Whole school priorities Archives

What Are We Going To Do About Writing?The “neglected R”.

Lorraine Beveridge makes the case for high quality writing experiences in every classroom…

A concerning, declining trend in writing national data over time (NSW Department of Education, 2017) suggests that the teaching of writing could possibly be “a neglected R” (Graham, Hebert and Harris, 2015; Korth, et al., 2017 and Sessions, Kang and Womack, 2016). Writing is a literacy skill, relevant to all key learning areas in school and a necessary communication skill in life. Early literacy includes the interdependent skills of reading, writing and oral language, and it has been suggested that the prioritised focus on reading has led to limited attention to teaching writing as well as inadequate research on early writing instruction (Korth et al., 2017). Declining writing results “casts a light on our teaching practice”, (Fisher, Frey and Hattie, 2017 p167), how we teach writing, including the component writing skills and writing processes, our understanding of how students learn to write and suggest a need to investigate writing strategies independent of other literacy skills. Writing is a crucial skill linked to reading and academic success, and engagement in society more broadly (Cutler and Graham, 2008; Gerde, Bingham and Wasik, 2012; Mackenzie and Petriwskyj, 2017). This paper is a result of my research and reflection on practice.

I begin with a focus on an historical overview of learning to write. Then, I outline strategies identified in the literature that work in improving student writing skills and outline examples from my research and the wider literature of best practice in the teaching of writing. The paper concludes with how we, as a teaching profession, can move “onwards and upwards” in ensuring that students are effective written communicators who are also passionate writers and, as a result, their love of writing and chances of success at school and beyond are maximised.

Historical overview of learning to write

Teachers need a shared understanding of how children learn to write as a starting point in improving student writing. (Calkins and Ehrenworth, 2016). Learning to write is often described as a progression from scribbles on a page to conventional text (Genishi and Dyson, 2009), but it is so much more, linked to emotions and communication, and the progression is not always a linear one (Mackenzie and Petriwskyi, 2017). Beginning writing behaviour usually includes exposure to quality texts, models of good writing, classroom talk, drawing and captioning pictures, and tracing over words. In addition to copying captions, students replicate words from around the room and environmental print. Copying print leads to students remembering word forms and writing them independently. At the same time, students are inventing spellings of words that they wish to use in their independent writing, eager to share the stories that are important to them, based on their growing oral language, phonemic awareness, alphabetic knowledge and sight word vocabulary, in doing so, learning about the writing process through writing (Clay, 1979; Fountas and Pinnell, 1996). In the beginning stages, it is common to see pretend writing, scribble, and copying text. By encouraging early writing experimentation, which includes miscellaneous marks as students master letter formations, a range of print conventions and the use of invented spelling, students are encouraged to create meaning from print and share the messages that are important to them, fostering a love of writing and utilising students’ growing graphological and phonological knowledge.

Through partaking in early writing, students are making connections between graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds). They are learning about the skills that constitute writing, and that writing is a process that conveys meaning to the reader. Students have a meaningful context to practise and apply their growing awareness of how language works. It can certainly be challenging to decipher students’ early independent writing attempts. However, it is important that we as teachers work hard to determine the message that students are attempting to convey. By seeking to understand students’ intended written message, we are valuing their work, and encouraging them to expand their writing repertoire and take pleasure in it. We are modelling the purpose of writing, which is to convey a message to the reader, “through responding to and composing texts…, and learn(ing) about the power, value and art of the English language for communication, knowledge and enjoyment” (Board of Studies, 2012 p10).

Figure 1: Supporting students’ early independent writing attempts

Student writing can be viewed through a formative assessment lens (Wiliam, 2011, 2016, 2018), as a measure of writing growth, an indicator of the impact of teacher practice and to signpost where to next in writing instruction for individual students. Student writing samples provide rich evidence of learning, reducing the over-reliance on narrow test scores to monitor progress (Mackenzie and Petriwskyi, 2017; Fisher, Frey and Hattie, 2017). By keeping regular chronological logs of student writing, teachers and students have evidence of writing growth, as a basis for where students are at, and where they need to go to next in their learning, “monitoring student success criteria” (Hattie, 2012 p19). Syllabus scope and sequences, as in the NSW English syllabus (NSW Board of Studies, 2012) and the National Literacy Learning Progressions (NLLP) (ACARA, 2018) are useful tools for teachers to identify achievement and plan for individual student instruction across the various elements of literacy. Additionally, the

NLLP are potentially useful for students to determine their own learning intentions and success criteria (Wiliam, 2018), providing a framework for them to self-monitor their progress.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) released the Literacy Learning Progressions (NLLP) in 2018, to assist Australian teachers in identifying, understanding and addressing students’ literacy learning needs. In NSW, the NLLP, although not mandatory, are an additional tool to support teachers in implementing the English syllabus (NESA, 2012), which drives teaching and learning in classrooms. Teachers use evidence of student writing to appraise practice, drawing on the English syllabus and NLLP to inform decision making on where to next for individual students, in doing so personalising writing instruction. Similarly, by familiarising students with the indicators of the progressions, they have access to tools to monitor their own learning (Fisher, Frey and Hattie, 2017). By students identifying what they can do using their own writing, and using the progressions as a guide, they are formulating future writing learning goals, and taking ownership of their learning. Student self-assessment is identified as a powerful formative assessment technique (William & Leahy, 2015).

In a recent classroom study, Korth et al., (2017) found that it is rare to observe teachers modelling or scaffolding writing for their students, opportunities for students to write in the classroom are decreasing, possibly due to a myriad of pressures on teachers and a crowded curriculum, and most important of all, teachers explicitly modelling writing processes to students makes a difference to student writing progress. Teacher modelling is a form of direct instruction, specifically targeting identified student needs. Through participating in writing in the classroom, teachers are demonstrating the importance of writing and their enjoyment of writing to their students, including drafting, editing and proof-reading. Modelling writing powerfully demonstrates the writing process, providing opportunities for mentoring and instructional sharing of skills in-context (Calkins, 1986). Through teacher modelling, students see the importance of writing through teachers demonstrating their love of writing and, at the same time, explicitly addressing identified student writing needs.

When they write, young children learn to use sounds and corresponding symbols. During composing, beginning writers say words slowly, and stretch words out to identify, then write, the individual sounds that they hear. Early writing attempts often contain grammar errors. These lessen as students’ grammatical competence increases through direct teaching and immersion in quality texts, increasing their oral language, phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension (McCarrier, Pinnell and Fountas, 1999; CIS, 2018), similar skills that students draw on in learning to be readers. Through writing, children manipulate sounds using symbols and learn how written language works.

Figure 2: Example of early writing attempt

Reading and writing are complementary processes. Just as it is important to model early reading skills explicitly for students, it is equally important to model early writing skills. For example, directionality can be taught using quality texts as models, as can the place of spaces between words.

A small number of letters can make many words, drawing on students’ graphological and phonological skills, establishing mental models and increasing their control over written language (Beck and Beck, 2013). Through building on what is already known, students rapidly extend their written vocabulary. Sentence starters are commonly used to teach basic grammatical knowledge and to scaffold students’ early writing attempts. For example, the sentence stem, “Here is…” is an example of the recurring principle (Clay, 1979) that students can build on in their own writing. Many children’s picture books are based on this principle.

Figure 2: Innovation on text using the recurring principle

Holland (2016) encourages teachers to find quality texts containing features that they wish to explore with their students, matching texts to lesson objectives and identified student learning needs, while at the same time providing authentic models for students to draw on whilst writing, propelling them forward in their writing learning journey. ACARA released a text complexity appendix to the NLLP, which explicitly states that “throughout their school years, students will be exposed to texts with a range of complexity” (ACARA, 2018b p2). The text complexity appendix identifies four broad levels of texts, which are simple, predictable, moderately complex and sophisticated texts. These text levels are referenced throughout the NLLP. Simple texts are the simplest form of continuous texts, with common usage vocabulary, language, structure and content. Predictable texts include a more diverse vocabulary than simple texts, there are a range of sentence types and the text structure is usually predictable. Moderately complex texts increase in difficulty in terms of the subject specific language used, use of figurative language and more complex language structures. Finally, the fourth level of texts complexity refers to sophisticated texts, which may draw on academic and extensive technical language. Sophisticated texts contain a wide range of sentence types, complex structures, content and print layout features. The purpose of the text complexity appendix is to encourage teachers to consider the features of texts that they use in their class English programs to ensure that the texts match student identified learning needs and the specific purpose that teachers are targeting in their teaching.

Strategies that improve the teaching and learning of writing

The teaching of writing does need to be a priority. We as a profession need to ensure that those conditions that accelerate student growth in writing are being practised in classrooms and are available to all students. Although it is unrealistic to expect that all strategies would be successful for all students, the literature identifies clear instructional strategies that are more likely to achieve student writing success than others.

