school achieving the greatest NAPLAN growth from Year 7 to 9 in the Hunter region and the 11th greatest in the state by engaging in whole school Quality Teaching Rounds (Duffy, 2024). Simultaneously, teachers reported greater morale and improved school culture, which are critical factors in addressing the current teacher shortage crisis.

“We are really proud of the results we have achieved so far. We’re not just trying to help kids through school here, we’re trying to help the Cessnock community by producing kids who are capable of getting quality jobs, being able to operate as a community member, and adding to our community.” (Peter Riley, Principal, Cessnock High School)

Thanks to additional funding from the Paul Ramsay Foundation, this partnership model is now being rolled out to 25 disadvantaged schools in NSW to support teachers and improve outcomes with a key focus on equity.

Our research shows the Quality Teaching approach, which was born here in NSW, has clear potential to address many of the most pressing concerns facing education in this country. By engaging in QTR on a wide scale, we can support the teaching workforce while achieving excellence and more equitable outcomes for Australian students.

References

Bowe, J. M., & Gore, J. M. (2017). Reassembling teacher professional development: The case for Quality Teaching Rounds. Teachers and Teaching, 23, 352–366.

Department of Education. (2022). National Teacher Workforce Action Plan. https://www.education.gov.au/national-teacher-workforce-action-plan

Duffy, C. (2024, April 14). Teachers once feared working at Cessnock High, now it’s a model for best practice. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-14/formerly-violent-nsw-high-school-sets-model-for-teaching/103675354

Gore, J. M., & Bowe, J.M. (2015). Interrupting attrition? Re-shaping the transition from preservice to inservice teaching through Quality Teaching Rounds. International Journal of Educational Research, 73, 77–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2015.05.006

Gore, J., Lloyd, A., Smith, M., Bowe, J., Ellis,H., & Lubans, D. (2017). Effects of a professional development on the quality of teaching: Results from a randomised controlled trial of Quality Teaching Rounds. Teaching and Teacher Education, 68, 99–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.08.007

Gore, J., Miller, A., Fray, L., Harris, J., & Prieto-Rodriguez, E. (2021). Improving student achievement through professional development: Results from a randomised controlled trial of Quality Teaching Rounds. Teaching and Teacher Education, 101, Article 103297. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2021.103297

Gore, J., Miller, A., Fray, L., & Patfield, S. (2023). Building capacity for quality teaching in Australian schools 2018–2023. Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, The University of Newcastle. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1493345

Gore. J. M., & Rickards, B. (2021). Rejuvenating experienced teachers through Quality Teaching Rounds professional development. Journal of Educational Change, 22, 335–354. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-020-09386-z

Harris, J., Miller, D., Gore, J., & Holmes, M. (2022). Building capacity for quality teaching in Australian schools: QTR Digital RCT final report. Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, University of Newcastle. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1471857

Ladwig, J. G., & King, M. B. (2003). Quality teaching in NSW public schools: An annotated bibliography. NSW Department of Education and Training, Professional Support and Curriculum Directorate.

Povey, J., Porter, M., Kennedy, L., Potia, A., Bellotti, M., & Austerberry, S. (2023). Building capacity for quality teaching in Australian Schools: Queensland replication study – final report. Institute for Social Science Research, University of Queensland. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1471855

Teachers and Teaching Research Centre. (2024). Strengthening Induction through Quality Teaching Rounds. The University of Newcastle. https://www.newcastle.edu.au/research/centre/teachers-and-teaching/quality-teaching-rounds/strengthening-induction-through-qtr

About the author

Laureate Professor Jenny Gore AM is the Director of the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre at the University of Newcastle. With almost $35 million in external funding since 1992, Jenny’s research is driven by the notion that all children should experience high quality teaching. Her ongoing work with colleagues on Quality Teaching and Quality Teaching Rounds over the last decade has shown how this framework can effectively support teacher professional development, increase teacher satisfaction, enhance teaching quality in schools, and improve student achievement while narrowing equity gaps. Jenny’s research on improving teaching and learning saw the QT Academy established in 2020. She has received awards and recognition from the ACDE, ACEL, AARE, AERA, ASSA, Royal Society of NSW, the Paul Brock Memorial Medal and was most recently awarded a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2024 Australia Day Honours for significant service to tertiary education.

Nicole Mockler summarises her extensive analysis of how teachers are represented in the Australian media, and the links between the resulting deficit-based discussions and education politics and policy . . .

In October 2023, the ‘Be That Teacher’ campaign, the national advertising campaign designed to make teaching look more attractive as a career and to stem the teacher shortage, launched. At the time, Federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare, said:

This campaign is all about changing the way we as a country think about our teachers, and the way our teachers think our country thinks of them. (Clare, 2024)

At the time of the joint launch, the NSW Minister for Education, Prue Car, similarly noted that “restoring pride and respect to the teaching profession is key to our plan” (Clare, 2024).

As a researcher with a focus on how teachers and their work are represented in the public space, this interested me greatly. While there’s a lot that could be said about the ‘Be That Teacher’ campaign, the question that interests me the most about it is how far an advertising campaign can be expected to counter ideas about teaching and teachers’ work that are aired over and over again in media and policy spaces?

I started thinking about representations of teachers in the media almost 20 years ago, in the course of my doctoral studies. For the next 15 years or so I conducted quite a few small-scale studies, where I analysed a small and well-chosen collection of articles, usually around a set focus and/or timeframe, to identify themes and patterns. In some of this work, I explored media attention to things such as the MySchool website (Mockler, 2013), and the National Plan for School Improvement (Mockler, 2014); and also media representations of early career teachers (Mockler, 2019). Small studies like these allow you to engage deeply with individual texts and to really illustrate how and where particular assumptions and ideas are embedded and how they then get amplified into the public space. What they don’t do is allow you to identify and track patterns over time, or to make broader statements about the work of the print media in relation to education. And so, in 2018 when I found myself in the very privileged position of having a two-year research fellowship that allowed me to learn a new set of research methods, I set about conducting a 25-year analysis of representations of teachers in the print media, which was published in the book Constructing Teacher Identities (Mockler) in 2022. To conduct the analysis, I used a set of methods that fall under the umbrella of ‘corpus assisted discourse analysis’. First, I constructed what I call the ‘Australian Teacher Corpus’ or ATC, a collection of all media articles from the twelve national and capital city daily newspapers that include the words teacher and/or teachers three times or more. The book reported on the analysis of the 65,604 articles published from 1996 to 2020, but the ATC has since been extended to include articles published in 2021, 2022 and 2023, so it now includes over 71,000 articles. That’s an average of about 50 articles a week, every week, for 28 years. We talk about teachers a lot.

