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.
Bednarek, M., & Caple, H. (2017). The discourse of news values: How news organizations create newsworthiness. Oxford University Press.
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.
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.
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
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:
“Aboriginal students: Curriculum, teaching and assessment programs will be challenging and culturally appropriate. Schools will have a supportive learning environment.
Aboriginal communities: Aboriginal communities and the Department of School Education will become partners in the whole educational process.
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.
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.
[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.
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
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
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:
a focus on discipline-specific content integrated with both general and content area pedagogical knowledge in a cohesive program of PL;
active learning cycles for teachers to design, experiment, reflect and consolidate;
expert feedback and support in understanding the content, research evidence and evidence-based practices;
collaboration with other teachers to encourage a shared sense of purpose; and
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:
We collected and analysed classroom data to understand the nuances of the educational contexts.
We helped develop a plan with the participating teachers to support new enacted pedagogies.
We worked with the teachers to discuss these action plans and the teachers set their own goals.
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.
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/
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
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.
In a world of rapidly advancing Artificial Intelligence, Leslie Loble and Kelly Stephens provide teachers with a framework of questioning when making decisions on using edtech to enhance teaching and learning. . .
In an era characterised by rapid technological advancements, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), we find ourselves at the brink of a ‘fourth industrial revolution.’ This revolution, fuelled by AI, is not just about the technology itself but about the profound impact it has on our daily lives – ‘a fundamental change in the way we live, work and relate to one another.’(World Economic Forum, 2024)
What does this mean for education? As teachers we are always encountering change as we strive to support students to live and learn in the contemporary world. Inherently curious and questioning, teachers are frequently early experimenters with new ways of doing things, especially if they sense benefits for their students or their profession. At the same time, teachers and education leaders are highly developed critical thinkers, with an inclination always to test the ‘why’ before adopting the ‘what’.
Nobody is better placed to navigate this new technological wave.
It is a little over a year since ChatGPT was released, creating excitement and alarm in equal measure. Oh wow, it can write a Shakespearean sonnet about a microwave, or help create a lesson plan. Oh dear, it can write to a rubric and generate a very passable essay. What does this mean for high-stakes assessment tasks? What does this mean for day-to-day teaching?
Before ChatGPT, the educational technology landscape was already being shaped by AI, with tools like adaptive learning platforms and predictive analytics available to support teaching and learning experiences. Only a year on, many applications have already incorporated generative AI into their platforms, and this number will doubtless grow. For example, the Microsoft suite offers the AI-enabled Copilot tool, Google now has Gemini and Khan Academy its Khanmigo chatbot.
Teachers are always looking for the best ways of supporting learning for the students in their classroom. NSW public school teachers are also always looking for ways to help lift the experiences, learning and outcomes for students experiencing disadvantage, and to tackle the enduring problem of educational inequity. There is strengthening evidence that good technological tools might be able to help us in this quest. To do so, however, they need to meet certain conditions. As outlined in the report Shaping AI and edtech to tackle Australia’s learning divide (Loble and Hawcroft, 2022), to create positive impact and avoid harm, edtech must be well designed, effectively used, and carefully managed.
There is more work for us to do as a society to ensure that these conditions are met – to make sure the edtech our students and teachers use are of high educational quality, ethical, safe and effective – without creating additional work for teachers and schools.
This article contributes to the conversation by suggesting five questions you might like to ask when considering using edtech in your teaching program. Spoiler alert: it’s all about doing what you already do – teaching first, technology second. Used well, good edtech can, and should, enhance and amplify your professionalism and expertise. In education, it is imperative we keep the human in the lead.
Five Key Questions to Consider
1.Which tool or resource should I choose?
We know that quality teaching tools and resources can make a difference in the classroom; teachers can, and do, invest significant time creating or finding resources they believe will work best. Edtech, including generative AI, has only increased the range of resources available to choose among. For example, even five years ago, there were nearly 500,000 learning applications just on the Apple and Google app stores.(Holon IQ, 2019) Resource publishers, including edtech providers, frequently approach schools with the intent of selling their products, often with a significant, ongoing price tag.
In making any choice:
Start with your whole-school strategy. We know that cohesive effort across a school community drives results. What are the key priorities in your school plan? Is there a useful app on the NSW Department of Education’s approved list?
Think about the curriculum and your pedagogy. We know that teachers have the greatest in-school impact on student outcomes. Does the tool align with, and support, quality teaching practice in your subject/s? A good edtech application should amplify teacher expertise and professionalism, not diminish it. For example, the right tool might help you carve out time to work with individuals or groups of students with differing needs, by providing an adaptive platform for others to use during that time.
Ask about the evidence base. Is it easy to find out what research informed the development of the tool? Was it informed by how students learn? Is there any research showing how well it has worked, in what circumstances and for whom?
Other markers of a quality tool include accessibility, and the security, privacy and ethical use of teacher and student data. There is more about accessibility and inclusion below, as well as about schools’ and teachers’ responsibilities regarding student data. Beyond this, it is worth asking, what type of student data a tool captures? (for example, does it include keystroke data and other monitoring of student behaviour?), who owns the data, and how it might be used?
It is often difficult to find the answers to these questions, and even when it is possible, it can take up precious time. There are some organisations that seek to make this process easier for teachers. Closest to home is the Department’s Online Learning Tools Catalogue. Tools listed here have been through an assessment process and integrated with the Department’s single sign on. Further afield, other organisations that review materials include EdReports,1 Edtech Impact,2 or Digital Promise.3
2.(How) Does this app help me understand more about my students’ learning?
Technology-based learning applications typically offer the ability to tailor student learning through adaptable lessons, activities, and assessments. For example, one tool offers possible lessons and activities around three broad levels – ‘core, deeper learning, or challenging’ – to allow teachers to scaffold and differentiate their instructional strategies based on student and class capabilities. Another tool gives students the option to select ‘something easier,’ or ‘something harder’; others use adaptive ‘branching’ to meet a student’s ability level and then move onto a greater challenge.
Most technology-based tools also now incorporate data dashboards for teachers, with displays that provide quick, easily accessed insights to student understanding and progress. Some tools also offer data on learning ‘flow’ or engagement. These data can be at quite granular levels (for example, by student, task, skill, curriculum unit and so forth) giving detailed, useful feedback to support a teacher’s plan and approach. Where a learning application also allows students to see their own data, it may help develop metacognitive skills (which are aligned with positive learning behaviours and outcomes (OECD, 2012).
But not every tool will work equally well or match a teacher’s classroom and students. The utility and impact of any tool rests strongly on how and when teachers decide to integrate it in their programming. Teachers deserve good information to understand the capabilities of the tool and its pedagogical design (as outlined above) and professional support to keep education technology use in proportion and firmly within their plan and control.
3.(How) does this application help me teach the full range of students in my classroom?
The craft of teaching depends on meeting a student at their point of learning development and need. We know that any classroom will have students working at a span of levels, sometimes a very wide span. NAPLAN data tells us that by Year 9, the range can be as great as five years.4 At the same time, approximately one in four students in NSW public schools are living (and studying) with disability. (ACARA, 2023) Eighty-six percent of these are studying in mainstream classes in mainstream schools. (NSW Department of Education, 2022) Meeting the needs of all these learners is key to improving the equity of learning outcomes for students in NSW and beyond.
