This course is designed for teachers who are interested in building practical skills around differentiation and inclusive planning for a mainstream context K-12. Participants will look at the timeline of disability within the school context and see how overtime changes have taken place (or not). Teachers will expand their strategies and skills in meeting the needs of students with disabilities in various settings to support positive and successful learning and engagement.
K-12 teachers who are interested in unpacking their understanding of inclusion and increase their strategies and skills in supporting a wide range of students with disability in their classroom.
30 October 2025 at NSW Teachers Federation, Surry Hills
$220
John Skene was elected as the NSW Teachers Federation Disability Officer in November 2024. As part of this role, he is responsible for supporting students, staff and schools in disability. He is working closely with the other areas in Federation (Organisers, Professional Support, Trade Union Training) to support Federation members.
With over fifteen years of experience as a teacher in special education, John has worked at Schools for Specific Purposes (SSPs) and Support Units (SUs). He has held roles such as Federation Representative and Assistant Principal Special Education. John was a Councillor and the Special Education Contact of Sutherland and Inner-City Teachers Association (across his time in school).
Bianca Bertalli considers the ‘media minefield’ and the benefits of collaborative teaching to facilitate students’ media literacy. . .
The internet has revolutionised the way people seek and use information. It has enabled faster and easier communication, facilitated the global trading of goods and ideas, and integrated access to information with everyday life. These rapid changes are reflected in classroom practice, where technology has transformed the tools available to teachers and students (Haleem et al., 2022). However, as access to information has grown, so has the proportion of misinformation available to consumers. Fake news, algorithm powered bots and organised troll groups are some of the common channels of misinformation likely to be encountered by today’s students.
Classroom teachers and teacher librarians play a key role in teaching students how to critically evaluate information. By developing collaborative practices in inquiry learning, teacher librarians can align learning with this need and support colleagues through an unprecedented era of online content creation and consumption (Australian School Library Association [ASLA], 2019; NSW Department of Education, 2022).
Misinformation vs disinformation
The term ‘misinformation’ infers an overarching invalidity of information, however other fundamental components are also at play in online content. Misinformation can be shared or spread unwittingly, or it can be categorised as ‘disinformation’ and deliberately circulated for financial gain or political advantage (Australian Communications and Media Authority, 2023; Harrison and Leopold, 2021). Ranked by severity, in terms of the negative social, economic, and environmental impact, mis/disinformation ranked 16th out of 32 imminent global risks identified by the World Economic Forum (2023). Worryingly, when considered in a long-term 10-year projection, mis/disinformation advances to 11th position. While the impact on young people has not yet been widely examined, the prospect of mis/disinformation as a global threat is particularly concerning, given that it ranks well ahead of dangers such as terrorist attacks or the use of weapons of mass destruction (World Economic Forum, 2023, p 11).
The media: fusion of fact and opinion
The emergence of ‘alternative facts’ and the recurrent sharing of unchecked information throughout the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the prevalence of misinformation in the media. It also increased concern globally on the cause and effect this may have on young people (Howard, Neudert and Prakesh, 2021). False news and media bias have the potential to undermine confidence in political personalities and influence democratic processes (Hobbs and McKnight, 2014; Nettlefold and Williams, 2018). The way news media is framed can underrepresent, misrepresent or purposefully exclude specific groups of people (Meehan et al., 2015; Moyer, 2022).
Mis/disinformation can also ignite and spread polarising ideas and threaten ‘social cohesion’ (World Economic Forum, 2023, p 24). Harrison and Leopold (2021) acknowledge that while political agendas are often the driving force behind media, financially incentivised click-bait headlines also make it tempting for media to give precedence to content that will draw readers in, rather than present accuracy.
The often-imperceptible fusion of fact and opinion across news media, combined with the reach and saturation of a small number of news corporations, places Australian school students at risk of information overload without a way to critically evaluate their way out (Nettlefold and Williams, 2018).
In a study of 1,000 Australians aged 8-16 years, Notley and Dezuanni (2020) found that despite an 8% increase in news consumption since 2017, there was only a 2% increase in the number of students who felt they could distinguish fake news from real news. Even though the broad consensus of teachers agreed that engaging with news in a critical way is important for students, only 1 out of 5 Australian students said that they had been taught how to decide whether a news story was credible (Nettlefold and Williams, 2018; Notley and Dezuanni, 2020).
Beware the bots
Through carefully created algorithms, internet ‘bots’ (originating from the word ‘robot’) have changed the way information is curated for search engines and can deliberately alter the way in which information is prioritised for viewing (Head et al., 2020; Nettlefold and Williams, 2018; Rogers-Whitehead et al., 2022). Bots and algorithms are neither good nor evil, as their function and impact are determined by those who designed them (Head et al., 2020; Lutkevich and Gillis, 2022). They do, however, have the power to alter the flow of data and influence an internet user’s experience (Alemanno, 2018; Rogers-Whitehead et al., 2022).
It has been estimated that bots make up more than two-thirds of internet traffic (Barracuda, 2021; Rogers-Whitehead et al., 2022). For example, over a 6-month period in 2020, COVID-19 related tweets were collected and analysed. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers found that 82% of the 50 most influential retweeters were in fact bots (CMU, 2020). This inundation of mis/disinformation and polarising messaging spread by bots can have alarming consequences, including risks to public debate and democracy or increased hostility, violence or crime (CMU, 2020; Howard et al., 2021).
While students prefer search engines, such as Google, as their primary source of research information, they often have a misplaced trust in it, believing that search results are provided, or fact checked, by a human employee (Dring, 2014; Lane and Van Bergan, 2018; The Office of Communications [OFCOM], 2017). Instead, web-crawler bots provide a curated list of website suggestions in response to search queries and, although students may believe sources are listed in order of validity, bots order results based on other factors, such as the frequency of visits to a site or the quantity of pages that link to a site (Cloudflare, n.d.). Google also lists paid search results that can be difficult for students to distinguish (OFCOM, 2017).
Complex algorithms further construct an individual’s online experience from data harvested through each engagement. The way in which algorithms present increasingly extreme viewpoints through ‘Watch Next’ suggestions on YouTube (Moyer, 2022) or other algorithm-driven content, such as personalised news feeds, advertisements or friend suggestions, makes it difficult for students to separate fact and fiction online (UNICEF, 2021). Rogers-Whitehead et al. (2022) warn that, as children grow and more seamlessly engage with technology, they will become ‘even more accustomed to outsourcing their information seeking and “truth” to devices’ (p 7).
Crossing the troll bridge
The internet dominates the channels that humans use to communicate and share information, and while propaganda is not a new concept, content specifically created to propagate ideologically-driven conflict has grown exponentially. When a student views an idea or message frequently, they often misinterpret this as an indicator of truthfulness (Moyer, 2022; Howard et al., 2021). At times, these messages are created by trolls, people who intentionally initiate hostility and conflict, often using mis/disinformation as their chosen weapon (Bradshaw and Howard, 2017; Howard et al., 2012).
The efficacy of organised troll groups in gaining political influence was investigated in an Oxford University study by Bradshaw and Howard (2017), who coined the phrase ‘cyber troops’ to describe ‘government, military or political party teams committed to manipulating public opinion over social media’ (p 3). They found that, across at least 28 countries, coordinated efforts were made to engage in social media platforms to sway or stifle discussions or consciously spread disinformation.
Practical solutions: a collaborative approach
Inquiry learning, including media literacy, is fundamental to the Australian Curriculum (ACARA, n.d). The rationale in the Media Arts learning area, for example, states that: ‘students learn to be critically aware of ways that the media are culturally used and negotiated, and are dynamic and central to the way they make sense of the world and of themselves’ (para. 3). More specifically, subject content descriptions provide scaffolds to assist students’ deep learning. For example, the content for Year 4 HASS (Humanities and Social Sciences) is driven by a number of ‘inquiry questions’ and divided into two strands: ‘knowledge and understanding’, and ‘inquiry and skills’. In particular, the ‘researching’ and ‘analysing’ skills require students to ‘locate and collect information and data from different sources,’ and ‘identify different points of view and distinguish facts from opinions.’ In various iterations that differ in complexity, the same questions and skills drive student learning in HASS from Foundation to Year 7.
In NSW, across the range of syllabuses, and at all stages, students are required to independently research and analyse information in various online and offline contexts, making it crucial that they are given the opportunity to develop skills that enable them to critically engage with information. The Stage Statements for Geography K–10 (NESA, n.d.), for example, provide a continuum of learning focused on inquiry and students’ ability to effectively consume and produce information. Lane and Van Bergen (2018) note that, as students compare, contrast and critically evaluate sources through the inquiry process, they become more adept at identifying mis/disinformation.
Despite universal recognition of the importance of media literacy, the current combined responsive efforts of media policy, regulation and educational practices to facilitate media literacy are predicted to fall short in addressing the projected global threat of mis/disinformation (World Economic Forum, 2023). However, with information technology acting as the ‘primary driving force behind education reform’ (Haleem et al., 2022, p 1), the need to increasingly assess the validity of information presents teachers and teacher librarians with a powerful, collaborative opportunity.
Teacher librarians can support classroom teachers and help bridge the knowledge gap to teach students media literacy skills (Nettlefold and Williams, 2018) by providing both in-context instruction shaped around the Information Fluency Framework (NSW Department of Education, n.d., PDF 900 KB) and curriculum-aligned resources. Britannica Education (2024), for example, offers a freely available online Media Literacy Guide, which unpacks media literacy metalanguage and provides helpful activities to encourage students to develop their critical information literacy across various platforms. Similarly, the ABC Education’s (2024) Media Literacy online hub of videos and interactive activities covers a broad range of topics, including social media, news bias, media ethics and fact checking.
Misinformation presents a ubiquitous threat for our young people. It is essential that classrooms and school libraries operate as spaces where information, innovation, and inclusion are deeply valued and fabrications, alternative facts and fake news are widely challenged. Working together, teachers and teacher librarians have a responsibility to cultivate students’ media literacy skills, develop inquiry-based models of learning, and foster practices that continuously build the information fluency of students.
