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What is Going Wrong with ‘Evidence-based’ Policies and Practices in Schools in Australia

James Ladwig explains why teachers should be aware of centrally pre-determined practices masquerading as ‘evidence-based’ advanced, innovative curriculum and teaching…

Scholars of school reform in particular are used to seeing paradoxes and ironies. But the point of naming them in our work is often a fairly simple attempt to get policy actors and teachers to see what they might not see when they are in the midst of their daily work. After all, one of the advantages of being in ‘the Ivory Tower’ is having the opportunity to see larger, longer-term patterns of human behaviour.

Here I would like to point out some contradictions in current public rhetoric about the relationship between educational research and schooling – focusing on teaching practices and curriculum for the moment.

The call for ‘evidenced-based’ practice in schools

By now we have all seen repeated calls for policy and practice to be ‘evidence-based’. On the one hand, this is common sense – a call to restrain the well-known tendency of educational reforms to fervently push one fad after another, based mostly on beliefs and normative appeals (that is messages that indicate what one should or should not do in a certain situation).

And let’s be honest, these often get tangled in party political debates – between ostensible conservatives and supposed progressives. The reality is that both sides are guilty of pushing reforms with either no serious empirical bases or re-interpretation of research – and both claiming authority based on that ‘research.’ Of course, not all high quality research is empirical – nor should it all be – but the appeal to evidence as a way of moving beyond stalemate is not without merit. Calling for empirical adjudication or verification does provide a pathway to establish more secure bases for justifying what reforms and practices ought to be implemented.

There are a number of ways in which we already know empirical analysis can now move educational reform further, because we can name very common educational practices for which we have ample evidence that the effects of those practices are not what advocates intended. For example, there is ample evidence that NAPLAN has been implemented in a manner that directly contradicts what some of its advocates intended; but the empirical experience has been that NAPLAN has become far more high-stakes than intended and has carried the consequences of narrowing curriculum, a consequence its early advocates said would not happen. This is an example of where empirical research can serve the vital role of assessing the difference between intended and experienced results.

Good research can turn into zealous advocacy

So on a general level, the case for evidence-based practice has a definite value. But let’s not over-extend this general appeal, because we also have plenty of experience of seeing good research turn into zealous advocacy with dubious intent and consequence. The current over-extensions of the empirical appeal have led paradigmatic warriors to push the authority of their work well beyond its actual capacity to inform educational practice. Here, let me name two forms of this over-extension.

Synthetic reviews

Take the contemporary appeal to summarise studies of specific practices as a means of deciphering which practices offer the most promise in practice. (This is called a ‘synthetic review’. John Hattie’s well-known work would be an example). There are, of course, many ways to conduct synthetic reviews of previous research – but we all know the statistical appeal of meta-analyses, based on one form or another of aggregating effect sizes reported in research, has come to dominate the minds of many Australian educators (without a lot of reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of reviews).

So if we take the stock standard effect size compilation exercise as authoritative, let us also note the obvious constraints implied in that exercise. First, to do that work, all included previous studies have to have measured an outcome that is seen to be the same outcome. This implies that outcome is a) actually valuable and b) sufficiently consistent to be consistently measured. Since most research that fits this bill has already bought the ideology behind standardised measures of educational achievement, that’s its strongest footing. And it is good for that. These forms of analysis are also often not only about teaching, since the practices summarised often are much more than just teaching, but include pre-packaged curriculum as well (for example, direct instruction research assumes previously set, given curriculum is being implemented).

Now just think about how many times you have seen someone say this or that practice has this or that effect size without also mentioning the very restricted nature of the studied ‘cause’ and measured outcome.

Simply ask ‘effect on what?’ and you have a clear idea of just how limited such meta-analyses actually are.

Randomised Control Trials

Also keep in mind what this form of research can actually tell us about new innovations: nothing directly. This last point applies doubly to the now ubiquitous calls for Randomised Control Trials (RCTs). By definition, RCTs cannot tell us what the effect of an innovation will be simply because that innovation has to already be in place to do an RCT at all. And to be firm on the methodology, we don’t need just one RCT per innovation, but several – so that meta-analyses can be conducted based on replication studies.

This isn’t an argument against meta-analyses and RCTs, but an appeal to be sensible about what we think we can learn from such necessary research endeavours.

Both of these forms of analysis are fundamentally committed to rigorously studying single cause-effect relationships, of the X leads to Y form, since the most rigorous empirical assessment of causality in this tradition is based on isolating the effects of everything other than the designed cause – the X of interest. This is how you specify just what needs to be randomised.

Although RCTs in education are built from the tradition of educational psychology that sought to examine generalised claims about all of humanity where randomisation was needed at the individual student level, most reform applications of RCTs will randomise whatever unit of analysis best fits the intended reform. Common contemporary forms of this application will randomise teachers or schools in this or that innovation. The point of that randomisation is to find effects that are independent of the differences between whatever is randomised.

Research shows what has happened, not what will happen

The point of replications is to mitigate against known human flaws (biases, mistakes, and so on) and to examine the effect of contexts. This is where our language about what research ‘says’ needs to be much more precise than what we typically see in news editorials and other online commentary. For example, when phonics advocates say ‘rigorous empirical research has shown phonics program X leads to effect Y’, don’t forget the background presumptions. What that research may have shown is that when phonics program X was implemented in a systemic study, the outcomes measured were Y. What this means is that the claims which can reasonably be drawn from such research are far more limited than zealous advocates hope. That research studied what happened, not what will happen.

Such research does NOT say anything about whether or not that program, when transplanted into a new context, will have the same effect. You have to be pretty sure the contexts are sufficiently similar to make that presumption. I am quite sceptical about crossing national boundaries with reforms, especially into Australia.

Fidelity of implementation studies and instruments

More importantly, such studies cannot say anything about whether or not reform X can actually be implemented with sufficient ‘fidelity’ to expect the intended outcome. This reality is precisely why researchers seeking the ‘gold standard’ of research are now producing voluminous ‘fidelity of implementation’ studies and instruments. Essentially fidelity of implementation measures attempt to estimate the degree to which the new program has been implemented as intended, often by analysing direct evidence of the implementation.

Each time I see one of these studies, it begs the question: ‘If the intent of the reform is to produce the qualities identified in the fidelity of implementation instruments, doesn’t the need of the fidelity of information suggest the reform isn’t readily implemented?’ For more on this issue see Tony Bryk’s Fidelity of Implementation: Is It the Right Concept?

The reality of ‘evidence-based’ policy

This is where the overall structure of the current push for evidence-based practices becomes most obvious. The fundamental paradox of current educational policy is that most of it is intended to centrally pre-determine what practices occur in local sites, what teachers do (and don’t do) – and yet the policy claims this will lead to the most advanced, innovative curriculum and teaching.

It won’t. It can’t.

What it can do is provide a solid basis of knowledge for teachers to know and use in their own professional judgements about what is the best thing to do with their students on any given day. It might help convince schools and teachers to give up on historical practices and debates we are pretty confident will not work. But what will work depends entirely on the innovation, professional judgement and, as Paul Brock once put it, nous of all educators.

James Ladwig is Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle and co-editor of the American Educational Research Journal. He is internationally recognised for his expertise in educational research and school reform.

Find James’ latest work in Limits to Evidence-Based Learning of Educational Science, in Hall, Quinn and Gollnick (Eds) The Wiley Handbook of Teaching and Learning published by Wiley-Blackwell, New York (in press).

James is on Twitter @jgladwig

This is an updated version of a blog which was first posted as ‘Here’s what is going wrong with ‘evidence-based’ policies and practices in schools in Australia’ by the Australian Association for Research in Education’s EduResearch Matters Blog at http://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=2822

Power, Authority and the New Modern History Syllabus

Jonathon Dallimore offers some reflections on the new HSC Modern History Core due to be examined for the first time in 2019…

The new Modern History Core, ‘Power and Authority in the Modern World’, presents both an exciting and a challenging update to the HSC course. At a time when discussions of populism, authoritarianism and dictatorship abound, students are provided an opportunity to consider a period of history in which politics was radically destabilised, much more than the present day.

There would be little disagreement that issues of power, authority, democracy and globalism (all central to this new Core topic) are important for students of the modern world to explore. Importantly, they also underpin other topics that students can study in the HSC course; in one form or another they are at the heart of most National Studies, Peace and Conflict studies and Change in the Modern World topics. This new Core can, therefore, be leveraged to tie links between other topics that students might investigate depending on the choices a school/teacher makes in setting up the course.

That said, this topic is much larger in scope than the previous Core, World War One, which covered a five-year period and focussed mostly on the Western Front. Power and Authority covers the period 1919 – 1946 (27 years) and requires students to come to terms with a much broader set of issues. This presents a challenge, and a new set of examination specifications will certainly add to the complexity of teaching this new topic for the first few years.

In the reflections that follow, I would like to highlight some key questions and issues that have arisen regularly as I have run workshops, visited schools to assist with program design and generally responded to questions about the new Modern History Core. There is, obviously, much more that could be said on this topic, and my hope is that these ideas might be useful as teachers and students begin exploring this topic over the next twelve months. My observations are based on my reading of the syllabus, and the support materials and the sample questions NESA have published.

Where to begin?

One approach to teaching Power and Authority would be to start with the first dot-point (‘an overview of the peace treaties…’) and move through the following points sequentially. An alternative might be to find a central theme that runs through the topic, such as ‘internationalism and nationalism’, that allows students to make connections between different parts of the topic as they explore the content.

Following the latter suggestion, it might be useful to start the topic by surveying the peace treaties that ended World War One and then introduce the ‘intentions and authority of the League of Nations’ (from the last section of the topic: ‘The search for peace and security in the world’). Not only does this make chronological sense in that the League of Nations was established in 1919 – 1920 during ongoing debates about the closure of the Great War, but it also sets up a theme of internationalism/nationalism that can be referred back to consistently throughout the topic. As the students then explore the Russian, Italian, German and Japanese regimes, they can compare-and-contrast their interaction with the League, why it ultimately failed and then consider how the United Nations developed the ‘intentions and authority’ of the League following the Second World War.

Where do sources ‘fit’ into this topic?

Although it has been a consistent message regarding this new Core topic, it is worth restating that teaching the Power and Authority topic should be grounded in source material relevant to the various content points. Students will obviously need a broad understanding of the ‘facts’ and ‘content’ relevant to each dot-point but they also need to be prepared to work closely with a range of source material.

Importantly, for those who taught the German National Study in the previous iteration of the Modern History course, this means that the more dense and detailed coverage of the Nazi regime to 1939 may need to be amended. Students will not be required to construct 25-mark essay responses for this topic and, therefore, the amount of detailed knowledge they will be required to take into the examination is likely to be less than it was for the previous German National Study.