Technology should have an inbuilt advantage in meeting the needs of diverse learners, due to the potential to adjust even simple settings, such as font size, or incorporate translational functions (e.g., text to speech, or speech to text). These inbuilt functions are worth looking for. In addition, many applications are web-based. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 cover a wide range of recommendations for making web content more accessible, including accommodations for blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these, and some accommodation for learning disabilities and cognitive limitations. These guidelines address accessibility of web content on desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices.5
Adaptive learning systems are some of the best researched edtech applications and can help support students to develop mastery, including identifying and filling in learning gaps, and providing stretch learning opportunities.[1] Teachers are also exploring the use of generative AI to make it easier and less time-consuming for them to adapt resources so that all students can effectively access the curriculum. For example, generative AI can quickly and easily rewrite passages of text for students with different reading levels. Of course, it is critical that teachers check any output from a generative AI tool for accuracy and suitability, from the perspective of their professional expertise.
Accessibility and inclusion don’t stop at technical adjustments and adaptability. Edtech – like all human creations – can be culturally insensitive or biased. An aspirational goal is that developers listen to and work with the communities most likely to be impacted by their products. Over time, we hope to see greater use of co-design and universal design for learning principles.
4.What type of AI does this application include?
Not all edtech includes AI and when it does, it is not necessarily generative AI. Very broadly, AI can be thought of in two types:
‘Good Old-Fashioned AI’ (known as GOFAI) – This encompasses a range of technologies including the chess program (Deep Blue) that beat Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997 and the technology that serves up recommendations to us in our daily life – videos to watch, songs to listen to, people to befriend. These technologies have advantages of memory and computational force that far exceed human capacities (Tegmark, 2017). An upside of some of these applications is that they can learn from your choices and improve their advice to you. A downside is that they can contribute to a polarisation of views. You may notice that you rarely see suggested information that offers a different perspective from the one you already hold (hence the term ‘echo chamber’).
Generative AI – This technology is distinctive in that it doesn’t just analyse existing data and predict the future on the basis of the past but creates new data instances that resemble the data it ‘trained’ on. For example, ChatGPT was trained on large sections of the internet, including all of Wikipedia – approximately 300 billion words. (Hughes, 2023) Generative AI tools can generate language, but also images and increasingly long video segments. Unlike older types of AI, the generative AI models are so complex that even the creators cannot understand exactly why a tool produces the output that it does. (Heikkila, 2024)
Generative AI has raised particular concerns from an educational perspective, not least because it is known to ‘hallucinate.’ Because ChatGPT writes like an articulate human, it can be hard to spot when the tool is just making things up.
Other issues – such as bias – can arise regardless of the type of AI involved. The output of any algorithm is only as good as the data set it draws on, and the rules it applies to that data, both of which may reflect systemic inequity.7 This has been shown across many fields including education.8 For example, the use of an algorithm to predict A-level results for UK students during COVID was found to systematically disadvantage students from state schools and had to be abandoned. (Gulson et al, 2021) Examples like this are powerful reminders that humans, not machines, remain accountable for decisions. When we do use technology to support student learning or streamline our work load, we need to stay abreast of its recommendations and adjust them when necessary.9
5.What data or information should I put into an app?
Personalisation can come at a price, and that price can be privacy. Recommendation engines improve the more they ‘know about’ (the more data they have on) the user. Data is highly valuable to many companies, including Edtech companies[KS2] . Data that can be linked to specific students, known as personally identifiable information (PII), falls under the Australian Privacy Act 1988 due to its sensitive nature. Personal information is any information that can be used to identify an individual directly or indirectly. It could be a student’s name, address, class, school, family details, fingerprints, or a combination of information from which a student or other individual can be identified.10 Applications accessed via the NSW Department of Education’s Online Learning Tools Catalogue have data safeguards in place. Outside of that framework, the responsibility for the appropriate treatment of personal data rests with teachers and schools, with advice available.11 It is worth noting that ChatGPT uses your content – uploaded files, prompts and chat history – to train the model, unless you choose to opt out.12
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence can be a polarising topic, represented as the answer to all our problems, or an impending risk to humanity. Educators are well positioned to avoid such extremes, approaching edtech firmly as a tool, not oracle, in service of the human pursuit of teaching and learning. If you would like to stay connected with our work seeking to ensure that edtech is leveraged for quality and equity across Australian schools, consider signing up to our mailing list here.
6 A synthesis by Escueta et al. (‘Upgrading education with technology: Insights from experimental research’, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 48, No. 4, 2020) finds that adaptive learning systems offer ‘enormous promise,’ with two-thirds of the high-quality research studies examined demonstrating substantial and statistically significant effects. Similarly, a meta-review of Intelligent Tutoring Systems by Kulik & Fletcher (‘Effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems: A meta-analytic review’, Review of Educational Research, Vol. 86, Issue 1, 2016) reports a mean effect size of 0.62 from their analysis of 50 controlled experimental or quasi-experimental evaluations of ITS in elementary, secondary, and tertiary institutions. This effect size is considered moderate-to-large in social sciences and well above many other traditional education interventions.
7 For example, a data set ‘may not be representative or may contain associations that run counter to policy goals’ (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning: Insights and Recommendations, Washington DC, 2023), p.33.
8 For a very readable look at the way AI and algorithms can replicate and reinforce existing inequities, see Ellen Broad, Made by Humans: The AI Condition (Melbourne University Press, 2018).
9 Even when automated processes are explicitly designed as decision-support tools, we humans can defer overly to them due to our ‘trust in automated logic, lack of time and the convenience of relying on pre-processed data’ (Anna Huggins, ‘Addressing Disconnection: Automated Decision-Making, Administrative Law and Regulatory Reform,’ UNSW Law Journal, Vol. 44, No. 3, 2021), p.1060.
Professor Leslie Loble AM is Chair of the Australian Network for Quality Digital Education. Leslie is a recognised leader of public purpose reform, both in Australia and the US. Leslie has spearheaded significant reform in school, tertiary and early childhood education, including the Gonski funding reforms, and establishment of the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, the Centre for Learning Innovation and the Catalyst Lab, within the NSW Department of Education. Leslie holds governance roles at the Australian Education Research Organisation and Copyright Agency and appointments to government expert advisory panels in education. She is Industry Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and affiliated with its Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion. Leslie is also a Paul Ramsay Foundation Fellow.
Dr Kelly Stephens is an experienced education policy and research leader. Kelly served as Director, Strategic Analysis within the NSW Department of Education’s Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation for a decade, where she played a leading role in the development of the School Excellence Framework and the fostering of evidence-based practice through What Works Best. Kelly has also held leadership roles in the Centre for Learning Innovation, the Education for a Changing World program, and as Director, Schools Policy, where she managed the strategic policy framework for K–12 education. Kelly supports the Network and its associated work program as Director, Edtech and Education Policy.
Geoff Gallop challenges us to commit to the aspirational goals of ‘excellence’ and ‘equity’ in education in a world of meritocratic hubris. . .
“Equity in education as the fundamental education policy is important not only for economic reasons, but it is a moral imperative especially in those countries that have made a promise to give all their people a fair go”. (Sahlberg and Cobbold ,2021)
Any commentary on what we ought to expect from the nation’s education system needs to start with the Education Ministers and their Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019). Its over-arching and aspirational goals for the system as a whole are “excellence” and “equity”. I interpret this to mean (1) a system that is continually improving in educational performance and (2) one that pushes hard to ensure all who access it can realise their talents and capacities. So too, our ministers say, it ought it be a system that helps create “confident and creative individuals” with “high expectations for their educational outcomes”. These objectives should never be far from our mind, they represent a promise to the people as to what we should expect from our schooling system.
Such goals are particularly relevant to the government sector within whose classrooms are “the vast bulk of students with disability and disadvantage”.1 The NSW statistics relevant to the finding are as follows:
The number of students with disability estimated to attract funding support has increased by almost 300 per cent since 2002.