Abu Kausar, M., Dhaka, V. & Singh, S. (2013). Web crawler: a review. International Journal of Computer Applications, 63, 31–36. https://doi.org/10.5120/10440-5125
Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority. (n.d.). Structure.
Alemanno, A. (2018). how to counter fake news? A taxonomy of anti-fake news approaches. European Journal of Risk Regulation, 9(1), 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1017/err.2018.12
Australian Communications and Media Authority. (2023, March 29). Online misinformation.
Bauer, A. J., Nadler, A. & Nelson, J. L. (2022). What is Fox News? Partisan journalism, misinformation, and the problem of classification. Electronic News, 16(1), 18–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/19312431211060426
Haleem, A., Javaid, M., Qadri, M. A. & Suman, R. (2022). Understanding the role of digital technologies in education: a review. Sustainable Operations and Computers, 3, 275–285. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.susoc.2022.05.004
Hobbs, M. & Mcknight, D. (2014). “Kick this mob out”: the Murdoch media and the Australian Labor government (2007 to 2013). Global Media Journal: Australian Edition, 8, 1–13.
Kammer, J., Donahay, A., King, M. & Koeberl, H. (2021). Understanding what makes school librarian-teacher collaboration successful. Knowledge Quest, 50(1), 50-52.
Rogers-Whitehead, C., Milstead, A. O. & Farris-Hill, L. (2022). Advocating digital citizenship: resources for the library and classroom. Libraries Unlimited.
Bianca Bertalli is currently a NSW Department of Education Specialist Teacher Scholarship recipient, completing her post-graduate Masters of Education (Teacher Librarianship), and working as Teacher Librarian K-6, at Gol Gol Public School in the Rural Far West. Bianca began teaching in 2010, as a classroom teacher in the inner city of Sydney, where she previously served as an elected government school representative on the Quality Teaching Council. Bianca has presented at courses and conferences to support early career teachers to develop skills in classroom management, planning/ programming and the accreditation process. She has been an active member of the NSW Teachers Federation for the past 16 years.
Fiona Beasley shares her research into trauma informed practice…
More and more, schools are recognising the need to support both students who have experienced trauma as well as the teachers who work with them every day. Research shows that children who go through tough experiences like abuse, neglect, or family struggles often face challenges in learning, behaviour, and relationships. They may struggle with focus, managing emotions, or getting along with others, and some may develop anxiety, depression, or other mental health concerns. Without the right support, these difficulties can lead to school suspensions or even expulsions.
Being trauma-informed means understanding how these experiences affect students and learning how to create a supportive, safe environment where they can thrive. This article covers ten important things teachers should know about trauma-informed practices to help every student feel understood, valued, and ready to learn.
1. What is trauma?
The most commonly used definition of trauma is that from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Trauma and Violence – What Is Trauma and Its Effects?, n.d.) SAMHSA recognises trauma as an event, or set of circumstances, that is experienced by an individual, resulting in physical, emotional and/or life-threatening harm. The event may be an accident, long term illness or natural disaster that results in someone feeling unsafe and unstable. It could be a one-time event, such as a car accident, on an ongoing event, such as prolonged neglect. Ongoing trauma, over a long period of time, creates toxic stress. Chronic or toxic stress, brought on by trauma, is the long term-activation of the body’s stress response.
2. How prevalent is trauma?
Australian Child Maltreatment Study (Haslam et al., 2023) found more than 2 in five Australians (39.4%) have experienced childhood maltreatment, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and exposure to domestic and family violence. The NSW Governments DCJ Quarterly Statistical Report on Services for Children and Young People – July – September 2024 (NSW Department of Communities and Justice, n.d.) identified:
A total of 104 687 child and young person concern reports were received. Of these 58.1% met the risk of significant harm (ROSH) threshold.
A total of 527 children and young people entered Out of Home Care (OOHC). This is an increase of 8.2%.
As of 30 September 2024, a total of 13 889 children and young people were in OOHC in NSW.
There were 351 children and young people in High Cost Emergency Arrangements (HCEA) at the end of September 2024.
It is important to note that this data relates to circumstances of harm that have been reported. It does not take into account other events identified as contributing to trauma. We can also make assumptions that these statistics are lower than the real number of children who may be experiencing maltreatment or abuse as a result of under-reporting.
3. What does trauma look like in schools
Our brains are developed to help us respond to threat. Children who have experienced trauma, perceive the world as a dangerous place. Their brains are on high alert and may appear to overreact to what may seem to those around them, as unthreatening stimuli, resulting in behaviours that can be characterised as fight, flight, freeze or fawn. These automatic responses can be defined as reacting to a perceived threat through:
Fight – responding aggressively
Flight – trying to flee
Freeze – an inability to move or act
Fawn – trying to please in order to avoid the threat.
Children who have been exposed to traumatic events resulting in experiencing toxic stress are at far greater risk of difficulties in school. Notably, the impact that trauma can have on brain development, particularly that resulting in toxic stress, leads to cognitive and social-emotional difficulties.
Downey et al. (2013), in the resource developed for the Victorian Child Safety Commissioner identified the most recognisable impacts on education under two intertwining categories.
Impacts on academic performance
Impacts on social relationships
Reduced cognitive capacity
Need for control
Sleep disturbance
Attachment difficulties
Difficulties with memory
Poor peer relationships
Language delays
Unstable living situation
4. Self-regulation can be challenging for students who have experienced trauma
For students who have been through trauma, self-regulation can be especially tough. Their struggles with schoolwork and social interactions are often made worse by difficulties managing their emotions and deep feelings of shame.
Emotional Dysregulation: Hyperarousal vs. Dissociation
Kids dealing with trauma often show emotional dysregulation in one of two ways—hyperarousal or dissociation.
· Hyperarousal means being on high alert all the time. These kids may see neutral situations as dangerous, reacting with fear or defensiveness. Even though their bodies are geared up for danger, they’re not always good at recognizing real threats, which can lead to risky behaviours. Plus, being in this constant state of alertness makes it incredibly hard to focus or pay attention in class.
· Dissociation is the opposite—these kids may seem zoned out, distant, or emotionally unreachable. Sometimes, they might even appear defiant or oppositional when, in reality, they’re just mentally shutting down as a coping mechanism.
The Weight of Shame
For children who have experienced trauma, feelings of shame can be overwhelming. A small mistake or a simple disciplinary action can make them feel like failures or even like they’re inherently “bad.” This shame can fuel emotional outbursts and make it even harder for them to regulate their emotions, sometimes leading to aggression as a way to cope.
Understanding these challenges is key to helping trauma-affected students navigate school and social situations with the support they need.
5. Kids who have experienced trauma are not going out of their way to push your buttons.
Children who have experienced trauma can develop maladaptive strategies as a means of maintaining personal safety. Dr Ross Greene puts it very simply as, “Kids do well if they can.” (2008) He identifies that rather than taking the view that kids do well if they want to, suggesting a lack of motivation, we should take the view that if a kid could do well, they would. Kids who struggle, who are challenging, are lacking the skills required to do so. Dr Greene goes on to say that challenging behaviour is most likely to occur when the expectations being placed on them outweigh the skills they have to respond adaptively.
6. We don’t always know what is happening when kids are not at school.
We don’t always know what experiences children bring to school. A child who runs late to school may be met with a reprimand and questions for why they are late. What about the child who rarely seems organised and never has the right equipment or fails to bring back excursion notes on time. Consider the iceberg analogy. We can see the tip of the iceberg, but what is hiding beneath the surface? The child who is reprimanded for being late spent the morning getting siblings ready for school and trying to scrounge together food for their breakfasts and lunches while their parent remained in bed, unable to get up due to the debilitating depression they are experiencing. Rather than reprimanding the student for being late, consider responding with compassion and empathy. This child has managed to get themselves to school despite the challenges they may be facing.
7. Build relationships
Understanding the impact that traumatic events can have on the developing brain helps us to understand what children need to heal. Although negative early experiences such as poor attachment have a negative impact on the brain, conversely, relationships can have a protective and reparative impact. The importance of relationships in healing cannot be understated. Whilst therapeutic interventions may be essential, genuine relationships resulting in micro moments of positive regard can be transformational for a child’s healing. It is the countless relational experiences that kids experience at school on a daily basis, both intentional and unintentional that have the greatest impact. (Australian Childhood Foundation, 2018; Ludy-Dobson & Perry, 2010)
“The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change, and the most powerful therapy is human love.” (Perry, 2007)
8. Use restorative practices rather than punitive discipline
Punitive discipline results in kids feeling shame and isolation for making mistakes as well as perpetuating the idea that they are bad. For students who have experienced trauma this can be particularly damaging and potentially re-traumatising. This type of discipline relies on control over care with an over-reliance on compliance, rather than understanding.
Restorative practice promotes a safe school culture and environment by helping to build positive relationships. Restorative practices are not about giving kids a free pass. “It recognises that a variety of factors influence behaviour and seeks to address the underlying influences through empathy, relationship-building, communication, social and emotional learning and finding ways to respectfully hold one another accountable”. (NSW Department of Education Wellbeing, 2025)
A new professional learning course developed in collaboration with leading experts in the field is now available on-demand from the NSW Department of Education. (Wellbeing, 2024)
9. Take care of your own wellbeing first.
The most important point to remember when working with children who have experienced trauma is the demands of this work. This can take its toll on the wellbeing of teachers in the form of compassion fatigue as a result of working day after day with children who may be aggressive or withdrawn and do not respond as quickly to the usual positive regard shown by teachers. They cannot continue to support the wellbeing of others unless individually and collectively we consider the wellbeing of the teachers themselves.