It is also crucial to point out that the previous emphasis on the three concepts of ‘perspective’ (P), ‘reliability’ (R) and ‘usefulness’ (U) in relation to source material is unlikely to feature in the same way for this new Core. Certainly, those ideas will still be relevant to explore within class and they may appear in some form or another in the examination, but teachers who have taught Modern History for some time will need to move beyond the PRU paradigm for the new Core study. The sample questions published by NESA, the History Teachers’ Association’s ‘Core Papers’ and Nicole Mansfield’s sample assessment task published in the September 2018 edition of Teaching History (HTA NSW, pp. 58 – 71) would provide a good starting point for those looking to broaden the scope of questions asked about source material.

What to do about timing?

The following is one suggestion for allocating the number of lessons to each part of this topic within the teaching unit. It should be noted that the 10% designation for the ‘survey’ is set as a requirement by the Modern History syllabus.

The other weightings provided below are not mandated by NESA but seem to be a reasonable division of the unit’s lessons to ensure that students develop a well-rounded understanding of the topic:

Survey (10%)
Rise of Dictatorships (about 25%)
Nazi Germany to 1939 (about 45%)
Search for Peace and Security (about 20%)

It is possible to integrate some of the content points from the ‘Search for Peace and Security’, for example ‘ambitions of Germany in Europe’, into some of the other major sections of this topic, such as ‘Nazi Germany to 1939’, which may mean that the percentage weightings allocated here are reshuffled slightly.

Some specific challenges

Most of the content-points within this topic are reasonably clear and it is easy to imagine examination questions developed from them. There are two, however, that seem a little awkward when considering how they might be ‘tested’.

The first is the ‘role of prominent individuals in the Nazi state’ dot-point. This obviously reflects discussions about the nature of Hitler’s power and the structure of the Nazi state that have been in the historical literature for many years. It is, however, hard to know how this could be examined given the wording of the point. Questions which arise include:

Can they name a ‘prominent individual’ in a question? (for example, Joseph Goebbels)
If so, since none are mentioned specifically in the syllabus, which ones are ‘fair game’?
If not, how could questions on this point be framed?

Perhaps something like the following could be a starting point:

Other than Adolf Hitler, outline the role of ONE prominent individual in the Nazi state.
Explain how prominent individuals contributed to the Nazi dictatorship between 1933 and 1939.

These are obviously not predictions regarding how these dot-points will be examined but are merely possible options for how they could be examined.

The second dot-point to consider is the ‘intentions and authority of the League of Nations and UN’. The League of Nations is logical in a topic that is largely centred on the ‘interwar crisis’. The United Nations, however, is more difficult to imagine as an examination question. The topic cuts off in 1946 which is barely enough time for signatories to ratify the UN charter and hold the first meeting of the General Assembly (January 1946), so how much might we expect students to know about this organisation? This is especially relevant when compared to the League of Nations, which was in operation for almost the entire period covered in this topic.

Perhaps a lower-mark question on the United Nations in an examination might be:

Outline the intentions and authority of the United Nations.

A higher-mark question drawing on the United Nations might be:

Compare and contrast the intentions and authority of the League of Nations and the United Nations.

Given the imbalance in what the students will learn about the two institutions in a topic covering the period 1919-1946, a compare and contrast question may not be as appropriate but that reaffirms the points: beyond a lower-mark question, how could the United Nations be ‘tested’ in an examination?

Examination notes

The basic examination specifications published by NESA for the new Modern History course are quite clear. For the Core topic, they note the following:

There will be 3-4 questions asked;
‘Analysing and interpreting sources’ and ‘applying own knowledge’ will be required;
One of the questions will be worth between 10 and 15 marks;
All questions in the Core section of the paper must be answered.

These directions and the sample questions provided by NESA for the new Core do, however, leave a lot of issues unanswered regarding this section of the examination. Some of these complexities are explored further in the article ‘Challenge and Response: Setting New Modern History Core Questions’, in the September 2018 edition of Teaching History (Kiem and Dallimore, 2018).

Resources

There are a range of dedicated textbooks now in circulation for Power and Authority. The following resources are very useful and may be good to purchase for school libraries or faculty collections (they are in no particular order):

Stephen Lee’s The European Dictatorships (4th Ed.) – this is a very useful overview of the period covered in this topic and it includes strong coverage of the dictatorships in Russia, Italy and Germany (the fourth edition includes a very small section on Japan).

Bruce Pauley, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century (4th Ed.) – this is a shorter book than Lee’s but it provides a clear overview of the main dictatorships that are the focus of the topic (except Japan). It is also highly readable and appears to be targeted at a younger audience (late high school and early university).

Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914 – 1949 – although this book also covers the Second World War and the early developments leading towards the Cold War, it provides a great insight into key issues of the Power and Authority topic.

Richard Overy, The Inter-War Crisis, 1919 – 1939 – Richard Overy is a very gifted writer and although this book seems aimed at undergraduate level, there are some very useful sections including a source cache at the back of the book (some of which may be too complex for the HSC topic).

Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century – this book covers the entire 20th century but the first several chapters are a highly readable account of the key issues underpinning Power and Authority in the Modern World.

Saburo Ienaga, The Pacific War, 1931 – 1945 – this book will provide useful detail on developments in Japan in the lead up to the Second World War which are covered in this topic.

Professor Richard J. Evans’ Gresham College lecture series ‘The Age of Dictatorship: 1919-1989’ provides excellent overviews of the Russian, Italian and German dictatorships. The first episode of that series (on Mussolini) can be accessed here.

Final thoughts

Although the new Modern History Core sets a different tone for the course, not everything is completely new. Many teachers will continue to explore the same national and conflict studies (some of which include only minor changes). More generally, the new Modern History syllabus strikes me as a positive update in some ways because we now have skills and concepts that run through Stages 4, 5 and 6. This will hopefully allow faculties to develop students’ historical thinking throughout junior courses and Year 11 in the lead-up to the HSC course.

This is the first time I have witnessed a major overhaul of the senior history syllabuses. It is a challenging process, especially when, for most teachers, a full 50% of the course will require change in Modern History (a new Core and an entirely new topic replacing the Personality Study). What makes the process less stressful is the community effort already well under way to produce and share resources and respond to issues as they arise. This, I think, the history teaching community in NSW does particularly well.

Jonathon Dallimore is currently on leave from teaching history at Smith’s Hill High School in Wollongong and is working part-time for the History Teachers’ Association of NSW. He has published a number of new texts for the new Stage 6 Modern and Extension History courses including Contesting the Great War (HTA NSW, 2017), Investigating Modern History (Cengage, 2017) and The History Extension Resource Book (HTA NSW, 2017), The American Civil Rights Movement: 1945 – 1968 (Cengage, 2018) and Conflict in Indochina: 1954 – 1979 (Cengage, 2018). Jonathon also teaches history methods courses at the University of New South Wales and the University of Wollongong.

A Guide to the New PDHPE Syllabus

Michelle Maher introduces you to the new K-10 syllabus which is mandatory for Years 7 and 9 in 2019…

As we begin implementation of the new syllabus, this article outlines key aspects and suggests some approaches to ensuring the new design and content are relevant for your school context.

Important dates

It is important to note that you may continue to use existing programs for K-6 and Year 8 and Year 10 cohorts in 2019. Whilst implementation of the syllabus across these cohorts is not mandatory before 2020, designing a clear path for content and skill development can ensure the sequential development of effective teaching and learning programs over the next two years. With implementation of Year 7 and Year 9 programs in 2019, professional development time needs to be invested in the development of authentic programs which integrate the new strands and skill domains.

Same, same but different

Whilst there are clear instructions around syllabus implementation, this syllabus encourages schools to mould the delivery of strands, skills and content to provide authentic learning for individual school contexts. Each strand must be addressed each year, but schools have the autonomy to manage course delivery in the way that best suits their students and the resources that are available to them to address the syllabus outcomes.

The refinement of the K-10 PDHPE syllabus from four to three strands significantly increases the opportunity to integrate content and impart greater relevance to students. The new syllabus strands: Health, Wellbeing and Relationships; Movement Skill and Performance and Healthy, Safe and Active Lifestyles, reinforce the importance of lifelong physical activity and positive health habits, equipping students with the skills to manage their health in an informed and purposeful manner. The content is organised around five propositions, the most notable being the move to a strengths-based approach. The propositions are:

Take a strengths-based approach;
Value movement;
Focus on educative purposes;
Include a critical inquiry approach; and
Develop health literacy.

When combined with the integrated Learning Across the Curriculum and Skills Domains, the content and syllabus structure promotes connection to “real-life” issues. This focus is particularly strengthened by three skill domains, Self-management Skills, Interpersonal Skills and Movement Skills (SIM), which are embedded within the outcomes and content of the syllabus. It is important to note that each domain, not every skill, must be addressed across each year of learning.

Another new development is the nine key inquiry questions which shape content, map outcomes and drive the focus of learning in each stage. Content is no longer directed by ‘learn about’ and ‘learn to’ statements but is organised under the key inquiry questions. All topics in Stages 4 and 5 are mandatory and schools have the freedom to decide on the degree of focus on each dot point in line with the needs and interests of their students.

New topics

In a world where we see a growing reliance on technology and engagement with social media, the inclusion of specific content to assist students to maintain personal safety online is important. A strong focus on the ethical use of technology and the development of strategies to manage online conflict will allow students to interact with relevant content and develop necessary skills to navigate their changing world. As students progress to Stage 5, the syllabus introduces more “real-life” experiences such as: create and evaluate health campaigns, programs or mobile applications that aim to promote fitness or participation in a lifetime of physical activity. This inclusion excites me as it opens prospects to analyse personal fitness devices such as FitBits or Apple watches, develop code for their own fitness app or implement a school-based fitness program. If you need further support embedding technology into your lessons, check out the handy links for integrating technology into PDHPE (PDHPE Curriculum Directorate).

Unlike previous models, the new syllabus directs the use of feedback in movement activities on a continuum from responding to reviewing, proposing and implementing alterative responses based on past performance or feedback. The Australian Council for Health Physical Education and Recreation offer workshops on assessment in NSW tailored to the new syllabus, and if you are looking for easy and effective ways to integrate technology into practical settings visit The PE Geek. The shift in the new syllabus away from traditional assessment methods also creates opportunity to increase enjoyment and engagement in learning for teachers and students alike.

To assist teachers to assess the value and appropriateness of new resources before using these as part of a teaching program, the Department has developed the Teacher Resource Flowchart.

Where you can access support

The most important thing for teachers moving towards implementation is to engage in the wide range of face-to-face and online professional learning experiences on offer. There are ten online PDHPE NESA-registered professional learning courses available through MyPL, and the NSW PDHPE Curriculum website features substantive links to support planning and implementation of the new syllabus. The Centre for Professional Learning also offers courses to support syllabus implementation. Participation in these professional learning opportunities can provide an opportunity to engage in professional networks, share ideas and resources and build confidence in the delivery of a new and engaging K-10 PDHPE syllabus.