The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) students in public schools has risen by 83 per cent from 2004 to 2019.
The number of students from a language background other than English (LBOTE) has increased by 45 per cent from 2004 to 2019.
Students classified from a low socio-educational advantage (SEA) status now make up 32 per cent of the student population.
One-third of NSW’s low SEA students live in regional, rural and remote areas and 86 per cent of those are enrolled in public schools. 2
With these facts related to a segregated system on the table, we are obliged to go further and ask whether or not our stated objectives of excellence, equity and creativity are being achieved, not just for some but for all segments of our society, including the disadvantaged? In Australian language it’s what we call a “fair go”!
Sahlberg and Cobbold
In taking up such a challenge, both philosophically and practically, we have been greatly assisted by the work of Pasi Sahlberg and Trevor Cobbold. They note the deficiency of the current National Schooling Reform Agreement (NSRA), namely that it doesn’t clearly enough define “equity-in-education”. They point to plenty of loose talk about “equality of opportunity” but insufficient clarity about it for policymaking, implementation and evaluation.
Their solution to this has two aspects:
“First, from an individual perspective, equity in education outcomes should mean that all children receive an education that enables them to fully participate in adult society in a way of their choosing. We can refer to this as an adequate education. Second, equity in education should also mean that students from different social groups achieve similar average outcomes and a similar range of these outcomes. We call this social equity-in-education”. Sahlberg, and Cobbold, (2021 pp12 -13)
Their definition of “equity-in-education” is particularly significant because:
“…it is unreasonable to expect in education policies or in school leadership strategies that all children will achieve the same education outcomes because, as individuals, they have a range of abilities and talents which lead to different choices in schooling. However, it is reasonable to expect that these different abilities and talents are distributed similarly across different social, ethnic and gender groups in society”. Sahlberg, and Cobbold, (2021 pp12 -13)
Put the two objectives together – an adequate education for all and more equity in educational outcomes across the society – and we have a strong and meaningful basis for guiding design and evaluation.
Sahlberg and Cobbold also point out that there may very well be groups within groups, “sub-groups” as they call them. For example, they may exist between indigenous students in remote as opposed to urban settings. This necessarily complicates the objective of improving social equity and needs to be thought through as required. It doesn’t, however, change the argument for equity.
Fairness and Public Policy
There are conservative commentators who dispute the assumption that different abilities and talents are distributed similarly within the groups that make up society. They are left defending hierarchy as in some sense “natural” or, for all of its faults, a better and more stable way to run a society, especially if there is room for some upward mobility. More to the point, and counter to Cobbold and Sahlberg, such conservatives say that fairness can’t actually be the focus of public policy, even as a generalised aspiration. Pushing the system towards equity-in-education may be good in “theory” but in “practice” it leads to more harm than good, upsetting as it does merit based decision making. This is so, says leading conservative critic, F.A. Hayek, because social justice is a “mirage”, “meaningless” and incompatible with a liberal, market society. (Hayek, 1976)
In response to this we are all obliged to ask the question: Why shouldn’t we aspire to more equality in educational outcomes as part of a broader agenda of fairness for all? It’s an objective derived from our human rights commitments (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26) and one that gives clarity to the anti-discrimination implications of those commitments. Whether it be gender, class, race, ethnicity or domicile around which we gather relevant information, we ought to ensure that educational outcomes allow equal access to further education, highly paid occupations and influential positions in society. We ought to be widening rather than limiting the pool of talent. (Sahlberg and Cobbold, 2021)
Let me now turn to some of the relevant statistics. On the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) Cobbold writes:
“The paper shows that 28% of low SES Year 9 students were below the national reading standard in 2022, 35% were below the writing standard and 15% were below the numeracy standard. Nearly 30% of Indigenous students were below the reading standard, 38% were below the writing standard and 16% were below the numeracy standard. Nearly one-third of remote area students were below the reading standard, 46% were below the writing standard and 15% were below the numeracy standard. By contrast, only 3% of Year 9 high SES students did not achieve the reading standard, 5% did not achieve the writing standard and 1% did not achieve the numeracy standard.
These are shocking inequities. For example, it is totally unacceptable that the percentage of low SES Year 9 students not achieving the national reading standard is 9 times that of high SES students and the proportion of Indigenous and remote area students not achieving the standard is 10 times that of high SES students”.
In some areas there were improvements but not enough to say that there isn’t “an appalling inequity” in the system.(Cobbold, 2023)
Do Schools Matter?
It is the case, of course, that social and economic factors play a crucial – some say decisive role – in all of this. A radical interpretation of these SES factors is that of sociologist – and social mobility scholar, John Goldthorpe (2020) . He writes: “It’s not schools and universities, but differences in home environments, and particularly the time parents can give their children, that are the obstacles to equality of opportunity”. Another perspective is that of the OECD who say that “some children from disadvantaged households do achieve strong outcomes, demonstrating that equitable outcomes are possible”.(OECD, 2022) Note the reference to “some” rather than “many”!
My conclusion from this is the same as that of Sahlberg and Cobbold:
Schools are in a constant battle against the reproduction of inequality and poverty in society. Since the out-of-school factors explain majority of variation in students’ achievement in school, their efforts must be supported by economic and social policies to reduce growing inequality and poverty. Sahlberg, and Cobbold, (2021 pp16 -17)
I would read this as saying that both external, SES factors, and internal, school factors, need to be working in tandem to ensure adequacy and improve equality outcomes, step by step, as part of a broader ambition to bring about a fairer and more productive society.
It’s Sahlberg’s view that it’s not just the continuous reproduction or disadvantage that holds back educational equity but also the policy agenda that has dominated in recent decades. He calls it the Global Education Reform Movement (or GERM) and it involves standardisation, a focus on core subjects, the search for low-risk ways of reaching learning goals, the use of corporate management models and test-based accountability policies”.(Sahlberg, 2012) Unless qualified with some real-world issues related to teachers position in the labour market, school leadership and management, classroom realities and, of course, school funding, such an agenda is bound to fail if improved educational outcomes are the objective.3
A Meritocracy?
The twin pursuit of excellence and equity is not helped either by what Professor Michael Sandel has called “meritocratic hubris” or the tendency of those who land on top to believe that their success is their own doing and, by implication, that those who were left behind, must deserve their fate as well”. Underpinning this hubris is “the tendency to forget our indebtedness to family, teachers, community, country, and the times in which we live as conditions for the success that we enjoy”.(Sandel, 2020)
Certainly more competition for jobs at the top and more diversity in the CEO class that emerges is in the public interest. Former OECD economist Adrian Blundell-Wignall puts it this way: “Inequality in the market for education is a barrier to long-term success” and is clearly in play in Australia. He points to the “remarkable outperformance of students from expensive private schools for entry to the best university courses, and their eventual dominance of corporal boardrooms”. (Blundell-Wignall, 2023) In other joint studies of the experience of the USA, France and Sweden, he finds evidence consistent with views “that more egalitarian societies that value innate ability more than social standing will generate better commercial leadership and economic performance than countries that do not”. (Atkinson and Blundell-Wignall, 2021)
In relation to GERM and the policies it produces, none have been as influential as “choice and competition” as opposed to “excellence and equity”. It leads to the conclusion that the government sector is best set up as a collection of semi-independent schools, minimally united and supported. This isn’t, as we argued in the first chapter of Valuing the teaching profession, “a sound basis upon which to build the commitment, capacities and leadership needed to turn the corner of disadvantage.” (Gallop, Kavanagh, and Lee , 2021) Let alone is it the basis to pursue equality of outcomes (as defined by Sahlberg and Cobbold). Our policy makers need a strategic, co-ordinated and prioritised approach to the way it builds its public school system.