Downey et al. (2013) suggests three strategies for self-care, being reminded by the three R’s: Reflection, Regulation and Relaxation
Reflection – be realistic about working with students who have experienced trauma as it can be very difficult to like and relate to them. Consider reflecting on their behaviour in light of what you know about trauma and try to understand the behaviour from the perspective of what has happened to them rather than what is wrong with them. Think about what you may need to continue to work and connect with the student. Ensure you have a trusted colleague you can debrief with.
Regulation – Be mindful of how this work may trigger your own dysregulation. Reflect on what it is you need to self-regulate. You cannot support the regulation of students if you are dysregulated. Be aware of your own triggers and the reactions and emotions they may invoke. You have probably heard the quote by L. R. Knost “When little people are overwhelmed by big emotions, it’s our job to share our calm, not join their chaos.” We cannot help children learn to self-regulate if we add our emotions to the mix.” (Kansas, 2023).
It is important that there is a culture of safety within your school that means you can tap out when needed, no questions asked. You need to be able to ask for help without judgement. It is not a reflection on your abilities as a teacher, but more how hard this work really is.
Relaxation – just as important as reflection and regulation is being able to relax. Having the time and space to engage in activities or past times that refresh and renew your energy. Ensure that you are engaging with things that are of interest to you, the things that bring you joy. Engage in Yoga, mindfulness, read a book, go for a hike, binge watch a favourite show, get a massage. Whatever you do, it is what brings you peace and joy.
Most importantly, remember to be patient and forgiving of yourself. Children who have experienced trauma and have disrupted attachment require time to change and being kind to yourself is necessary within a culture of safety and social support in your school.
End note
This JPL article is based upon Fiona’s 2024 Eric Pearson report entitled Trauma Informed Practice: An Observation of the Elements Required to Sustain Practice.
Federation members can access this document through the Member Portal :
Greene, R. W. (2008). Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BB18318146
Kansas, C. C. a. O. (2023, August 21). When Little People are Overwhelmed by Big Emotions. Child Care Aware. https://ks.childcareaware.org/when-little-people-are-overwhelmed-by-big-emotions/
Perry, B. D. (2007). The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL17210964M/The_boy_who_was_raised_as_a_dog
Fiona Beasley began teaching as an Itinerant Support Teacher (Hearing) in 1996 in Mudgee. Since then, she has worked in both mainstream and special education settings in primary schools in rural and remote areas from Broken Hill to the far south coast as a teacher, Assistant Principal and relieving Principal.
She has also worked in and out of corporate roles as a Non-School Based Teacher since 2007. Prior to her current role, as Wellbeing Systems Support Advisor, she worked in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on Students with Disabilities in Schools (NCCD) team and substantively holds the position of Assistant Principal Learning and Support for the Batemans Bay Network of schools.
Fiona is an experienced presenter of the Department of Education’s Trauma Informed Practice for improved learning and wellbeing professional learning.
She completed an Eric Pearson Study Grant report on Trauma-Informed Practice: An Observation of the Elements Required to Sustain Practice in 2024.
In addition, she presented her work at the Trauma Aware Education Conference in Brisbane Queensland in 2024 and will undertake QUT’s new Microcredential in Trauma Aware Education as part of the first intake in July.
Michael Sciffer highlights the issues related to school segregation in Australia and challenges us to commit to the development of an Australian education system in which education exists for the common good, not individual advancement...
In May 2007 Prime Minister John Howard said that public education was a “safety net” for families who could not afford private school fees. The Howard federal government (1996-2007) transformed the structure of the Australian schooling system such that school segregation is increasing at the second-fastest rate in the OECD (O’Brien et al., 2023) to make us the 7th most segregated system (Gutiérrez, 2023). The Howard government’s four policies to shift enrolments from public to private schools were:
Very large increases in federal government funding to private schools
Deregulating the creation of low-fee private schools
Starting a culture war against the values of public education
Targeting parental anxieties to pressure families to believe “school choice” is a requirement of good parenting
The outcome was to accelerate the shift of middle-income families from public to low-fee, government-dependent, private schools. This has changed the enrolment composition of public schools, residualising many traditional neighbourhood public schools.
In the years since the Howard government NSW public schools have shown very little growth, resulting in the public education system shrinking in relative size compared to independent schools. This has undermined the authority and prestige of the public system in educational decision-making.
In recent years, a concerning new trend has emerged of NSW public primary schools losing enrolment numbers as shown in Figure 1. From 2020 public primary schools have lost 27858 students while public secondary schools have only gained 3626 students (ABS, 2025). At the same time, Catholic and independent primary and secondary schools have increased by 16394 and 32605 students respectively.
Figure 1. Enrolment changes in NSW schools 2014-2024.
What is school segregation?
School segregation is the separation of students into different schools based on social characteristics such as socioeconomic status (SES) or class. Segregation is often measured by how unevenly socially disadvantaged students are enrolled across schools within an area or school system. In Australia, school sectors have very different socioeconomic enrolment profiles as shown in Figure 2. The public system over enrols low-SES students, systemic Catholic schools over enrol middle-SES students, independent schools over enrol high SES students, while selective schools enormously over enrol high SES students. As no school sector is representative of the community Australia’s schooling system is educating children with a skewed perception of society.
Figure 2. The 2019 socioeconomic profile of Australian secondary schools
Why does school segregation matter?
School segregation matters because it multiplies social disadvantages. The Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019) sets Australia’s schools the twin goals of educational excellence and equity. But research shows that segregation diminishes the capacity of schools to achieve academic excellence for socially disadvantaged students. The socioeconomic status of a student’s peers, measured as the average SES of a school, is just as important to their learning as the SES of their parents in predicting academic achievement. This is called the school compositional effect.
The school compositional effect is shown in Figure 3 from our research (Sciffer et al., 2022). It shows that both the SES of a student’s family and their school predicts academic achievement. Our research found that a low SES student in a low SES school was two times less likely to achieve minimum NAPLAN benchmarks than the same type of student in a high SES school.
Figure 3. Proportion of students achieving all NAPLAN benchmarks by family and school socioeconomic status
School composition influences more than academic achievement. It has negative effects on high school graduation and access to university (Chesters, 2019; Palardy, 2013, 2015) and social cohesion (Molina & Lamb, 2022).
What causes school segregation?
International research has shown a range of factors are associated with school segregation. In the US where most students attend public schools, neighbourhood segregation largely drives school segregation. This is less of a factor in Australia because of lower rates of income segregation and a much higher degree of school competition. Thus in Australia, more relevant factors are parental decision making, school marketisation reforms, and the enrolment practices of schools.
Parental choice is often identified as the cause of school segregation in Australia (Larsen, 2024; Munro, 2018). Blaming parents for school segregation makes sense in a free-market society that views people as consumers free to make decisions in their own self-interest. An alternative explanation is that Australian parents are driven by anxiety to protect their own children from the harms of a hyper-individualistic society. Where once the education of children was part of the common good guaranteed by government, it has been privitised to an artificially limited commodity (Astin, 1992). Many parents who “choose” private schools report they would prefer neighbourhood public schools but feel compelled to purchase private schooling because of the inadequate resourcing of public schools (Campbell et al., 2009).
School marketisation reforms have caused segregation in every country in which they have been implemented (Lubienski et al., 2022; Zancajo & Bonal, 2022). Governments have argued that school competition and choice will raise quality as it does for consumer products like cars and mobile phones. But school markets fail because they are constrained (Astin, 1992). When consumer products are popular, production is expanded to increase sales and profit, allowing more consumers to benefit from the product. Otherwise, a competitor will take market share. But when schools are popular, they cannot substantially increase enrolments because of physical and geographical constraints. Instead, they put up fees or drive up nearby housing prices. Popular schools are thus able to entrench their privilege over generations.
School market reforms increase the power of popular schools to choose their students. Enrolment and exclusion practices allow schools to select high achieving compliant students who are cheap to teach. This enables the marketing of high academic achievement and orderly learning environments without investing resources into teaching quality nor student wellbeing. The outcome is that Australian schools compete based on enrolment profiles, not teaching quality. This is exemplified in the media’s annual reporting of HSC results which predictably follow socioeconomic enrolment profiles. Selective schools come first, followed by high fee private schools, then low fee and comprehensive public schools. The only insight this reporting provides is as a class analysis of metropolitan Sydney.
Where to next?
Substantial reforms to the structure of Australia’s schooling system are required if we are to achieve the goals of academic excellence and equity. While low SES students are excluded from academic excellence, Australia’s schooling system will continue to languish by international standards. To address school segregation requires confronting the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Australian education policy, between equity and competition. Segregation can only be addressed if there is a shared commitment to the education of all children and young people. That is, education for the common good, not individual advancement. Such a commitment would require:
Every school being resourced from all income sources according to need, and
Every school contributing to the learning of all social groups.
In such a system, there would be no need for families to jostle for schools. Families enjoy such a right with schooling systems in countries like Finland and Canada. These countries prioritise the common good in education. It will take a substantial and sustained struggle from public education supporters, in particular from the union movement, to refashion the schooling system to serve the effective functioning of a democratic society.
Astin, A. W. (1992). Educational ‘Choice’: Its Appeal May be Illusory. Sociology of Education, 65(4), 255–260. https://doi.org/10.2307/2112768
Campbell, C., Proctor, H., & Sherington, G. (2009). School Choice: How Parents Negotiate the New School Market in Australia. Allen & Unwin.