Michelle Maher has 31 years of experience as a PDHPE teacher in NSW public schools and has been heavily involved in the professional development of teachers. Michelle has written textbooks for Stage 4, 5 and 6 PDHPE courses and has engaged in the development of syllabus documents and curriculum support resources for PDHPE and PASS syllabuses. Michelle is an experienced Stage 6 PDHPE Senior Marker and Head Teacher who currently convenes the Hunter HT PDHPE Network.

Marvellous Things! Visual Arts Teaching

Alexandra Johnson celebrates success in her Visual Arts classrooms and you can too…

Remember your first year of teaching? I do.

For me, Visual Arts has always been about more than the HSC. It is the subject where students can communicate without words, and where their background can have less influence on their creative success or failure.

Like many, my first year as a Visual Arts teacher was filled with high expectations, nervous energy and a determination which allowed me to believe I could almost will my class towards HSC success. Naively, I expected ‘Band 6’s’ were being given out as freely as Oprah gives away free cars.

However, when it came to that first HSC class, sadly, hopes for great results were frustrated by outcomes which were so close, yet so far away, from what I was sure was possible for my students.

What to do?

How could I change my pedagogy to ensure the success of those students whose education I had been entrusted with? And how could I make sure my students held onto their love of art in the process?

engaged in numerous professional development opportunities, chatted with colleagues and reflected on my practice. I know it is what all good teachers are supposed to do, but for me, the key was to actually make improvement a priority.

Eventually, it hit me. The syllabus, our central text, and The Conceptual Framework had the answers.

Artist, Artwork, Audience and World are the necessary teaching components of our syllabus, and along with mentoring resilience, knowing our students, building rapport and maintaining high expectations, momentum began to build.

Artist, Artwork, Audience and World

Artist – us, the teachers

We are the masters of our Visual Arts classroom. How we continually develop our own practice defines the way we enhance the learning experiences of our students. My most important resources have been my colleagues, in particular one amazing and inspiring teacher who took me under her wing when I was new. Bouncing my ideas off her and building my own resilience enabled me to recognise that some of my initial and seemingly crazy ideas for building student engagement and rapport through programming could actually be possible.

I also met with colleagues from other schools, as well as in different subject areas. The advice I gained here around time-keeping and making students constantly accountable by upholding promises to contact parents became invaluable.

I engaged in professional development opportunities through ArtExpress teacher-directed courses, made contact with colleagues at local schools to peer mark senior student work and constantly referred back to the syllabus, asking: What skills do I want my students to be able to achieve?

Throughout, focus was on lessons with explicit learning objectives linked to teaching students to construct focused responses and engage in higher-order critiquing of artworks and critical thinking. I came to fully realise that young student artists need to be taught to write and critique artworks in a sophisticated way; that nourishing both their creativity and literacy is necessary for success.

I also learnt that, sometimes, our skill is to embrace our students’ outstanding ability to procrastinate, and to develop a way to cut through the waffle and make more meaningful responses.

Artwork – our students

Where major projects are involved, maintaining a firm and fair approach has helped to get my students over the line. There is a fine line between developing rapport and letting students get away with things that are only going to lead to disappointment in the future. Parent contact and fortnightly progress meetings with students have proved to be beneficial when it comes to producing a successful Body of Work.

Time management and routine is crucial and developing a fortnightly progress interview which can be formal or informal discussions during class time has proven to be successful for students who often leave things to the last minute.

The ability to think creatively and in a different way is an asset in our subject. This can be nurtured by encouraging students to challenge themselves and their teacher. Often we are ‘blown away’ by how crazily smart our kids actually are – as artists, they can be more willing to take calculated risks than we are and it can be our role to mentor this ability.

Some questions to encourage creativity include:

What artists have you considered as inspiration for this piece?
How have you analysed your own practice?
Does your medium and concept match? Is there a better way to display your concept?

The idea of such questioning is to generate ideas, prepare for action and encourage students to predict and understand potential challenges.

Honesty and mentoring resilience can also be the most important traits to develop in Visual Arts students, beginning in the junior years in preparation for senior study. In reality, Visual Arts is not the stereotypical ‘fluffy and lovey’ discussions some assume. Whilst the fear of hurting the feelings of sensitive, creative students is high and, at times, real, some approaches to offering encouraging and constructive feedback include asking “Do you want me to be nice, or honest?” I know this sounds harsh initially, but students know honesty is what is going to help them. It is about how you structure this conversation and prepare your feedback to include and offer other options that is essential.

Showing rather than telling is also a helpful approach. Try preparing some examples, finding similar images on Pinterest, art gallery websites, in journals or in art magazines. If all else fails, share some of your work or experimentation if you have some. Students love hearing that you are a practising artist yourself.

I also utilise other members of staff and their experience to support my conversations. More often than not you have mentioned the same thing to your student several times but until they hear it from someone else they also respect it may not stick.

Audience – the examiners and the examination

The importance of developing the writing skills of Visual Arts students cannot be overstated. Writing about art needs to be analytical, concise and sophisticated. Whilst writing scaffolds (such as ALARM and PEEL) are popular and often useful for coaxing students to move to analysis, interpretation and appreciation, it is essential for such scaffolds to be adapted to your students’ needs, and to understand that this is just a starting point.

Using the language and structures of effective writing in junior years and continuing to utilise this in some form through to senior years can have positive results. At the same time, students add their own ‘flavour’ to their writing, and students who are already talented writers may find such uniform structures restrictive. In my experience, working to know and enhance students’ existing abilities is the best way forward.

The official NESA site has a useful selection of past papers. However, as images are often subject to copyright, I take the questions from the pages and add my own images to analyse. A fun activity to do closer to examinations is to take photographs of the student’s own art and choose short answer questions from HSC papers for students to analyse their own practice against. Not only do they understand artist’s practice better but they understand how to answer the question based on their own knowledge of their practice.

World – art is so much more than the HSC

Students who choose Visual Arts often come to the subject thinking it is relaxed and a bit of a ‘bludge’. You can teach them right from the get-go that this subject will make them think critically, challenge them to question everyday assumptions and most importantly, and inspire them.

Visual Arts inspires students to be lifelong learners, to engage in a world beyond their front doorstep and to find a passion to adore a subject that says: “It is okay to think differently, to not always agree and to take calculated risks”. I adore the possibilities of this subject and how it allows me to connect with students; I appreciate the opportunities it provides to inspire and make change and how it challenges me. And isn’t that what we are all here for anyway?

Alexandra Johnson currently teaches Visual Arts and English at Castle Hill High School and completed a Masters of Teaching in 2011. Alexandra has been a Year Advisor at Castle Hill High School, and this has driven her passion for student welfare and building rapport with students to manage behaviour and well-being matters. Her focus on improving achievement in Visual Arts has resulted in students regularly being admitted to ARTEXPRESS, recognition for excellent results in the HSC for Visual Arts and student artwork being purchased by the Wilkins collection and exhibited in the Department of Education building.

Technology You Can Look Forward To

Steve Delaney sees much to be excited about in the new Technology syllabus which is mandatory for Year 7 in 2019 and Year 8 in 2020…

Whenever teachers are presented with a new syllabus there are always mixed feelings of fear and excitement. The inevitable, “Oh, we’re going to have to make new programs!” and, “When are we going to have time to do it all?” statements are usually two of the first concerns that arise in faculty meetings.

There is good news.

Not much necessarily has to change. The current Technology Mandatory syllabus has allowed us scope to explore some innovative and engaging units of work, such as Bottle Rockets, Battlebots, Coding and Fantastic Foods, and these units map nicely to the new syllabus content requirements.

Hands-on

The increased focus on Engineered Systems and Digital Technologies may sound scary at first, but it really does set the pathway for including interesting units of work in your curriculum, and can act as an ideal pathway into Stage 5 subjects, such as iSTEM, IT Engineering, Design and Technology, IST and IT Multimedia.

The picture becomes even clearer if you complement these pathways with the flexibility in focus areas associated with the Materials Technologies context focus, and shape your curriculum to suit the needs of your students and the strengths of your faculty. In this way, the Materials Technologies context focus makes it possible to focus on particular ‘traditional’ hands-on subjects like woodwork, metalwork, polymers, graphics, electronics, textiles and more.

Things are getting exciting, right?

What else is cooking?

The addition of agriculture to the food focus certainly adds a twist to the traditional focus. However, ingraining that link and producing food and fibres as a part of the learning experience can really add some awesome experiences to how we deliver this aspect of the curriculum. My great hope is that this change assists us to improve students’ (and parents’) views on Food Technology as a viable, academic, Stage 5 subject option, as some tend to believe that this subject is just about ‘cooking’. So whilst we may only be talking about a change in Year 7 and Year 8 at the moment, there may be positive follow-on developments in this subject area which encourage more students to learn about the science of food and agriculture.

Keeping it real with coding

I guess the scariest part of the syllabus change for most is going to be coding. You can understand why. In a number of schools, computing subjects may not be taught in TAS and this is generally an area where our more experienced teachers may not be as experienced. However, there are cool coding options such as The Starlab Mars Rover and Lego ev3 Mindstorms. Scratch is also very easy to learn. It is free and students can create quite complex games using a range of ‘drop and drag’ style tools. There are also plenty of code-able robotic options starting to emerge too!

With each new syllabus we take the familiar and the new, and, together, we find a way to make the best choices for our students. I’m excited!

Steve Delaney is Head Teacher TAS at Bulli High School. He is the TAS Curriculum Network Illawarra Coordinating Teacher and Australian Aeronautical Velocity Challenge Coordinating Teacher.

Additional NESA support materials are also available here.

“I Want to Get Physical, Physical”: Spatial Technologies Inside and Outside Your Geography Classroom

Lorraine Chaffer encourages you to confidently use spatial technologies in your classroom…

What is Geography like in your classroom?

With the new K-10 Geography syllabus implemented in all schools from 2017, it may well be timely to stop and ask ourselves a couple of reflective questions such as: What have the students been doing? What have we been doing? Is it working? What should we try next?

I have been looking inside many Geography classrooms across NSW and I have noticed students using spatial technologies to create digital tours, plot information from fieldwork activities, create digital elevation profiles, contribute to citizen science projects and examine or analyse real-time data.

The students like it. Increasingly, I think their teachers do too.

Outside the classroom, governments, organisations and individuals are using spatial technologies to analyse spatial data, create visual representations and make predictions in fields as wide ranging as urban planning, disaster management, agricultural production and climate change.