It’s the case that many of the challenges facing principals and classroom teachers today are being experienced by all schools, government and non-government. Mental health issues and behavioural issues are at play in society – and, therefore, in classrooms today. In relation to this there’s plenty of evidence to lead us to conclude that the pursuit of equality – in all of its manifestations – starting with income and material equality puts schools in a better position to tackle those challenges.4
Thus far I’ve addressed some of the realities that make difficult the achievement of improved performance in both excellence and equity – the sociology of disadvantage, the politics of GERM and the ideology of meritocracy. On the other side of the equation we now have a clear definition of equity and what can demonstrate whether progress is – or isn’t – being made in that direction. This is the breakthrough that gives definition and structure to the argument.5
Strengths of Government Schools
We know too, that the all-important government sector has strengths lacking in the non-government sector – and which can be mobilised for progress in equity.
We know, for example, that within the limits laid down by the social and economic environment within which schools operate, government schools perform as well as their non-government counterparts, and that is the case even with all the resources and infrastructure the private sector has to provide for its students. (Larson, 2022)
We know too, that state (public) school graduates do better at university than private school graduates within the same end-of-school tertiary entrance score, this being “a clear finding” in England as well as Australia. (Preston, 2014).
We know too, that values, more inclusive and science-based than propagated in parts of the non-government sector, prevail in government schools. Learning to live with differences, a basic requirement for policy-makers in a multicultural society, is at the core of the mission of a government school today.6
In noting these positive drivers related to a government school system, I’m reminded of the early years of the Australian Nation when public sector institutions or enterprises were set up with the clear aim of not only competing with private sector equivalents but also seeking best practice in what they do. It soon became obvious that strong political support was needed – in funding and organisational innovation – if we were to create a genuine mixed economy. The same applies today, and in the context of education needs to be strategic and more than strong, and coming from both the national and state arms of government.
The politics of all of this can’t be avoided. Myths are myths. Prejudice is prejudice but it doesn’t mean they won’t be influential. A significant portion of the community have come to see the education debate in terms of choice (parents) and competition (government). They want government priorities to support their own families and their own children. It’s that old battle that can’t be avoided, self-interest versus the public interest. It’s one thing to have a mix that seeks to reconcile the two principles, quite another to allow one of the two elements to undermine the other.
Definition, measurement and reporting
More practically our focus needs to be on developing further the work on the statistics and information generally needed in relation to “equity-in-education”. As Cobbold has put it:
“A clear definition of equity in education is fundamental to making real progress towards it. Not only would it clarify expectations about equity but it is necessary to set clear achievement targets for students from different social groups and monitor progress in achieving equity. It is equally necessary to ensure government accountability for making progress on equity”. (Cobbold, 2022)
Currently, says Cobbold, reporting on progress is deficient. The same points are made by Jim Tognolini and Tom Alegounarias(2021) “ The relative lack of confidence in key concepts or generally understood definitions in the assessment domain is, therefore, an acute problem in teaching”
In relation to this “The inculcation of higher order thinking skills, non-cognitive skills, and competencies into the Australian Curriculum, in accord with the 2019 Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration, has raised the stakes for beginning teachers to be able to teach, assess, interpret and measure progress on skills that have been traditionally found difficult, if not impossible, to measure” (Tognolini and Alegounarias, 2021)Making equity matter in all our thinking about education isn’t easy and, as we have seen, has its detractors and, indeed, its enemies. It requires a commitment that all may not share and it requires serious work in the province of measurement and assessment. It’s a – work – in – progress that needs leadership from our public schools as well as partnerships between them and the wider community, including our researchers.
Certainly, I trust that nothing I have written is meant to imply that “confident curriculum expertise” and “basic and varied pedagogical principles” aren’t crucial in the education endeavour (Tognolini and Alegounarias, 2021). Indeed they are, but unless they are backed up with “assessment expertise” and framed in the way outlined by Sahlberg and Cobbold (2021) there is every chance that only little – if any – dents into the prevailing inequalities will be possible.
Education Department quoted in Gallop, G, Kavanagh, T and Lee, P, Valuing the teaching profession (2021), p. 20.
Ibid.
See Gallop, G, Kavanagh, T and Lee, P, Valuing the teaching profession (2021) for an alternative approach to “reform”.
See Wilkinson, R and Pickett, K “Income Inequality and Social Dysfunction”, Annu.Rev.Social, 2009:35:493-511.
See also, Cobbold, T. “Equity in Education must be clearly defined, measured and reported”, Pearls and Irritations, 1 July 2022.
See Gallop, G. Evolving Partnerships in Education (Australian College of Education, 1990), pp. 43-44.
Blundell-Wignall, A (2023 December 19) “Tip private schools out of boardrooms for a more productive Australia”, Australian Financial Review.
Sahlberg, P and Cobbold, T (2021) “Leadership for equity and adequacy in education”, School Leadership and Management, 20 May 2021,
Sandel, M (2020, September 14) Quoted in Evan Osnos, “A Political Philosopher on why Democrats should think differently about merit”, The New Yorker.
Tognolini,J. and Alegounarias, T (2021) Submission to the QualityTeacher Education Review
Wilkinson, R and Pickett (2009) K “Income Inequality and Social Dysfunction”, Annu.Rev.Social, 2009:35:493-511.
Emeritus Professor Dr Geoff Gallop AC FASS was Director of Sydney University’s Graduate School of Government from 2006 to 2015. From 1986 to 2006 he was a Labor Party Member of Western Australia’s Legislative Assembly, a Minister in the Lawrence Government from 1990 to 1993 and Premier from 2001 to 2006. Currently he is the chair of the Research Committee for the New Democracy Foundation, a director of the Constitutional Education Fund of Australia, and a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
He recently chaired a NSW Teachers Federation commissioned inquiry into the wages and working conditions for government school teachers in NSW.
The recent introduction of a new syllabus spurred this English Faculty to build and embed trust, transparency, and collaboration as the drivers of a cohesive and effective staffroom. Amy Peace and Louise Turk take us through the processes…
How To Build A Harmonious And Productive Workplace Culture
The celebration of the new English Syllabus began with the formation of a circle of colleagues, at Woonona High School, a co-educational secondary school in the northern suburbs of the Illawarra, NSW, on Dharawal Country. Each member of the English Faculty introduced themselves and their favourite reading text to other teachers within the school, and to guests from the wider educational community.
The circle was a metaphor. It was a symbol of equality amongst those who made the formation and a powerful emblem for the potential of transforming student thinking through a dynamic educational framework. Most importantly, it was an authentic circle. Its geometric simplicity was underpinned by an edifice which had taken leadership direction and considerable time to develop.
Before the launch day in November 2023, during which the English Faculty shared its new programming and resolute forward vision with the school community, a purposeful and steady change in work culture had been taking place. Faculty Head Teacher (acting), Ms Amy Peace, led a transformation to foster collaboration amongst Faculty members, and to develop their skills to respond to rapid change in the workplace. It involved providing opportunities for colleagues to build trust, innervating the sharing of ideas and knowledge and the desire to work together.
Building relational trust was the primary goal in equipping teachers to deal with the demands of preparing to introduce a new English Syllabus while, simultaneously, teaching the current syllabus (Hawkins, 2020). Peace, who is undertaking a Masters in Educational Leadership, understood the importance of creating a climate in which Faculty members could take necessary risks and experiment with innovation, and engage in robust professional dialogue (Barsade, 2002; Goleman,1999; Lipscombe et.al. 2020). The English Faculty needed to become an environment of transparency and accountability and one in which there was shared responsibility. She set to work.