Chesters, J. (2019). Alleviating or exacerbating disadvantage: Does school attended mediate the association between family background and educational attainment? Journal of Education Policy, 34(3), 331–350. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2018.1488001
Gutiérrez, G. (2023). Privatisation, School Markets and Socioeconomic Segregation: An International Overview. In V. Dupriez, J. P. Valenzuela, M. Verhoeven, & J. Corvalán (Eds.), Educational Markets and Segregation: Global Trends and Singular Experiences From Belgium and Chile (pp. 103–126). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36147-0_6
Lubienski, C., Perry, L. B., Kim, J., & Canbolat, Y. (2022). Market models and segregation: Examining mechanisms of student sorting. Comparative Education, 58(1), 16–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2021.2013043
Molina, A., & Lamb, S. (2022). School segregation, inequality and trust in institutions: Evidence from Santiago. Comparative Education, 58(1), 72–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2021.1997025
Palardy, G. J. (2013). High School Socioeconomic Segregation and Student Attainment. American Educational Research Journal, 50(4), 714–754. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831213481240
Palardy, G. J. (2015). High school socioeconomic composition and college choice: Multilevel mediation via organizational habitus, school practices, peer and staff attitudes. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 26(3), 329–353. https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2014.965182
Sciffer, M. G., Perry, L. B., & McConney, A. (2022). The substantiveness of socioeconomic school compositional effects in Australia: Measurement error and the relationship with academic composition. Large-Scale Assessments in Education, 10(1), 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40536-022-00142-8
Zancajo, A., & Bonal, X. (2022). Education markets and school segregation: A mechanism-based explanation. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 52(8), 1241–1258. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2020.1858272
About the author
Michael Sciffer is a school counsellor in Armidale, having taught and counselled across many public schools in the Riverina and Northern Tablelands. He is a PhD candidate of Murdoch University and has published a range of research papers across diverse international journals. His research interests are in school segregation and compositional effects. In particular, the role of public policy settings in determining the social contexts of schools.
Dr Katitza Marinkovic Chavez, Phoebe Quinn, Nathaniel Barker and Prof Lisa Gibbs discuss new research and co-designed resources to support teacher wellbeing in the face of climate change…
Climate change is a wellbeing issue for students and teachers. In this article, we share insights from research into the challenges teachers face and what can help support their ‘climate wellbeing’, while also supporting student wellbeing and learning. We also introduce the Teacher Climate Superpowers resources, which have been co-developed with Australian teachers, to support them, their students and the planet in the face of climate change.
Climate change is a wellbeing issue for students and teachers
There is growing awareness of climate distress among students, with teachers playinga vital role in helping them navigate it. However, teachers’ own climate wellbeing is often overlooked, with limited research and resources to promote it.
We approach the notion of ‘climate wellbeing’ from a holistic perspective to better understand how people experience their wellbeing in the face of the various challenges presented by climate change. Teacher climate wellbeing is important in its own right, as well as being necessary for teachers’ ability to support students and promote sustainable practices in schools.
Building on a Strength-Based Approach: Your Climate Superpowers
In 2022, we collaborated with over 70 young people to develop a resource to support young people’s climate well-being (Marinkovic Chavez et al, 2023). The resulting website, www.climatesuperpowers.org, centres on the idea of ‘climate superpowers’ that enhance personal and collective resilience.
There are seven superpowers: social, natural, cultural, political, built, financial, and human (Quinn & Marinkovic Chavez, 2022). The website includes a fun quiz to help students discover their main superpowers. Based on their personal strengths and interests (superpowers), students are invited to engage in different actions for climate learning, self-care, and social transformation. The website’s content and its design, including the interactive quiz and striking illustrations, were all shaped by co-designers aged between 12 and 25 years over a series of workshops (Marinkovic Chavez et al, 2023).
Climate Superpowers in the Classroom
After the Climate Superpowers website launched, we heard from many teachers interested in using it to support their conversations with students about climate change. However, given the many demands on teachers’ time, there was a clear need for classroom-ready resources to facilitate this uptake.
So, along with teacher and student co-designers, we created lesson plans, curriculum guides, and activity materials to discuss climate change in the classroom. These resources were aligned with the Australian Curriculum and made freely accessible via the existing website (see the Classroom Resources section of the website). This is an evolving set of resources, which is being refined and grown as passionate teachers and students experiment with activity formats in classrooms.
Throughout this process, we have encountered many dedicated teachers going above and beyond in their efforts to support students and sustainability in schools, often with very little recognition or resourcing. This highlighted an important area for further attention and support: teacher climate wellbeing.
New Insights on The Emotional Weight of Climate Change for Teachers
Previous research has shown evidence of teachers dealing with their personal concerns about climate change and experiencing feelings of anxiety, helplessness, guilt, and frustration (Hermans, 2016; Pihkala, 2020). Many have reported feeling unsure or underprepared to manage climate discussions without distressing students (Bleazby et al., 2023; Hopman, 2022) due to a lack of knowledge or access to information about the topic. However, research on teacher climate-related experiences is scant, and often narrowly focused on impacts on student learning.
With support of the Teachers Health Foundation and the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, we have been conducting further research to deepen understandings of current experiences of teachers in Australia, including challenges they are facing, strategies they find helpful, and changes they want to see in relation to climate wellbeing (students’ and their own). This project, called Teacher Climate Superpowers, aims to develop strategies to support teachers, school leaders, and the education system in holistically supporting climate wellbeing.
Across 14 qualitative interviews and four workshops with 56 teachers, we have heard about a wide range of wellbeing challenges, relating to teachers’ own thoughts and feelings relating to climate change, difficulties relating to student climate distress (e.g. anxiety, anger, hopelessness) or disengagement, systemic and resourcing issues, (e.g. curriculum and time constraints), tensions within some school communities (e.g. interactions with colleagues or parents, political disagreements), and environmental events such as bushfires, floods, storms, drought and extreme heat.
Teacher Climate Superpowers: a professional development resource co-developed with Australian teachers
Through the workshops and interviews described above, we have also been collaborating with Australian teachers to create a strengths-based, practically useful online resource. This Teacher Climate Superpowers professional development resource is specifically designed to support teacher climate wellbeingwhile continuing to develop the student-focused resources. The aim is to empower teachers by providing a structured space to explore, plan, and act on their climate wellbeing alongside their efforts to support students and the environment.
The Teacher Climate Superpowers resource is being piloted from May 2025. It is a choose-your-own-adventure kind of resource, with multiple possible modes of engaging with the content depending on each teacher’s preferences. This includes:
webinars (live and recorded)
a quiz, teachers can discover their personal strengths (superpowers) relevant to climate action and well-being.
a guided reflection ‘action plan’ tool to help teachers promote their wellbeing, student wellbeing and learning, and planetary health. For each one of these three topics, teachers are invited to explore their personal challenges, existing strengths/resources/practices/successes, and plans for action going forward.
interactive, self-paced modules that provide evidence-based strategies for addressing climate anxiety and stress, and opportunities for connecting with other teachers.
Teacher Climate Superpowers aims to be a useful professional development resource for teachers to connect to the latest evidence on student and teacher climate wellbeing. It is meant to serve as a practical tool to deal with everyday challenges and promote in-depth reflection.
Invitation to participate in the Teacher Climate Superpowers pilot
We invite teachers working across Australia to join the Teacher Climate Superpowers pilot study between Terms 2 and 3, 2025. Participation is open to individuals as well as groups of teachers who want to engage as part of a school or teacher network.
Based on your feedback, we will continue refining the platform as a living and growing resource so it can effectively help teachers feel confident to discuss climate change with students and manage the impacts of climate change on their wellbeing. Listening to teachers is crucial for this resource to meet the needs of both teachers and students effectively. Tailoring resources to teachers’ needs is essential to foster resilience and wellbeing within the education sector amid growing environmental challenges.
The Teacher Climate Superpowers has components based on the Australian Curriculum, which can be used directly by a number of States and Territories. The NSW Teachers Federation and the Centre for Professional Learning are in discussions with the University of Melbourne to develop a NSW curriculum focus.The program is up and running but certain parts of the platform are still under construction.
Reference list
Bleazby, J., Burgh, G., Thornton, S., Graham, M., Reid, A., & Finefter-Ronsebluh, I. (2023). Teaching about climate change in the midst of ecological crisis: Responsibilities, challenges, and possibilities. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 55(10), 1087-1095. DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2023.2211260
Hermans, M. (2016). Geography Teachers and Climate Change: Emotions about Consequences, Coping Strategies, and Views on Mitigation. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 11(4), 389-408.
Marinkovic Chavez, K., Quinn, P., Gibbs, L., Block, K., Leppold, C., Stanley, J., & Vella-Brodrick, D. (2023). Growing up in Victoria, Australia, in the midst of the climate emergency. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01650254231205239
Katitza Marinkovic Chavez is a psychologist and Research Fellow in Participatory Methods at the Disaster, Climate and Adversity Unit in Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Her research focuses on empowering children and young adults to articulate their strengths in advocating for climate action, and has co-developed with young people the Your ClimateSuperpowers website. With Phoebe Quinn, Katitza led the Young People’s Climate Superpowers project, and co-leads the Intergenerational Justice Stream of the Climate Collaborative Action for Transformative Change in Health and Healthcare (CATCH) Lab.
Phoebe Quinn
Phoebe Quinn is a Research Fellow in Disaster Recovery at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. Her work focuses on disaster resilience, community wellbeing and social justice, and the development of strengths-based resources relating to disasters and climate change. Phoebe’s research is firmly oriented towards informing policy and practice, and exploring how democratic innovations using digital technologies can support community decision-making around disasters and climate change. With Katitza Marinkovic Chavez, Phoebe led the Young People’s Climate Superpowers project, and co-leads the Intergenerational Justice Stream of the Climate Collaborative Action for Transformative Change in Health and Healthcare (CATCH) Lab.
Professor Lisa Gibbs
Lisa Gibbs is a Professor of Public Health and Director of the Disaster, Climate and Adversity Unit in Melbourne School of Population and Global Health and Academic Lead for Community Resilience and Public Health in the Centre for Disaster Management and Public Safety. Her research focuses on disaster recovery and resilience particularly relating to the interplay between individual and community level outcomes. Professor Gibbs also leads a range of research studies relating to child health, wellbeing, and citizenship. Prof Gibbs also leads the Teacher Climate Superpowers project, to co-develop resources with and for teachers to promote teacher wellbeing in the context of climate change.
Nathaniel Barker, MPH
Nate, an educator and holder of a Master’s in Public Health, is deeply committed to climate education. In his role, he has been part of the Teacher Climate Superpowers project, collaborating with fellow educators to co-create effective and tailored resources informed by evidence and lived experiences. Nate’s research has focused on exploring teachers’ experiences of well-being in the face of climate change, a crucial aspect of equipping educators to address this pressing issue.