Spatial technology is creating significant and interesting employment opportunities in many industries

Spatial technology is creating significant and interesting employment opportunities in many industries, leading to a growing demand for trained technologists with spatial analysis skills. Geography has always been the subject that is relevant to all other fields. Now, the skills of geographers in both the humanities and technical industries are in increasing demand.

Spatial technologies include any technology that enables us to collect data about a location (place) and organise that data to show spatial patterns, usually on a map or satellite image.

We may not realise it but this technology has become an integral part of our lives through the devices we use, such as our computers, tablets and smartphones. All online programs, including social media applications, maps and games, have spatial components built into them.

Despite the prevalence of spatial technologies in our daily lives there remains a range of impediments to their use in the classroom. These include software and data access, hardware availability, computer room access and teacher expertise. This article seeks to build confidence and awareness of some of the practical applications teachers are using successfully now, whilst acknowledging that improved resources will also be essential for effective teaching of many of the positive aspects of our new syllabuses.

What does the Geography K-10 syllabus have to say about spatial technologies?

In the NSW Geography Syllabus 7-10, spatial technologies is one of the tools students use in geographical inquiry to gather, interpret, analyse and communicate geographical information.

The syllabus glossary states:

Spatial technologies include any software or hardware that interacts with real world locations. Examples include, but are not limited to, virtual maps, satellite images, global positioning systems (GPS), geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing and augmented reality. Spatial technologies are used to visualise, manipulate, analyse, display and record spatial data.

Geography K-10 Syllabus

In the Continuum of Tools, examples of spatial technologies are listed to provide teachers with options when selecting technologies that are content and stage appropriate. For instance,

Stages 1 to 3 – virtual maps, satellite images and global positioning systems (GPS);
Stages 4 and 5 – virtual maps, satellite images and global positioning systems (GPS); remote sensing, Augmented Reality (AR) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

Over time it is expected that students will experience a range of these spatial tools in the context of asking and answer key geographical questions. By the end of Stage 5 students should feel confident enough to independently choose a spatial technology application for geographical inquiry tasks.

We still need to ask important questions

At Stage 1, students might experience spatial technologies when examining a digital map or using Google Earth to find their suburb or their house. The aim is not only to have students play with the technology but to learn its value in answering questions they have about their world. These questions may include: Where is it? How are places organised?

Continuing with this rationale in mind, by Stage 4, students could be using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to answer questions such as: What patterns can be observed? How can these spatial patterns be explained? What relationships can you see between features?

The aim is not only to have students play with the technology but to learn its value in answering questions they have about their world.

The technology can then be used to represent their data as layers of information on a map or image. The layers can be turned on and off, allowing choices to be made about the information relevant to a geographical investigation. For example, a layer that shows areas susceptible to flooding in a local area or where rice is grown on a map of the world could help students understand and plan for questions around water as a resource or the impact of hydrological hazards.

At a basic level, a student will use data sets which already exist in an application such as the different layers in Google Earth or Geographic Map Maker. At a more sophisticated level, students will add their own data to create a layer on a map or image using programs such as Esri Story Maps or Google My Maps.

The big five spatial tools

GPS – a global navigation system that uses satellites and ground monitoring stations to locate places using a system of geographic coordinates. The most common application is the use of GPS in cars.

GIS is the system that captures, stores and manipulates geographical data linked to geographic coordinates. It creates data layers in a visual format, such a map, for analysis. In your car, the GPS data collected from the satellite is plotted onto a map that shows where you are.

Remote sensing is a way of obtaining information about places from a distance, usually using aircraft or satellites as well as instruments such as drones, remote cameras, thermal scanners, atmospheric balloons and ocean buoys.

Augmented reality (AR) provides an enhanced version of reality in which computer-generated images (virtual elements) are superimposed onto real world views. In the Geography classroom, the use of AR allows students to obtain extra information about a place or environment from the augmented image. A good example is an Augmented Reality Sandbox in which contour lines are superimposed over landforms created in the sandbox and rain can be simulated to allow a study of runoff and river flow.

Virtual reality (VR) is a digital recreation of an environment or situation. Users feel like they are experiencing the place or event. In the Geography classroom, the use of VR allows students to experience real environments they may never visit in person by using a headset (goggles) and a smartphone.

Real time data visualisations show environmental change as it happens. Satellites capture and analyse global data instantaneously. This data is used to create real time visualisations. Examples include applications that show the movement of fishing vessels and container ships at sea and monitor weather systems as they occur.

Introducing spatial technologies in the Geography classroom

Confidence is the key to the successful use of spatial technologies in a classroom, but it is also the reality that many students will pick up the skills they need to use these technologies very quickly. For teachers and students, there are free online tutorials for most spatial technology applications used in Geography classrooms worldwide.

My suggestion is to select one spatial tool at a time to develop your skills, and integrate that tool into as many places in your curriculum as possible. Do not feel you need to learn everything a spatial technology tool can do at once; build your skills over time. Most importantly, have a ‘Plan B’ for those days the technology is not working or a problem arises during your lessons.

Importantly, student activities integrating the use of spatial technologies should have a purpose, be planned and have clear links to the syllabus content and outcomes. Use an inquiry question to focus student learning and provide clear instructions for students to follow. A planning template can be useful when developing activities that could be used as Assessments ‘as’ or ‘for’ Learning.

See Attachment 1 for Spatial Technology Activity Planning Document

Getting started or moving forward

To develop your own confidence, try getting together with colleagues to experiment with some of the following examples, beginning with some real-time data visualisations first, then moving on to creating maps using programs with inbuilt layers of data. When your team is more confident, start using applications that require you to add your own data layers. Try one at a time and get ‘bang for your buck’ by trying out your new ideas across your classes for 7-10 or possibly across KLAs for K-6.

And, have some fun together!

1. Real-time data visualisations

2. Applications with inbuilt layers of geographical data:

Google Earth, to create an elevation profile
Geographic Mapmaker Interactive
Global Forest Watch
The Story Map Gallery

3. Application to create a GIS map:

Scribble Maps
Google Tour Builder
Story Map
Getting started with Story Map
Visualize your data on a custom map using Google My Maps
GIS for schools ESRI Australia

The foundations of successful Geography teaching remain a strong emphasis on inquiry and skill development to better understand and affect our world. When we keep strong pedagogy and content knowledge at the heart of our teaching, including a little new technology to investigate some very big questions could well be the next thing we should try.

Lorraine Chaffer has 38 years’ experience as a Geography teacher in NSW public schools and has been heavily involved in the professional development of teachers. Lorraine was a consultant in the development of the NSW Geography Syllabus K-10, has written textbooks for the Australian Curriculum Geography and the NSW Geography Syllabus K-10 and has worked with K-6 teachers across NSW to unpack the new syllabus and develop the essential knowledge, understanding and skills to deliver the syllabus effectively. Lorraine is the President of the Geography Teachers Association of NSW (GTANSW) and a board member of the Professional Teachers Council, and she provides professional learning for teachers of K-10 Geography Syllabus and Stage 6. Lorraine is editor of the GTANSW Geography Bulletin, has written articles for the CPL and presented on the new Geography Syllabus for CPL in 2017.

Getting Better at Assessment

Emma Finlayson reflects on what quality assessment is really about…

I am a middle career teacher. I have made it past the notorious ‘7 year quit’ and I have taught the full range of students across schools with student numbers between 300 and 1300. My experience has taught me that regardless of context, at the end of the lesson, school day, course, or term, all of our students will need to be assessed somehow.

This article is a guide to what I have learned about assessment; like all the best lessons, much of my wisdom has come from failure-ridden endeavours. These have often been of my own tragic making and have mostly involved me making a fool of myself at school.

What does good assessment entail?

It is so obvious when you are an early career teacher to simply re-use past examinations. And like many before me, I did!

I was Year 8 Science Co-ordinator when I used a past examination. One of the questions was:

(Description of Debbie Strauss’s work) Debbie Strauss is a zoologist. Describe what her daily job might entail.

What I did not notice then, and what I always look out for now, is that the choice of verb ensured the question was out of the reach of at least 60 percent of our students, 90 percent of whom were EAL/D.

It was not that the students struggled to describe what they thought a zoologist might do, day to day. It was that they did not understand what ‘entail’ meant and so they tended to leave the question blank.

I have since written similar questions, but now I ask:

Describe what Debbie Strauss might study in a normal work day as a zoologist.

Take home message

It is easy to forget that a question which seems straightforward in your own mind could be interpreted in a myriad of ways by students, all of whom are nervous and looking to achieve. Look at the wording of your question closely and ask: Is it pitched at an appropriate level for my students?

Incidentally, be aware when re-using or borrowing past assessments. If you use directly without modifying, it is very likely you have not considered the potential problems that may be lurking within.

Why did I come here?

We are all human. And that means that we are all fallible.

I tend to argue that my examinations are like Celtic art: I deliberately include an error so as not to challenge the perfection of the creator. Ahem. Maybe not.

While this might work the first time, it can wear thin quickly with your students.

When I started teaching, I was horrified by the prospects of making a mistake in an examination paper. I remain vigilant for errors and remember fondly watching a past colleague absolutely own his mistake.

My colleague was called to an examination owing to queries about a question. When he arrived, the students immediately started excoriating him because he had included a question on content that had not yet been covered. He argued, they argued, and then, in the end, my colleague dropped his head and muttered with a groan:

Why did I come here?

The students burst into laughter.

What did I learn from this? That when the same thing happened to me, I announced:

Great news! Your paper will be out of 95, not 100! By the way, cross out Question 30b.

The students cheered!

Take home message

It is okay to make mistakes, as long as you acknowledge them. Students know you are human. If we insist on infallibility, the effect is to teach our students to doubt themselves and their knowledge, to freeze up in examinations and become anxious around what might be included in formal assessment. There have been mistakes, even in the HSC. Very few, but still, it happens. It is what we do in the moment that matters and how we reassure our students and plan to avoid errors when it comes to the next task that can make a difference.

Question 27 is fantastic!

We know we are smart, right? We are teachers! Sometimes this thinking can lead to awkward situations.

Long, long ago, in an education system far, far away, there was a beast called the School Certificate, which was essentially, centralised examinations for Year 10.

A call came through to the staffroom:

We think there’s an error in Question 27! Can someone come and look at it?

Well, I was the only one in the staffroom. I was also in my first year of teaching, and determined to save the day. So, I ran to the school hall (yes, I ran), grabbed the paper and announced:

Could all students please put down their pens and turn to Question 27. If you read the question, you will see that…

Then I read the question. Then, and only then, did I realise it was asking students to correct mistakes in the question. What could I do? I just kept talking:

You will see that Question 27 is a great question. Isn’t it fantastic? Best of luck, Year 10!

Some of the students saw straight through me and were giggling, most assumed I was new and overeager. Needless to say, I beat a fairly hasty retreat.