Logic dictates that increased, dedicated time to write in schools will improve student writing (Korth et al., 2017; Mo et al., 2014; Bromley, 2007). Mo et al. (2014) calls for a “writing revolution” in which the time spent writing at school is doubled. This strategy not only includes providing regular writing opportunities for students to write frequently and fluently using a growing repertoire of skills, but also teachers providing intentional, regular instruction that addresses students’ specific writing needs, often referred to as point-of-need “mini lessons” (Korth et al., 2017). It is important for students to have time to write daily in an unstructured way, including free personal choice writing that will not be critiqued, writing in which they can engage their emotions and tell the stories that they dearly wish to write about. This may take the form of journal writing or some other developmentally appropriate task for emergent writers, possibly symbolic representations, including “think- draw- write”. By putting school-wide structures and systems in place to ensure that all students write every day, schools are growing a culture that values writing and the messages that students’ writing contain. When students are also provided with explicit and regular feedback on their writing, research suggests that students’ writing skills increase dramatically (Hattie, 2012; Simmerman et al., 2012; Cutler and Graham, 2008).

Undeniably, writing is a complex task. Cutler and Graham (2008) also identify the need to spend more time teaching writing. They find that many teachers take an eclectic approach to teaching writing and call for a more balanced instructional line of attack between time spent independently writing and learning writing skills and processes. There are two clear components to effective writing teaching, the explicit teaching of writing skills, which sits alongside the second, possibly more important component, which is teaching the writing process. Writing instruction focusing on a skills-based approach is not enough. It does not evoke a passion for writing. Writers go through a process, a series of steps to compose a piece of writing that needs to be modelled and taught explicitly. The writing process includes collecting and organising information, writing a draft, revising, editing and rewriting. To learn about the writing process, students require protected time to write, choice over the topic they wish to write about and targeted feedback from teachers (Calkins and Ehrenworth, 2016; Cutler and Graham, 2008; Korth et al., 2017).

Education systems need to do a better job of providing targeted teacher professional learning in writing that addresses school and students’ identified writing needs. (Mo et al., 2014; Cutler and Graham, 2008). A focus of a recent professional learning course for middle school teachers delivered over a term, and spanning 12 schools, was teachers, collaboratively reflecting on the cognitive dimension of teaching writing, as Oz (2011) describes writing as, “the operation of putting information, structured in the brain, into print” (p251) . Teachers were thinking about and sharing how writing is taught in their local context, and brainstorming how they could possibly do it better, an example of the power of collaborative professional learning, in which teachers learn with and from each other (Beveridge, 2015).

Figure 4: Middle Years Writing Course reflection (2017)

In the middle years writing course (Brassil, Bridge and Sindrey, 2012), teachers identified what they regard as going well in the teaching of writing, what still needs be a focus and ideas for improvement. Table 1 below lists participating teachers’ responses as to how they were addressing the teaching of writing in their schools and where they needed to go to next in the teaching of writing in their local contexts to address the learning needs of their particular students.

What’s going well in the teaching of writing?	What still needs to improve?	What are ideas for improvement?
ALARM[1] (cognitive scaffold, framework for writing).	Clarify the learning intention at the lesson outset (and encourage all staff to use this language).	Identifying audience and purpose of writing. Unpacking rubrics together so students are clear about what the task involves. Co-writing rubrics with students drawing on syllabus/ progression indicators to increase student ownership of learning.
SEAL, TXXXC[2] (secondary paragraph writing strategies).	Students to reflect on their writing (self /peer-assess).	Activities and strategies that improve sentence structure. Teacher professional learning on grammar with a shared focus and understanding of how language works.
Using writing tools; a range of writing apps	Discussing ideas together before we begin writing (dialogic teaching).	Identifying the writing demands of the key learning areas and map the commonalities across KLAs.
Sharing of ideas/ writing strategies with staff facilitates professional discussion.	Coherence and consistency of teaching writing across the grades.	Building subject specific vocabulary to draw on when writing. Subject-specific teachers to agree on a consistent approach for teaching writing school-wide.
Making writing a school focus and linking effective teaching of writing to other school foci.	Assessment of writing from a school-wide perspective that all staff share ownership of.	Improving grammar knowledge in context, through explicit teaching and using quality texts as writing models.
Students believe that they can write, irrespective of skill level.	Providing students with quality writing models / texts and explicit quality criteria for writing.	Generating ideas to write about together at the outset of a lesson (in creative ways, to put the magic back in the teaching of writing).

Table 1: Writing in the Middle Years course reflection (2017)

Increasing classroom discourse, where the teacher and students together discuss and clarify complex tasks, has an effect size of .82, double the effect size of .4, which is generally regarded as one year’s teaching for one year’s growth (Fisher, Frey and Hattie, 2017 p3). In the writing classroom, this may look like the students and teacher participating in joint writing construction, and modelling metacognitive processes, which could involve asking self-questions (for metacognition and self-reflection) whilst writing. Self-questions relate to the learning intentions of the lesson, and whether students have explicitly addressed these in their writing.

Figure 5: Tools to support students asking self-questions.

For example, in Figure 5 above, the pedagogical framework strategies “WILF and WALT” provide visual prompts to students of the learning intention: What are we learning today? (WALT), and success criteria: What am I looking for? (WILF). Such lessons support students in self-monitoring and evaluating their writing. Self-questions students may ask from the WILT and WALT framework include:

Have I used adjectives in my writing? Where are they? How do they make my writing more interesting?
Where are my spaces between words, full stops and capital letters? Have I used them correctly? How do they help my writing make sense to the reader?
What language choices have I made to make my writing more interesting? How successful was I in achieving this?

Calkins and Ehrenworth (2016) outline three guiding principles for teachers to keep in mind when teaching writing:

Students are actively involved in the writing process
They share what they write
They perceive themselves as writers.

Increasing classroom discourse may look like students discussing their current performance and the criteria that they will use to measure their writing success. It has been stated that “the more clearly they [students] can see the goals, the more motivated they will be [to achieve them]” (Fisher, Frey and Hattie p43). Overall but not exclusively, the aim of classroom discourse in writing lessons is for teachers to gradually release writing responsibilities to students (Kaya and Ates, 2016, Pearson and Gallagher, 1983). To become expert teachers of writing, teachers must become skilled at supporting students in achieving their (self-) identified success criteria (Hattie, 2012). The NLLP are a useful guide for students to identify what they can do, and where they need to go to next in their writing learning journey.

Writing at school has infinite possibilities to integrate learning across the key learning areas which include various genres inclusive of imaginative, persuasive and information texts (Board of Studies, 2012). An emphasis on writing across different content areas reinforces the integrative nature of writing and its high gravitas in all key learning areas at school, and in life. For example, writing class books about a specific topic or activity, describing the attributes of characters or animals and writing expositional texts in science, are all evidence that writing is much more than narrative. Students need to write arguments and information texts; in fact, a wide range of texts across all subjects. In turn, teachers need to clearly state how writing skills learned in one classroom or key learning area can support developing writing skills and processes in another, making explicit and strengthening the writing links across the key learning areas for students.

School leaders have a responsibility to facilitate the organisation of opportunities for teachers and students to develop and share what good writing looks like. This can be achieved through ensuring teachers have time to collaboratively plan for and review student writing. This could involve using the samples provided in the Assessment Resource Centre as authoritative sources, analysing student exemplars locally and collectively studying published writing and quality texts. By developing shared teacher understandings of what good writing looks like across the school, writing expectations for students are aligned and cohere, clarifying and democratising writing instruction from one classroom to another (Wiggins, 2000).

Through exposure to and deconstruction of a range of quality texts, students learn writing strategies through engaging with real authors and identifying how they engage readers in their texts. At the Australian Literacy Educators (ALEA) National Conference in Adelaide in 2016, I attended a writing session presented by an Australian Capital Territory (ACT) community of schools. The schools reported that the most significant factor that contributed to their collective, improved and sustained writing results, and increased student engagement in writing, was a shared “Visiting Children’s Author Program” in which students learned to “write like a writer”. Exposure to quality texts improves student writing through providing inspiration that they talk about, share and build on in their own writing. A rich diet of a wide variety of texts provides opportunities for critical and creative thinking, and sustained conversations about authors, real texts and aspects of texts that engage readers (Haland, 2016).

At a recent middle school writers’ workshop at a local high school, it was reported to me that the first activity of the day involved students voting with their feet. They moved to a specific corner of the room if they enjoyed writing at school and considered themselves good writers. Similarly, students who considered themselves poor writers and didn’t enjoy writing at school moved to the opposite corner. Students placed themselves along the human continuum based on their feelings about writing in the school context. Overwhelmingly, the vast majority of the group of around 90 students from the local high school and its primary feeder schools, regarded themselves as poor writers who did not enjoy writing at school.

