Early career Archives - Page 2 of 2

Fads and Miracle Cures in Education

Carly-Jane Boreland delves into some of the most recent fashions in education and wonders if …

Have we got a deal for you!

Early in their career and perhaps for every year thereafter, teachers will be presented with fads, miracle cures and the latest trends in educational fashion. As workers of the intellect, teachers can find this bewildering and occasionally professionally insulting. So how can we distinguish between the substantial and the cosmetic?

A good starting point is the NSWDEC Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation’s document ‘Great Teaching Inspired Learning: What does the evidence tell us about effective teaching?’(2013). This article suggests a way that might free educators from some of the seemingly immovable and competing demands upon their time. Through an approach placing current, valid and relevant bodies of research at the centre of professional learning, it aims to assist teachers to better identify fads and educational fashion and consider contemporary key findings about planning and programming for effective teaching. Some practical suggestions for what this might look like in a classroom are also included.

Pedagogy is both the art and science of teaching

We do know, now more than ever before, what makes a good school, what effective teaching looks like and what many effective teachers do. However, the discipline of education research is not without challenge due to the complexity of factors at play in the course of any child’s education. Further, randomised trials and controls are difficult, as educators do not withhold promising interventions from groups of students. The consequences of these difficulties, described by the DEC (2013), is that ‘often, descriptive or anecdotal accounts of practice have been accorded the same status as more rigorous methodologies, meaning that the important distinction between correlation and cause is lost.’ In NSW, an unsophisticated understanding of the science and evidence base, coupled with a propensity towards craft based ideas, and tendentious ideological intervention into teaching, has meant that

“…even research that appears to be rigorous, data-based, and comprehensive, can be subject to criticism and contention, not always in ways that clarify the topic. As a result, the base that does exist has not always made a significant impact on classroom context. Conversely, spurious theories have sometimes attained faddish status with the result that the research literature includes ‘recurrent findings of inadvertent harm’ – evidence that ‘it is possible for teachers – well-intentioned, caring and experienced – to unknowingly have impacts on students that are the direct reverse of what they intended (DEC, 2013).”

What follows are a few suggestions as to how to analyse ideas placed before you throughout your career as teacher:

Questions to ask about research

1. Is evidence presented in a transparent way to inform teachers’ decision making, or, has it been appropriated for political, organisational, or other purposes?

2. Are the researcher/publication/organisation’s qualifications known and trusted and relevant to the field of public education?

3. Is there adequate information to inform decisions about the evidence base, methods, validity, currency and relevance of the research base and the researcher’s conclusions?

4. Is a single study set against other overwhelming evidence being presented?

5. Is the size and nature of sample(s) comparable? For example, what is the school type, location, age of students, number and nature of students/teachers?

Some Terminology

1. Empirical (based on observation and experiment);

2. Meta-analysis (combination of many trial results eg. 800 empirical studies);

3. Qualitative (descriptive, holistic, anecdotal);

4. Quantitative (numerical and statistical analysis);

5. Coding methods (categories for data gathering and analysis).

The current evidence base

The research base for practices and other attributes of effective teachers is strongest. The research base for measures of teacher quality is weakest. There is overwhelming agreement about which practices are effective. In the early stages of a teacher’s career (and beyond) it is wisest to plan and program for:

• Monitoring and Feedback;

• Strong Subject Knowledge;

• Explicit Teaching Techniques.

Planning and Programming for Manageable Monitoring and Feedback

Timperley (2009) points out that many teachers have been trained to use data to label and categorise students, and that a shift is required in order for teachers to use data to guide and direct students, and to reflect upon the effectiveness of their teaching. Such practices might include:

• Establish a method to record qualitative and quantitative data about students;

• Read and comment on student work during engaging independent tasks or oral presentations, focus on a small number of students each lesson if necessary;

• Check, initial and discuss completed work 5 minutes before the end of a lesson;

• Plan a lesson on peer, self and teacher feedback following each assessment task;

• Make time to formally grade assessment and work samples with colleagues and share these with students.