Take home message

I am still blushing over this one. With the benefit of hindsight, I might conclude it is important to act with our hearts in the right place. Possibly, it is wise to first stop, understand the situation, consult with a colleague and, if we are to act (or react), to tread lightly.

Assessment is more than examination

The above are some things I have learned through failure. Along the way I have also learned much about effective assessment. It is important to see the point of assessment as more than a final examination or even the HSC.

Yes, good assessment entails questions that are meaningful and relevant. Yes, when it comes to formal and summative assessment we should be testing only that which we have already taught. Yes, we should work together to reflect on our pedagogy, and we should talk together about what matters and what we are trying to achieve before we act.

We should also remember to start as well as finish with assessment. Assessment is the initial insights into where our students are and where we will take them next. It is checking in during the lesson and taking time to reteach that which has not been understood before moving on.

Good assessment comes from knowing what is required and understanding why. It is about knowing what will help our students to learn more and how to allow them to demonstrate their best achievements. A starting point to improve your assessment practices for K-10 is the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Advice on Assessment. For Years 11-12, NESA’s Stage 6 Assessment and 11-12 Assessment Advice are important reading.

Final thoughts

There will always be days when we could have done better. This article seeks to help you avoid the mistakes I have made. If we begin with our hearts in the right place and with a strong understanding of what is necessary and why some approaches can be effective, we can be well placed to assess in ways which are best and most wise for both ourselves and our students.

Emma Finlayson is a senior chemistry teacher at Concord High School. She has a special interest in EAL/D education in science and is an experienced teacher of GAT students. She has contributed to the creation of a range of resources for the new Stage 6 syllabus, including for a major publishing company. She also delivers workshops around classroom management for beginning teachers.

An Introduction to the New Stage 6 Mathematics Advanced and Extension Syllabuses

Terry Moriarty introduces the new calculus-based courses to be implemented from 2019…

The new NSW Stage 6 Mathematics Advance and Extension Syllabuses were endorsed in 2017. 2018 is a planning year with implementation for Year 11 in 2019 and Year 12 in 2020. There are support materials, such as sample scope and sequence and assessment tasks, available through the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) website.

Due to the online nature of the syllabus documents, teachers are encouraged to download and review each section, including the aim and rationale before moving to the course content. New features of the Stage 6 syllabuses and common material include:

Australian curriculum content identified by codes;
Learning across the curriculum content, including cross-curriculum priorities, general capabilities and other learning across curriculum areas, are incorporated and identified by icons;
An interactive glossary.

Additionally, the Mathematics syllabuses include coding of applications and modelling as integral parts of each strand. Some strands are now merged together and the Mathematics Advanced and Mathematics Standard syllabuses contain common material which is identified by a ‘paperclip’ icon.

Mathematics Advanced

Mathematics Advanced replaces the previous Mathematics 2 Unit syllabus. There is a new organisational structure as well as updates to content.

The Year 11 organisational structure

The Advanced course is organised into Strands, with the strands divided into Topics and Sub-topics. Topics within the strands have been updated, including some content from different topics in the current course, such as Functions, which includes Linear and Trigonometric Functions, as well as new topics.

What to look out for

Some of the topics below have not been included in the new courses:

Plane Geometry;
Coordinate Methods in Geometry;
Harder Applications as a topic;
Conics.

Some of the topics below have been updated, including some units from different topics:

Working with Functions includes Linear, Quadratic and Cubic Functions;
Trigonometry and Measure of Angles, includes the use of two and three dimensions as well as new topics;
Velocity and acceleration are included in Introduction to Differentiation;
Financial Mathematics involves sequences and series and their application to financial situations.

Mathematics Advanced: Content

The table below demonstrates the changes between the previous and new syllabus.

2 Unit Preliminary (current in 2018)	New Mathematics Advanced Year 11 Course – Topics and Sub-topics (to be implemented in 2019)
Basic Arithmetic and Algebra Real functions Trigonometric ratios Linear functions The quadratic polynomial and the parabola Plane geometry – geometrical properties Tangent to a curve and derivative of a function	Functions MA-F1 Working with Functions Trigonometric Functions MA-T1 Trigonometry and Measure of Angles MA-T2 Trigonometric Functions and Identities Calculus MA-C1 Introduction to Differentiation Exponential and Logarithmic Functions MA-E1 Logarithms and Exponentials Statistical Analysis MA-S1 Probability and Discrete Probability Distributions

2 Unit Preliminary

(current in 2018)

New Mathematics Advanced Year 11 Course – Topics and Sub-topics (to be implemented in 2019)

Basic Arithmetic and Algebra
Real functions
Trigonometric ratios
Linear functions
The quadratic polynomial and the parabola
Plane geometry – geometrical properties
Tangent to a curve and derivative of a function

Functions

MA-F1 Working with Functions

Trigonometric Functions

MA-T1 Trigonometry and Measure of Angles

MA-T2 Trigonometric Functions and Identities

Calculus

MA-C1 Introduction to Differentiation

Exponential and Logarithmic Functions

MA-E1 Logarithms and Exponentials

Statistical Analysis

MA-S1 Probability and Discrete Probability Distributions

2 Unit HSC Course (Current until 2019)	New Mathematics Advanced Year 12 Course – Topics and Sub-topics (to be implemented in 2020)
Coordinate methods in geometry Applications of geometrical properties Geometrical applications of differentiation Integration Trigonometric functions Logarithmic and exponential functions Applications of calculus to the physical world Probability Series and series applications	Functions MA-F2 Graphing Techniques Trigonometric Functions MA-T3 Trigonometric Functions and Graphs Calculus MA-C2 Differential Calculus MA-C3 The Second Derivative MA-C4 Integral Calculus Financial Mathematics MA-M1 Modelling Financial Situations Statistical Analysis MA-S2 Descriptive Statistics and Bivariate Data Analysis MA-S3 Random Variables

2 Unit HSC Course

(Current until 2019)

New Mathematics Advanced Year 12 Course – Topics and Sub-topics (to be implemented in 2020)

Coordinate methods in geometry
Applications of geometrical properties
Geometrical applications of differentiation
Integration
Trigonometric functions
Logarithmic and exponential functions
Applications of calculus to the physical world
Probability
Series and series applications

Functions

MA-F2 Graphing Techniques

Trigonometric Functions

MA-T3 Trigonometric Functions and Graphs

Calculus

MA-C2 Differential Calculus

MA-C3 The Second Derivative

MA-C4 Integral Calculus

Financial Mathematics

MA-M1 Modelling Financial Situations

Statistical Analysis

MA-S2 Descriptive Statistics and Bivariate Data Analysis

MA-S3 Random Variables

Mathematics Extension 1: Content

The table below demonstrates the changes between the previous and new syllabus.

3 Unit Preliminary Course (current in 2018)	New Mathematics Extension 1 Year 11 Course – Topics and Sub-topics (to be implemented in 2019)
Other inequalities Circle geometry Further trigonometry Angles between two lines Internal & external division of lines into given ratios Parametric representation Permutations combinations Polynomials	Functions ME-F1 Further Work with Functions ME-F2 Polynomials Trigonometric Functions ME-T1 Inverse Trigonometric Functions ME-T2 further Trigonometric Identities Calculus ME-C2 Rates of Change Combinatorics ME-A1 Working with Combinatorics

3 Unit Preliminary Course

(current in 2018)

New Mathematics Extension 1 Year 11 Course – Topics and Sub-topics (to be implemented in 2019)

Other inequalities
Circle geometry
Further trigonometry
Angles between two lines
Internal & external division of lines into given ratios
Parametric representation
Permutations combinations
Polynomials

Functions

ME-F1 Further Work with Functions

ME-F2 Polynomials

Trigonometric Functions

ME-T1 Inverse Trigonometric Functions

ME-T2 further Trigonometric Identities

Calculus

ME-C2 Rates of Change

Combinatorics

ME-A1 Working with Combinatorics

3 Unit HSC Course (current in 2019)	New Mathematics Extension 1 Year 12 Course – Topics and Sub-topics (to be implemented in 2020)
Methods of integration Primitive of sin2x and cos2x Equation dN/dt= k(N-P) Velocity and acceleration as a function of x Projectile motion Simple harmonic motion Inverse functions & inverse trigonometric functions Induction Binomial theorem Further probability Iterative methods for numerical estimation of the roots of a polynomial equation Harder applications of HSC 2 Unit topics	Functions ME-F1 Further Work with Functions ME-F2 Polynomials Trigonometric Functions ME-T1 Inverse Trigonometric Functions ME-T2 Further Trigonometric Identities Calculus ME-C2 Rates of Change Combinatorics ME-A1 Working with Combinatorics

3 Unit HSC Course

(current in 2019)

New Mathematics Extension 1 Year 12 Course – Topics and Sub-topics (to be implemented in 2020)

Methods of integration
Primitive of sin2x and cos2x
Equation dN/dt= k(N-P)
Velocity and acceleration as a function of x
Projectile motion
Simple harmonic motion
Inverse functions & inverse trigonometric functions
Induction
Binomial theorem
Further probability
Iterative methods for numerical estimation of the roots of a polynomial equation
Harder applications of HSC 2 Unit topics

Functions

ME-F1 Further Work with Functions

ME-F2 Polynomials

Trigonometric Functions

ME-T1 Inverse Trigonometric Functions

ME-T2 Further Trigonometric Identities

Calculus

ME-C2 Rates of Change

Combinatorics

ME-A1 Working with Combinatorics

Mathematics Extension 2: Content

The table below demonstrates the changes between the previous and new syllabus.

4 Unit Course (current until 2019)	New Mathematics Extension 2 Course – Topics and Sub-topics (to be implemented in 2020)
Graphs Complex numbers Conics Integration Volumes Mechanics Polynomials Harder 3 Unit topics	Proof MEX-P1 The Nature of Proof MEX-P2 Further Proof by Mathematical Induction Vectors MEX-V1 Further Work with Vectors Complex Numbers MEX-N1 Introduction to Complex Numbers MEX-N2 Using Complex Numbers Calculus MEX-C1 Further Integration Mechanics MEX-M1 Applications of Calculus to Mechanics

4 Unit Course

(current until 2019)

New Mathematics Extension 2 Course – Topics and Sub-topics (to be implemented in 2020)

Graphs
Complex numbers
Conics
Integration
Volumes
Mechanics
Polynomials
Harder 3 Unit topics

Proof

MEX-P1 The Nature of Proof

MEX-P2 Further Proof by Mathematical Induction

Vectors

MEX-V1 Further Work with Vectors

Complex Numbers

MEX-N1 Introduction to Complex Numbers

MEX-N2 Using Complex Numbers

Calculus

MEX-C1 Further Integration

Mechanics

MEX-M1 Applications of Calculus to Mechanics

Assessment and examination

Advice regarding assessment and examination has been published on the NESA website and teachers should refer to the site regularly for updates. The most significant change is the approach to the formal school-based assessment program for Year 11 and Year 12.