Whether this informal poll is generalisable data is admittedly dubious. However, when I arrived at the school at the end of the day for teacher professional learning, I found a group of highly engaged, happy and proud students, eager to share their writing with me. The lucky students had spent the day being motivated to write by a high profile children’s author who shared his authentic secret business in relation to “writing like a writer” with the students. He provided them with insights and writing models from (his) quality texts, narrative, humour and multimodality that totally engaged and engrossed students in the writing process. Students’ shared excitement and pride in their writing efforts and their successes were tangible and infectious. The students had been mentored in writing by a “real” writer, providing a genuine context for their writing. The author worked hard in encouraging students to weave their emotions into their writing, delving into the affective domain, which involved a coming together of their hearts and minds in the act of writing.

It is suggested that the creativity and originality that promotes imagination, expressiveness and risk taking in the writing process is what is missing in the way that writing is taught in schools today, possibly as a result of the way writing is currently measured (Ewing, 2018, Frawley and McLean-Davis, 2015). Increasingly, the decline in writing results Australia-wide is attributed to the movement away from students engaging with processes linked to the creative arts, including imagination, creativity, flexibility and problem solving, processes that have transformative potential (Rieber and Carton, 1987). It has been suggested that the creative magic of writing is possibly what is missing in the teaching of writing in schools today. “What if we brought the magic back into the teaching of writing? It’s in teachers’ hands” (Adoniou, 2018).

Figure 6: Middle Years Writing workshop (2017)

Teaching writing in the digital age

Our students are products of a digital world, and they seem to not respond well to the writing teaching practices of the past (Johnson, 2016; Kaya and Ates, 2016; Vue et al., 2016, Engestrom, 2001). Table 2 below shows how our digitally mediated culture has impacted the way we teach writing, classified by Engestrom (2001) as the old and new way to teach writing. Teaching writing with new technologies requires a shift in how teachers conceptualise writing teaching in their classrooms.

This is now	That was then
Process approach sits alongside writing skills focus.	Product based approach.
Draws on methods and motivators used by published authors. Learning to “write like a writer”.	Teaching writing usually the domain of the classroom teacher.
Both writing skills and processes taught together.	Skills-based focus.
Writing tasks have real-world purpose. Focus on communicative action/ meaning.	Compliance discourse, for example, praise for product.
New understandings and models of authoring and publishing texts. Focus on how language works. Functional view of grammar.	Grammar focus.
Use of an increasing range of digital writing tools and web based apps and programs.	Pencil/pen and paper writing tools.
Writing and sharing to a wider [often electronic] audience.	Traditional publishing of stories and books.
Authentic writing tasks across all key learning areas.	Writing was the domain of subject English.
Need to combine digital and non-digital media in teaching writing.	Writing was taught using non-digital media.

Table 2: Writing in a digitally mediated culture (adapted from Engestrom, 2001)

Students (and adults) are forever writing, in the forms of text messages, blogs, emails, snapchats, Facebook posts, Tweets, Instagram posts and so on, suggesting high and increased engagement in, and importance of, writing as a result of our digitally mediated culture. The use of digital tools has changed the composing and publishing process. Yet there seems to be a divide between school writing, typified by low engagement and writing in the real world, typically a high engagement task. We need to build a bridge between school and home writing, so teachers and students alike see the high gravitas of both as forms of written communication and making meaning. Digital tools are increasingly part of our world. Well-considered professional development and support is required, to address teacher dispositions in relation to using digital tools in the writing process while, at the same time, building teacher and student skills and expertise that will be sustained and built upon in practice.

As we discover more about neuroscience and human cognition, we are increasingly learning about how multiple formats of texts (multimedia) have a positive effect on learning through reducing the cognitive load on working memory, resulting in improved information processing and understanding (Johnson, 2016; Vue et al., 2016; Wilson and Czik, 2016). Computers do need to be a more integral part of the writing classroom. However, we need to authentically integrate them into learning tasks to improve pedagogy (Cutler and Graham, 2008). Most students have access to digital technology and use it to stay connected. It is their preferred mode of text-based communication. The challenge as we learn more through research seems to be how we can increasingly integrate digital tools to promote quality writing through real-world, authentic and semiotic (meaning-making) writing tasks; and at the same time “hook into” the high student engagement associated with digitally mediated communication (Johnson, 2016; Jones, 2015).

I witnessed one school’s attempt to span the home-school writing divide, similar to the “bridgeable knowledge gap” (Hattie and Yates, 2013). Stage 3 students wrote stories, illustrated them, captured them digitally, they then displayed them as QR codes in their classrooms accessed via their mobile phones. In this way, the old and new ways of teaching writing come together in an engaging format, easily shared both locally and with a wider electronic audience.
However, focusing on digital tools in the writing process is not enough, as these can fail on application, and students need to be independently competent written communicators, to succeed at school and in life. The goal is for students to achieve capability writing in authentic ways, to the real world. Authentic writing involves students understanding the relevance and importance of what they are writing, often publishing to a wider, electronic audience.

Turning around school writing results: a case study

In 2013, I surveyed 160 schools and from these data, selected 4 case-study schools to determine the impact and sustainability of collaborative professional learning (Beveridge, 2015). One of these schools had an ongoing focus on the teaching of writing which resulted in a significant and sustained “turn around” in their writing results. They achieved this enviable outcome through a range of whole school strategies that other schools could possibly learn from, and are worthy of sharing to a wider education audience.
The school is classified as a metropolitan government primary school, with an enrolment of 166 students (ACARA, 2012). There are seven full-time teaching staff, a non-teaching principal and one class per grade. It is a small country school, situated on the outskirts of a large regional centre. Contrary to the extant literature (Little, 2006; Louis, Marks and Kruse, 1996; Stoll et al., 2006), I did not find that school size is a clear determinant of whether professional learning is sustained, as this school, as well as a large high school case study, both sustained their learning over a number of years, whilst my other two case study schools did not. It seemed to have more to do with a school culture of collaboration and sharing that facilitated the changes that resulted in professional learning being sustained (Beveridge, 2016).

Specific strategies the school had firmly in place that supported a sustained improvement in writing, are loosely coupled to the framework of factors that sustain collaborative professional learning (Beveridge, 2016), and include:

Leadership strategies

The Principal was engaged in professional learning as an equal partner, and participated in team teaching sessions alongside teachers.
The school leadership team monitored teacher workloads to prevent teachers from taking on too much change at any one time.
Teachers were allocated 30 minutes additional release, to discuss and focus on the writing progress of three targeted students per week with the Principal.
The Principal and the class teacher jointly monitored student writing data.
The Principal was aware of and actively interested in students’ writing progress.

School-level strategies

Writing time was a priority in all classrooms, at a set time, every day.
There was whole school buy-in of a spelling program that staff co-designed, daily, at an assigned time. There was ongoing reflection on and adjustment of the spelling program based on formative assessment data and identified student learning needs.
Teacher professional learning was regarded as a high priority. Regular collaborative professional learning meetings where teachers discussed latest research, how to implement relevant writing strategies in their classrooms and what they looked like in practice, was facilitated by an external literacy coach. The literacy coach worked towards making herself redundant by building school capacity that would remain in the school when she moved on.
Teachers had between session tasks to complete in their classroom, concretely linking theory with their daily practice of teaching writing.
Collaborative reflection on what worked in the local context, based on evidence, was a feature of professional learning meetings.
Professional learning cohered with the school plan and focused on one target at a time, with leadership support.

Teacher-level strategies

A literacy coach worked in-class, shoulder to shoulder alongside teachers. She also had timetabled one-to-one regular release time with teachers to reflect, and provide feedback on their individual goals, teaching practice and student learning.
The class teacher targeted three students per week to discuss writing goals with the Principal and literacy coach, who supported them in-class in achieving their goals. In this way, over a term, each student received specific, intensive individualised writing instruction in addition to their regular class support.
Teachers organised and implemented their own peer evaluation and feedback sessions with whomever they felt most comfortable among their colleagues. Peer observation and feedback sessions were timetabled regularly.
The literacy coach observed teachers’ lessons, and provided targeted feedback to assist them in achieving their jointly planned professional learning goals. Class teachers put a lot of effort into showing the literacy coach that they were using her advice in practice. Professional trust was tangible.
A range of multimodal writing tools were used by teachers and students to create texts, share their texts with a wider audience and stay connected both inside and outside the classroom.

I have viewed a number of conference presentations and teach-meets at which teachers from the school presented their writing program, and shared their exemplary practice with wider educational audience. The staff and students shared a love of writing. The strategies that the staff learned were firmly embedded in their daily practice, have been expanded and built upon, and are now regarded as “the way we do things around here” (Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Fullan and Hargreaves, 1991; Schuck, et al, 2012). Additionally, other schools visit the school to view first-hand teaching practice that resulted in them not only “turning around” their writing results but also sustaining their improved results over time. In opening up their writing classrooms to others, teachers were sharing the good news about what works in the teaching of writing across the broader education landscape.