We relied on each other for logistical and emotional support. Having a collective approach to the syllabus implementation helped to reduce the cognitive load and stress of programming and helped to create more comprehensive and exciting learning opportunities as we used each other as soundboards to generate new learning experiences and projects.
-Mr Jack Stranger, English classroom teacher
Peace focused on managing the wellbeing of the staff and developing a strong sense of Faculty identity (Goleman, 1999). The design and creation of a Faculty logo, with the visual imagery of an open book sprouting knowledge through metaphorical flowers, helped to create a sense of cohesion and foster a sense of pride amongst staff. The logo was proudly emblazoned on work shirts and was used as a watermark on digital resources. Its calming forest green palette became the thematic colour when the English classroom doors were repainted, transforming them from a less inspiring beige tint. Peace designed a Faculty flag, embedded with the logo, which was displayed at whole school meetings.
The physical environment of the staffroom was de-cluttered and purposefully organised, with all Faculty members sharing the responsibility for keeping the space clean and tidy. Ergonomic chairs were purchased. Fragrant reed diffusers, a coffee machine, a soda machine, and a hand-towel dispenser were added to the staffroom space. A display box in the English corridor featured professional photos of Faculty members. Small additions, one may ponder, but not insignificant when you are building a workplace culture of happiness and inclusion (Hawkins, 2020). Staff birthdays were celebrated with cake. The success of staff was celebrated weekly in school newsletters, bulletins, faculty meetings and with handmade cards, designed and crafted by the Woonona High School Principal, Ms Caroline David. David hand-wrote congratulatory messages inside the card and left the messages of acknowledgement on staff desks (across the school) with chocolate or home baked brownies. She frequently matched the photos or motifs around which she designed the cards to a personal connection with a staff member. David knew your favourite colour and which beach was closest to the coastal town where you grew up. It was the accumulation of these small but very deliberate and consistent affirmations towards staff that made coming to work a joyful process.
I love coming to work! My colleagues are the best and I really care about each one of them. I feel totally supported. I have never worked in a faculty that works so harmoniously together while also being honest and clear with each other – it is really refreshing. Amy (Peace) fosters this approach and is clear and kind to all of us in a calm and considered way.
-Ms Louisa Smith, English Faculty, second in charge
The English Faculty culture at Woonona High School is one that is built upon a steadfast foundation of a love for literature and the everlasting joys that come from this lifelong engagement. I believe that this bedrock is conducive to English as a subject being held in popular regard by students and staff within the school community, as the infectious nature of this mutually-held passion is an example in which students can, and do, follow. Further, the level of collegial support is unparalleled, both professionally and interpersonally. Genuine care and kindness are never absent, and again, it is this ethos, as set by the English staff at Woonona High School, that inspires students and staff alike to strive to be “Lifelong Learners”.
-Mr Saxon Penn, English classroom teacher
The next step in creating a workplace culture ready for rapid change was to introduce processes that would reduce the cognitive load for teachers (Sweller,1988). Clear and transparent processes were necessary to create an equitable teaching environment in which every individual understood their role and contribution. New templates were created for learning programs and scope and sequences. The role of year coordinators was clearly defined. The sharing of programs and resources on the Faculty Google Drive was refined to make the location of information more streamlined.
At the start of the implementation phase of the new syllabus in 2023, the Faculty designed a collaborative timeline for the next twelve months. This collaborative and critically reflective process allowed for a visualisation of the journey ahead (Jefferson, 2017). Time in Faculty meetings was devoted to assessing how current programs could be modified to meet the requirements of the new syllabus.
Collaboration within the Woonona High School English Faculty and collaboration between six schools in the Illawarra; Dapto, Illawarra Sports, Kiama, Lake Illawarra and Warrawong High Schools (known as the Curriculum Network Illawarra (CNI) Professional Learning Network) ensured the transition between syllabi was an efficient process. The slow and methodical systems and processes resulted in accuracy, agency and accountability.
The first step was to audit our programs to identify the gaps and opportunities in our current scope and sequence. I initially found myself quite confused and overwhelmed at how we would navigate this process and found that taking the initiative to collaboratively design processes was the best way to visualise where we were at and where we needed to go. By creating a syllabus outcomes checklist, we were able to evaluate our programs in a comprehensive and consistent way which made it easier to “respoke the wheel” as opposed to starting from scratch.
-Mr Jack Stranger, English classroom teacher
Time in Faculty meetings to discuss changes, State-wide professional learning and staff development days with a focus on new directions, new texts, and the wording of outcomes really helped to clarify my understanding of the new syllabus.
-Mrs Marnie Whidden, English classroom teacher
The mood of the launch of the new English Syllabus last November can best be described as incandescent. Staff from across all Faculties at Woonona High School, the executive of the school, student representatives, and community representatives including the NSW Teachers Federation President, Mr Henry Rajendra and NSW Teachers’ Federation Organiser, Mr Duncan McDonald, were united in an exciting vision for the future.
That vision includes creating an educational landscape in which student voice and agency are at the forefront of the English classroom. Was the plan to build relational capability within the English Faculty at Woonona High School a success and, ultimately, will it make a difference to the social and academic progress of students? The last word goes to classroom teacher, Mr Shane Pratt.
I feel confident moving forward and implementing changes. One of the largest reasons I feel this confidence is because I feel supported by my faculty and my head teacher. I feel empowered to try new ideas and implement my own flair to programming and don’t feel restricted or inhibited to make the program my own.
If we have teachers feeling confident and empowered in the workplace, then this will only lead to increased positive outcomes for our students.
Barsade, S. G. (2002). The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and its Influence on Group Behavior. Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(4), 644-675. https://doi.org/10.2307/3094912
Goleman, D. (1999) Working with Emotional Intelligence, Bloomsbury, England.
Hattie, J. (2011) Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximising Impact on Learning. Taylor & Frances Ltd, England.
Hawkins, G. (2020) Mentally At Work, Mentally At Work, Melbourne, Australia.
Jefferson, M. & Anderson, M. (2017) Transforming Schools: Creativity, Critical Reflection, Communication, Collaboration. Bloomsbury, Australia
Lipscombe, K., Bennett, S., Kidson, P., Gardiner, P. & McIntyre, A. (2020). Leadership for Learning Frameworks. Sydney: NSW School Leadership Institute. https://ro.uow.edu.au/asshpapers/150
Louise Turk is a classroom teacher and 2iC in the English Faculty at Woonona High School. She is a Higher School Certificate marker in English Advanced and English Standard. This is her ninth year teaching English for the NSW Department of Education. Turk is a former Fairfax journalist.
Amy Peace is the Head Teacher (rel.) of English at Woonona High School. She has been championing Public Education for sixteen years in various roles, including Teachers’ Federation Women’s Contact, Curriculum Network Illawarra (CNI) Leader and Higher School Certificate marker. Her passions are improving equity in teaching and learning and driving systemic change to improve conditions for teachers and students.
English Head Teachers, Emma Campbell, Steve Henry, and Rosemary Henzell, share the motivators and contextual variables that were the driving force behind their approach to planning and programming for the new 7-10 English Syllabus. . .
Much like new homeowners facing a house quaintly described as “well-loved and full of character”, faculties facing a new English syllabus must ask themselves a single question: “Repaint, renovate, or rebuild?” For some, the thought of doing any more than a quick update will be overwhelming, while others may see it as a chance to fix issues that have been bothering them for years. A total overhaul offers us an opportunity to completely reconfigure our programs to fit our current world: a huge amount of work initially, but with the possibility of a wonderful final product. Regardless of where we sit along this spectrum, however, we must not allow fittings, fixtures, and furniture to distract us from the core purpose of such an endeavour: to build a home for ideas, student thinking and deep engagement with texts and language. This is, and always has been, our priority.