School-based assessment requirements

Teachers should refer to the NESA Assessment and Reporting in Mathematics Stage 6 document. Some features of the new syllabuses include:

The Year 11 formal school-based assessment program is to reflect the following requirements:

three assessment tasks
the minimum weighting for an individual task is 20%
the maximum weighting for an individual task is 40%
one task must be an assignment or investigation-style with a weighting of 20–30%.

The Year 12 formal school-based assessment program is to reflect the following requirements:

a maximum of four assessment tasks
the minimum weighting for an individual task is 10%
the maximum weighting for an individual task is 40%
only one task may be a formal written examination with a maximum weighting of 30%
one task must be an assignment or investigation-style with a weighting of 15–30%.

NESA has provided the following examples of some approaches to task types for the assignment or investigation-style task:

an investigative project or assignment involving presentation of work in class;
an independently chosen project or investigation;
scaffolded learning tasks culminating in an open-ended or modelling style problem;
a guided investigation or research task involving collection of data and analysis.

Teachers can benefit from working collaboratively to plan for these new syllabuses. Access to professional learning time and resources will be essential and courses offered by the Centre for Professional Leaning are an ideal place to begin.

Terry Moriarty has been a Mathematics teacher and Head Teacher in South and South Western Sydney for forty years. He has been involved in curriculum development processes throughout his career.

A Very Useful Aspirin: Networks and the New Stage 6 Mathematics Standard Syllabus

David Watson reflects on why the new Mathematics Standard course is useful for students and explains how to teach the new Networks topic…

A problem

The problem presented by the new Mathematics Standard syllabus did not reveal itself straight away.

In preparation for the new Networks topic, I reviewed everything I could. I searched key words such as Kruskal’s Algorithm and Prim’s Algorithm in Google and reviewed the resources provided by NESA to support our programming and assessment.

In doing this work I was quickly reminded of my over-confidence while studying Network Theory at university. It was the beginning of this millennium and I was much younger and, perhaps, less wise. I was twenty-two years old and in my final year and I was amazed at how simple I found the concepts. I even remember thinking that, “I could score 100 in this course!”

Score 100, I did not.

Upon exploring these Networks concepts again now, I enjoyed feeling good at it. It was fun to experience success. Then, while exploring examples online and reviewing the syllabus further, I found the problem that I now consider the biggest danger in my programming for 2018…

It was all a very nice experience for me to return to my university days, to rediscover learning and knowledge I had thought lost or, at least, forgotten. Yet, in amongst the many applications listed in the syllabus, including travel times, power cabling and garbage bin routes, all of which made sense to me, I realised I needed to think on how to help Networks make sense for my students.

Not just make sense, but actually be useful!

To steal a metaphor from Dan Meyer, if Network Diagrams, Shortest Paths, Minimum Spanning Trees and Critical Paths are the aspirin, how do we create the headache?

So, what are we doing with Networks?

In this section, I will present some examples of approaches to introducing the new concepts and reflect on some teaching challenges that I encountered while learning about this content. At the end of the article, I will consider possible solutions to these teaching challenges.

Before you read any further, this article assumes the reader is comfortable to convert an image or table of a real world situation into a network diagram and to understand the language of Network Theory. If you need help at this level you might visit the Mathspace Essentials free, online textbook for a simple and concise explanation, as this is the first section for both the Mathematics Standard 1 (MS1) and Mathematics Standard 2 (MS2) pathways.

Konigsberg Bridge

In Mathematics Standard 2, one additional example is the Konigsberg Bridge problem. Images such as the one below are easily found via an internet search. The map of the city of Konigsberg in Prussia illustrates that the city, either side of the Pregel River and including two islands, includes seven bridges. The problem posed is whether a path can be drawn, with any starting point, so that all bridges are crossed exactly once.

Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory#/media/File:Konigsberg_bridges.png

This bridge town and problem has many interesting elements, and essentially serves as an opportunity for students to investigate networks and practise their skills in modelling a real world situation. A possible diagram that models this situation is below. Click here to view image

The seven bridges are represented by edges and the four separate land sections are represented by vertices. The problem now becomes: “Is there a path that travels along each edge exactly once?” The answer becomes apparent after a few attempts.

It is interesting to note that Konigsberg is now called Kaliningrad and only five of the seven bridges still exist (only two in their original form). This can give rise to discussions about what this new situation does to the problem, and does it matter which of the five bridges are still in existence?

Konigsberg Bridge teaching challenge

My first teaching challenge with this new topic arose when I found it easier to ‘play’ with this problem using the original image than when I attempted to use the new diagram above. I was fortunate enough to have stumbled across the same point of view held by many of the students I have encountered in the current Mathematics General 2 course, seeing the creation of this diagram as a needless extra step.

So why draw a network?

Shortest Path

I will return to the question of drawing a network later. For now, we continue exploring, and look into the concept of Shortest Path and Minimum Spanning Trees. These are concepts that are required in both the MS1 and MS2 pathways.

The Shortest Path between two points is a fairly obvious concept if we consider the diagram below. We want to find the shortest path from vertex A to vertex B. This image is partway through the algorithm, and the numbers ‘12’, ‘15’ and ‘14’ in vertices ‘C’, ‘D’ and ‘E’ respectively represent the minimum distance to get to the first three vertices. The shortest path to ‘D’ is through ‘C’. Click here to view image.

From here we would write ‘27’ in vertex ‘F’, as the shortest distance to ‘F’ is through ‘D’. We would then write ‘31’ in vertex ‘B’, making the shortest distance from A to B equal to 31, with the shortest path being A>C>D>F>B.

Shortest Path teaching challenge

Similarly to the Konigsberg Bridge problem, I encountered my second teaching challenge here. This algorithm was effective; however, I wondered if it was particularly different to what students would do anyway? It was, in essence, an exhaustive method of solving the problem and I wondered if it was still a useful tool for students?

Minimum Spanning Trees

Once again, for now we push on and investigate Minimum Spanning Trees.

I discovered the definition: a set of edges with the minimum cost that connect all vertices together. This concept is, obviously, for weighted edges and also for undirected networks. Yet, the application felt a bit less apparent to me, and so I went searching. The syllabus provided a good recommendation of connecting towns, places or locations to a power station or phone network.

In an online search, the problem that arises most is the ‘Muddy City Problem’. This problem involves a city where the mayor has decided to pave some of the pathways between houses to allow driving access. The mayor hopes to allow for all houses to be accessed from any other house; however, the major also wants the minimum possible cost. Therefore, only the minimum spanning tree in the network will be paved. To view a diagram and free lessons for the Muddy City Problem click here.

The number of pavers in the image displays the cost of paving each road (this could be price, resources or time required, and so on). Prim’s Algorithm suggests we first select the shortest edge, and then continue by selecting the shortest ATTACHED edge. This continues until all vertices are included, and, of course, we avoid all loops. You may have already identified that there are many possible beginnings, as the more edges with equal costs in a network, the more likely we are to find equal solutions.

Kruskal’s Algorithm requires us to start with the smallest edge, and then select the next smallest edge, regardless of whether it is attached to the existing tree or not. Again we must avoid any loops. Regardless of where you begin, by the end of the process all distinct sections will link to make a tree.

A breakthrough

It was at this point that I began to see a solution to the teaching challenges outlined above. Not only were these algorithms both immediately helpful and relatively easy to follow, which was encouraging, but I noticed a key point that I thought I might be able to use. All three problems introduced above can be investigated without the use of Network Theory. They may require scaffolding for your class, but I found I could successfully introduce these problems to Stage 5 students, and all were intrigued and keen to “play” with the problem.

Critical Path Analysis

Now we move on to Critical Path Analysis, the first of two major skills required only by students following the MS2 pathway. When presented with a list of related tasks to complete a job, Critical Path Analysis supports us to analyse the situation, identify the shortest possible time taken to complete the list as well as the latest start time for certain steps without delaying the overall time.

This tool has a variety of applications. A simple one with an example I have created is baking some biscuits for afternoon tea. I enjoy this example because it could be just about any recipe, so students can create and analyse their own situation. The table below describes the steps involved, the prerequisites and the time for each step, as well as labels.

We are looking for the critical path, so we draw a network diagram, where the vertices represent a moment in time where you are available to start a new task (or tasks), and the edges represent the tasks themselves. Below is an analysis of the above table.

In the analysis, it is evident that making a cup of tea (Task G) could be started after 21 minutes, and still not delay the entire task. Mixing in eggs, flour and choc chips (Task D) could not begin until after 10 minutes.

The vertices are split in half and down the centre in my diagram (above), with the number on the left indicating the earliest time that jobs that begin from this vertex could begin. The space on the right of each vertex is reserved for the latest time that a task beginning at this vertex could begin without delaying the overall job. How to communicate this latest start time varies depending on the source you are reviewing, and by looking through a variety of textbooks as well as online industry explanations, I have seen a number of different forms of these vertices. These include circles being divided with a horizontal line, or even vertices divided into three parts.

Critical Path Analysis inspired me with applications relevant to students’ future areas of employment, as well as to their present daily lives. All we really need to consider are tasks that are dependent upon one another, and contribute to the completion of an overall job. Finally, and sometimes most challengingly, we are asking students to look for tasks that in some instances could be completed at the same time.

Maximum-Flow, Minimum-Cut Theorem

The final skill included in the new syllabus is the use of Maximum-Flow, Minimum-Cut Theorem. This is used to determine the maximum flow of something through a network. Considering the network from above from A to B, where A would be considered a source (where the flow originates from) and B considered a sink (where the flow ends). The question is what is the maximum flow that can get from A to B? The lines cutting though the diagram represent “cuts”, because they completely separate the source and the sink. Click here to view image.

The blue, curved line is the minimum cut, as it severs the connection between A and B and it cuts through a total of 19. If the numbers in this diagram represent the number of litres of water that can flow from one vertex to the next per minute, then this ‘19’ is the maximum flow per minute from A to B. The most that can flow into ‘B’ is clearly 24, and while we can easily ‘fill’ vertex ‘F’ with 4 litres per minute (min) and therefore maximise this edge (FB), there are only 15L/min worth of edges approaching ‘C’ and therefore we can only fill this with 15L per minute. This means that while CB is able to allow 20L/min to flow through, only 15L/min is available, giving us a total flow of 15 + 4 = 19.

Similar to the Critical Path Analysis, this strategy has some obvious applications, such as in the area of traffic flow, water and power. In addition, both problems are available to students to investigate without first being given the algorithms to solve. And I can feel a really pleasant headache.

So what to do about my challenges?

The question I was trying to solve while working through Network Theory was, breaking it right down, “Why?”