In a world-first study Dr. Sally Patfield and Dr. Leanne Fray look at the importance of student aspirations and how they can be nurtured in public education…
While careers advice largely takes place in the later years of high school, young people begin to form ideas about their futures starting in the early years of primary school. How those aspirations take shape, what factors influence them, and what challenges they face in achieving their goals were some of the key questions at the heart of an Australian-first, decade-long study by us and our colleagues at the University of Newcastle.
When we first spoke to Dahlia* in 2016, she was a high achieving Year 11 student with aspirations to become a criminal psychologist. A young Aboriginal woman passionate about social justice, Dahlia had ambitions to create a different kind of future for First Nations people through reform of the criminal justice system.
However, the following year during Year 12, Dahlia suffered from severe mental ill health. Five years later, we spoke again with Dahlia who told us how the pressure of Year 12 had caused her to drop out of school:
It was just a burn out, like, I was just so overwhelmed. I felt like I was so pressured to do the best and I felt like I wasn’t the best […] then I’d get anxiety about not being as good as everyone thinks I am […] that’s why I really wanted to do this interview, because I wanted to put it out there that high school is not the be all, end all […] getting that high [Year 12] mark isn’t the be all, end all.
Dahlia’s story is just one from the thousands of interviews we conducted as part of the Aspirations Longitudinal Study, which began in 2012 and is continuing today, providing comprehensive insights into the factors which shape the career and educational aspirations of Australia’s young people – and how these aspirations actually eventuate. The insights produced by this research have significant implications for teachers, schools and communities.
The Aspirations Longitudinal Study
The Aspirations Longitudinal Study began as an ARC (Australian Research Council) Linkage Project in 2012, led by Laureate Professor Jenny Gore AM and the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre at the University of Newcastle.
The study sought to understand the way in which students from Years 3 to 12 think about the post-school options available to them, what factors shape their choices, how possibilities might be opened up or closed off, and the impact teachers, families and society can have on the pursuit of their goals.
In the first year of the study, students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 from 64 government schools in various locations across NSW undertook a survey about their career and educational aspirations. The students repeated the survey over four consecutive years which enabled us to follow students throughout their schooling, providing a range of views from Years 3 to 12, matched with NAPLAN data and other socio-educational data. We also undertook interviews and focus groups with students, teachers, parents, and community members.
In total, the study collected more than 12,000 survey responses and 1,000 interview and focus group transcripts and paved the way for ten additional studies which looked at everything from the aspirations of Indigenous students and students from regional and remote Australia, implications for the VET and Higher Education sectors, to the impact of bushfires, floods, and COVID-19 on the formation and pursuit of young people’s aspirations.
This year, we have returned to several of the schools involved in the original study to conduct a follow up study to understand how student aspirations might have changed over the decade since we first began collecting this data.
Key insights
Analysis of this data produced a number of important insights that are extremely relevant to teachers, school leaders and careers advisers, as well as education system leaders, policymakers, tertiary and higher education providers, and university staff developing community outreach programs.
Some of our findings are intuitive – we still see stubborn and highly gendered aspirations among young people. Males are more likely to aspire to careers such as Engineering, Defence, Sports, and STEM disciplines. Female students are more likely to aspire to careers such as Nursing, Teaching, Social Work and the Arts.
But many of the findings really challenge common assumptions about how students decide what they want or don’t want to pursue after school.
For instance, we found that Indigenous students have very similar career aspirations to their non-Indigenous peers, however teachers often perceive a difference. Interestingly, where the aspirations of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students really diverge is among the highest achieving students – where Indigenous students are significantly less likely to aspire to a university education career path than their non-Indigenous peers. For Indigenous students, the path to higher education often involves navigating complex intersections of racial, socioeconomic, and cultural barriers—challenges that are typically not experienced by non-Indigenous young people.
We also found that aspirations for university among students in regional and remote communities are often shaped by the presence or proximity of university to their community. While governments and universities often emphasise scholarships and other financial incentives for rural and remote students, cost is just one factor impacting young people’s desire to pursue higher education. Distance, job opportunities closer to home and emotional attachment to their communities are often of greater concern.
Starkly, another key finding of our research was that young people who don’t have parents who have been to university often discount the possibility of future study at a very young age when compared to their peers with university-educated parents. Those students without university-educated parents who go on to higher education are often referred to as ‘first in family’ students. These students sometimes fall into multiple equity categories – more likely to be Indigenous, live in a regional or remote area, and attend a relatively disadvantaged school – but they also face the unique challenge of navigating towards a new and alien environment. Our research calls for specific policies and supports for these students.
Translating these findings into practical applications for teachers and the wider community
In 2018, following the completion of the major arm of the Aspirations Longitudinal Study, the Australian Government commissioned the development of a professional development course to translate these research findings into practice.
Aspirations: Supporting Students’ Futures is a free, online self-paced course for teachers that unpacks the evidence-base produced during the longitudinal study. It provides a framework and practical strategies for teachers to understand how aspirations form and the role they can play in nurturing the aspirations of students from diverse backgrounds, with applications both within and outside the classroom.
On the back of the positive reception to this course, we also developed a second course,When I Grow Up: Supporting Children’s Aspirations, which is a free online course designed specifically for parents, carers and community members. Like the first course, it also provides evidence-based approaches for nurturing the educational and career aspirations of young people, with a particular focus on life outside of the classroom.
The Path Travelled
Thankfully, Dahlia’s story, which we began this article with, is a happy one. After leaving high school before the HSC, Dahlia took up a series of retail and hospitality jobs in her local community. But when she came across an advertisement for an Aboriginal traineeship at a local Indigenous pre-school, her passion to work with First Nations Australians was reignited. She completed her traineeship before entering university to study a combined degree in primary and early childhood teaching.
While her original career aspirations changed, the underpinning desire to create systematic change remains a driving force for Dahlia:
There’s such a push now for formal schooling to start early. But those first five years, just being able to be a kid and enjoy your childhood is just so important. I really want to give our Goori kids a chance to do that… I’m very passionate about culture so I do a lot of language and songs and dance in my practice so that these kids have culture in their lives and feel connected before they start school.
Dahlia’s story – like those of the many other young people we’ve spoken to over the course of the past 10 years – emphasises the need for all of us to understand how young people’s aspirations form, what values and beliefs drive them, and what supports – both at an individual and systemic level – we need to provide to enable them to achieve their goals.
*Names have been changed
About the Authors
Dr Sally Patfield is a lecturer in the School of Education and member of the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre at the University of Newcastle. Her research focuses on issues of equity and social justice across formal schooling and higher education, particularly in relation to educational and social inequities connected to social class, rurality, first-in-family status, race, and the changing nature of the education system.
Dr Leanne Fray is a senior lecturer in the School of Education and member of the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre at the University of Newcastle. Leanne’s research focuses on improving educational outcomes for students from complex backgrounds. Her work is centred on the impact of professional development in specialised school contexts, the effects of COVID-19 on teachers and students, and student education and career aspirations. Leanne leads the Primary Literacy team at the University of Newcastle.
This new CPL course offers participants an exciting new way to integrate peace studies into the syllabuses they teach. In this course you participate in theory-based learning about current academic research about peace. Participants will also develop the knowledge and skills to feel confident to undertake the teaching of peace studies as well as investigating programming approaches and strategies in order to apply what they learn to the NSW syllabuses.
Teachers interested in implementing peace studies in their classrooms. Primary, Secondary and TAFE teachers are encouraged to apply to attend this course.
Margaret Vos
Margaret Vos is the Director of the Centre for Professional Learning and the Centre for Public Education Research.
Theo Bougatsas
Theo Bougatsas is a NSW Teachers Federation organiser. A long-time advocate for peace education, Theo heads the Sam Lewis Peace Prize committee.
Associate Professor Jake Lynch
Jake Lynch is Associate Professor in the Discipline of Sociology and Criminology. He has spent the past 20 years researching, developing, teaching and training in Peace Journalism. For this work, he was recognised with the award of the 2017 Luxembourg Peace Prize, by the Schengen Peace Foundation.
Scholarly publications include several books and over 50 book chapters and refereed articles. Jake’s latest monograph, A Global Standard for Reporting Conflict presents results from his Australian Research Council Linkage Project, with partnership by the International Federation of Journalists and the aid agency, Act for Peace. It includes data from original fieldwork in Australia, the Philippines, South Africa and Mexico. Jake served for nine years on the Executive Committee of the Sydney Peace Foundation, and for two years as Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association.
Before taking up an academic post, Jake enjoyed a 20-year career in journalism. He was a Political Correspondent for Sky News, at Westminster, and the Sydney Correspondent for the Independent newspaper, culminating in a role as an on-air presenter (anchor) for BBC World Television News.
Jake’s new novel, Mind Over Murder, is the first crime fiction to be set in the world of EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing: a powerful therapeutic technique for treating unprocessed trauma. The book is published by Next Chapter.
Melanie Morrison
Melanie Morrison is the Director of the Sydney Peace Foundation, a foundation of the University of Sydney. She is a human rights advocate who leads the Foundation’s governance, strategic initiatives, partner and stakeholder outreach and communications programs. With a Master’s Degree from the University of Sydney, she has led communications and research programs across the corporate, non-profit, government and university sectors. She is an award-winning journalist, researcher and producer for her work in Australia and overseas.
This course is designed for teachers in the earlier stages of their career. It will help Early Career Teachers in developing their practice, with an emphasis on their professionalism. The course will provide participants with practical strategies and deeper understanding of the theory and practice of good management and good teaching.
Further details to follow.