…we collect data for writing and it’s really specific data for each student. Every student in my class gets feedback at least once a week on a piece of writing and that’s all part of what we’re doing. It’s hard. You see the improvement in student outcomes and it’s so worth every bit. (Natalie, team leader)

There was a clear, coherent developmental path to improving writing. It had both an individual and collective focus. There was ongoing teacher support from colleagues, a literacy coach, who was a “knowledgeable outsider” (Beveridge, Mockler and Gore, 2017) and acted as a critical friend to the school, as well as supportive school leadership. Strategies such as timetabled teacher meetings and team teaching sessions with the literacy coach, as well as data tracking meetings with the Principal, ensured that teachers were supported and learning was targeted to address both teacher and student needs. Professional learning which focused on improving student writing was like a continuum, a complex
interplay of affect, cognition, and metacognition, where teachers acted and collaboratively reflected on learning processes and ways to improve them in an ongoing cycle of improvement and reflexivity.

The “neglected R”: onwards and upwards

Reading and writing are complementary processes. Like reading, writing needs to be a priority across all grades and key learning areas, every day… both electronic and traditional writing, to get our message across and make ourselves understood. Too often in the literature it is termed “the neglected R” (Mo et al., 2014; Sessions, Kang and Womack, 2016; Graham, Hebert and Harris, 2015). A stronger systems focus on teaching writing is required to move and improve student writing results.
Teachers are in a privileged position to be able to ignite students’ passions in writing, and “put the magic back” (Adoniou, 2018) into the teaching of writing. One means of fostering a love of writing is by engaging students in writing through drawing on quality texts. In this way, students know and experience what great writing looks like, and jointly (and individually) experience the emotions that quality writing evoke. Through dialogic instruction, teachers are able to explicitly teach those skills that students demonstrate that they need in their independent writing, at the same time ensuring that there is designated, frequent class time for students to write and share their own written messages. Students require regular, authentic opportunities to write and share their work with others because writing is a communicative tool, the goal of which is to convey meaning to the reader and engage readers in meaning making
Do you think our identities as teachers of English and literacy more closely align with reading than writing? Have we unconsciously devalued writing?
(Frawley and McLean-Davis, 2015)

[1] ALARM is a learning and responding matrix to support student learning.

[2] SEAL and TXXXC are student writing scaffolds.

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Dr Lorraine Beveridge has been a NSWTF member for all of her 35 years teaching in the NSW Department of Education. She has held a range of executive roles, both in schools and supporting schools, building teacher capacity across the state. She currently works in curriculum. Her passion is building a love of literacy in students and teachers, and Quality Teaching. Lorraine’s PhD research is in the area of collaborative teacher professional learning.

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‘The way we think about teachers’: Media representations of teachers and their work in Australia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Teachers should’ provides a good example of this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politicians using curriculum as a tool to push their ideology onto teachers

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

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

Fast policy and policy borrowing

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

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

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

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

Ideological entrepreneurs

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

Political framing

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

The game board of Social Media and Old Media

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

Our case study: From Rufo to Latham

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

Source: Heggart et al., 2023, Page 3

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

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

So what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How teachers can use the Learning from Country Framework to build an Aboriginal curriculum narrative for students

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

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

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

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

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

What does the research in Aboriginal education tell us?

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

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

Acknowledging yet overcoming the challenges of doing this work

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

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

Educational policies supporting Learning from Country

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Learning from Country Framework

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Journal Articles & Book Chapters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How-teachers-can-use-the-Learning-from-Country-Framework-to-build-an-Aboriginal-curriculum-narrative-for-students Download

Co-designed professional learning in the classroom: An opportunity for reflexive agency

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

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

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

Key ingredients of effective Professional Learning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Features of Co-designed Professional Learning

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

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

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

Outcomes of co-designed professional learning

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

This CDPL was beneficial for teachers in multiple ways.

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

The CDPL was beneficial for students in their ability to:

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

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

Where to get research support?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The new wave of change: Artificial Intelligence and Education

In a world of rapidly advancing Artificial Intelligence, Leslie Loble and Kelly Stephens provide teachers with a framework of questioning when making decisions on using edtech to enhance teaching and learning. . .

In an era characterised by rapid technological advancements, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), we find ourselves at the brink of a ‘fourth industrial revolution.’ This revolution, fuelled by AI, is not just about the technology itself but about the profound impact it has on our daily lives – ‘a fundamental change in the way we live, work and relate to one another.’(World Economic Forum, 2024)

What does this mean for education? As teachers we are always encountering change as we strive to support students to live and learn in the contemporary world. Inherently curious and questioning, teachers are frequently early experimenters with new ways of doing things, especially if they sense benefits for their students or their profession. At the same time, teachers and education leaders are highly developed critical thinkers, with an inclination always to test the ‘why’ before adopting the ‘what’.

Nobody is better placed to navigate this new technological wave.

It is a little over a year since ChatGPT was released, creating excitement and alarm in equal measure. Oh wow, it can write a Shakespearean sonnet about a microwave, or help create a lesson plan. Oh dear, it can write to a rubric and generate a very passable essay. What does this mean for high-stakes assessment tasks? What does this mean for day-to-day teaching?

Before ChatGPT, the educational technology landscape was already being shaped by AI, with tools like adaptive learning platforms and predictive analytics available to support teaching and learning experiences. Only a year on, many applications have already incorporated generative AI into their platforms, and this number will doubtless grow. For example, the Microsoft suite offers the AI-enabled Copilot tool, Google now has Gemini and Khan Academy its Khanmigo chatbot.

Teachers are always looking for the best ways of supporting learning for the students in their classroom. NSW public school teachers are also always looking for ways to help lift the experiences, learning and outcomes for students experiencing disadvantage, and to tackle the enduring problem of educational inequity. There is strengthening evidence that good technological tools might be able to help us in this quest. To do so, however, they need to meet certain conditions. As outlined in the report Shaping AI and edtech to tackle Australia’s learning divide (Loble and Hawcroft, 2022), to create positive impact and avoid harm, edtech must be well designed, effectively used, and carefully managed.

There is more work for us to do as a society to ensure that these conditions are met – to make sure the edtech our students and teachers use are of high educational quality, ethical, safe and effective – without creating additional work for teachers and schools.

This article contributes to the conversation by suggesting five questions you might like to ask when considering using edtech in your teaching program. Spoiler alert: it’s all about doing what you already do – teaching first, technology second. Used well, good edtech can, and should, enhance and amplify your professionalism and expertise. In education, it is imperative we keep the human in the lead.

Five Key Questions to Consider

1.Which tool or resource should I choose?

We know that quality teaching tools and resources can make a difference in the classroom; teachers can, and do, invest significant time creating or finding resources they believe will work best. Edtech, including generative AI, has only increased the range of resources available to choose among. For example, even five years ago, there were nearly 500,000 learning applications just on the Apple and Google app stores.(Holon IQ, 2019) Resource publishers, including edtech providers, frequently approach schools with the intent of selling their products, often with a significant, ongoing price tag.

In making any choice:

Start with your whole-school strategy. We know that cohesive effort across a school community drives results. What are the key priorities in your school plan? Is there a useful app on the NSW Department of Education’s approved list?
Think about the curriculum and your pedagogy. We know that teachers have the greatest in-school impact on student outcomes. Does the tool align with, and support, quality teaching practice in your subject/s? A good edtech application should amplify teacher expertise and professionalism, not diminish it. For example, the right tool might help you carve out time to work with individuals or groups of students with differing needs, by providing an adaptive platform for others to use during that time.
Ask about the evidence base. Is it easy to find out what research informed the development of the tool? Was it informed by how students learn? Is there any research showing how well it has worked, in what circumstances and for whom?
Other markers of a quality tool include accessibility, and the security, privacy and ethical use of teacher and student data. There is more about accessibility and inclusion below, as well as about schools’ and teachers’ responsibilities regarding student data. Beyond this, it is worth asking, what type of student data a tool captures? (for example, does it include keystroke data and other monitoring of student behaviour?), who owns the data, and how it might be used?

It is often difficult to find the answers to these questions, and even when it is possible, it can take up precious time. There are some organisations that seek to make this process easier for teachers. Closest to home is the Department’s Online Learning Tools Catalogue. Tools listed here have been through an assessment process and integrated with the Department’s single sign on. Further afield, other organisations that review materials include EdReports,¹ Edtech Impact,²or Digital Promise.³

2.(How) Does this app help me understand more about my students’ learning?