Planning and Programming for Strong Subject Knowledge

Alton-Lee’s synthesis of 72 studies, which analyses the link between professional development and its impact on student outcomes, found that the greatest benefits to student learning were from professional development programs ‘that deepen teachers’ foundation of curricular-specific pedagogical content and assessment knowledge’ because they ‘provided teachers with new theoretical understanding that helped them make informed decisions about their practice’.

• Program to include your passions, interests and expertise;

• Subscribe to subject specific publications such as subject associations, newspapers, journals, e-newsletters;

• Apply for 3-4 subject specific professional learning courses at the beginning of the year;

• Set realistic annual goals for expanding your subject knowledge for each topic you teach, for instance, read one book/chapter/article (not school textbooks), watch a documentary, visit a gallery/site/exhibition/performance.

Planning and Programming for Explicit Teaching Techniques

When dealing with novel information, learners should be explicitly shown what to do and how to do it… [Hattie’s meta-analysis of 800 studies describes explicit teaching techniques:] The teacher decides the learning intentions and success criteria, makes them transparent to the students, demonstrates them by modeling, evaluates if they understand what they have been told by checking for understanding, and retelling them what they have told by tying it all together with closure.

• Plan for finished products the student is proud of each week;

• Skill development, high-order questioning and conceptual understanding in lessons and drill and practise at home;

• Teach the specific skills required for success in a task;

• Modify examples of student work in front of the class;

• Work with colleagues to find and share work samples;

• Save samples to show students what is possible early in a task or assessment;

• Value sharing and perfecting impressive sentences in class and talk about what makes the sentence impressive.

The Big Picture

If you teach in a NSW Public School you are one of over 60,000 educators. We do know, now more than ever before, what makes a good school, what effective teaching often looks like and what many effective teachers do. You also have the opportunity in our system to look beyond your school to find other good practitioners and advice around planning, programming and research.

Carly-Jane Boreland has been a classroom teacher and Head Teacher in NSW government schools. Carly sits on the Quality Teaching Council and the Initial Teacher Education Committee of the BOSTES.

Bibliography and Reading List

Alton-Lee A 2011, ‘(Using) evidence for educational improvement’, Cambridge Journal of Education 41
Black P and Wiliam D 1989, ‘Inside the Black Box: Raising standards through classroom assessment’, Phi Delta Kappa 80
Hattie J and Timperley H 2007, ‘The Power of Feedback’, Review of Educational Research 77
Hattie J 2009, Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta analyses relating to achievement, Oxon, UK
Ingvarson L and Rowe K 2008, ‘Conceptualising and Evaluating Teacher Quality: Substantive and methodological issues’, Australian Journal of Education 52
Kirshner P, Sweller J and Clarke R 2006, ‘Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and enquiry-based teaching’ Educational Psychologist 41
NSWDEC Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation 2013, ‘Great Teaching Inspired Learning: What does the evidence tell us about effective teaching?’
Strong J 2010, ‘Evaluating What Good Teachers Do: Eight research based standards for assessing excellence’, Eye on Education
Timperley H 2009, ‘Using Assessment Data for Improving Teaching Practice’, Paper Presented at the Australian Council for Educational Research Conference, 16-18 August

Setting Up For Your Career

Michelle Gleeson gives some practical advice for teachers starting out in the profession…

There is no doubt that starting out as a teacher is an exciting, challenging, and at times overwhelming period. Whatever role and position you’re in, it’s important to develop and maintain a ‘big-picture’ perspective in your first few years of teaching. The routines, practices and behaviours that you instill in your professional life now can put you in good stead for the years ahead.