29 July 2025 at NSW Teachers Federation, 23-33 Mary Street, Surry Hills
$220
Lila Mularczyk
Lila Mularczyk’s commitment to education was recognised by being honoured with the Order of Australia Medal (OAM). Lila has been contributing to public education for 40 years. She currently is undertaking a portfolio of work including leading or participating on multiple National and State Education Boards and Reference Groups and projects (including, PEF, ACE, UTS, UNSW, NSWTF and CPL.) tertiary professional experience officer, coach and mentor, UNSW Gonski Institute, State and Vice Chair ACE, supporting HALT’s, tertiary lecturer, work in and for schools, research, contract work, critical friend, innovation projects etc.
Prior, Lila was the Director, Secondary Education, at the Department of Education. Immediately prior to this, Lila was President of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council (SPC) from 2012 to 2016. As President and as a school Principal, Lila represented Public Education around Australia, and frequently globally, at conferences over many years. Lila was Principal at Merrylands High School for 15 years until 2016.
Judith Wilks, Mark Werner and Angela Turner demonstrate the importance of learning from Aboriginal approaches to caring for Country as they tackle climate change in the classroom…
Preface
I was surfing the other day and the conditions started to change. A rip had formed where I was sitting, and water was heading back out to sea. This is not unusual, and I instinctively moved to ensure that I remained in the best position. I could have stayed where I was (but I’d probably still be there). I am also a high school teacher. My desire to learn fuels my passion to teach. As both a teacher and surfer I rely on my instincts and situational awareness to ensure my students are engaged and focused on their learning. If what I am doing is not working, then I must make changes for the benefit of my students’ learning. The ongoing challenge for teachers lies in the confines of our scope of control. I can make incremental adjustments (within my role description as classroom teacher) that will have some benefit to student outcomes. I cannot however undertake the seismic shift that is so desperately needed to support the ongoing growth of our kids’ learning. If under some miracle I could, and let’s set aside the fact that we are in a crippling staffing shortage, then I would suggest one strategy: ‘onCountry learning’ to remind ourselves what teaching was like before schools had fences, and off campus excursions didn’t involve half a dozen layers of risk assessment paperwork. [Mark Werner]
Introduction
In 2021 a collaboration between school teachers, university teacher-researchers, and a local council established an outdoor learning setting in a park known as ‘Dawkins Park Reserve’, in Macksville, rural NSW. This group coalesced around a shared desire to promote local resilience to climate change impacts, and to strengthen the local community’s understanding and engagement with local Indigenous cultural and scientific knowledge. This park was chosen as a setting primarily for two reasons: it was within walking distance of a high school, and it was suffering real and visible biodiversity breakdown due to the effects of climate change.
Being part of this collaboration as two university researchers (Wilks and Turner) was a rich experience in terms of the lasting relationships built with local teachers and moreover, witnessing the enjoyment and significant growth in the students’ understanding of climate change. In Turner and Wilks (2022) we recounted our experiences and research findings, concluding with a concerning paradox: as the benefits of place-based environmental learning become better known, in practical terms it is getting harder to achieve with teachers increasingly burdened by layers of paperwork, risk assessment protocols, policies and procedures. The resulting disembodiment of learning from the natural environment is especially concerning, given that the endeavour of education has its very roots in nature, where over 250 years ago Jean-Jacques Rousseau recognised nature as the child’s best teacher (Taylor, 2013). Caught in the current risk-averse milieu, many educational systems have forgotten these roots in the face of increasing litigation, and educational trends that marginalise the connectedness between nature and children and young people. (Wilks, Turner & Shipway, 2020).
Our particular focus here is to convey the experiences of collaboration that involved the teaching of climate change. We share how a different approach to teaching and learning in this rural setting might be sustained into the future through engaged environmental and Indigenous cultural learning, and creating a smoother transition for students between primary and secondary school.
The enactment of positive change is not possible without first acknowledging the need for a new direction. In the high school learning environment, collegiality and the courage to innovate are important ingredients for success in cross-curriculum and cross-cultural teaching and learning. In 2020 a small collegiate of like-minded teachers saw an opportunity for their Year 7 students to investigate climate change through authentic, active, environmental learning experiences. Even though well-established relationships with local Aboriginal elders and Knowledge holders already existed, it was critical to invite them into our teaching collegiate. Consequently, they became integral to the students’ outdoor learning experiences.
The authors all live and work on Gumbaynggirr Country located on the NSW Mid-North Coast, NSW. Mark Werner is a proud First Nations man from the Torres Strait, a Dauareb and member of the Ulag Clan, a clan of the Zagareb Tribe of Mer. He is also a Geography/History high school teacher.
Background
At Macksville High we were seeking to create a different type of learning environment, albeit on a shoestring budget. In order to better engage Year 7 students, we were compelled to try something new, and it turned out to be something that became a highly influential force in our teaching — the creation of a teaching and learning Year 7 ‘Hub’ [Mark Werner].
The Hub was a learning environment established to provide students with a smoother transition from local primary ‘feeder’ schools into high school. It was designed with the goal that a foundation year of focused interdisciplinary teaching and learning would support the academic success of students, and address some of the poor student learning habits we were noticing. Students coming into Year 7 are confronted with up to fifteen different teachers. This not only impacts on their sense of connectivity and engagement with the new learning environment of high school, but also on the teaching staff’s capacity to develop an understanding of each student’s strengths, capacities and inherent learning styles.
The Hub space was an open learning space (conjoined classrooms) housing up to fifty students, three teaching staff (English, Maths, Science and Geography/History), and one student learning support officer. Each lesson could be delivered to the whole group or, alternatively, a targeted skills intervention lesson could be taught on a rotation basis.
The Year 6 – Year 7 transition is often experienced by students as a difficult period, thus there was a significant focus on student wellbeing. For students being part of this core group provided them with the continuity and consistency lacking in the traditional Year 7 structure. The establishment and maintenance of consistent classroom expectations provided a foundation for improved learning outcomes within a safe and predictable place, more attuned to the students’ social and emotional needs. The teacher-student ratio afforded staff the space to develop stronger relationships with students, target their skills, identify curriculum overlap, and withdraw struggling students to a different space without disrupting the learning of their peers.
Improving our knowledge, understanding and agency about climate change is urgent. The rapid deterioration in Earth’s natural systems presents unprecedented challenges for teaching and learning that is capable of encompassing, and bringing meaning and immediacy to the scientific, the ecological, the social, the economic/political, the moral, the cultural and the ethical dimensions of climate change (Haraway, 2015). It is not surprising that in recent years climate change learning has been embedded into Australian school curricula. In Australia, climate change learning in schools must provide the scope across key learning areas for students to be able to acquire deep knowledge about the many dimensions of human-caused ecological change. Learning about climate change therefore has played an increasingly significant role in NSW school curricula.
A series of cross curricular, collaborative learning programs and resources was developed by teachers in the Hub prioritising learning about climate change, and, under this umbrella, teaching the themes of ‘identity’ and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and sciences. The environmental learning activities at the Park were designed to deepen students’ knowledge of climate change through authentic learning about water quality, biodiversity, ecological and technological processes in Dawkins Park Reserve.
Activities and resources were designed to promote engagement with the Australian cross curriculum priorities Sustainability and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures. Students learned about how our ecological landscape is shaped through natural and human-caused factors; the influences of this on animal behaviour patterns; how humans interact with ecosystems; and how these interactions may be achieved in a sustainable way. At Dawkins Park Reserve students were exposed to ‘real world’ hands-on activities such as collecting water ‘bugs’ as the students called them [microorganisms], identifying flora and fauna, observing bird migration patterns, testing the water, and using maps, photos and light microscopes to analyse their water samples.
Findings
The interconnectedness of fieldwork skills combined with a highly relevant case study at Dawkins Park Reserve engaged both students and teachers, and through this experience they developed the necessary knowledge to understand climate change at a deep level. But we were onlyable to examine climate change in any depth because of the Hub model. Previously there were very few interdisciplinary options and subjects were taught in silos.
Well established community relationships with local Aboriginal elders and local Knowledge holders also proved to be pivotal. Students learned about clan size and what the size of the group should be to sustain itself. They learned about sustainable lifestyles in the Indigenous context, how a typical day was broken up in the clan, and about structured lore/systems. They enjoyed the Gumbayngirr cultural narratives through stories, dance, song, and art.
Students participated in an ‘On Country’ cultural immersion field trip. This excursion was organised to support the unit of learning called ‘Identity’. During this experience students and staff were offered an alternative learning environment. This alternative learning environment shifted behaviour and attitudes of both students and staff. The logistics of the journey focused on ensuring Aboriginal perspectives from across their valley were well represented. The day started with a Welcome to Country in Bowraville, delivered by a local knowledge and language holder, who then shared the history and narrative of his town and community. The immersive experience continued as the students travelled to Nambucca Heads and were met by traditional owners, elders and knowledge holders who shared narratives, culture and experiences. A smoking ceremony and the re-creation of a local dreaming narrative (using the students as actors and participants) enriched the students and teacher understanding of local Aboriginal culture and identity. The final leg of the journey was to Scotts Head. Once again cultural protocols were observed, and students and teachers learnt more about the Gumbaynggirr creation narratives regarding the how the sea was created and how waves were made. This was followed by the playing of Traditional Indigenous Games on the beach and reflecting on the history, purpose and relevance of these activities
Teachers’ interest, enjoyment and excitement in teaching climate change were stimulated by these events. Commensurately there was an increase in their self-efficacy and confidence as their knowledge grew and their understandings and perceptions deepened. It was clear that the growth in these attributes was connected to their own learning about climate change at the park. Teacher A recounted their journey as follows:
I think at the beginning … I kind of had that attitude of ‘nah Climate change’ … I’d glaze over. But now I think I have a better understanding myself, and I think the enjoyment of teaching it, through the process that we followed … has improved my knowledge of climate change, as well as my enthusiasm for teaching it, and passing it onto the students, and encouraging them to do something [about it].