Back in 2021, I did a quick search for how many articles came up using the same parameters for accountants, public servants, nurses, lawyers and doctors, and found that far more column inches were devoted to teachers. About twice as many, for example, as were devoted to nurses in the years from 1996 to 2020. So clearly there’s a large appetite on the part of journalists, editors, and, presumably, readers of newspapers for stories about teachers and schools.

Given that there’s such a lot of coverage, there’s also a lot of findings out of this analysis, so I’m going to focus here on just three aspects of the analysis.

First, the ATC is replete with words and phrases that essentialise or homogenise teachers: teachers should…; all teachers…; every teacher…, and so on. These constructions appeal to the news value of ‘superlativeness’, one of a number of strategies whereby newspapers develop a sense of newsworthiness in stories (Bednarek & Caple 2017). The effect of this is to first, emphasise high intensity, and second, to make teachers’ work appear simple, as though there is a single right choice in any given circumstance.

‘Teachers should’ provides a good example of this:

This small cross-section of the approximately 2300 instances of teachers should points to many contradictory positions on what teachers should do (e.g. teachers should be given clear, concise road-maps of what to teach vs teachers should not adopt a cookie-cutter approach to learning). They contain advice for teachers about the need to affirm, respect and support children, to get to know their students, and to arrive in classes prepared [having] thought about how they are going to present material, suggesting that these things are not already part of teachers’ professional repertoires. Teachers should also points to level of disrespect displayed toward teachers in the print media, from the insulting claim that teachers should grow up to at least the age level of those who they are supposed to be teaching, to the no less insulting but arguably more tempered teachers should be paid according to how their students succeed.  Statements such as these, just two examples amongst a great many in the ATC, amplify messages of contempt toward teachers while also rendering their work simple and denying its complexity. All of which undermines teacher professionalism, normalising these attitudes for their readers.

Second, I was able to track through this analysis, the rise of the discourse of teacher quality since the mid-2000s, with attention to teacher quality outstripping general discussions of quality (for example of teaching, or of education or schools) in the ATC.

My analysis highlighted that discussions of teacher quality are almost invariably linked to a deficit assessment of teachers: stories of high or outstanding teacher quality are rare, while stories about declining teacher quality, or the need to improve it, dominate. When they’re prevalent in the media, discourses of teacher quality have the effect of making teachers responsible for the structural and systemic issues that proliferate in education, rather than pointing to what needs to be done at a structural level. The emphasis on teacher quality effectively lays blame for systemic failures on individual teachers, in a way that more nuanced discussions of teaching practice, even when we’re talking about the possibility of improving it, do not. Good teaching is practised rather than embodied (Gore, et al., 2004) – it’s a set of practices we engage in rather than a state of being – and real improvements in quality require good professional learning and support for teachers from early career into and beyond mid-career.

Finally, the ebb and flow of the three quality discourses shown in the graph above, highlight the way that discussions of teachers and their work, and particularly deficit-based discussions, are intimately linked to education politics and policy. The height of the teacher quality discourse, in 2012/13, was closely linked to the Gillard Government’s National Plan for School Improvement (2012), which constituted the Government’s response to the original Gonski review and was the catalyst for the Australian Education Act (2013). Similarly, the 2007/8 peak reflected the early years of the Rudd-Gillard ‘Education Revolution’, while the 2019 peak coincided with the release of the 2018 PISA results and discussions by Education Ministers and other policymakers around curriculum and teacher quality reform.

So, while it’s admirable that our Federal and State education ministers hold aspirations around “changing the way we as a country think about our teachers” (Clare, 2023), a systematic analysis of 28 years of print media coverage suggests that an advertising campaign, on its own, is unlikely to get us there. Media coverage of education, and specifically of teachers and their work, is heavily tied to discussions of education policy, largely led by politicians themselves. With the common positioning of teachers within those policy and media discussions infused with notions of deficit, it’s unlikely that the way we as a country think about our teachers will change without these discussions themselves changing. And for that we’re going to need more than promises of greater respect.

References

Bednarek, M., & Caple, H. (2017). The discourse of news values: How news organizations create newsworthiness. Oxford University Press. 

Clare, J. (2023).  Retrieved 10 January 2024 from

https://ministers.education.gov.au/clare/national-campaign-launched-encourage-more-australians-be-teacher

Gore, J., Griffiths, T., & Ladwig, J. G. (2004). Towards better teaching: Productive pedagogy as a framework for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(4), 375-387. 

Mockler, N. (2013). Reporting the ‘education revolution’: MySchool.edu.au in the print media. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34(1), 1-16. 

Mockler, N. (2014). Simple solutions to complex problems: moral panic and the fluid shift from ‘equity’ to ‘quality’ in education. Review of Education, 2(2), 115-143. 

Mockler, N. (2019). Shifting the Frame: Representations of Early Career Teachers in the Australian Print Media. In A. M. Sullivan, B. Johnson, & M. Simons (Eds.), Attracting and keeping the best teachers: Issues and Opportunities (pp. 63-82). Springer.  Mockler, N. (2022). Constructing Teacher Identities: How the Print Media Define and Represent Teachers and their Work. Bloomsbury Academic.

About the Author

Dr Nicole Mockler is Professor of Education within the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. She was awarded her PhD in Education at the University of Sydney in 2008, and also holds a Master of Arts in History/Gender Studies and a Master of Science in Applied Statistics. Nicole’s research interests are in the areas of teachers’ work and professional learning; education policy and politics; and curriculum and pedagogy. In 2022 Nicole was awarded the Australian Council for Educational Leadership NSW Dr Paul Brock Memorial Medal.

Steven Kolber, et al highlight the role of global think tanks, lobby groups, ideological entrepreneurs, and social media in the formation of Australian education policy; and provide us with some simple steps to stem the flow of ‘fast policy’. . .

Have you ever been reading or watching the news about education and thought to yourself: “How on earth did the politicians come up with that idea? Have they ever spoken to a real teacher?” Our study (Heggart et al., 2023) examined this process, and found that a small number of actors are working to insert the ideas of overseas think tanks and lobby groups into Australia’s media ecosystem with a view to influencing educational policy making and practice.  In the study discussed below, we found that these ideas were being used to directly shape the latest revision of the Australian Curriculum. This raises serious questions about the role played by various think tanks and lobby groups in the formation of Australian education policy – and what teachers and their organisations might do about that.

Fast policy and policy borrowing

This is a feature of globalisation that has been written about in a general sense before (see, for example, Peck, 2015), but it hasn’t been applied to the development of educational policy. In short, globalisation has meant that ideas can easily travel across borders and are ripe for adoption in new jurisdictions/countries even when they don’t really make much sense in these new contexts. Education, central as it is to the concerns of parents, politicians and the wider public, represents a site that is especially vulnerable to this kind of influence, and popular and populist ideas can have a direct, and almost immediate, impact.