Be actively engaged and pro-active

Now, active doesn’t mean volunteering to take on the dance group, soccer team and the debating club all at once. In that regard, be quite selective about additional roles that you take on and work to your strengths. Remember, your primary responsibilities are to the class or group of students whom you teach every day.Instead, engage in practices that will support and enhance what you do in the classroom. Ask questions, seek out teachers who you feel you can learn a lot from (chances are they might learn from you, too). Be willing to be open about your practice and share what you’re doing, even if this isn’t the custom or habit of those around you. Collegiality builds the strongest support in schools. Be reflective and willing to adapt and experiment. The most effective teachers are those who continuously review what they are doing, and evaluate it in light of current ‘best-practice’ and what is best for students.

Maintain your love of learning

There has to be something said about a person who spends 13+ years of their life in education to then take up a career in that very profession. Think about what got you into teaching in the first place. Was it a passion for ancient Rome? Being curious about physical phenomena? A fascination about how children learn to read and write? Whatever the impetus, we’ve all come from a place of being totally absorbed in our area of interest that drove us into becoming a teacher. Throughout your career, recognise areas where you can further your learning. Keep your teaching fresh, interesting and engaging by keeping up with content knowledge and current pedagogy. Your students will appreciate and value your teaching when you maintain your love of learning throughout your teaching practice.

Build professional networks

Connect with teachers and teaching beyond the school gate. Chances are there are teachers in the school down the road and in schools in the far west of the state who are facing similar experiences and can relate to you. There may be a wealth of experience in your workplace, and certainly a mentor is a great point of contact to debrief, but it is also important to get out of the ‘bubble’ and take an outside perspective. Read professional journals, join a professional association, attend a union association meeting, and interact with professional learning networks through social media. Involvement in these activities can also lead to fantastic professional opportunities that can further support your growth as an educator.

Develop your own professional plan

Whilst it’s often the case that early in your career teachers are consumed by managing the day-to-day aspects of teaching, take time to think about factors that will affect your professional life over the longer term. Set yourself realistic goals and review them regularly. The end of each term is a helpful marker for reflection and review, especially when the busyness of the term sets in. If there are parts of your teaching that you want to improve or refine, focus on mastering one area of your teaching at a time and develop a set of aims and resources that can support you to get to where you want to be. Similarly, if you need to attain Proficient Teacher accreditation with BOSTES, use the given timeline wisely and work in a process of continual review and reflection. Leaving this process until 3 months out from the due date will only result in unnecessary stress for yourself and for others who are supporting you in this process.

Balance life and work

This seems like commonsense, but far too often early career teachers find themselves feeling overworked as they work through trying to prioritise the range of tasks that come with the job. Teaching can very easily become a 24/7 job. Creating the perfect resource, finding a strategy that might work with the student who finds a particular concept challenging – these are the things that keep our brains whirring when we should be resting. Establishing work and life routines by setting yourself boundaries around what work you take home can help curb burnout behaviours. And for the times when you do tire and get sick, take care of yourself by staying home because you’ll be better for it in the long run.

Finally, the core of effective teaching is built on relationships. Positive relationships with students, parents and teacher colleagues, and also the relationships that exist between students, build trust for learning to occur. Modelling the teacher who you want to be from the start of your career will impact not only your students but also influence those who work with you and the community who observes you. Stay positive, be persistent and keep growing and developing your professional persona. And above all else, love the teaching.

Michelle Gleeson is a teacher at Castle Hill Public School. For the last five years she has run many workshops and conference presentations including for the NSW Institute of Teachers and the Centre for Professional Learning.

Managing Student Behaviour

Helen McMahon considers one of the most confronting issues for almost all teachers …

Of all the issues confronting beginning teachers, perhaps the most challenging is managing the behaviour of students. It is important to note from the outset that there are system and whole school responsibilities for managing behaviour.
While student behaviour is best managed in a collaborative manner throughout the school, rather than viewed solely as the responsibility of an individual, each teacher must develop a set of skills that ensure that his or her classroom is an orderly learning environment. Acceptable behaviour management strategies must be applied consistently and constantly in every situation.