Technology-based learning applications typically offer the ability to tailor student learning through adaptable lessons, activities, and assessments. For example, one tool offers possible lessons and activities around three broad levels – ‘core, deeper learning, or challenging’ – to allow teachers to scaffold and differentiate their instructional strategies based on student and class capabilities. Another tool gives students the option to select ‘something easier,’ or ‘something harder’; others use adaptive ‘branching’ to meet a student’s ability level and then move onto a greater challenge.

Most technology-based tools also now incorporate data dashboards for teachers, with displays that provide quick, easily accessed insights to student understanding and progress. Some tools also offer data on learning ‘flow’ or engagement. These data can be at quite granular levels (for example, by student, task, skill, curriculum unit and so forth) giving detailed, useful feedback to support a teacher’s plan and approach. Where a learning application also allows students to see their own data, it may help develop metacognitive skills (which are aligned with positive learning behaviours and outcomes (OECD, 2012).

But not every tool will work equally well or match a teacher’s classroom and students. The utility and impact of any tool rests strongly on how and when teachers decide to integrate it in their programming. Teachers deserve good information to understand the capabilities of the tool and its pedagogical design (as outlined above) and professional support to keep education technology use in proportion and firmly within their plan and control.

3.(How) does this application help me teach the full range of students in my classroom?

The craft of teaching depends on meeting a student at their point of learning development and need. We know that any classroom will have students working at a span of levels, sometimes a very wide span. NAPLAN data tells us that by Year 9, the range can be as great as five years.⁴At the same time, approximately one in four students in NSW public schools are living (and studying) with disability. (ACARA, 2023) Eighty-six percent of these are studying in mainstream classes in mainstream schools. (NSW Department of Education, 2022) Meeting the needs of all these learners is key to improving the equity of learning outcomes for students in NSW and beyond.

Technology should have an inbuilt advantage in meeting the needs of diverse learners, due to the potential to adjust even simple settings, such as font size, or incorporate translational functions (e.g., text to speech, or speech to text). These inbuilt functions are worth looking for. In addition, many applications are web-based. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 cover a wide range of recommendations for making web content more accessible, including accommodations for blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these, and some accommodation for learning disabilities and cognitive limitations. These guidelines address accessibility of web content on desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices.⁵

Adaptive learning systems are some of the best researched edtech applications and can help support students to develop mastery, including identifying and filling in learning gaps, and providing stretch learning opportunities.^[1] Teachers are also exploring the use of generative AI to make it easier and less time-consuming for them to adapt resources so that all students can effectively access the curriculum. For example, generative AI can quickly and easily rewrite passages of text for students with different reading levels. Of course, it is critical that teachers check any output from a generative AI tool for accuracy and suitability, from the perspective of their professional expertise.

Accessibility and inclusion don’t stop at technical adjustments and adaptability. Edtech – like all human creations – can be culturally insensitive or biased. An aspirational goal is that developers listen to and work with the communities most likely to be impacted by their products. Over time, we hope to see greater use of co-design and universal design for learning principles.

4.What type of AI does this application include?

Not all edtech includes AI and when it does, it is not necessarily generative AI. Very broadly, AI can be thought of in two types:

‘Good Old-Fashioned AI’ (known as GOFAI) – This encompasses a range of technologies including the chess program (Deep Blue) that beat Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997 and the technology that serves up recommendations to us in our daily life – videos to watch, songs to listen to, people to befriend. These technologies have advantages of memory and computational force that far exceed human capacities (Tegmark, 2017). An upside of some of these applications is that they can learn from your choices and improve their advice to you. A downside is that they can contribute to a polarisation of views. You may notice that you rarely see suggested information that offers a different perspective from the one you already hold (hence the term ‘echo chamber’).
Generative AI – This technology is distinctive in that it doesn’t just analyse existing data and predict the future on the basis of the past but creates new data instances that resemble the data it ‘trained’ on. For example, ChatGPT was trained on large sections of the internet, including all of Wikipedia – approximately 300 billion words. (Hughes, 2023) Generative AI tools can generate language, but also images and increasingly long video segments. Unlike older types of AI, the generative AI models are so complex that even the creators cannot understand exactly why a tool produces the output that it does. (Heikkila, 2024)

Generative AI has raised particular concerns from an educational perspective, not least because it is known to ‘hallucinate.’ Because ChatGPT writes like an articulate human, it can be hard to spot when the tool is just making things up.

Other issues – such as bias – can arise regardless of the type of AI involved. The output of any algorithm is only as good as the data set it draws on, and the rules it applies to that data, both of which may reflect systemic inequity.⁷ This has been shown across many fields including education.⁸For example, the use of an algorithm to predict A-level results for UK students during COVID was found to systematically disadvantage students from state schools and had to be abandoned. (Gulson et al, 2021) Examples like this are powerful reminders that humans, not machines, remain accountable for decisions. When we do use technology to support student learning or streamline our work load, we need to stay abreast of its recommendations and adjust them when necessary.⁹

5.What data or information should I put into an app?

Personalisation can come at a price, and that price can be privacy. Recommendation engines improve the more they ‘know about’ (the more data they have on) the user. Data is highly valuable to many companies, including Edtech companies [KS2] . Data that can be linked to specific students, known as personally identifiable information (PII), falls under the Australian Privacy Act 1988 due to its sensitive nature. Personal information is any information that can be used to identify an individual directly or indirectly. It could be a student’s name, address, class, school, family details, fingerprints, or a combination of information from which a student or other individual can be identified.¹⁰Applications accessed via the NSW Department of Education’s Online Learning Tools Catalogue have data safeguards in place. Outside of that framework, the responsibility for the appropriate treatment of personal data rests with teachers and schools, with advice available.¹¹It is worth noting that ChatGPT uses your content – uploaded files, prompts and chat history – to train the model, unless you choose to opt out.¹²

Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence can be a polarising topic, represented as the answer to all our problems, or an impending risk to humanity. Educators are well positioned to avoid such extremes, approaching edtech firmly as a tool, not oracle, in service of the human pursuit of teaching and learning. If you would like to stay connected with our work seeking to ensure that edtech is leveraged for quality and equity across Australian schools, consider signing up to our mailing list here.

1. https://www.edreports.org/

² https://edtechimpact.com/

³ https://digitalpromise.org/

⁴ https://saveourschools.com.au/funding/close-the-achievement-gaps-between-rich-and-poor/; https://grattan.edu.au/news/our-schools-abound-in-under-achievement/

⁵ https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

⁶ A synthesis by Escueta et al. (‘Upgrading education with technology: Insights from experimental research’, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 48, No. 4, 2020) finds that adaptive learning systems offer ‘enormous promise,’ with two-thirds of the high-quality research studies examined demonstrating substantial and statistically significant effects. Similarly, a meta-review of Intelligent Tutoring Systems by Kulik & Fletcher (‘Effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems: A meta-analytic review’, Review of Educational Research, Vol. 86, Issue 1, 2016) reports a mean effect size of 0.62 from their analysis of 50 controlled experimental or quasi-experimental evaluations of ITS in elementary, secondary, and tertiary institutions. This effect size is considered moderate-to-large in social sciences and well above many other traditional education interventions.

⁷ For example, a data set ‘may not be representative or may contain associations that run counter to policy goals’ (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning: Insights and Recommendations, Washington DC, 2023), p.33.

⁸ For a very readable look at the way AI and algorithms can replicate and reinforce existing inequities, see Ellen Broad, Made by Humans: The AI Condition (Melbourne University Press, 2018).

⁹ Even when automated processes are explicitly designed as decision-support tools, we humans can defer overly to them due to our ‘trust in automated logic, lack of time and the convenience of relying on pre-processed data’ (Anna Huggins, ‘Addressing Disconnection: Automated Decision-Making, Administrative Law and Regulatory Reform,’ UNSW Law Journal, Vol. 44, No. 3, 2021), p.1060.

¹⁰ https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/education-for-a-changing-world/guidelines-regarding-use-of-generative-ai

¹¹ https://education.nsw.gov.au/policy-library/policyprocedures/pd-2024-0481/pd-2024-0481-01

¹² https://help.openai.com/en/articles/5722486-how-your-data-is-used-to-improve-model-performance

ACARA (2023) ‘School Students with Disability’ ACARA website: https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/school-students-with-disability

Cobbold, T (2023 November 28) ‘Close the Achievement Gap Between Rich and Poor’ Save Our Schools (SOS) Australia website: https://saveourschools.com.au/funding/close-the-achievement-gaps-between-rich-and-poor/

Digital promise website: https://digitalpromise.org/

EdReports website: https://www.edreports.org/

EdTech Impact website: https://edtechimpact.com/

Gulson, K et al (2021 November 22) ‘Algorithms can decide your marks, your work prospects and your financial security How do you know they’re fair?’ The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/algorithms-can-decide-your-marks-your-work-prospects-and-your-financial-security-how-do-you-know-theyre-fair-171590

Heikkila, M (2024) ‘Nobody Knows How Technology Works’MIT Technology review website: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/03/05/1089449/nobody-knows-how-ai-works/

Holon IQ website (2019 May 9) ‘Global Education Apps and the Android Ecosystem’ https://www.holoniq.com/notes/global-education-apps-the-android-ecosystem

Hughes, A (2023 September 26) ‘ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about OpenAI’s GPT- 4 tool’ BBC Science Focus website: https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/gpt-3

Hunter, J (2023 January 29) ‘Our schools abound in under achievement’ Grattan Institute website: https://grattan.edu.au/news/our-schools-abound-in-under-achievement/

Loble, L and Hawcroft, A (2022) Shaping AI and Edtech to Tackle Australia’s Learning Divide, University of Technology Sydney: ).