Fast policy and policy borrowing are two concepts that can be used to understand the ways that policies can be very quickly adopted from nation to nation. One of the challenges facing education, as a whole, is the lack of, or limited, evaluation of various policies.  A thorough evaluation of different policies would indicate how successful each was, and question their relevance to the various parts of the Australian education system. Such evaluations are rarely implemented, however, due to a variety of reasons, including time constraints, disregard for the expertise of teachers, and a lack of political will to address the hard questions. This means that there are limited impediments to policies traveling from one jurisdiction to the next very quickly. In these cases, there is less attention paid to the educational value of the policy; rather, the important factor is that it is an ‘announceable’ for a politician. Fast policy is the way in which societies have adapted to globalisation in such a way as to allow for the simplification of policy development – so that policies themselves can be traded across borders.

Policy borrowing is a closely linked phenomenon. It is the idea that, like fast food, policies can be used in a ‘grab and go’ way without making many changes for context or local climate. While it is probably true to say that there might be good policies that can be adopted from other locations as examples of best practice, ideally after a period of consultation and contextualisation, the essence of fast policy is that this does not occur. Rather, policies are selected and deployed ‘off-the shelf’ – to the detriment of all involved.

A well-known example of this are the various ‘Teach for….’ policy approaches that aim to address teacher quality, and the teacher shortage, by fast-tracking teacher training. This approach began in the United States as ‘Teach for America’ and although it has had limited benefit for teachers or students, it has been adopted both in the United Kingdom (UK) as ‘Teach First’ and then later ‘Teach for Australia’ within most  Australian jurisdictions. To reiterate the power of fast policy as a tool: there is very limited evidence that any of these variants of the ‘Teach First’ policies have had any material effect on both teacher shortages or student learning outcomes. Despite this, the policies have been adopted and continue to be funded. 

 Ideological entrepreneurs

The way education policy is formulated and implemented within the context of policy borrowing and fast policy is not simple; rather, decisions about policies are contested by various interests. One of the key features of fast policy is that it has enabled specific groups to have a global reach and influence – something that these organisations have been quick to capitalise on, through the formation of far-ranging matrices such as The Atlas Network. This means that at any specific time, there are think tanks and lobby groups, as well as individuals, that are seeking to influence the formation of policy on both a local and a global scale. Those who make a career out of attempting to influence policy are termed ‘Ideological entrepreneurs’ within our study (Atwell et al., 2024). They are shaping and reshaping ideas, in this case conservative narratives with a focus on virality and reach, rather than any true pursuit of good policy. The educational sphere is fertile soil for the ideological entrepreneur, considering its inherently ideological nature. One way that ideological entrepreneurs seek to do this is by shifting the political frame.

 Political framing

Political framing is the way that politicians frame and reframe ideas until they become acceptable to voters. The Overton window is a rhetorical device used to understand this. Imagine the round window from play school, what’s inside the circle is acceptable opinions to hold. Everything outside is less acceptable and more extreme, the types of opinions that might get one ‘cancelled’ online. The job of the policy influencer online (much as it was in legacy media) is to move more extreme ideas into the frame of the window. One way this can be done is by advancing extreme points of view on particular topics (such as Critical Race Theory in the curriculum, as we discuss below), knowing that this will be rejected, but recognising that it will allow for debate about the wider topic and, hence, shifting the window in the sought direction. Our research examined the way this played out in the recent revisions of the Australian Curriculum and especially in History. In order to understand the way that these ideological entrepreneurs work globally and locally, and the influence that this has upon politicians and policy, we need to examine the game board: social media. 

The game board of Social Media and Old Media

For many teachers, the use of social media is something that we could not live without as it is a source of resources, advice and connection. Social media has, due to its virality and scaleabiltiy, – as well as the algorithms that govern what is seen on social media – changed the way politicians and members of the public engage with topics of debate. Indeed, the slow decline of ‘old media’ and traditional newspapers style coverage also has an important role to play here. As more experienced journalists within education are less likely to remain in their jobs due to extensive layoffs (Waller, 2012), the ensuing shortage of experienced journalists means that think-tanks and other groups that appear influential by their presence in news and social media, can have a much greater impact upon public opinion. Politicians are quick to tap into the debates about popular topics being framed or discussed in a certain way and can thus lend legitimacy to points of views that are at odds with public opinion – regardless of how they are presented via social media. The case study below describes this process.

Our case study: From Rufo to Latham

Ideological entrepreneur Christopher Rufo, from the Manhattan Institute, is where the story of Critical Race Theory (CRT) moves from an idea most closely explored within the United States to Australia and begins to have an impact upon the Australian Curriculum. Through analysing Rufo’s online engagement, it is possible to track his attempts to capture and define the educational policy landscape. The graph below tracks the posts he made and articles he wrote about CRT over the course of early 2021.His writing, speaking and posting around CRT wasn’t especially viral until he stumbled upon the idea of linking schools and children with CRT, at which point this idea took off: he had ‘gone viral’.

Source: Heggart et al., 2023, Page 3

This virality was quickly seized upon by Australian politicians. In the same year, One Nations’ Mark Latham pronounced that there would be no inclusion of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the Australian curriculum. This was a strange announcement: there already was no mention of Critical Race Theory within the curriculum and, for the most part, the consultation phase of the latest version of the curriculum had concluded and all that was required was some proofreading and revision of the curriculum document. Yet, this set in action another revision by the Education Minister at the time, who suddenly started talking to various news outlets about patriotism and the need for young Australians to fight for their country – a marked departure from previous commentaries on the newest version of the Australian Curriculum. As a result, the almost-completed version was sent back for redrafting to reflect this new, hardline focus.

In this short example, we highlight the way that the ideas described above – policy borrowing, political framing and ideological entrepreneurship – are enacted across social media and have a material effect upon the Australian Curriculum. We note that the space itself is conflicted: there were battles between Mark Latham and various Liberal education ministers to seize the initiative about this topic, but the effect of these battles meant that the political frame of History and Civics and Citizenship Education shifted towards a focus on patriotism and duty. We can clearly see all of the elements of fast policy and ideological entrepreneurship in play here. Despite the obvious absurdity of an idea that didn’t really hold sway within Australia, it should be concerning to teachers that the Australian Curriculum became an object of political interference so swiftly.

So what?