In her keynote address at last year’s CPL Secondary English Conference (2023), Jackie Manuel traced the through lines of the NSW English syllabus, from its origins in 1911 to its most recent iterations. Using Jeanette Winterson’s observation that ‘everything is forever imprinted with what it once was’ (The Stone Gods, 2008), Jackie reminded us of the echoic nature of our syllabus, from the original statement that it is in the ‘study of . . . literature that the High School will exercise its highest influence upon the general training of pupils’ (NSW Department of Public Instruction,1911, p. 5, p. 18)to the most recent aim of the syllabus where students learn to ‘appreciate, reflect on and enjoy language, and make meaning in ways that are imaginative . . . and powerful.’
The notion that we, as teachers, may be able to embody these ideals and affect the lives of the next generation in ways that are lasting, profound and enriching, still motivates young people to enter the classroom and our profession. Jackie’s reminder of our educational inheritance then becomes an important touchstone for the tackling of the new syllabus over the last twelve months and it is these broader aims of the new syllabus, rather than the more performative measures of ATAR or HSC band analysis that are our starting point.
Emma Campbell and Steve Henry (Head Teachers of English: Cherrybrook Technology High)
Where are we now?
Working in an English faculty, with some genuine stability and experience at the heart of the staffing roster, and with a large student cohort that is generally motivated and socially privileged, our approach to the new syllabus was equivalent to a home renovation. Yes, there were going to be drop sheets and dust and some demolition, scraping, smells of paint and turpentine but the structure of our programs would remain largely intact.
New syllabus as opportunity
Looking back over the years, the regular changes to the syllabus stand out, but there are other changes that have affected us as well and it’s worthwhile pondering these shifts in order to put the new syllabus in context. At the national level we’ve had the push for a national curriculum, but NSW has held fast to its commitment to the HSC, so it has felt less like a tidal shift and more like an insistent current. More profound has been the siloing of our schools and faculties, firstly with the loss of a structured approach to local networks of English teachers, then with Covid and now with the teacher shortage and the sheer exhaustion of administrative overload. We have all, it seems, been attempting the impossible: to develop our own networks, to connect where we can, to learn, discuss, tinker, sweep away the old, renovate, rebuild or re-shape our programs within the time and personnel limitations of our schools and system. Has it been possible to see this as more opportunity than burden? Talking with others and moving through this process, we think so. Perhaps we are limited in our own siloed experience or, perhaps, the simple fact is that the English teachers of NSW regularly do the impossible. For us, the opportunity to refresh and re-shape has been welcome, particularly given the obvious shifts within the lives of our teens, artificial intelligence, the distractions and distorting effects of social media, the rise of anxiety and the deficits left by covid. But to tell this story, it might be better to move away from a building metaphor to an image that is less static.
The car, and the kid in the passenger seat
At the centre of our review, then, we placed the students. Our classrooms demanded a new curriculum because the students sitting in them have been buffeted by these enormous forces, reforming their ways of engaging in the world. Our goals: encourage closer reading, deeper engagement, and authentic composition, so students could harness that power we have for so long been encouraging.
The new syllabus, freed from some of the clutter, offered a chance to slow down our program. Metaphorically, we wanted to upgrade the car. We wanted to take the students from passive passengers( glued to their phones in the front seat, eventually squinting into sunlight, wondering where they were and how they ended up there) to being the ones who ask for the keys.
The syllabus, with its focus areas of reading, understanding, and responding, has allowed multiple points of entry, because English, as a discipline, does not have a clear start and end point. Our students are cast as readers, who grow to critique others’ work, and develop the confidence to compose their own, before going back to read some more to help refine their writing. We want them to stop thinking about learning as a passive journey that their teachers are navigating for them from A to B to C. Instead, opening a book is being dropped at any point of the map and navigating their way back to clarity.
A clean car with seat warmers and safety cameras is offering us the best opportunity to reacquaint our teens with the power and magic of language. Upon returning to the classroom after online learning, our students were hesitant to take charge of their learning – reluctant to answer questions, mulishly splitting up a group task into four individual responses, politely asking how many quotes they need in each paragraph to get an A, before they’d actually read the end of the novel. Paring back our units, focusing on structured discussion, allowing space for confusion to grow into understanding, is, we hope, teaching them how to drive.
Rosemary Henzell (Head Teacher English: Canterbury Girls High School)
Where should we start?
Coming into a new faculty on the brink of a new syllabus was both a blessing and a curse. Having just arrived, I hadn’t had a chance to see most of the programs in action before I needed to begin discussions about what our approach should be. On the other hand, early conversations with teachers revealed the need for significant changes as well as a readiness to revamp and renew. Our school was in a Local Government Area (LGA) of concern during COVID, and the aftereffects of strict lockdowns were evident in disconnection between students and in the decline of some faculty processes, compounded by changes in staff. We settled on an ambitious but necessary project: a complete knock-down and rebuild of our 7-10 programs, recycling some quality materials where possible, but integrating them into a brand new build.
Planning our ‘dream home’
Like for Steve and Emma, the new syllabus, therefore, became a marvellous opportunity. It invited us to have reflective and evaluative conversations about our values, our expectations for our students and what we cherished about our role as English teachers. These conversations, at the beginning of 2023, centred around four key questions:
Where are we at right now?
Where do we want to go?
What does ‘excellence’ look like for us?
Why do we want to go there?
These discussions were instrumental in allowing us to drill down into what mattered most to us, and what we felt our students needed in today’s world. Similar to Cherrybrook, deeper engagement with reading, developing students’ critical thinking, and supporting them to find their personal voice through authentic writing opportunities were at the forefront of our plans. We also considered social-emotional development in our choice of concepts, ensuring positive and affirming ideas were present to balance out the dark, and providing opportunities to tackle big issues in authentic and productive ways. Armed with Jane Sherlock and Deb Macpherson’s incredible list of suggested texts from the 2022 CPL Secondary English Conference, we embarked on a revamp of our book room.
A brand new 7-10 scope and sequence, backward-mapped from Year 11 and 12, became our schematics. Introducing a conceptual framework approach, I led small faculty teams through the creation and structuring of units during once-a term planning days. Release time was hard to come by, but we were supported, wherever possible, by the Executive to achieve this. This rebuild was only made possible by the incredible dedication of our faculty, and it is a testament to those collective efforts that by the time we wrapped up in 2023, we had completed programs for all units, including assessment tasks drafts and conceptual introduction resources. The house was built…but there wasn’t a lot of furnishing in place yet!
Resisting the one-size-fits-all McMansion
I am a firm believer that programming lies at the heart of our work as English teachers. The process of interpreting a syllabus through the creation of structured, meaningful and experiential learning activities relevant to my particular content and cohort of students has always been one of my greatest joys, and methods of development, as a teacher. Collaboration with our colleagues through co-creation turns a scope and sequence into a living, breathing entity that is capable of growth, evolution and innovation. As we teach, we become what Steve calls the embodied syllabus – we are the vehicle and vessel for student learning, deep thinking, questioning, creation and reflection. Let me be clear – I’m not suggesting that every program in every school must be built from scratch, and the sharing of units and resources is central to our practice (and survival!). However, if we are not cultivating our programming skills, or supporting others to cultivate theirs, we risk losing our ability to synthesise future shifts in syllabus focus with the enduring truths and values of our subject. We must remain connected to our history, our core purpose and beliefs as English teachers, perhaps drawing inspiration from Charles Olson (1997) when he says:
whatever you have to say, leave the roots on, let them dangle.