Teachers sharedthat at the Park they had been caught up in the same feelings of excitement and the fascination as the students when they were discovering new knowledge through for example, water sampling activities. And the growth in both teacher and student knowledge and enthusiasm had an entwined, spiraling effect, with each promoting the other. The teachers became co-inquirers with their students because they were also making deeper connections between the different scales of climate change. Teacher B said “I think the connections I was able to make within my own personal life, and how little things that I can do can make a big difference on a bigger picture, certainly grew.”
While the teacher’s learning design and programming benefitted, they also stated that they now found it easier to link teaching about climate change with the Australian Curriculum’s Sustainability priority area. Furthermore, they envisioned the Park becoming a ‘centrepiece’ for future learning about the impacts of climate change at the local level, as it offered great affordance in terms of teaching, learning and benchmarking about key concepts in geography such as place; space; environment; interconnection; scale; and change. Fieldwork is geography; it is at its very heart (Laws, 1984; Bliss, 2009). From Teacher C’s perspective, the experience “gave me more time to spend investigating on a local level, and a pathway to teach it through because sometimes you think, ‘how am I going to embed this into the program?’ but here, if it’s the centrepiece of the program, it’s really simple.”
The teachers related that teaching climate change through an Indigenous lens gave students the opportunity to hear about Aboriginal perspectives of pristine environments and no trace practises. The Aboriginal guides embedded language into their stories. Although the Park is not an Aboriginal sacred site as it is human built, there are many sites in the district and the area has strong links to Gumma, where fresh water supply and the Nambucca River link to the sea. Students looked at the variety of vegetation types available, and their traditional Gumbaynggirr names and purposes. Students were shown the Lomandra grasses used for weaving baskets, and were encouraged to speculate about what type of things these baskets might have carried. Teacher D explained:
We’ve tried to open up their understanding as to what Indigenous communities are about and different aspects of their lives and we’re certainly incorporating a little bit more of that to increase the understanding because for some of them they really had limited understanding of pre-European settlement in the area.
Students came to realise that there were many places around them, in their daily lives, that have stories. Student A shared: “Just knowing about it makes you feel more connected”, and another (Student B) said, “Stories make it easier to remember things.”
Teachers not only observed the stimulation of their students’ interest, passion, enjoyment and engagement in learning about climate change, they also noticed their students were reflecting far more deeply about their responsibilities in relation to it. The following observations were made in this respect:
There were a lot of light bulb moments, a lot of students not only learning the information, but then also getting a bit of a fire in their belly, really wanting to change, really wanting to make action, and asking questions like what can they do about it to change. they’re kind of at that age where they’re starting to understand the world isn’t perfect. And we’re kind of called, aren’t we, it’s all our responsibility to all do something about it for the future. (Teacher A)
I guess for my generation we kind of feel responsible for what’s happened, and these guys kind of inherit a lot of our shortcuts and kind of short-sightedness. Whereas you get some students who kind of straight away think, they just lay the blame, and see the dire consequences straight away. And then to get other students that kind of perk them up by saying, “How about this and for solutions? (Teacher B)
Students were excited about seeing things in ‘real life’ at the Park and teachers could see them getting ‘hooked in’ to their learning there. Teachers were not having to deal with behaviour issues because the setting catered for a wide variety of learners and all students were so engaged: “they really benefit … all of them … from experiential learning where they’re hands on. They’re measuring … they’re testing … they’re collecting, analysing and comparing … they’re really focused and on-task” (Teacher C). This reinforced for teachers how important it is for students to have place-based, authentic learning experiences and to “try and get the kids out of the classroom and give them those real-life experiences as much as we can” (Teacher D). When they returned to classroom learning the teachers noticed a real enthusiasm borne from what they had done at the Park. Students were motivated to venture hypotheses, do their own research, and give class presentations on what they had found out.
In their discussions with researchers before they went to the Park, students used terms such as ‘nervous’, ‘devastated’ ‘not confident’ to describe their thinking about climate change. Teachers observed that as a result of the activities their students demonstrated a greater confidence and a richer vocabulary when postulating connections between the local and the global in relation to climate change. They related that through being at the Park students were able to link their learning about climate change to a place with which they were familiar and in so doing enriching their knowledge and understanding. As Teacher A explained, “having something to pin it on”, and Teacher B observed “We’re having conversations with the students where they wouldn’t have made the links previously … floods in West Germany, record temperatures in Europe”; and another:“… for them to get an understanding about the relationship between fossil fuels and carbon emissions…It was kind of like just opening the door for a lot of them. They really hadn’t thought about it before, even though they’ve heard some of the phrases and things like that. But for them to get an understanding of the causes and the links, and also some of the possible solutions”.
According to Teacher D, the conversations they were having with their students and what they did at the park had opened up their thinking to beyond their ‘small world’ to “what’s happening around them and how that impacts everybody else in the world”. Moreover, Teacher B observed that the program had encouraged students to have bigger thoughts beyond themselves, to “go deeper … and tie a lot of things in with climate change.”
Reflection
It not surprising that in recent years learning about climate change has played an increasingly significant role in NSW school curriculum. There are now frequent mentions of the term climate change, with Sustainability framing the entire curriculum as one of the three Australian curriculum priority areas. Nevertheless, such curriculum elements represent relatively new and emerging fields of study in both primary and secondary curricula, and teachers have had had to quickly ‘come on board’ with teaching them across all curriculum areas, as they are no longer just located within the traditional domains of geography and science. The students perceived the potential for cross curricula learning about climate change emanating from their experiences at the Park. They expressed a desire to see more art, mathematics, and writing, in addition to geography and science, associated with their activities there.
Through professional channels many teachers have anecdotally reported a lack of confidence in teaching climate change despite the many excellent professional development opportunities and resources that have been created for teachers. The problem has been that the majority of these are text-based and designed to be delivered in a classroom setting – either in digital or paper-based format. This has led to a focus on ‘climate science’ and environmental ‘issues’ (Loughland, Reid, and Petocz, 2010) privileging knowing facts about climate change over more experiential, sensory engagements inhibiting the creation of deep knowledge which, as Jensen and Ross argue, is so vitally important underpinning “all educational skills we value…knowledge begets knowledge”, (2022, p. 23). The experiences of teachers and students at Dawkins Park most certainly aided the development of deeper content knowledge about climate change.
Students related that they loved learning outside the classroom, that they felt more focused and “a bit more free” (Student B). Paradoxically, they felt “less distracted… if that makes sense” (Student C). They enjoyed learning through their senses – listening; seeing; touching and feeling; and smelling – and in so doing they felt more connected to the environment. They were more able to make connections between the local and the global manifestations of climate change; the interactions between plants and animals and the seasonal influences relating to climate change. Teachers observed students to be more curious, interested, engaged and both student and teacher appreciation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural, language and scientific knowledge increased. Teacher feelings about self-efficacy in teaching climate change also improved.
As others have experienced in similar, recent programs (Burgess & Thorpe, 2024; Spillman et al., 2022), we found that well established community relationships with local Aboriginal elders were vital to the success of the program. The students thoroughly enjoyed the telling of Gumbayngirr stories by the Aboriginal knowledge holders. Through embedding an Aboriginal voice in the activities, students’ cultural awareness and engagement with holistic, spiritually-based connections to Country were enhanced. Story telling involves feelings and emotions, and helps young people to follow a series of events through a story’s structure, and to understand choices people have made in the past and the consequences of those choices (Seefeldt, Castle & Falconer, 2014, p. 232).
The Hub enabled the Year 7 student cohort to be taught as an entity, as opposed to separate classes, by a core group of teachers enabling a significant focus on student wellbeing. Students were provided with continuity and consistency during what is often experienced as a difficult transition from primary to secondary school. The synergy generated through the combined efforts of highly trained professionals created momentum and enthusiasm within the learning environment. The collaboration facilitated an even deeper mutual regard for colleagues’ professionalism, their discipline and content-specific knowledge. Sharing a teaching space between colleagues and freely exchanging ideas and feedback empowered and invigorated teaching.
Conclusion
It is imperative that our students are climate change literate. This involves understanding how our ecological landscape is shaped through both natural and human-caused factors; the ways in which water is integral to the survival of all living things; how this influences animal behaviour patterns; how humans interact with ecosystems, and how these interactions may be achieved in an environmentally sustainable way.
It was obvious to us as teachers that students were developing understandings about climate change at a deep level. As clearly beneficial as it was to take the students to this rich environmental and cultural learning setting, we were onlyable to examine climate change to the depth we did because of the added affordances that the Hub model offered for enriching teaching and learning. That we managed to interconnect learning about climate change with fieldwork attached to a highly relevant case study at Dawkins Park Reserve which clearly engaged the students was achieved in large part because of the Hub. Learning stations have been created at the Park for future outdoor environmental education activities, and their continued use will augment students’ understandings about climate change vulnerabilities, risks and adaptation responses.
Just as swimmers and surfers must react to the sudden formation of an ocean rip, it is imperative in teaching to change what is not working. When you change your perspective on historical, entrenched challenges in education you can deliver enhanced student engagement and success. Macksville High School in rural NSW had the courage and conviction to embrace remodelling education delivery to its newest students when it literally flung open the school gates to a world of possibilities.
Postscript
Although the ‘physical’ Hub no longer exists, relational links between the participating teachers remain strong, and the possibility still exists for cross curriculum project-based learning because of these links. Ironically, external factors associated with climate change conspired to erode teacher motivation around its continuance. These included COVID-19 and the accompanying lockdowns and extended periods of learning from home, teacher shortages and time constraints largely borne out of the COVID-19 driven workforce-wide impacts, and prolonged flooding in the region causing major disruptions to everyday life. Possible areas of future focus are teaching space redesign, classroom furniture, and redistribution of students into subject-specific skill rotation groups that coalesce around social interactions, friendship cohorts and abilities.
Burgess, C., & Thorpe, K. (2024). How teachers can use the Learning from Country framework to build an Aboriginal curriculum narrative for students. Journal of Professional Learning. NSW Teachers Federation.
Laws, K. (1984). Learning geography through fieldwork. In J.Fein (Ed.), The Geography teacher’s guide to the classroom (pp. 134-145). MacMillan.