NSW Department of Education (2022) Progress Report: Improving outcomes for students with disability: https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/teaching-and-learning/disability-learning-and-support/our-disability-strategy/Progress_Report_Improving_outcomes_for_students_with_disability_2022.PDF

OECD (2012) Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools, OECD Publishing: https://asiasociety.org/files/equity-and-quality-in-education_0.pdf

Tegmark, M (2017) Life 3.0: Being human in the age of Artificial Intelligence, Penguin: p.78.

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) website: https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

World Economic Forum (2024) Fourth industrial revolution website: https://www.weforum.org/focus/fourth-industrial-revolution/

Professor Leslie Loble AM is Chair of the Australian Network for Quality Digital Education. Leslie is a recognised leader of public purpose reform, both in Australia and the US. Leslie has spearheaded significant reform in school, tertiary and early childhood education, including the Gonski funding reforms, and establishment of the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, the Centre for Learning Innovation and the Catalyst Lab, within the NSW Department of Education. Leslie holds governance roles at the Australian Education Research Organisation and Copyright Agency and appointments to government expert advisory panels in education. She is Industry Professor at the University of Technology Sydney and affiliated with its Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion. Leslie is also a Paul Ramsay Foundation Fellow.

Dr Kelly Stephens is an experienced education policy and research leader. Kelly served as Director, Strategic Analysis within the NSW Department of Education’s Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation for a decade, where she played a leading role in the development of the School Excellence Framework and the fostering of evidence-based practice through What Works Best. Kelly has also held leadership roles in the Centre for Learning Innovation, the Education for a Changing World program, and as Director, Schools Policy, where she managed the strategic policy framework for K–12 education. Kelly supports the Network and its associated work program as Director, Edtech and Education Policy.

The-New-Wave-of-Change-Artificial-Intelligence-and-Education Download

Making Equity Matter

Geoff Gallop challenges us to commit to the aspirational goals of ‘excellence’ and ‘equity’ in education in a world of meritocratic hubris. . .

“Equity in education as the fundamental education policy is important not only for economic reasons, but it is a moral imperative especially in those countries that have made a promise to give all their people a fair go”. (Sahlberg and Cobbold ,2021)

Any commentary on what we ought to expect from the nation’s education system needs to start with the Education Ministers and their Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019). Its over-arching and aspirational goals for the system as a whole are “excellence” and “equity”. I interpret this to mean (1) a system that is continually improving in educational performance and (2) one that pushes hard to ensure all who access it can realise their talents and capacities. So too, our ministers say, it ought it be a system that helps create “confident and creative individuals” with “high expectations for their educational outcomes”. These objectives should never be far from our mind, they represent a promise to the people as to what we should expect from our schooling system.

Such goals are particularly relevant to the government sector within whose classrooms are “the vast bulk of students with disability and disadvantage”.¹ The NSW statistics relevant to the finding are as follows:

The number of students with disability estimated to attract funding support has increased by almost 300 per cent since 2002.
The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) students in public schools has risen by 83 per cent from 2004 to 2019.
The number of students from a language background other than English (LBOTE) has increased by 45 per cent from 2004 to 2019.
Students classified from a low socio-educational advantage (SEA) status now make up 32 per cent of the student population.
One-third of NSW’s low SEA students live in regional, rural and remote areas and 86 per cent of those are enrolled in public schools. ²

With these facts related to a segregated system on the table, we are obliged to go further and ask whether or not our stated objectives of excellence, equity and creativity are being achieved, not just for some but for all segments of our society, including the disadvantaged? In Australian language it’s what we call a “fair go”!

Sahlberg and Cobbold

In taking up such a challenge, both philosophically and practically, we have been greatly assisted by the work of Pasi Sahlberg and Trevor Cobbold. They note the deficiency of the current National Schooling Reform Agreement (NSRA), namely that it doesn’t clearly enough define “equity-in-education”. They point to plenty of loose talk about “equality of opportunity” but insufficient clarity about it for policymaking, implementation and evaluation.

Their solution to this has two aspects:

“First, from an individual perspective, equity in education outcomes should mean that all children receive an education that enables them to fully participate in adult society in a way of their choosing. We can refer to this as an adequate education. Second, equity in education should also mean that students from different social groups achieve similar average outcomes and a similar range of these outcomes. We call this social equity-in-education”. Sahlberg, and Cobbold, (2021 pp12 -13)

Their definition of “equity-in-education” is particularly significant because:

“…it is unreasonable to expect in education policies or in school leadership strategies that all children will achieve the same education outcomes because, as individuals, they have a range of abilities and talents which lead to different choices in schooling. However, it is reasonable to expect that these different abilities and talents are distributed similarly across different social, ethnic and gender groups in society”. Sahlberg, and Cobbold, (2021 pp12 -13)

Put the two objectives together – an adequate education for all and more equity in educational outcomes across the society – and we have a strong and meaningful basis for guiding design and evaluation.

Sahlberg and Cobbold also point out that there may very well be groups within groups, “sub-groups” as they call them. For example, they may exist between indigenous students in remote as opposed to urban settings. This necessarily complicates the objective of improving social equity and needs to be thought through as required. It doesn’t, however, change the argument for equity.

Fairness and Public Policy

There are conservative commentators who dispute the assumption that different abilities and talents are distributed similarly within the groups that make up society. They are left defending hierarchy as in some sense “natural” or, for all of its faults, a better and more stable way to run a society, especially if there is room for some upward mobility. More to the point, and counter to Cobbold and Sahlberg, such conservatives say that fairness can’t actually be the focus of public policy, even as a generalised aspiration. Pushing the system towards equity-in-education may be good in “theory” but in “practice” it leads to more harm than good, upsetting as it does merit based decision making. This is so, says leading conservative critic, F.A. Hayek, because social justice is a “mirage”, “meaningless” and incompatible with a liberal, market society. (Hayek, 1976)

In response to this we are all obliged to ask the question: Why shouldn’t we aspire to more equality in educational outcomes as part of a broader agenda of fairness for all? It’s an objective derived from our human rights commitments (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26) and one that gives clarity to the anti-discrimination implications of those commitments. Whether it be gender, class, race, ethnicity or domicile around which we gather relevant information, we ought to ensure that educational outcomes allow equal access to further education, highly paid occupations and influential positions in society. We ought to be widening rather than limiting the pool of talent. (Sahlberg and Cobbold, 2021)

Let me now turn to some of the relevant statistics. On the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) Cobbold writes:

“The paper shows that 28% of low SES Year 9 students were below the national reading standard in 2022, 35% were below the writing standard and 15% were below the numeracy standard. Nearly 30% of Indigenous students were below the reading standard, 38% were below the writing standard and 16% were below the numeracy standard. Nearly one-third of remote area students were below the reading standard, 46% were below the writing standard and 15% were below the numeracy standard. By contrast, only 3% of Year 9 high SES students did not achieve the reading standard, 5% did not achieve the writing standard and 1% did not achieve the numeracy standard.

These are shocking inequities. For example, it is totally unacceptable that the percentage of low SES Year 9 students not achieving the national reading standard is 9 times that of high SES students and the proportion of Indigenous and remote area students not achieving the standard is 10 times that of high SES students”.

In some areas there were improvements but not enough to say that there isn’t “an appalling inequity” in the system.(Cobbold, 2023)

Do Schools Matter?

It is the case, of course, that social and economic factors play a crucial – some say decisive role – in all of this. A radical interpretation of these SES factors is that of sociologist – and social mobility scholar, John Goldthorpe (2020) . He writes: “It’s not schools and universities, but differences in home environments, and particularly the time parents can give their children, that are the obstacles to equality of opportunity”. Another perspective is that of the OECD who say that “some children from disadvantaged households do achieve strong outcomes, demonstrating that equitable outcomes are possible”.(OECD, 2022) Note the reference to “some” rather than “many”!

My conclusion from this is the same as that of Sahlberg and Cobbold:

Schools are in a constant battle against the reproduction of inequality and poverty in society. Since the out-of-school factors explain majority of variation in students’ achievement in school, their efforts must be supported by economic and social policies to reduce growing inequality and poverty. Sahlberg, and Cobbold, (2021 pp16 -17)

I would read this as saying that both external, SES factors, and internal, school factors, need to be working in tandem to ensure adequacy and improve equality outcomes, step by step, as part of a broader ambition to bring about a fairer and more productive society.