Considering how quickly educational ideas can be adopted from other contexts and cemented into policy, it is important for teachers, unionists, and activists to be aware of these processes. When considering the funding and support that back some of these idea factories, such as think tanks and ideological entrepreneurs, it can make us feel powerless by comparison. But there are clear pathways to becoming more aware of these processes through training, and by using such training to inform your actions both online and offline. Choosing the way to respond is important because ideas are supported and thrive upon virality. Consider the last time you saw a dramatic headline about teaching that you then read and shared with your online network or discussed with your colleagues. Giving these ideas traction in this way may, in fact, be feeding the very thing you are trying to stop. This could mean that you need to check the sources quoted, think about whose ideas are being platformed and whether you’re helping or harming the situation by sharing them.

And if we were to learn these skills and apply them in our work, then we would also need to begin passing these same skills down to our students. It could even mean more teachers engaging around professional matters on social media, or unions taking a hold of this ‘game board’ as well and fighting the ideological war wherever it might be won. Alternatively, as schools can be relatively isolated from these kinds of debates, influential teachers in their contexts might engage their colleagues in ‘counter-practices’ early on that challenge these ideas before they have the chance to gain a foothold. As always there is a need for teachers to get their voices out into the world, but having the skills to recognise when, and how, this might best be leveraged is an important ability to develop.

References

Attwell, K., Hannah, A., Drislane, S., Harper, T., Savage, G. C., & Tchilingirian, J. (2024). Media actors as policy entrepreneurs: a case study of “No Jab, No Play” and “No Jab, No Pay” mandatory vaccination policies in Australia. Policy Sciences, 1-23.

Heggart, K., Barnes, N., Kolber, S., Mahoney, T., & Malcher, C. (2023). The Australian Curriculum gambit: playing knowledge games with education policy. Curriculum Perspectives, 1-11.

Peck, J. (2015). Fast policy : experimental statecraft at the thresholds of neoliberalism / Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore. University of Minnesota Press.

Waller, L. J. (2012). Learning in both worlds: Academic journalism as a research outcome. Research Journalism, 2(1), 1

About the Authors

Steven Kolber is a Curriculum Writer at the Faculty of Education, within the University of Melbourne. He was a proud public school teacher for 12 years, being named a top 50 finalist in the Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Prize. His most recent publication, ‘Empowering Teachers and Democratising Schooling: Perspectives from Australia’, co-edited with Keith Heggart explores these topics further. Steven has represented teachers globally for Education International, at the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the OECDs Global Teaching Insights, and UNESCOs Teacher Task Force 2030.

Tom Mahoney is a teacher and educator of secondary VCE Mathematics and Psychology students, currently completing a PhD in Educational Philosophy part time through Deakin University. His research currently revolves around the influence of dominant educational ideologies on teacher subjectivity. In particular, he is interested in the ways in which ideologies of neoliberalism and social efficiency contribute to limiting teacher agency and the teacher’s ability to engage educationally in schools.

Dr Keith Heggart is an early career researcher with a focus on learning and instructional design, educational technology and civics and citizenship education. He is currently exploring the way that online learning platforms can assist in the formation of active citizenship amongst Australian youth. Keith is a former high school teacher, having worked as a school leader in Australia and overseas, in government and non-government sectors. In addition, he has worked as an Organiser for the Independent Education Union of Australia, and as an independent Learning Designer for a range of organisations.

Dr Naomi Barnes is a Senior Lecturer interested in how crisis influences education politics. With a specific focus on moral panics, she has demonstrated how online communication has influenced education politics in Australia, the US and the UK. She has analysed and developed network models to show the effect of moral panics on the Australian curriculum and how it is taught. Naomi is also regularly asked to comment on how Australian teachers should respond to perceived threats to Australian nationalism, identity, and democracy. Naomi lectures future teachers in Modern History, Civics and Citizenship and Writing Studies. She has worked for Education Queensland as a Senior Writer and has worked as a Secondary Humanities and Social Science teacher in the government, Catholic and Independent schooling sectors.

Cameron Malcher teaches English, Drama and EAL/D in NSW public high schools. He has a Master’s in Educational Psychology from the University of Sydney and is currently undertaking a Master’s in TESOL at the University of Wollongong. Cameron has produced the Teachers’ Education Review Podcast since 2013, and his brief attempt at a PhD was on teachers’ engagement with podcasts and social media as professional learning activities, which he hopes to return to in the near future.

Cathie Burgess and Katrina Thorpe share the processes and results of a five-year teaching and research project to support all teachers to develop an Aboriginal curriculum narrative using a framework based on building relationships and listening to Aboriginal people and Country. . .

As Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal authors, we are two members of a team of four researchers who undertook a five-year teaching and research project we called Learning from Country in the City (LFC) (Burgess, et al., 2022a). This project emerged from an ongoing commitment to Aboriginal[1] education and Aboriginal Studies along with our personal and professional engagement in local Aboriginal community contexts. The project was undertaken with preservice teachers, early-career teachers, and Aboriginal community-based educators[2] from 2018-2022 at the University of Sydney, situated on Gadigal Land of the Eora Nation (now referred to as Sydney). We recognise the many Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators before us who have worked tirelessly to ensure that Aboriginal voices are foregrounded, and knowledges are embedded in Australia education systems (Holt, 2021). We continue to support these goals by working with preservice teachers to develop their capability to meaningful engage with local Aboriginal communities and move beyond surface-level and tokenistic approaches to the inclusion of Aboriginal curriculum content and pedagogies in their classrooms.

In our teaching, Learning from Country involves immersive learning experiences outside the classroom on Country. Here, preservice teachers walk with Aboriginal community-based educators while listening to, learning from, and observing the layered stories of local Country.

In this article we share our insights to the significance of connecting preservice teachers, teachers, and students to Country-centred learning. A Learning from Country Framework is used to represent the key processes of engagement and learning, which shifts the focus of Aboriginal curriculum planning and implementation from thinking about what “Aboriginal content” we might “add” to the curriculum (although this can be one outcome of LFC) to foregrounding the ethical practices and processes that you can undertake to open up opportunities for building connections to local Country and Aboriginal people.

Firstly though, we must acknowledge that learning from/on/with Country is not new and, indeed, has been practised in Australia for thousands of years. The expanding literature that centres Country and Aboriginal knowledges in curriculum is a testament to the continuity, resilience and significance of these pedagogical practices for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students and teachers in Australia now and in the future (e.g., Burgess et al., 2022a, 2022b; Country et al, 2020; Dolan et al, 2020; Harrison, 2013; Lowe et al. 2021; McKnight, 2016; Spillman et al., 2023; Thorpe, et al., 2021).

What does the research in Aboriginal education tell us?