Loughland, T., Reid., & Petocz, P. (2010). Young people’s conceptions of the environment: A phenomenographic analysis, Environmental Education Research, 8(2), 187-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620220128248
Seefeldt, C., Castile, S., & Falconer, R. (2014). Social Studies for the preschool/primary child. Pearson.
Spillman, D., Wilson, B., Nixon, M., & McKinnin, K. (2023). ‘New Localism’ in Australian Schools: Country as Teacher as a critical pedagogy of place. Curriculum Pedagogies. 43, 103-114
Taylor, A. (2013). Reconfiguring the natures of childhood. Routledge.
Turner, A., & Wilks, J. (2022) Whose voices? Whose knowledge? Children and young people’s learning about climate change through local spaces and indigenous knowledge systems, Children’s Geographies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2022.2139591
Wilks, J., Turner, A., & Shipway, B. (2020). The risky socioecological learner. In A. Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles., A. Lasczik., J. Wilks., M. Logan., A. Turner, A., & W. Boyd, (Eds.), Touchstones for deterritorializing socioecologcial learning: The anthropocene, posthumanism and common worlds as creative milieux (pp. 75-99). Palgrave Macmillan.
About the Authors
Mark Werner
Mark is Daureb and part of the Ulag Clan which is a clan of the Zagareb Tribe of Mer in the Torres Strait. He is a secondary trained teacher and holds a Masters in Indigenous Languages. He lives and works on the Mid North Coast of NSW. He is passionate about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, the environment and creating On Country immersive learning experiences.
Dr Judith Wilks OAM
Is Adjunct Associate Professor at Southern Cross University, Faculty of Education, and also Adjunct Associate Professor, Nulungu Research Institute of the University of Notre Dame Australia. She is an experienced educator with a significant research, teaching and community engagement track record in regional education services delivery in both the higher education and schooling sectors. In 2023 Judith was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for Services to Education. Her research interests and publications stretch across a number of fields. These include the promotion of agency, resilience, and citizenship skills through participatory methodologies for children and young people in environmental education learning settings. Judith has also been an active member of national research collaboration (Nulungu Research Institute) that has sought to promote access, participation and success in higher education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. In recent years she has undertaken considerable research work in the Western Kimberley region focusing on strengthening the learning experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander higher education students living in remote locations.
Dr Angela Turner
Dr Angela Turner has 22 years higher education teaching experience. She holds a Bachelor of Education Technologies (Hons) and a PhD in Food Technology education. Angela has been recognised for integrating the domains of teaching and research through a Southern Cross University Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Citation (2018); School of Education Recognition Award (2018); Australian College of Educators Award (2017). Her research projects have received competitive grant success over the years for actively forming university-school community engagement with rural primary and secondary school communities that have advanced teaching, learning and assessment in the classroom as an ongoing educational enterprise. She is currently an Adjunct Senior Lecturer/Researcher at Southern Cross University and a curriculum advisor for the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) curriculum reform for Technological and Applied Studies 7-10.
Melissa O’Meara looks at nurturing the learner psyche, strengthening family bonds, and shaping the affective domain in non-traditional learning environments…
High school graduations are pivotal milestones in an individual’s educational journey, wielding profound influence on the learner’s psyche, family dynamics, and the affective learning domain. This impact is particularly pronounced in cases where the learning journey has been non-linear, involving unconventional paths and challenges. Additionally, the significance of high school graduations extends to non-traditional learning environments, such as high school equivalency programs, where the achievement of graduation holds even greater importance. I will explore the importance of high school graduations, with a specific focus on non-traditional learning environments, drawing connections between the learner psyche, family dynamics, and the affective domain.
High school graduation serves as a transformative event that significantly shapes the learner’s psyche. In the context of a traditional learning journey, the achievement of this milestone represents the culmination of years of academic growth and personal development. Erikson’s psychosocial theory (Cherry, 2023) highlights the importance of successfully navigating the developmental task of identity versus role confusion during the adolescent years, and high school graduation serves as a critical marker in this process.
For learners in non-traditional learning environments (such as TAFE NSW’s high school equivalency programs), where the path to graduation may be non-linear, the psychological impact is even more pronounced. The learner’s psyche becomes intricately connected to the process of overcoming challenges, showcasing resilience, and achieving academic success. This achievement not only validates the learner’s intellectual capabilities but also instils a sense of pride and accomplishment that can positively shape their self-identity. Non-traditional learning environments, specifically TAFE NSW high school equivalency programs, cater to individuals whose educational journeys have often taken unconventional paths.
TAFE NSW, as the public provider, serves learners who face various challenges, such as academic setbacks, personal responsibilities, disability or the need for flexible learning options. A raft of research suggests that such disadvantage is often compounded by social structures of power further minimising an individual’s ability to achieve in a mainstream learning environment. Therefore, high school graduations hold unique significance in the TAFE NSW environment, symbolising triumph over adversity and resilience in the face of challenge.
The attainment of high school graduation is not solely an individual triumph, but also a shared victory within the family unit. In traditional learning environments, families play a crucial role in supporting learners, and the celebration of high school graduation becomes a testament to the collective efforts and sacrifices made. In non-linear learning journeys, families often face additional challenges, and the achievement of graduation becomes an even more significant source of pride. Moreover, family dynamics are intimately tied to the affective domain. High school graduations, particularly in non-traditional learning environments, strengthen familial bonds by providing a shared sense of accomplishment. The affective domain within the family unit is enriched through the collective emotions of pride, joy, and resilience. The celebratory nature of graduation ceremonies fosters a positive emotional connection among family members, contributing to a supportive environment that recognises and values the learner’s unique journey.
Graduations also have deep intergenerational impacts, shaping not only the graduate’s life, but that of their family and subsequently their communities. According to Sahirah and Mohd (2024) educational attainment often sets a precedent for future generations. Further, they found that a student’s academic performance was directly influenced by a mother’s educational accomplishments, with following generations viewing this as something attainable and tangible for themselves. It is not unreasonable to conclude then that this leads to the breaking of systemic access and equity issues and improves socio-economic status and opportunities for the family. It also benefits the communities in which they live, as graduates have higher levels of community engagement, are more likely to take on community leadership, mentorship and role modelling, thereby contributing to societal improvements as their credibility, due to having qualifications, lifts. There are further societal and generational effects, as education is linked to increased positive health outcomes, an increased ability to access healthcare and an increased capacity to adopt healthier lifestyles. This is in conjunction with a shift in social and cultural values due to an increase in critical thinking and the adoption of new principles that are aligned to diversity, inclusion and a challenge to community norms.
Research by Reed et al (2012) emphasises the importance of recognising the diverse needs of learners in non-traditional settings. High school equivalency programs, designed to provide an alternative pathway to graduation, acknowledge the complexities of learners’ lives and offer tailored approaches to education. The achievement of graduation in these environments becomes a symbol of empowerment, demonstrating that individuals can successfully navigate non-linear paths and attain academic success despite challenges. In the TAFE environment, the affective domain plays a central role in the educational experience. High school equivalency programs often cater to adult learners, and the affective domain becomes a key factor in shaping their attitudes, motivations, and emotional connections to education. The achievement of high school graduation in these settings can have a profound impact on learners’ perceptions of themselves and their lifelong educational journey.
Learners in high school equivalency programs often harbour a range of emotions, including anxiety, self-doubt (imposter syndrome), and a desire for self-improvement. If the current trends around school refusal and childhood and adolescent mental health continue, neurodiversity will be a huge driver of students to the TAFE NSW learning environment, as students fail to thrive in the mainstream ecosystem (evidence of an overworked, underfunded, and under-resourced learning environment and not a failure of teachers). Given this range of emotions, and current learner trends, there is a clear link that graduation serves as a catalyst for positive emotional experiences, contributing to a more favourable attitude toward education and the creation of lifelong learners.
Moore and Anderson (2003) emphasise the importance of recognising and addressing the affective needs of learners to enhance educational outcomes and, thereby, meeting TAFE NSW’s core value of creating lifelong learners. Graduations in non-traditional learning environments also influence learners’ motivations. The accomplishment becomes a source of intrinsic motivation, inspiring individuals to pursue further educational and career goals. The affective domain, in this context, becomes a driving force behind continued learning and personal development.
High school graduations wield profound importance for learners, their families, and the affective domain, particularly in the context of non-traditional learning environments. The achievement of graduation shapes the learner’s psyche, providing a sense of pride, persistence and resilience in the face of challenges. Family dynamics are enriched through shared victories, characterised by a supportive learning environment and are often symbolic of a student’s first experience of educational success. Improvements within the affective domain, which is intrinsically connected to attitudes and motivations, foster a lifelong love for learning. Recognising the increased significance of high school graduations in non-traditional settings like TAFE NSW and a consistent approach to such – as opposed to shooting a student out of a funding system – is crucial for promoting inclusivity and acknowledging the diverse pathways individuals take to achieve educational success.
Sahirah Ag Isha, D. N., & Rahaya Mohd, H. S. (2024, March 7). Determinants of students’ academic performance among undergraduate students in Universiti Malaysia Sabah: A structural equation modelling approach. The 6th ISM International Statistical Conference 2023, 3123(1). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0192226
Melissa O’Meara is a teacher at TAFE NSW. Her specialities include neurodiversity and LLND. The youngest daughter of migrants, Melissa came to teaching late in life after finishing her first degree in 2018. Prior to this Melissa spent nearly 20 years as a qualified financial planner and bank manager.
Melissa is currently the Women’s Contact for TAFE Teachers Association as well as a member of the Teacher Workload Committee. Melissa is proud to teach, learn and live on Ngambri, Ngunnawal and Gundungurra country. She predominately teaches on the high school equivalency programs at Goulburn TAFE Campus, as well as the occasional specialist program.
Melissa has been active in the NSW Teachers Federation since joining the teaching profession and credits her sanity to activism and the collegiately, compassion and collaboration that it brings to her teaching practice.