It’s Sahlberg’s view that it’s not just the continuous reproduction or disadvantage that holds back educational equity but also the policy agenda that has dominated in recent decades. He calls it the Global Education Reform Movement (or GERM) and it involves standardisation, a focus on core subjects, the search for low-risk ways of reaching learning goals, the use of corporate management models and test-based accountability policies”.(Sahlberg, 2012) Unless qualified with some real-world issues related to teachers position in the labour market, school leadership and management, classroom realities and, of course, school funding, such an agenda is bound to fail if improved educational outcomes are the objective.³

A Meritocracy?

The twin pursuit of excellence and equity is not helped either by what Professor Michael Sandel has called “meritocratic hubris” or the tendency of those who land on top to believe that their success is their own doing and, by implication, that those who were left behind, must deserve their fate as well”. Underpinning this hubris is “the tendency to forget our indebtedness to family, teachers, community, country, and the times in which we live as conditions for the success that we enjoy”.(Sandel, 2020)

Certainly more competition for jobs at the top and more diversity in the CEO class that emerges is in the public interest. Former OECD economist Adrian Blundell-Wignall puts it this way: “Inequality in the market for education is a barrier to long-term success” and is clearly in play in Australia. He points to the “remarkable outperformance of students from expensive private schools for entry to the best university courses, and their eventual dominance of corporal boardrooms”. (Blundell-Wignall, 2023) In other joint studies of the experience of the USA, France and Sweden, he finds evidence consistent with views “that more egalitarian societies that value innate ability more than social standing will generate better commercial leadership and economic performance than countries that do not”. (Atkinson and Blundell-Wignall, 2021)

In relation to GERM and the policies it produces, none have been as influential as “choice and competition” as opposed to “excellence and equity”. It leads to the conclusion that the government sector is best set up as a collection of semi-independent schools, minimally united and supported. This isn’t, as we argued in the first chapter of Valuing the teaching profession, “a sound basis upon which to build the commitment, capacities and leadership needed to turn the corner of disadvantage.” (Gallop, Kavanagh, and Lee , 2021) Let alone is it the basis to pursue equality of outcomes (as defined by Sahlberg and Cobbold). Our policy makers need a strategic, co-ordinated and prioritised approach to the way it builds its public school system.

It’s the case that many of the challenges facing principals and classroom teachers today are being experienced by all schools, government and non-government. Mental health issues and behavioural issues are at play in society – and, therefore, in classrooms today. In relation to this there’s plenty of evidence to lead us to conclude that the pursuit of equality – in all of its manifestations – starting with income and material equality puts schools in a better position to tackle those challenges.⁴

Thus far I’ve addressed some of the realities that make difficult the achievement of improved performance in both excellence and equity – the sociology of disadvantage, the politics of GERM and the ideology of meritocracy. On the other side of the equation we now have a clear definition of equity and what can demonstrate whether progress is – or isn’t – being made in that direction. This is the breakthrough that gives definition and structure to the argument.⁵

Strengths of Government Schools

We know too, that the all-important government sector has strengths lacking in the non-government sector – and which can be mobilised for progress in equity.

We know, for example, that within the limits laid down by the social and economic environment within which schools operate, government schools perform as well as their non-government counterparts, and that is the case even with all the resources and infrastructure the private sector has to provide for its students. (Larson, 2022)

We know too, that state (public) school graduates do better at university than private school graduates within the same end-of-school tertiary entrance score, this being “a clear finding” in England as well as Australia. (Preston, 2014)^.

We know too, that values, more inclusive and science-based than propagated in parts of the non-government sector, prevail in government schools. Learning to live with differences, a basic requirement for policy-makers in a multicultural society, is at the core of the mission of a government school today.⁶

In noting these positive drivers related to a government school system, I’m reminded of the early years of the Australian Nation when public sector institutions or enterprises were set up with the clear aim of not only competing with private sector equivalents but also seeking best practice in what they do. It soon became obvious that strong political support was needed – in funding and organisational innovation – if we were to create a genuine mixed economy. The same applies today, and in the context of education needs to be strategic and more than strong, and coming from both the national and state arms of government.

The politics of all of this can’t be avoided. Myths are myths. Prejudice is prejudice but it doesn’t mean they won’t be influential. A significant portion of the community have come to see the education debate in terms of choice (parents) and competition (government). They want government priorities to support their own families and their own children. It’s that old battle that can’t be avoided, self-interest versus the public interest. It’s one thing to have a mix that seeks to reconcile the two principles, quite another to allow one of the two elements to undermine the other.

Definition, measurement and reporting

More practically our focus needs to be on developing further the work on the statistics and information generally needed in relation to “equity-in-education”. As Cobbold has put it:

“A clear definition of equity in education is fundamental to making real progress towards it. Not only would it clarify expectations about equity but it is necessary to set clear achievement targets for students from different social groups and monitor progress in achieving equity. It is equally necessary to ensure government accountability for making progress on equity”. (Cobbold, 2022)

Currently, says Cobbold, reporting on progress is deficient. The same points are made by Jim Tognolini and Tom Alegounarias(2021) “ The relative lack of confidence in key concepts or generally understood definitions in the assessment domain is, therefore, an acute problem in teaching”

In relation to this “The inculcation of higher order thinking skills, non-cognitive skills, and competencies into the Australian Curriculum, in accord with the 2019 Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration, has raised the stakes for beginning teachers to be able to teach, assess, interpret and measure progress on skills that have been traditionally found difficult, if not impossible, to measure” (Tognolini and Alegounarias, 2021)Making equity matter in all our thinking about education isn’t easy and, as we have seen, has its detractors and, indeed, its enemies. It requires a commitment that all may not share and it requires serious work in the province of measurement and assessment. It’s a – work – in – progress that needs leadership from our public schools as well as partnerships between them and the wider community, including our researchers.

Certainly, I trust that nothing I have written is meant to imply that “confident curriculum expertise” and “basic and varied pedagogical principles” aren’t crucial in the education endeavour (Tognolini and Alegounarias, 2021). Indeed they are, but unless they are backed up with “assessment expertise” and framed in the way outlined by Sahlberg and Cobbold (2021) there is every chance that only little – if any – dents into the prevailing inequalities will be possible.

Education Department quoted in Gallop, G, Kavanagh, T and Lee, P, Valuing the teaching profession (2021), p. 20.
Ibid.
See Gallop, G, Kavanagh, T and Lee, P, Valuing the teaching profession (2021) for an alternative approach to “reform”.
See Wilkinson, R and Pickett, K “Income Inequality and Social Dysfunction”, Annu.Rev.Social, 2009:35:493-511.

See also, Cobbold, T. “Equity in Education must be clearly defined, measured and reported”, Pearls and Irritations, 1 July 2022.
See Gallop, G. Evolving Partnerships in Education (Australian College of Education, 1990), pp. 43-44.

Blundell-Wignall, A (2023 December 19) “Tip private schools out of boardrooms for a more productive Australia”, Australian Financial Review.

https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/tip-private-schools-out-of-boardrooms-for-a-more-productive-australia-20231212-p5equl#:~:text=Opinion-,Tip%20private%20schools%20out%20of%20boardrooms%20for%20a%20more%20productive,capital%20might%20have%20to%20offer.&text=Rising%20productivity%20is%20essential%20for%20a%20sustainable%20economy.

Carroll, L and Harris, C ( 2023 December 5) “Australia’s long-term slide in reading, maths and science”, Sydney Morning Herald.

Cobbold, T., (2022 July 1)“Equity in Education must be clearly defined, measured and reported”, Pearls and Irritations.

Cobbold,T., (2023 February 13 ) “Shocking inequity in NSW school outcomes and funding”, Pearls and Irritations.

Education Council (2019). Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration.

https://www.education.gov.au/alice-springs-mparntwe-education-declaration/resources/alice-springs-mparntwe-education-declaration

Gallop, G, Kavanagh, T and Lee, P, Valuing the teaching profession (2021),

https://www.nswtf.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Valuing-the-teaching-profession-Gallop-Inquiry.pdf

See the 2023 update of the report:

https://www.nswtf.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Valuing-the-teaching-profession-Update.pdf

Goldthorpe, J ( 2020 March 17) Quoted in Peter Wilby, “The expert in social mobility”, The Guardian,

Hayek, F.A, (1976) Law, Legislation and Liberty

Larson, S et al, (2022, January 3) “The public private debate”, The Australian Educational Review.

OECD (2022) Equity in education: the foundation for a more resilient future

Preston, B (2014 July 17) “State school kids do better at Uni”, The Conversation.

https://theconversation.com/state-school-kids-do-better-at-uni-29155

Sahlberg, P., (2012) a blog – “Global Education Reform Movement is here!”