In 2019, 13 academics, from across ten universities, conducted ten systematic reviews analysing over 13,000 research studies reported on from 2006 to 2017 (Guenther et al., 2019). These reviews covered key Indigenous Education topics in the areas of curriculum, pedagogy, leadership, professional learning, racism, literacy, numeracy, language and culture, community engagement, and remote education. Key findings across the reviews found that successful schools did the following:

• engage honestly and respectfully with parents and community.
• demonstrate deep understanding of the local socio-cultural and political context resulting from colonisation.
• focus on holistic, wrap – around and culturally responsive strategies to support student, family, and community needs.
• articulate high expectations of students, teachers, and leaders.
• ensure curriculum, pedagogy and assessment reflects students’ cultural backgrounds and interests, and is clearly scaffolded and supported.
• implement culture and language programs to deepen students’ sense of belonging to build confident, engaged learners.

Acknowledging yet overcoming the challenges of doing this work

Many educators are challenged by working in this area for many reasons (Captain & Burgess, 2022). Significantly, teachers themselves have often had little or no education on Aboriginal Australia and feel vulnerable and unprepared. Not wishing to offend Aboriginal students and their families (Rose, 2015), and overwhelmed by a constantly growing and changing curriculum, teachers often avoid this area unless it is mandatory. Compounding this inertia, the Aboriginal content in the Australian Curriculum is limited and while the NSW curriculum improves on this, there is still no coherent, scoped and sequenced Aboriginal curriculum narrative across the Key Learning Areas and Stages, as there is in ‘mainstream’ subjects. We suggest an Aboriginal curriculum narrative is “a combination and construction of the stories that teachers know (and have probably experienced) about a particular subject or content area that provides knowledge, understandings, and therefore guidance about how and what to teach” (Burgess et al., 2022b, p. 158). This can result in teachers wondering how to start to build this narrative rather than add piecemeal and decontextualised Aboriginal content into the curriculum.

Unfortunately, the impact of racism still permeates education, and some teachers are influenced by the overgeneralisations, stereotypes and deficit discourses that position Aboriginal students and their families as the problem and, through a perceived inability to assimilate, as responsible for their lack of success (Bodkin-Andrews & Carlson, 2014). Fortunately, many teachers are beginning to listen to Aboriginal voices, embrace truth telling and implement inclusive classrooms where controversial and uncomfortable knowledges can be discussed respectfully.

Educational policies supporting Learning from Country

Importantly, Aboriginal curriculum is necessary for ALL students; it has not been constructed with only Aboriginal students in mind. In NSW, the Department of Education Aboriginal Education Policy has been mandatory since 1987. Rather than summarising the current policy, we look back to the 1996 version for its clear and simple articulation of three key tenets that underpin all versions of the policy:

1. “Aboriginal students: Curriculum, teaching and assessment programs will be challenging and culturally appropriate. Schools will have a supportive learning environment.
2. Aboriginal communities: Aboriginal communities and the Department of School Education will become partners in the whole educational process.
3. All staff – all students – all schools: All Department of School Education staff and students will have knowledge and understanding of, and respect for, Aboriginal Australia”.

This and subsequent Aboriginal education policies are also reflected in two of the Australian Institute for Teachers and School Leadership (AITSL), Australian Professional Standards for Teachers:

1.4.2    Design and implement effective teaching strategies that are responsive to the local community and cultural setting, linguistic background, and histories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

2.4.2    Provide opportunities for students to develop understanding of, and respect for, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and languages.

While past and present Aboriginal education policies provide teachers with the policy parameters to work within, teachers are yet to “heed the call” to enact the Aboriginal education imperatives (White et al., 2022) that have been articulated over many decades.

The Australian Curriculum’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cross Curriculum Priority (ACARA, 2011) is designed for application across KLAs and Stages. It consists of three interconnected aspects: Country/Place, Culture, and People, with three organising ideas in each. While these provide a reasonable base to work from, there are clear omissions that not all teachers will recognise or address. These include the lack of breadth and depth of Aboriginal content where concepts such as self-determination, Aboriginal resistance, treaty, truth telling, and racism are absent (Lowe & Yunkaporta, 2013). Moreover, while there has been a plethora of resources developed over the last decade or so, they have‘unfortunately been left to sit on the “virtual shelf” to date, with minimal uptake by the teaching profession’(White et al., 2022, p. 13)      

The Learning from Country Framework

We have created an LFC framework that can be used by teachers to localise curriculum, build relationships with community, engage learners, and create culturally responsive and sustaining classrooms. In describing the processes in Figure 1, we acknowledge the nonlinear, reflexive nature of Aboriginal Country-centred learning that links the past, present, and future.

Figure 1. Learning from Country framework. © Dr Katrina Thorpe, A/Prof Cathie Burgess, Dr Suzanne Egan, Prof Valerie Harwood in C. Burgess, K. Thorpe, S. Egan and V. Harwood, in ‘Towards a conceptual framework for Country-centred teaching and learning,’ Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 28(8), p. 931

The graphic was designed by Dharawal artist Michael Fardon. It can be described as follows:

The dark blue acknowledges that Country is strong—it is “full” of knowledge. The light blue circles represent the “activity” emanating and rippling throughout the Learning from Country processes which include deep listening to Aboriginal community voices and truth telling … As each waterhole ripples with new knowledge and impacts on existing knowledge, it flows into the next waterhole. The connecting waterways between the waterholes represent the ebb and flow of knowledges and understandings that ripple through each waterhole. (Burgess et al., 2022a, p. 164)

Country-centred relationships requires listening to local Aboriginal people about the cultural and socio-political history and current issues in the local area. Once you have begun this journey, you will be able to see, and enact, ways of bringing Country into the classroom, as well as explore Country beyond the classroom door. This makes learning more ‘hands on’ and engaging for students and contributes to a local Aboriginal narrative for use in your curriculum.

Relating deepens these connections through truth telling which includes listening to Aboriginal lived experiences of colonisation in this country. While this can be uncomfortable or even distressing, it is important to emotionally engage with these narratives to build empathy and understanding and to create a sense of belonging for everyone involved in this process. The Aboriginal community-based educators often talk about the healing power of these experiences and their sense of empowerment in educating future generations. To ensure you are being respectful, speak to Aboriginal staff and get to know your students and families to seek advice. All education systems have some level of regional and/or statewide support for teachers, and the NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) has local branch meetings you can attend.

Critical engagement occurs when you reflect on the emotional and intellectual learning you have encountered through LFC experiences and prompts you to reflect on how this impacts your personal and professional identity. By positioning yourself as a learner rather than a teacher, new ways of knowing, being and doing through an Aboriginal lens, helps you reimagine what an Aboriginal curriculum narrative might look like.

The ‘doing’ occurs as you develop culturally nourishing and sustaining teaching and learning practices that engage all students and brings the school-community closer together. This occurs throughout the LFC processes as you continue to think about how you will enact LFC in your classroom and maintain the relationships necessary to do this work.