And the dirt
Just to make clear where they come from
Let us always remember where we have come from, and cherish the dirt beneath our fingernails that is a sign of our dedication and efforts.
New South Wales Department of Public Instruction, (1911) NSW English Syllabus
Olson, C., (1997) These Days from The Collected poems of Charles Olson University of California Press
Winterson, J., (2008) The Stone Gods Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Steve Henry is currently Head Teacher of English at Cherrybrook Technology High School and has taught senior English for many years. Steve has been the Supervisor of Marking in the Texts and Human experiences module.
He has been involved in writing study guides and articles for the Sydney Morning Herald and the ETA on a range of HSC topics. Steve has a love for creative and innovative writing.
Emma Campbell is currently Head Teacher of English at Cherrybrook Technology High School. She has been involved in HSC marking, syllabus development, and pre-service teacher education. She is currently in the process of implementing whole school literacy and writing programs to empower students’ authentic engagement with literature.
Rosemary Henzell is currently Head Teacher English at Canterbury Girls High School. She has contributed to the Journal of Professional Learning as well as CPL podcasts, and has been published in the Journal for Adolescent and Adult Literacy. She has a keen interest in Load Reduction Instruction as a means to manage cognitive load and Project Zero’s work in Creating Cultures of Thinking.
Kathy Rushton and Joanne Rossbridge outline the theory and research about young children’s language and literacy development through play; and provide teachers with engaging and inclusive activities and resources to foster creativity and student engagement in the early years of schooling. . .
Learning in the early years
In the first years of schooling young children are encouraged to develop understandings about the use of language in a range of contexts – both oral and written. Before school, understandings and experiences have been developed through oral language interactions some of which may have been around the written word.
However, some children might experience the language to talk about language, metalanguage, for the first time when they go to school. Some children will be able to confidently discuss many aspects of how language works and how it is used in a variety of contexts, even if they are not yet independently literate.
Developing language for a range of purposes and the use of metalanguage to reflect on the choices speakers and writers make are most easily developed through play. Play provides opportunities for both individual choice and collaboration and, with a teacher’s support, in providing contexts and modelling language (Karaolis, 2023), individual students are enabled to develop and build on their own language resources. Scaffolding learning experiences to be both challenging and supportive (Hammond, 2021) is dependent on a pedagogy which supports language development as a catalyst for emergent literacy.
Developing language and the language to talk about language: metalanguage
In the school years students will engage with oral and written texts which are broadly categorised as imaginative, persuasive or informative. Within these broad categories there are a range of twenty or more genres (Derewianka, 2022; Humphrey, Droga & Feez 2012, p.199) which students will encounter and learn to both read and write. To comprehend or produce a text, written or spoken, the choice of grammatical features is always defined by the audience and purpose of the text and the genre. Metalanguage is developed when teachers read, deconstruct and jointly construct texts with their students. In this way knowledge of language and grammar is developed in a familiar context through oral interactions about texts (Rossbridge & Rushton, 2010).
The first language or dialect is not taught to a young child rather it is developed through meaningful oral interaction. The use of the speech functions such as statements (greet, observe, play); commands (command, demand, play); questions (greet, demand, play), exclamations (demand, command, play) begin to be developed even before a young child can speak fluently. Within a range of contexts, the choices a speaker or writer makes reflect both the audience and the purpose of the text. Grammar“is a way of describing how a language works to make meaning.” (Derewianka, 2022, p.1)
The use of the concept of the mode continuum exemplifies the range of grammatical choices speakers and writers make to produce effective oral and written texts.
The picture books and traditional rhymes and songs that young children encounter, often use more spoken like text and are, therefore, supportive in developing decoding skills and sound and letter knowledge and phonemic awareness for emergent readers. However, as they are sung or recited in a context in which the focus may be on movement the words are often ancillary to the main focus of the activity. We learn to use language to satisfy our needs as we play, perform and “do” the moves. If every song or rhyme also includes the presentation and exploration of the written text, there will be many opportunities to develop literacy.
Not only questions but also Think alouds (statements) can explore the meaning of the rhyme. Using the Here; Hidden; Head framework, comprehension and vocabulary can both be supported e.g. Here: I think I know what a candlestick is. Hidden: I wonder what ‘nimble’ means. Head: I wonder who Jack is and why he was jumping. Modelled and guided reading can be supported by jointly constructing texts developed in meaningful play-based contexts (Davis & Dunn, 2023 & Karaolis, 2023). Drama strategies like Readers Theatre; Freeze frame and drawing; Puppet Theatre and Interviewing can be integrated with the use of quality children’s literature to provide contexts for playing with ideas and language.
Reading for meaning (Comprehension, vocabulary development and decoding)
Most students enter early years classrooms with an amazing resource which forms the foundation of language and literacy acquisition as they move through their schooling. This resource is oral language, and it is the foundation of all learning. When used in meaningful contexts to communicate with others, oral language serves to draw upon, not only existing language, but scaffolds both reading and writing. (Hammond, 2021 & Gibbons 2015)
Talk and play as a context for reading development
An effective and engaging way to draw upon the language skills that students bring to classrooms is by connecting speaking, listening, reading and writing in real world scenarios. By designing learning through play, students are given numerous opportunities to practise language and interact with others by drawing on their own background and experiences as well as the languages and dialects they use in the home and community. As a teacher models being a reader, and students engage with texts, they are not only active meaning makers but developing vocabulary and hearing the sounds and rhythm of language as they decode in the context of engaging quality literature (Adoniou, Cambourne & Ewing, 2018).
Careful selection of texts, such as picture books, can be the catalyst for designing meaningful learning situations which can be placed along the mode continuum. A context, theme, topic or concept can be selected as a starting point for text choice. The following texts were chosen for their representation of dogs and their interactions with humans. Obviously, looking at texts and interactions around getting and caring for a dog may not be the best choice for all students given their interests and background, but any context can easily lead to a range of possible texts and scenarios for play.
Let’s Get a Pup! (Bob Graham, 2001, Walker Books)
When Billy was a Dog (Kirsty Murray and Karen Blair, 2019, Walker Books)
Too Many Cheeky Dogs (Johanna Bell and Dion Beasley, 2016, Allen & Unwin)
My Dog Bigsy (Alison Lester, 2015, Penguin)
Sad the Dog (Sandy Fussell and Tull Suwannakit, 2017, Walker Books)
A Human for Kingsley (Gabriel Evans, 2021, Hardie Grant)
Annie’s Chair (Deborah Niland, 2006, Penguin)
‘Let’s get a Pup’ by Bob Graham (2001, Walker Books) is the story of a family who visit a rescue centre to get a pup but end up with not only a pup but also old, grey Rosy. It celebrates the interactions of humans bringing dogs into their family.
Using this book, in conjunction with opportunities for play, and incorporating before, during and after reading strategies through shared reading (Gibbons, 2015), is an example of how to provide opportunities for comprehension, vocabulary development, and an explicit focus on sound and letter knowledge.
Before reading
Floorstorm (display covers of all books above and ask students to share what they see)Play sounds of dogs and humans interactingList noises dogs make in different languagesPredict from front cover by focusing on human and dog relationships – record student ideas and vocabulary (add to after reading)Take turns to walk in role taking a dog for a walk (with lead and dog puppet)
During reading
Read the book uninterruptedRead the book again with think alouds using Here, Hidden and Head statementsReread the book uninterrupted allowing students to respond
After reading
Students draw their own interactions with a dog and share with classRank a list of words/pictures/nouns in order of importance of what a new dog might need e.g. food, water, bed, blanket, brush etc.Group words from the book with the same sound such as ‘u’, e.g. pup and mum in comparison to cute and rescueRole play human/dog interaction scenarios with puppetsIndependent play with: a toy dog a vet kit dog washing/grooming kit etc.