Not necessarily “Why is it in the course?”, although this is a question that would be answered as a result, but rather, why is it useful, and would I be able to help my students to see this usefulness? Again, if these tools are the aspirin, how could I give my students the headache?

The value of the Konigsberg Bridge problem is not discovering whether or not the bridges can be traversed without repetition, but rather, how can we prove and communicate that a solution does not exist, and why it does not exist. While ‘playing’ with the image might be more natural to students, investigating, discussing and communicating why there is no solution is best supported by the network diagram. The proof relates to the odd degree of each vertex, which is difficult to examine without first defining the vertices.

The students I have shared Shortest Path problems with have been able to investigate the problem, and generally find the solution. When subsequently shown the algorithm, the room filled with “ohhhhh”’s of realisation.

They were able to engage with the Muddy City Problem, order events in a critical path scenario and consider the maximum flow through a network. They often found solutions and could explain how they found them, yet had difficulty convincing me or themselves that this was definitely the maximum, shortest or best solution. Most importantly, their confused looks and questions of one another turned to smiles and satisfaction that there indeed was an easier and more effective way. Their headache had been relieved.

Final thoughts

Not only does allowing your students to investigate these problems first without the algorithm support them to discover the need for one, it provides a fantastic opportunity to apply problem-solving skills and communicate and justify their solutions. When an algorithm is introduced, these skills are able to be revisited and enhanced with a deep understanding of useful tools.

And that is a very useful aspirin.

David Watson is a Mathematics Head Teacher in a Sydney High School, experienced in leading teachers from all stages of their careers in syllabus analysis and program development as well as modernising and engaging the Mathematics classroom. He is a graduate of the University of Technology, Sydney and has worked in a variety of school settings, supporting students from a range of different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Since 2015, David has been a working party member for Lachlan Macquarie College, providing professional learning and networking opportunities for teachers as well as enrichment days for highly engaged students of Mathematics and Science.

Considering the Advanced and Standard Courses in the New Stage 6 English Syllabus: Part II: Year 11

Deb McPherson, Jane Sherlock, Jowen Hillyer and Rosemary Henzell suggest some approaches to planning for the new Standard and Advanced Stage 6 English courses …

…Come, my friends,

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world…

To sail beyond the sunset, …

Ulysses, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

PART 2: Year 11

This report is based on the 2017 Centre for Professional Learning English Conferences, presented by Associate Professor Jackie Manuel, Jane Sherlock and Deb McPherson with teaching strategies and texts from Rosemary Henzell and Jowen Hillyer. It provides an orientation to the new Standard and Advanced Year 11 courses. It discusses the planning required for implementing the new Year 11 courses, including unpacking the Modules for Standard and Advanced, commentary on new texts and suggestions for Year 11 pathways. Click on the image to download

What’s new

The Year 11 course has new elements, with set electives and assumptions. There is a change from broad Electives to specific Modules. Now there are three prescribed modules with Area of Study removed and replaced by the Common Module – Reading to Write. It is mandatory to program the Reading to Write module first to further develop students’ skills to respond to texts and refine their writing.

There is a stronger focus on individual reading to inform, inspire and encourage writing. The Standard course has become more prescriptive; there is a requirement for Standard only that in Module A one complex multimodal or digital text must be studied. In Module B one substantial literary print text is required. In the Advanced course, teachers could consider a complex multimodal text for Year 11 as there are few opportunities in Year 12. Teachers should note that one assessment task for Year 12 must be a multimodal presentation. Click on the image to download

Teachers will need to consider the strengthening of a wide and independent reading/viewing culture to create a community of readers and viewers. Of crucial importance will be the planning of text choices, Cross Curriculum Priorities (CCP), past and contemporary texts, integration, wide reading and backward mapping.

Text requirements

Apart from the requirements listed above, teachers have other text requirements to consider for Year 11. The Stage 6 syllabus text requirements have similarities to the 2012 K-10 English Syllabus. Again, the selection of texts across the stage MUST give students experience of:

Quality literature
Intercultural experiences and cultures of Asia
Australian texts, including texts by Aboriginal authors
Cultural, social and gender perspectives and texts which integrate the modes

Students must explore a range of texts drawn from prose fiction, drama, poetry, nonfiction, film, media and digital texts. The Cross-Curriculum Priorities (CCPs) are also in Stage 6, and teachers need to be aware that the Stage 6 descriptions have clear distinctions from Stage 5. For example:

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures …recognise the histories, cultures, traditions and languages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for their foundational and central presence among contemporary Australian societies and cultures …read the Principles and Protocols….
Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia …studying texts from Asia, about Asia and by Asian authors is one way to ensure that a creative and forward-looking Australia can engage with our place in the region.
Sustainability …research and discuss this global issue and learn the importance of respecting and valuing a wide range of world views.

(Stage 6 English Syllabus)

The CPP are ‘lenses’ which teachers can use to plan to ensure that content is linked meaningfully to the real world, and many teachers may choose to explore these areas in Year 11 rather than in Year 12.

Challenges for Year 11 2018

Faculties will need to consider how to build on Stage 5, the introduction of new and more complex texts and ways to build readiness to cross the bridge to Year 12. Preparation for Year 11 begins with analysis of the new module descriptions and shortlisting of texts and resources to deliver the content. A bookroom audit should look at what already exists and may suit Year 11 (including previous HSC texts), what texts need to be increased in quantity and what should be discarded as well as identifying funding for new texts to implement the new syllabus demands from school and P&C sources. Teachers will need to consider a different way of thinking about class texts, especially in the Reading to Write module, where student voice and choice should be considered.

Putting in place pathways and texts that will build to and support the HSC study will lead to a more coherent and interconnected Stage 6 program. Consider a common thread in the pathway if the arrangement of texts allows and any links to the texts you will consider for Year 12 and the concepts you might explore.

Year 11 Common Module: Reading to Write

This module must be programed first in 2018. It provides an excellent opportunity to explore a range of types of texts drawn from prose fiction, drama, poetry, nonfiction, film, media and digital texts. Reading and viewing widely is what it is all about. Central to this module is developing student capacity to respond perceptively to texts through their own considered and thoughtful writing and judicious reflection on their skills and knowledge as writers. This module is a great place for exploring CCPs.

The Common Module: the key questions

How to structure a wide reading and viewing program using a range of modes and media? (thematically, aesthetically, stylistically and/or conceptually)
How will these texts broaden your students’ understanding of themselves and their world?
What reasons and opportunities to write will you give your students?
What creative and critical texts which meet their needs and interests can be offered for their choice?
How will you develop the skills that students need to extend their own writing? (For example, connections, reflection, comprehension, analysis, interpretation and evaluation?)
How will you model ways to explore ideas/relationships/endeavours/scenarios in texts?
How will you model the ways tone, structure, imagery, syntax, voice and image can shape meaning?

The module requires students to read a number and range of texts linked either:

Thematically e.g. speculative, crime
Aesthetically e.g. the nature of beauty and art over time as revealed in the books we read
Stylistically e.g. verse novels, voice
Conceptually e.g. perspective, authority, argument, character, codes and conventions, context, genre, intertextuality

Students need to read widely to find models of different styles and voices which can be used for their own writing e.g. 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style by Matt Madden is a series of engrossing one-page comics that tell the same story 99 different ways.

Writing is prompted by what is being read. Writers are readers – reading and writing are inseparable.

Some ideas for structuring the reading and viewing include:

Regularly read and write with your students in the classroom
Enjoy the experience as you read and view with your students
Legitimise and normalise reading within the school day as a critical component of what we do in teaching English
Make better readers by giving students what they want to read. Find their passion and their spark, their curiosity about a topic to build confidence and fluency
Establish reading and viewing groups with clear roles and scaffolds for what is required
Propose a quest/search/pursuit over time, concepts, genre
Provide and invite a selection of texts e.g. fiction, film, nonfiction poetry, drama, cartoons, essays, feature articles, to suit student needs and interests and diversity and allow choice by students

The first task is engaging students – getting them reading. It is essential that students be given some choice about the texts they can read and view.

The essential conditions for developing writing accomplishment and confidence are:

Time
Choice
Real purposes and audience
Craft knowledge and skills
Understanding writing as process (growing repertoire of skills, strategies, routine, reflective abilities. How does someone get started? What do they do when they get stuck?)
Response feedback
Community – writing is a social act; it requires the establishment of a community of learners

When planning a unit of work for the Year 11 Common Module the following template may be useful.

Planning Template for Year 11 Common Module: Reading to Write
What is your focus for this module?	Big ideas? Consider a Project Based Learning style question.
Resources?	Collect novels, short stories, films, poetry anthologies, plays, cartoons, trailers or visuals and make available in book boxes, devices or through the library.
Required reading and viewing?	Consider at least six texts e.g. fiction + film/play script + poems + non-fiction texts.
Reading and viewing groups?	What roles and expectations will you set up?
Ways into the unit to provide the initial hook?	Consider 3-4 short and varied texts e.g. cartoon, poem, song, short story, film or book trailers, visuals to introduce some of the big ideas and how the reader/viewer’s response is positioned by the composer.
Timeline for unit?	Structure unit with skills lessons/“masterclasses” on how to explore a text, mid-point tasks, reflection points, and progress reports and how these will be presented and reported.
Variety of writing tasks?	Use a small, everyday notebook for reflections and trigger words.
Syllabus requirements?	Make a checklist for Standard and Advanced for outcomes and content that match unit knowledge, skills and understandings. Assign numbers to the content points e.g. Outcome 1. Content point 4=1.4 so that you can pinpoint the content reflected in the unit and reduce the amount of syllabus text in your program.
Assessment tasks?	Decide which of the Year 11 English School-based Assessment Requirements suits this Module.

The following four examples feature ideas and texts for units to engage students in Reading to Write:

1. Thematically: Dystopias

2. Stylistically: Connections in a Crowded World

3. Conceptually: First Voices

4. Aesthetically: World Literature.

Early lessons need to provide a foundation of how composers use their texts to explore the selected focus e.g. the future or relationships. Students need to be positioned for their investigation. Consider a selection of short texts in a variety of media which illuminates your focus and the conventions used by those texts and what students need to look for. Use an article which explores the focus to provide some background.

You will find elaborations of resources, texts and assessments for each example in Attachment 1 at the end of this article.

Year 11 Module A Standard Contemporary Possibilities

A reminder that there is a requirement for Standard only that in Module A one complex multimodal or digital text must be studied.