Conclusion

We acknowledge that this is challenging work as it asks you to rethink how you experienced education, but once the processes are underway, you will be rewarded by increased confidence in your curriculum and pedagogy, more engaged learners and calmer classrooms. Building relationships and listening to Aboriginal people and Country, is the place to start to develop an Aboriginal curriculum narrative. At the same time, you should explore resources and build your own knowledge of Aboriginal histories and cultures and reflect on these in relation to your local community. Truth telling, listening to Aboriginal community narratives, and Learning from Country reveals paths of resistance, resilience, and activism to mobilise genuine educational change for future generations.

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[1] We use the term ‘Aboriginal’ as this is the preferred term in our local communities and the preferred term of the NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Inc. We acknowledge there are many Torres Strait Islander students, teachers and parents and we respectfully include Torres Strait Islander peoples within this.

[2] Aboriginal community-based educators agreed on this term to describe themselves which includes Elders, community workers, knowledge holders, political activists, cultural educators, Department of Education workers.

References

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2011). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/CrossCurriculumPriorities/Aboriginal-and-Torres-Strait-Islander-histories-and-cultures

Bodkin-Andrews, G., & Carlson, B. (2014). The legacy of racism and Indigenous Australian identity within education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 19(4), 784-807. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2014.969224

Burgess, C., Thorpe, K., Egan, S., & Harwood, V. (2022a) Towards a conceptual framework for Country-inspired teaching and learning Teachers and Teaching. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2022.2137132

Burgess, C., Thorpe, K., Egan, S., & Harwood, V. (2022b). Learning from Country to conceptualise what an Aboriginal curriculum narrative might look like in education. Curriculum Perspectives, 42(2), 157-169. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-022-00164-w

Captain, K., & Burgess, C. (2022). Be that Teacher who makes a Difference and Lead Aboriginal Education for all Students. Ultimate World Publishing

Country, K., Gordon, P., Spillman, D., & Wilson, B. (2020). Re-placing schooling in Country: Australian stories of teaching and learning for social and ecological renewal. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2, 31–44.

Dolan, H., Hill, B., Harris, J., Lewis, M. J., & Stenlake, B. W. (2020). The Benefits of in Country Experiences at the Tertiary Level. In B. Hill, J. Harris, & R. Bacchus (Eds.), Teaching Aboriginal Cultural Competence: Authentic Approaches (pp. 37-48). Springer.

Guenther, J., Harrison, N., Burgess, C. (2019) Editorial. Special Issue. Aboriginal Voices: Systematic Reviews of Indigenous Education. The Australian Educational Researcher, 46(2), 207-211

Harrison, N. (2013). Country teaches: The significance of the local in the Australian history curriculum. Australian Journal of Education. 57(3), 214-224

Holt, L. (2021). Talking Strong: the National Aboriginal Education Committee and the development of Aboriginal education policy. Aboriginal Studies Press.

Lowe, K., Moodie, N., & Weuffen, S. (2021). Refusing Reconciliation in Indigenous Curriculum. In. B. Green, P. Roberts & M. Brennan Curriculum Challenges and Opportunities in a Changing World, (pp.71-86). Palgrave Macmillan.

Lowe, K., & Yunkaporta, T. (2013). The inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content in the Australian National Curriculum: A cultural, cognitive and socio-political evaluation. Curriculum Perspectives, 33(1), 1-14.

McKnight, A. (2016).Meeting Country and self to initiate an embodiment of knowledge: Embedding a process for Aboriginal perspectives. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 45(1), 11–22

Rose, D. (2015). The ‘silent apartheid’ as the practitioner’s blindspot. In Price, K. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education. (pp. 66-82). Cambridge University Press: Melbourne, Australia

Spillman, D., Wilson, B., Nixon, M., & McKinnon, K. (2023). ‘New localism’ in Australian schools: Country as Teacher as a critical pedagogy of place. Curriculum Perspectives, 43(2), 103-114. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-023-00201-2

Thorpe, K.,Burgess, C., & Egan, S. (2021). Aboriginal Community-led Preservice Teacher Education: Learning from Country in the City. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 46(1). Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol46/iss1/4

White, S., Anderson, P., Quin, A., Gower, G., Byrne, M., Bennet, M. (2022). Supporting the teaching profession to enable a culturally responsive curriculum. Lee, O.L., Brown, P., Goodwin, A. L., Green, A. (Eds) International Handbook on Education Development in Asia Pacific. Springer https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2327-1_82-1

Yunkaporta, T., & Shillingsworth, D. (2020). Relationally responsive standpoint. Journal of Indigenous Research, 8(4). https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/kicjir/vol8/iss2020/4

Appendix

Videos produced by the University of Sydney One Sydney Many People (OSMP) strategy:

• Explaining LFC https://youtu.be/GvnJSqGZOI8;
• LFC Experiences https://youtu.be/9f70k-peyMo;
• Relationship building https://youtu.be/5v-SnEC1UFc

Journal Articles & Book Chapters

Burgess C. (2022) Learning from Country: Aboriginal Community-Led Relational Pedagogies. In: Peters M.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Teacher Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1179-6_474-1

Burgess, C., Thorpe, K., Egan, S., & Harwood, V. (2022). Towards a conceptual framework for Country-centred teaching and learning. Teachers and Teaching, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2022.2137132

Burgess, C., Thorpe, K., Egan, S., & Harwood, V. (2022). Learning from Country to conceptualise what an Aboriginal curriculum narrative might look like in education. Curriculum Perspectives, 42(2), 157-169. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-022-00164-w

Golledge, C & Burgess, C. (2023). Learning (history) from Country. Teaching History – Journal of the History Teachers’ Association of NSW.

Scarcella, J.  & Burgess , C. (2024). Applying Country-centred place-based pedagogies to include all learners in English. International Perspectives on English as an Emancipatory Subject: Promoting Equity, Justice, and Democracy through English [volume 5 pp]

Thorpe, K. (2022) Learning from Country: Aboriginal-led Country-Centred Learning for preservice teachers. In Lee, O.L., Brown, P., Goodwin, A. L., Green, A. (Eds) International Handbook on Education Development in Asia Pacific. https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-981-16-2327-1.