Before reading strategies are critical prior to the first reading of a book as they provide opportunities to activate prior knowledge so students can bring their own life and language experiences to the book. They can also serve to provide knowledge and vocabulary needed for comprehension. Young children also feel a sense of satisfaction when they can confirm their predictions.
The first reading of a book needs to be uninterrupted, so students are able to take in the story as a whole and get the overall gist. When the teacher rereads with carefully designed think alouds, students are then exposed to what a reader does during the reading process whilst also being alerted to key meanings and language within the text. Subsequent readings invite the students to add their own thoughts and responses to the text. It is critical that the book should be read multiple times by the teacher throughout any teaching sequence.
When designing learning for after reading, strategies need to support response to the text particularly through the use of oral language and play. These strategies may need to be initially modelled and supported by the teacher but ideally the talk is coming mainly from the students as they use their own resources to directly engage with meanings in the text or beyond the text. With students controlling the talk, particularly during play scenarios, they are using their own language resources and building upon them with the meanings, language and vocabulary encountered in the book.
After reading is also an opportune time to explore targeted vocabulary and letter and sound knowledge in the context of the book as students are considering language choices, patterns andconventions based on meaning. They are in the position to discuss features with reference to meaning which is the time for the teacher to introduce metalanguage to explicitly talk about language. This might include the use of terms such as letter, word, sound, and nouns for naming things.
Extending access to a range of texts ensures students are exposed to a range of genres. Reading can be further supported through shared reading of a range of other texts related to the picture book. Based on student interests these may include:
looking at websites on dogs for adoption
viewing videos on how to care for dogs and dog training
reading information texts on dog breeds
locating pet products on pet shop websites
comparing online reviews / star ratings of possible food and pet toys
watching cartoons with dogs as characters.
Developing written text: Play as a context for writing
Many of the strategies suggested in the table above for after reading are play based and do not involve writing. For students with developing literacy, oral language is drawn upon when looking at responding to text and can be again drawn upon with the move into writing. Students can be supported to write through teacher modelling and joint construction and again the focus text and play opportunities can stimulate the creation of a range of real-world scenarios which provide a purpose for writing.
Purposes for writing could include:
a shopping list before going to the pet shop
description of a favourite dog
an animal meal plan or pet menu
instructions on how to care for a pet
recount of events with a pet
narrative about a problematic adventure with a pet.
Writing for a purpose and joint construction
To prepare for writing students can be involved in independent play such as visiting the vet, introducing a pet to other pets or friends and family, or shopping at the pet shop. This can be developed through use of props, costumes, toys and puppets.
The vet kit shown below provides opportunities for students to take on the role of a vet, client or pet. Students will need to make different oral language choices given their roles. The props such as stethoscope and thermometer also stimulate talk appropriate for the context. The mobile phone, clipboard and medication provide numerous opportunities for role playing both literacy and numeracy practices. From this play students are then able to transfer their experience and oral language to jointly constructing a text such as recounting an experience to the vet, writing a list of supplies and equipment needed by a vet or writing instructions on how to care for a pet. In doing so, language choices move from the spoken to more written-like choices along the mode continuum and possibly from a home language or dialect to include English.
When joint construction occurs with students there is a balance between the talk of the teacher and the students. The teacher acts as a guide to make thinking explicit whilst the students contribute ideas and discuss choices (Rossbridge and Rushton, 2014 & 2015). In the example below, students and the teacher were sharing the pen resulting in greater participation in the joint construction by students.
Thank you to Marie Bashir Public School.
During joint construction the teacher can support explicit discussion about the purpose and audience for the writing as well as the use specific metalanguage. For example, when writing instructions, action verbs will tend to be at the beginning of commands. When writing a recount, the focus will also be on the actions undertaken but in past tense. When writing a list, the language will be noun groups such as ‘medicine, dry food, dog treats’. If the students don’t have this language, they are able to share the experiences of other students through play which not only supports ideas for writing but also the development of metalanguage.
Conclusion
The school years are focussed on the development of literacy as well as developing knowledge about literature and language. When teachers recognise the differences between spoken and written language, they are most effectively able to build on individual students’ knowledge, understanding and use of language – both oral and written. As young students begin to explore the audiences and purposes of a range of genres, the diverse voices available in quality children’s literature can both expand and confirm children’s experiences of the world and help them to make connections to their own lives. Quality texts exemplify the effective use of language and provide great models for writing as well as opportunities to explore language and grammar in context and to develop metalanguage. Perhaps though the most important aspect of the early learning experience is that it is engaging, inclusive and enjoyable for all our young students. Play provides a context which can foster creativity and student agency as they engage with the challenges and rewards of becoming literate.
Adoniou, M. Cambourne, B & Ewing, E (2018). ‘What are ‘decodable readers’ and do they work?’. The Conversation.
Derewianka B. (2022) A New Grammar Companion for Primary Teachers. Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association Australia.
Gibbons, P. (2015) Scaffolding Language Scaffolding Language: Teaching English language learners in the mainstream classroom. Portsmouth: Heinemann.
Hammond, J. (2021) ‘Scaffolding in EAL/D education’ in Harper, H and Feez, S, An EAL/D handbook, Newtown, Primary English Teaching Association Australia, pp 16-18.
Humphrey S., Droga, L. & Feez, S. (2012) Grammar and Meaning: New Edition. Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association Australia.
Rossbridge, J. & Rushton, K. (2010) Conversations about text 1: Teaching grammar using literary texts. Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association Australia.
Joanne Rossbridge is an independent language and literacy consultant working in both primary and secondary schools and with teachers across Australia. She has worked as a classroom teacher and literacy consultant with the DET (NSW). Her expertise and much of her experience is in working with students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Joanne is particularly interested in student and teacher talk and how talk about language can assist the development of language and literacy.
Kathy Rushton is interested in the development of language and literacy especially in disadvantaged communities. She has worked as a classroom teacher and literacy consultant and provides professional learning for teachers in the areas of language and literacy development. Her current research projects include a study of multilingual pre-service teachers and the impact that teacher professional learning has on the development of a creative pedagogical stance which supports translanguaging and student identity and wellbeing.
The Supporting Students with ADHD in 7-10 course is designed to support teachers to:
develop an understanding of the wide range of characteristics of students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD);
explore a range of strategies which address the needs of students with ADHD in the areas of language and cognitive development, communication skills and social behaviour;
develop specific strategies to help students with ADHD access the curriculum, and
develop an understanding for the need for explicit instruction in the essential components of literacy in every classroom every day.
All CPL courses run from 9am to 3pm.
Dr Roselyn Dixon has been a special education teacher in both mainstream and special education settings in primary and secondary schools. Rose has been in academia and involved with Inclusive Education for more than 25 years. She has published research in the fields of social skills and behavioural interventions for people with a range of disabilities including students with Oppositional Defiance Disorders and Autism.
She has been actively involved in examining the relationship between digital technologies and pedagogy in special education and inclusive classrooms for students with Autism as well as the implications of the NDIS on people with disabilities in rural and remote communities. Rose is an Honorary Associate Professor at the School of Education, University of Wollongong, where she was previously the Academic Director of Inclusive and Special Education. She continues to support doctoral students in Inclusive and Special education with a focus on Autism.
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