Put simply, there is a standard of behaviour that should be expected of all students and applied throughout the school each day by everyone. While public schools accept all students this does not mean that all behaviours are accepted.
Students have a right to learn and teachers have a right to teach. No individual has a right to threaten those rights by engaging in disruptive behaviour. Similarly, parents have an expectation that the adults to whom they have entrusted the education and care of their children will ensure the learning environment is safe and productive.

The following ideas may assist those early career teachers and those with responsibility for mentoring beginning teachers. The resources attached have been gathered and ‘borrowed’ from a range of sources, adapted, and have been used at sessions for beginning teachers at induction courses.

Policies and personnel

A starting point for each teacher is to be given a clear understanding what levels of support exist within a school and the key policies and personnel that underpin that support. However, teachers must not only be supported but be seen to be supported when it comes to managing students who engage in unacceptable behaviour.
An important inclusion in any induction program should be an understanding of state-wide Department of Education policies. From that, school student welfare and behaviour policies and procedures should be explored and discussed in detail. Many school-based policies may articulate issues such as procedural fairness and the need for documentation. They should also define the roles of key personnel within a school, how students can be referred to someone in higher authority and under what circumstances.
As student misbehaviour should be dealt with promptly, it is vital that a referring teacher understands when and how they will be provided with feedback, ideally by the end of the school day unless there are exceptional circumstances. Intervention delayed is far less effective.

Lesson planning as a key

Experienced teachers understand that the underlying cause of most misbehaviour is a student’s lack of self-esteem due to poor academic ability. A fear of failure can cause a student to resort to negative learned behaviour such as work avoidance, poor attendance, acting out and a failure to bring the correct equipment. However, there is evidence that inclusive teaching and learning strategies can be very powerful in minimising disruptive behaviour.

See attachment 1 below: Ten strategies for reducing problem behaviours with good academic management

Avoiding confrontation

Confrontational behaviour that challenges a teacher is one of the most emotionally stressful situations a teacher will experience. When a teacher is ignored or verbally insulted, it can be humiliating and debilitating. It is little comfort at the time to know that the student is likely to be experiencing conflict in a range of situations, with peers or family or any number of circumstances external to the class.
As teachers gain in experience they become more adept at responding in a professionally detached manner. For early career teachers, the first rule is to try to remain calm and in control, and to seek support where possible. An emotional response may only cause the situation to escalate.

See attachment 2 below: Dealing with confrontation

Preventing poor behaviour from escalating

Conflict situations can quickly escalate and become more difficult to manage and create a series of secondary issues unrelated to the original offence. One of the skills that teachers develop is to lower the heat in conflict so as to reduce the likelihood of the conflict escalating and becoming more complex.

See attachment 3 below: Twenty key points for preventing a situation from escalating

Some general advice

Early career teachers will be just as likely to enter teaching employed as a casual relief or in a temporary block but similar principles of effective classroom management can be applied in most situations.
• Learn the names of your students as quickly as possible.
• Assert your control of the classroom environment: the seating, the lights, the heater, the blinds, where students are to sit. Some students will challenge this. Be alert.
• Be confident in your language and actions as you enter the room. This sets the tone.
• Know your subject matter but also show students you love what you teach. Enthusiasm is catching.
• Be well-prepared and bring spares of everything – handouts, texts, pens, paper etc.
• Have an interesting extension activity ready for those that complete the work quickly.
• Articulate at the beginning of the lesson an overview of what you expect to be achieved that day.
• Have back-up plans. Data projectors and laptops will fail at some point or a library may be double-booked.
• Use humour when you can (but never sarcasm) to lighten the mood.
• Be consistent in your insistence on high standards of behaviour every lesson. Students like routine.
• Know your students well – their interests, their hobbies, their favourite sporting team.
• Keep a professional distance at all times: be friendly but never a friend.
• Always follow-up unacceptable behaviour, preferably in ways that do not disrupt the flow of the lesson.
• Learn from your mistakes and seek advice from supportive colleagues.
And, finally, remember: what you allow, you teach.

Helen McMahon has taught in a range of public schools across NSW and in a diversity of positions from classroom teacher to principal