Thorpe, K., Burgess, C., Egan, S., & Harwood, V. (in press). Learning from Country in the City: Aboriginal Community-Based Educators teaching the teachers. Springer

Thorpe, K.,Burgess, C., Grice, C. (2023). Aboriginal curriculum enactment: Stirring teachers into the practices of learning from Country in the city. In K. Reimer., M, Kaukko., S. Windsor., K. Mahon., & S. Kemmis. Living Well in a World Worth Living In. Volume 2. Current Practices of Social Justice, Sustainability and Well Being. Springer

Thorpe, K., Burgess, C., & Egan, S. (2021). Aboriginal Community-led Preservice Teacher Education: Learning from Country in the City. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 46(1). Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol46/iss1/4

Thorpe. K,. ten Kate, L  & Burgess, C. (2024) Reimagining democratic education by positioning Aboriginal Country-centred learning as foundational to curriculum and pedagogy. Curriculum Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-024-00233-2

About the Authors

Dr Cathie Burgess is an Associate Professor in Aboriginal Studies/Education, Aboriginal Community Engagement, Learning from Country and Leadership in Aboriginal Education programs at the Sydney School of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney. She has extensive teaching and leadership experience in secondary schools and maintains strong connections with school-communities through teacher professional learning and research projects. Along with co-author Kylie Captain, Cathie published ‘Be that Teacher who makes a Difference and Lead Aboriginal Education for all Students’ Amazon Best Selling bookbased on over 40 years’ of educational experience in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Cathie’s work in Aboriginal Education/Aboriginal Studies is acknowledged through an Honorary Life Member, NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group and Life Member, Aboriginal Studies Association NSW.

Dr Katrina Thorpe is an Associate Professor at Nura Gili: Centre for Indigenous Programs, UNSW, Sydney. Katrina’s research focuses on educational approaches that engage students in Country-centred ‘Learning from Country’ pedagogies. Katrina is passionate about developing culturally responsive pedagogies that facilitate connections between students and Aboriginal people, communities and Country. Katrina has over 25 years’ experience teaching mandatory Indigenous Studies across a number of disciplines including education, social work, nursing, health and community development.

Mary Ryan, et al share the outcomes and benefits of co-designed professional learning between education researchers and classroom teachers. . .

Professional Learning (PL) for teachers is an increasing area of interest due to the complex nature of our profession. Professional Learning is different to Professional Development (PD) as it can be tailored for individual teachers and include informal conversations, adaptive release learning that teachers do in their own time, and/or collaborative research in schools. PL provides opportunities to support teachers’ work, the learning needs of students, changing curricula and the demands of external assessment regimes in the contemporary landscape. The proliferation of PD for teachers, often denies the contextual experiences and expertise of teachers in favour of prescriptive top-down approaches. However, in our research alongside primary teachers, we used PL to show how co-design between teachers and researchers can have a real impact on teacher agency, practice and, consequently, student learning.

In a recent journal article, we reported on our research and PL program with primary teachers on the teaching of writing. Our research design included a discovery phase to find out what was happening for students and teachers regarding writing. Next, we engaged in a co-design process with teachers so they could better understand the conditions that were enabling or constraining writing and developed action plans to trial and evaluate. You may also be interested in our WORD project website. Our findings have broader implications for PL programs in schools.

Key ingredients of effective Professional Learning

Two major reviews of PL literature, including Darling-Hammond et al. (2017) in the US and Cordingley et al. (2015) in the UK, identified overlapping features of effective Professional Learning that have an impact on practice:

1. a focus on discipline-specific content integrated with both general and content area pedagogical knowledge in a cohesive program of PL;
2. active learning cycles for teachers to design, experiment, reflect and consolidate;
3. expert feedback and support in understanding the content, research evidence and evidence-based practices;
4. collaboration with other teachers to encourage a shared sense of purpose; and
5. sustained duration, typically a year or longer, to provide teachers sufficient time to learn, practice, implement, collect, and analyse evidence, and reflect on their practice.

Recent scholarship has highlighted the value of educational co-design and the way it shapes collaborative partnerships  amongst teachers, learners, and researchers (Juuti et al., 2021).

The key theme across the literature is that effective PL offers complex and varied opportunities for collaboration and teacher input. Successful partnerships between teachers and researchers work to recognise the everyday demands teachers face and help them to co-design sustainable methodologies that work in the classroom.

How can a reflexivity process help us make the most of professional learning?

We found reflexivity was a great way to guide a more nuanced approach to Professional Learning to account for the way students and teachers make decisions about learning and teaching, especially in relation to writing. In addition, reflexivity theory (Archer, 2012) helps us to explain the dynamic contextual conditions that shape any learning and teaching event.

Reflexivity involves deliberating about possible courses of action, weighing up the contextual conditions to decide what might be feasible in this pedagogic situation and then choosing a way forward.

There are three distinct, yet related, conditions that shape, and are shaped by, our engagement in any situation (Archer, 2012). These conditions are Personal, Structural, and Cultural. Personal conditions relate to personal identity; Structural conditions are systems, practices, and resources in this context; and Cultural conditions relate to prevailing beliefs, and expectations in this context. These conditions apply both to teachers and students.

Table 1. Some conditions that influence or are influenced in the classroom

Personal conditions in teaching	Structural conditions in teaching	Cultural conditions in teaching
Identity as a teacher and learnerConfidence and efficacyBeliefs about teaching and learningKnowledge and skills	CurriculumPlanning documentsTimetableResourcesLanguageEveryday practicesStudents’ wellbeing and approach to learning	Importance of the subject areaHow the purpose of learning tasks is framedIdeologies of approaches to teaching e.g., explicit teaching, inquiry-based learning, and othersRelationships across school and community Expectations of parents, school system, government

In our project, we found that students (and teachers) approached decision-making around writing in quite different ways. Archer (2012) calls these modes of reflexivity, which may change in different learning contexts. These reflexive modes are communicative, autonomous, meta-reflexive, and fractured. The modes help us describe the different ways writers take on the task of writing:

• Communicative reflexives – decisions need to be confirmed by others before they lead to action; for example, seeking constant affirmation from the teacher or peers about decisions or following the teacher’s ideas and/or structures without injecting personal style or voice.
• Autonomous reflexives have a clear idea about their approach to a task and their decision-making leads to direct and quick action; for example, setting a plan that aligns with their favourite approach and not veering from the plan, so they get it finished.
• Meta-reflexives tend to consider the broader context alongside their own goals and past experiences to make decisions that will lead to the best outcome for everyone; for example, meeting the expectations of the task and teacher while pursuing their own priorities at the same time.
• Fractured reflexives find it difficult to make decisions or take purposeful action; for example, disaffected students who are paralysed by language requirements or the perceived enormity of the task.

Each of us can adopt these modes of decision-making at some point and in some contexts, but Archer argues that we generally have a dominant mode. Self-assessment and regulation can be much more effective if we understand our mode of reflexivity in any given context (Ryan et al., 2022). If teachers recognise their own and students’ modes of reflexivity, they can create pedagogic and classroom conditions that support students to enact effective learning decisions.