Year 11 Module A Standard: the key questions

What are the different communication technologies with which we interact in our world?
What are the features of digital, multimedia, multimodal and nonlinear texts?
In what ways do these different communication technologies shape the ways that we read, navigate, understand and respond to digital, multimedia, multimodal and nonlinear texts?
What are further creative possibilities of such technology?
What text will you use for your detailed study of one complex multimodal or digital text for example film, media or interactive narratives?
How will you develop students’ understanding of the nature, scope and ethical use of digital technology in their own responding and composing?
In what ways and with what texts will you develop your students’ deeper appreciation and understanding of the power of communication technologies to reach a broad audience for a range of purposes?
Using the selected texts, what strategies can help students appreciate the active roles of both composer and responder in controlling and choosing the reading pathways through texts?
How can students analyse and interpret the ways composers use and manipulate a variety of aural, language and visual devices to shape our understanding of what we listen to, read or view? Students may explore notions of hybridity and intertextuality.
How will your students individually or collaboratively design and create their own multimodal or digital texts to communicate and represent their ideas; understanding the importance of creating a responsible digital footprint?
What types of viewing, listening or reading experiences will you give your students to enable them to analyse and assess the text’s specific features and form?

Suggested multimodal texts for this module include Snow Fall: the Avalanche at Tunnel Creek, a digital essay by the New York Times; What they Took with Them, a film based on a rhythmic poem by Jenifer Toksvig; My Year 12 Life; The Dressmaker; and several SBS interactives including the Cronulla Riots, Exit Australia, The Boat and K’gari.

Jowen Hillyer’s work has explored how to deliver Contemporary Possibilities in a low SES school or context with limited technology. Details of this approach to teaching the unit can be found in Attachment 2 at the end of this article. Rosemary Henzell’s work explored a range of digital texts to be used in the classroom and how to set up a basic project in which students collaborate to build a website or interactive online experience. Students have choice and can consider a local event, place, person or history, or a social issue of importance to them. Rosemary’s article ‘Contemporary (Im)possibilities’ is also in this edition of the Journal of Professional Learning.

Year 11 Module B Standard: Close Study of Literature

The key difference in this module is that a substantial PRINT text is mandatory.

Year 11 Module B Standard: the key questions

What substantial literary print text have you chosen?
What strategies will you develop for students to study and respond to the text in its entirety?
How can you develop your students’ understanding of the ways that language features, text structures and stylistic choices have been used in their text?
What strategies will you use to help students identify, analyse and respond to the ideas in the text and the ways in which meaning is shaped?
In what ways will students examine the conventions that are particular to their chosen literary form, and the ways that authors use, manipulate and/or challenge those conventions?
What types of critical and creative responses to the text will students experience to develop their understanding of the use and effects of elements such as style, tone and mood?
How can students further develop their critical skills to analyse and assess the ways meaning is shaped and conveyed?
How will you enable students to engage with the text to further develop their personal connections with, and enjoyment of the text, enabling them to express their personal interpretation of its meaning and importance?

Classroom considerations and texts for Year 11 Standard Module B

It is important to choose an engaging text as students will be spending considerable time on it. Consider texts that will enrich students’ experiences and take them somewhere they may not have been or may not go to without support. While it is tempting to go to previous HSC Module B texts it may be useful to consider some better choices from recently published texts or previous Area of Study or Modules A or C.

Some suggested Year 11 Standard pathways are included in Attachment 3 at the end of this article. They include suggested texts for the Common Module, Module A and Module B.

Year 11 Advanced Module A: Narratives that Shape our World

There are distinct differences in this module from the previous syllabus. Students are required to study a range of narratives with a focus on story-telling and the diverse ways it can be explored in texts.

Year 11 Advanced Module A: the key questions

What narrative will frame your study?
What texts will you choose which will be a range of narratives from the past and the contemporary era that illuminate and convey ideas, attitudes and values?
What strategies will you employ to help students consider the powerful role of stories and storytelling as a feature of narrative in past and present societies?
Which of these are explored in your chosen texts: connecting people within and across cultures, communities and historical eras; inspiring change or consolidating stability; revealing, affirming or questioning cultural practices; sharing collective or individual experiences; or celebrating aesthetic achievement.
How will you help students deepen their understanding of how narrative shapes meaning in a range of modes, media and forms, and how it influences the way that individuals and communities understand and represent themselves?
What strategies will you develop to enable students to analyse and evaluate one or more print, digital and/or multimodal texts to explore how narratives are shaped by the context and values of composers (authors, poets, playwrights, directors, designers and so on) and responders alike?
How can your students investigate how narratives can be appropriated, reimagined or reconceptualised for new audiences?

Year 11 Advanced Module B: Critical Study of Literature

This module is more familiar to teachers and requires students to engage with the literary text in its entirety and to consider its textual integrity.

Year 11 Advanced Module B: the key questions

What literary text has been selected to suit the needs and interest of your specific students?
How will you help students develop analytical and critical knowledge, understanding and appreciation of their literary text?
How will you enable your students through increasingly informed personal responses to the text in its entirety, to develop understanding of the distinctive qualities of the text and notions of textual integrity?
How will you assist your students to explore how the author’s ideas are expressed in the text through an analysis of its construction, content and language?
How can students develop their own interpretation of the text, basing their judgements on evidence drawn from their research and reading, enabling the development of a deeper and richer understanding of the text?
In what ways can students consider notions of contexts with regard to the text’s composition and reception, investigate the perspectives of others, and explore the ideas in the text, further strengthening their personal perspective on the text?
What opportunities will you provide to enable students to appreciate and express views about the aesthetic and imaginative aspects of a text by composing creative and critical texts of their own?
Through what kinds of reading, viewing or listening opportunities will your students analyse, evaluate and comment on the text’s specific language features and form?
How will you provide opportunities for your students to engage deeply with the text as a responder and composer to further develop their personal and intellectual connections with this text, to enable students to express their informed personal view of its meaning and value?

Classroom considerations and texts for Year 11 Advanced Module B

Teachers can revisit previous Module B texts or texts from the Area of Study, Modules A and C. The time available gives you opportunities to vary the writing/ responding activities e.g. review, for a specific publication, imaginative re-creation or digital essay. There are opportunities here to explore Shakespeare and look at different interpretations and readings. You could include research into different productions on stage and on screen or look at different interpretations of characters, setting, and re-contextualisations.

Some suggested Year 11 Advanced pathways are included in Attachment 4 at the end of this article. They include suggested texts for the Common Module, Module A and Module B.

Some of the new aspects of the Standard and Advanced courses in Year 11 are challenging and also exhilarating. The Common Module Reading to Write will provide an opportunity to reset the way we do English in Year 11 and open students up to the excitement of reading widely and choosing what to read and view. The multimodal requirement for Standard (why not Advanced as well?) will encourage and validate the exploration of digital texts, websites and films in the classroom.

Deb McPherson taught English in NSW government secondary schools for 28 years as a classroom teacher, Head Teacher and Deputy Principal. She was a member of the committee selecting texts for the Higher School Certificate English courses for over 15 years. She worked as a Senior Curriculum Officer, English, at the Board of Studies and as the Manager of English for the NSW Department of Education and Training. She has been a lecturer and tutor at the University of Newcastle and at the University of Wollongong. She is an author of four anthologies for schools for OUP and co-authored Choices for English, a collection of recommended texts for the 7-12 English classroom with Helen Sykes and Ernie Tucker. Her review column, ‘Reading and Viewing with Deb McPherson’, appears in the AATE journal, English in Australia.

Jane Sherlock is an experienced, enthusiastic and passionate public education teacher of English for 40 years having retired from teaching as Head Teacher English at Kiama High. Currently, Jane is the NSW English Teachers’ Association project officer for HSC student days which are run throughout the year. Jane is also an author of a number of English textbooks, including the national award-winning Oxford HSC English. Jane is a presenter for the NSW Teachers Federation’s Centre for Professional Learning and with Deb McPherson has now presented at four English conferences for the CPL. In 2009, Jane received the Australian College of Educators award for her contribution to education.

Jowen Hillyer is currently Head Teacher of English at Taree High School (a Connected Communities school) in rural NSW. She has been a teacher, head teacher and teacher educator for 19 years, with experience in both rural and disadvantaged public schools, as well as 3 years as an Associate Lecturer at The University of Sydney. In her current role, Jowen leads a large, diverse faculty in new approaches, innovation and student engagement. Her research interests are centred on project based learning, boys’ writing in the middle years and mentoring programs for beginning English teachers.

Rosemary Henzell currently teaches English at Willoughby Girls High School. She completed her Master of Teaching in 2013, having spent seven years as an adult ESL teacher and TESOL trainer in Australia and Japan. Her MTeach Action Research Project investigated how to raise student confidence and agency in essay writing. Rosemary is part of her school’s Professional Learning Team, and is currently investigating how Project Based Learning and Teaching For Understanding frameworks can be utilised in the English classroom.

The call for ‘evidenced-based’ practice in schools

Good research can turn into zealous advocacy

Synthetic reviews

Randomised Control Trials

Research shows what has happened, not what will happen

Fidelity of implementation studies and instruments

The reality of ‘evidence-based’ policy

Where to begin?

Where do sources ‘fit’ into this topic?

What to do about timing?

Some specific challenges

Examination notes

Resources

Final thoughts

Important dates

Same, same but different

New topics

Where you can access support

What to do?

Artist, Artwork, Audience and World

Artist – us, the teachers

Artwork – our students

Audience – the examiners and the examination

World – art is so much more than the HSC

Hands-on

What else is cooking?

Keeping it real with coding

What is Geography like in your classroom?

What does the Geography K-10 syllabus have to say about spatial technologies?

We still need to ask important questions

The big five spatial tools

Introducing spatial technologies in the Geography classroom

Getting started or moving forward

What does good assessment entail?

Take home message

Why did I come here?

Take home message

Question 27 is fantastic!

Take home message

Assessment is more than examination

Final thoughts

Mathematics Advanced

The Year 11 organisational structure

What to look out for

Mathematics Advanced: Content

Mathematics Extension 1: Content

Mathematics Extension 2: Content

Assessment and examination

School-based assessment requirements

A problem

So, what are we doing with Networks?

Konigsberg Bridge

Konigsberg Bridge teaching challenge

Shortest Path

Shortest Path teaching challenge

Minimum Spanning Trees

A breakthrough

Critical Path Analysis

Maximum-Flow, Minimum-Cut Theorem

So what to do about my challenges?

Final thoughts

PART 2: Year 11

What’s new

Text requirements

Challenges for Year 11 2018

Year 11 Common Module: Reading to Write

The Common Module: the key questions

Year 11 Module A Standard Contemporary Possibilities

Year 11 Module A Standard: the key questions

Year 11 Module B Standard: Close Study of Literature

Year 11 Module B Standard: the key questions

Classroom considerations and texts for Year 11 Standard Module B

Year 11 Advanced Module A: Narratives that Shape our World

Year 11 Advanced Module A: the key questions

Year 11 Advanced Module B: the key questions

Classroom considerations and texts for Year 11 Advanced Module B

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