We found throughout the project, that three key terms were helpful for the teachers to consider in relation to the conditions that might enable or constrain their pedagogy: Know yourself, Know your students, Know your context.  Below are some reflexive prompts you may like to consider:

Know yourself	What do I know about the topic?What do I struggle with or feel I lack knowledge of in relation to the topic?Do I engage in this topic as part of my life? If not, why not? What do I want/need to know?Where can I get support?
Know your students	Where are the children in my classroom at in relation to this topic?What kind of readers and writers are they?What kinds of texts are they interested in?How can I differentiate/assess where the kids are so I can meet them there and uplift them?How can I draw on the strengths of the children (their diverse knowledge of language other than English, cultural knowledge, experience of this subject matter at home etc) so that I can support their growth in this topic?
Know your context	What program (other than the mandated curriculum) is in use at my school in this subject area? Does it use a commercial program or rely on external resources?How deep/shallow is my knowledge of the curriculum and policy that influences my pedagogy in this area?How does my school culture support my knowledge and pedagogy?How valued is this topic in the school and community? Do they know enough about it?

Features of Co-designed Professional Learning

Because reflexivity foregrounds the impact of context on teaching (including the teacher’s own impact on that context), we adopted a co-design approach to the PL element of this study. Our co-design had four parts:

1. We collected and analysed classroom data to understand the nuances of the educational contexts.
2. We helped develop a plan with the participating teachers to support new enacted pedagogies.
3. We worked with the teachers to discuss these action plans and the teachers set their own goals.
4. We had sustained, contextualised discussion with teachers regarding how these actions were working in practice. We provided guidance to teachers in the form of classroom visits and debriefs.

We refer to this process as Co-Designed Professional Learning (CDPL). Our process was iterative: this means we introduced different types of analysis and action as the teachers worked with us to identify their enablers and constraints in teaching writing. For example, we studied the way time was spent during lessons when the teachers indicated their number one constraint was a lack of time to teach writing well. This process involved recording writing lessons and coding the time to understand the content of talk, how much time was spent on writing vs classroom management, and opportunities for students to discuss their ideas with teachers and peers through dialogic talk. The codes we developed were guided by evidence-based principles for writing pedagogy. This fine-grained analysis allowed us to offer targeted feedback to teachers and support the development of a suite of talk-prompts and time-saving strategies for their writing teaching.

Outcomes of co-designed professional learning

In the latter half of the CDPL project, we found that students spent more time writing and focused individually on the writing task. We found that teachers were more aware of time, allowing for more student-centred writing time and less interruptions from the teacher to clarify the task. We also found that the CDPL helped teachers to set goals. Students were observed to remain on task working independently on their writing and talking through their ideas while working. We witnessed higher student engagement in writing and more sophisticated texts. The teachers were more intentional in their pedagogy – using their data and action plans to focus on areas of improvement for themselves and for specific students. The amount of time spent on classroom management was also significantly reduced. Our focus in the project was not on NAPLAN results, but due to the co-design of effective writing pedagogy based on contextual classroom evidence (including teacher knowledge and confidence in teaching writing), student NAPLAN writing results improved significantly for classrooms in this study.

This CDPL was beneficial for teachers in multiple ways.

• They were able to make sense of complex (personal, structural, cultural) conditions of their classrooms.
• They received in-time guidance about how to account for these dynamic conditions in their teaching.
• They exercised agency through their action plans, pedagogical design, and targeted support for students based on the data. This strengthened their confidence.
• CDPL has the potential for sustainable change, as the teacher develops new, transferrable skills.

The CDPL was beneficial for students in their ability to:

• Write for a clear audience and purpose.
• Make choices related to their writing and write about topics they are interested in.
• Spend more time on writing.
• Receive quality feedback on their writing from teachers and peers.

These findings have important implications for teachers’ professional learning and the ways in which schools approach PL programs.

Where to get research support?

University researchers are generally keen to work with schools and teachers on programs of professional learning that may also include some research. Search for the expertise you need by looking at Education staff profiles on university websites or feel free to contact the NSW Council of Deans of Education as they would be happy to circulate your request to all NSW universities.

References

Archer, M. (2012). The reflexive imperative in late modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cordingley, P., Higgins, S., Greany, T., Buckler, N., Coles-Jordan, D., Crisp, B., Saunders, L., & Coe, R. (2015). Developing great teaching: Lessons from the international reviews into effective professional development. Teacher Development Trust. https://tdtrust.org/about/dgt/

Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., & Gardner, M. (2017). Effective teacher professional development. Palo alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/effective-teacher-professional-development-report

Juuti, K., Lavonen, J., Salonen, V., Salmela-Aro, K., Schneider, B., & Krajcik, J. (2021). A teacher-researcher partnership for professional learning: Co-designing project-based learning units to increase student engagement in science classes. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 32(6), 625–641. https://doi.org/10.1080/1046560X.2021.1872207

Ryan, M. Khosronejad, M., Barton, G., Myhill, D. & Kervin, L. (2022). Reflexive writing dialogues: Elementary students’ perceptions and performances as writers during classroom experiences. Assessing Writing, 51, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2021.100592

About the Authors

Mary Ryan is Professor and Executive Dean of Education and Arts at Australian Catholic University. Her research is in the areas of writing pedagogy and assessment, teachers’ work in, and preparation for, diverse classrooms, reflexive learning and practice, and reflective writing. She was formerly a primary teacher and has an extensive record of professional learning for teachers. Her funded research projects are in the areas of classroom writing and preparing teachers to teach for diversity to break the cycle of disadvantage.

Dr Lauren A. Weber is Lecturer of Language, Literature and Literacy in the School of Education at the University of Wollongong. She specialises in the teaching and learning of English from primary to tertiary contexts and has published her research in a range of outlets including English in Education, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, and Cordite Poetry Review. She is a core member of the Shakespeare Reloaded project team. Lauren often works in community to connect children and young people with rich and authentic opportunities to read and write works of literature.

Dr Georgina Barton is a Professor of literacies and pedagogy at the University of Southern Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. She currently teaches English and literacy education courses in the post-graduate teacher education program. Georgina worked in many schools before becoming an academic and she conducts most of her research with teachers and students. With over 180 publications, her research often intersects between literacies, the arts and wellbeing. Georgina’s latest co-authored book titled Aesthetic Positive Pedagogy (Palgrave) is about a positive approach to literacy with aesthetics at the core of learning.

Dr Janet Dutton is Senior Lecturer in Secondary English at Macquarie University, NSW, Australia and was the Chief Examiner, NSW HSC English. A former English teacher, Janet has extensive experience designing and delivering teacher professional learning and is passionate promoting creative pedagogy. Janet researches in the areas of English curriculum, creative pedagogy for EAL/D learners, out of field teaching, transition to teaching and teacher retention.