Global Educational Reform Movement is here!

Sahlberg, P and Cobbold, T (2021) “Leadership for equity and adequacy in education”, School Leadership and Management, 20 May 2021,

Sandel, M (2020, September 14) Quoted in Evan Osnos, “A Political Philosopher on why Democrats should think differently about merit”, The New Yorker.

Tognolini,J. and Alegounarias, T (2021) Submission to the Quality Teacher Education Review

Wilkinson, R and Pickett (2009) K “Income Inequality and Social Dysfunction”, Annu.Rev.Social, 2009:35:493-511.

Emeritus Professor Dr Geoff Gallop AC FASS was Director of Sydney University’s Graduate School of Government from 2006 to 2015. From 1986 to 2006 he was a Labor Party Member of Western Australia’s Legislative Assembly, a Minister in the Lawrence Government from 1990 to 1993 and Premier from 2001 to 2006. Currently he is the chair of the Research Committee for the New Democracy Foundation, a director of the Constitutional Education Fund of Australia, and a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

He recently chaired a NSW Teachers Federation commissioned inquiry into the wages and working conditions for government school teachers in NSW.

Making-Equity-Matter Download

NSW Syllabus: A Celebration of Public Education

The recent introduction of a new syllabus spurred this English Faculty to build and embed trust, transparency, and collaboration as the drivers of a cohesive and effective staffroom. Amy Peace and Louise Turk take us through the processes…

How To Build A Harmonious And Productive Workplace Culture

The celebration of the new English Syllabus began with the formation of a circle of colleagues, at Woonona High School, a co-educational secondary school in the northern suburbs of the Illawarra, NSW, on Dharawal Country. Each member of the English Faculty introduced themselves and their favourite reading text to other teachers within the school, and to guests from the wider educational community.

The circle was a metaphor. It was a symbol of equality amongst those who made the formation and a powerful emblem for the potential of transforming student thinking through a dynamic educational framework. Most importantly, it was an authentic circle. Its geometric simplicity was underpinned by an edifice which had taken leadership direction and considerable time to develop.

Before the launch day in November 2023, during which the English Faculty shared its new programming and resolute forward vision with the school community, a purposeful and steady change in work culture had been taking place. Faculty Head Teacher (acting), Ms Amy Peace, led a transformation to foster collaboration amongst Faculty members, and to develop their skills to respond to rapid change in the workplace. It involved providing opportunities for colleagues to build trust, innervating the sharing of ideas and knowledge and the desire to work together.

Building relational trust was the primary goal in equipping teachers to deal with the demands of preparing to introduce a new English Syllabus while, simultaneously, teaching the current syllabus (Hawkins, 2020). Peace, who is undertaking a Masters in Educational Leadership, understood the importance of creating a climate in which Faculty members could take necessary risks and experiment with innovation, and engage in robust professional dialogue (Barsade, 2002; Goleman,1999; Lipscombe et.al. 2020). The English Faculty needed to become an environment of transparency and accountability and one in which there was shared responsibility. She set to work.

We relied on each other for logistical and emotional support. Having a collective approach to the syllabus implementation helped to reduce the cognitive load and stress of programming and helped to create more comprehensive and exciting learning opportunities as we used each other as soundboards to generate new learning experiences and projects.

-Mr Jack Stranger, English classroom teacher

Peace focused on managing the wellbeing of the staff and developing a strong sense of Faculty identity (Goleman, 1999). The design and creation of a Faculty logo, with the visual imagery of an open book sprouting knowledge through metaphorical flowers, helped to create a sense of cohesion and foster a sense of pride amongst staff. The logo was proudly emblazoned on work shirts and was used as a watermark on digital resources. Its calming forest green palette became the thematic colour when the English classroom doors were repainted, transforming them from a less inspiring beige tint. Peace designed a Faculty flag, embedded with the logo, which was displayed at whole school meetings.

The physical environment of the staffroom was de-cluttered and purposefully organised, with all Faculty members sharing the responsibility for keeping the space clean and tidy. Ergonomic chairs were purchased. Fragrant reed diffusers, a coffee machine, a soda machine, and a hand-towel dispenser were added to the staffroom space. A display box in the English corridor featured professional photos of Faculty members. Small additions, one may ponder, but not insignificant when you are building a workplace culture of happiness and inclusion (Hawkins, 2020). Staff birthdays were celebrated with cake. The success of staff was celebrated weekly in school newsletters, bulletins, faculty meetings and with handmade cards, designed and crafted by the Woonona High School Principal, Ms Caroline David. David hand-wrote congratulatory messages inside the card and left the messages of acknowledgement on staff desks (across the school) with chocolate or home baked brownies. She frequently matched the photos or motifs around which she designed the cards to a personal connection with a staff member. David knew your favourite colour and which beach was closest to the coastal town where you grew up. It was the accumulation of these small but very deliberate and consistent affirmations towards staff that made coming to work a joyful process.

I love coming to work! My colleagues are the best and I really care about each one of them. I feel totally supported. I have never worked in a faculty that works so harmoniously together while also being honest and clear with each other – it is really refreshing. Amy (Peace) fosters this approach and is clear and kind to all of us in a calm and considered way.

-Ms Louisa Smith, English Faculty, second in charge

The English Faculty culture at Woonona High School is one that is built upon a steadfast foundation of a love for literature and the everlasting joys that come from this lifelong engagement. I believe that this bedrock is conducive to English as a subject being held in popular regard by students and staff within the school community, as the infectious nature of this mutually-held passion is an example in which students can, and do, follow. Further, the level of collegial support is unparalleled, both professionally and interpersonally. Genuine care and kindness are never absent, and again, it is this ethos, as set by the English staff at Woonona High School, that inspires students and staff alike to strive to be “Lifelong Learners”.

-Mr Saxon Penn, English classroom teacher

The next step in creating a workplace culture ready for rapid change was to introduce processes that would reduce the cognitive load for teachers (Sweller,1988). Clear and transparent processes were necessary to create an equitable teaching environment in which every individual understood their role and contribution. New templates were created for learning programs and scope and sequences. The role of year coordinators was clearly defined. The sharing of programs and resources on the Faculty Google Drive was refined to make the location of information more streamlined.

At the start of the implementation phase of the new syllabus in 2023, the Faculty designed a collaborative timeline for the next twelve months. This collaborative and critically reflective process allowed for a visualisation of the journey ahead (Jefferson, 2017). Time in Faculty meetings was devoted to assessing how current programs could be modified to meet the requirements of the new syllabus.

Collaboration within the Woonona High School English Faculty and collaboration between six schools in the Illawarra; Dapto, Illawarra Sports, Kiama, Lake Illawarra and Warrawong High Schools (known as the Curriculum Network Illawarra (CNI) Professional Learning Network) ensured the transition between syllabi was an efficient process. The slow and methodical systems and processes resulted in accuracy, agency and accountability.

The first step was to audit our programs to identify the gaps and opportunities in our current scope and sequence. I initially found myself quite confused and overwhelmed at how we would navigate this process and found that taking the initiative to collaboratively design processes was the best way to visualise where we were at and where we needed to go. By creating a syllabus outcomes checklist, we were able to evaluate our programs in a comprehensive and consistent way which made it easier to “respoke the wheel” as opposed to starting from scratch.

-Mr Jack Stranger, English classroom teacher

Time in Faculty meetings to discuss changes, State-wide professional learning and staff development days with a focus on new directions, new texts, and the wording of outcomes really helped to clarify my understanding of the new syllabus.

-Mrs Marnie Whidden, English classroom teacher

The mood of the launch of the new English Syllabus last November can best be described as incandescent. Staff from across all Faculties at Woonona High School, the executive of the school, student representatives, and community representatives including the NSW Teachers Federation President, Mr Henry Rajendra and NSW Teachers’ Federation Organiser, Mr Duncan McDonald, were united in an exciting vision for the future.

That vision includes creating an educational landscape in which student voice and agency are at the forefront of the English classroom. Was the plan to build relational capability within the English Faculty at Woonona High School a success and, ultimately, will it make a difference to the social and academic progress of students? The last word goes to classroom teacher, Mr Shane Pratt.

I feel confident moving forward and implementing changes. One of the largest reasons I feel this confidence is because I feel supported by my faculty and my head teacher. I feel empowered to try new ideas and implement my own flair to programming and don’t feel restricted or inhibited to make the program my own.

If we have teachers feeling confident and empowered in the workplace, then this will only lead to increased positive outcomes for our students.

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA] (2018). National Literacy Learning Progression (adapted for NSW Syllabuses). https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/wcm/connect/32837681-1ffc-49b3-8069-c756611ff054/national-literacy-learning-progression.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID=

Barsade, S. G. (2002). The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and its Influence on Group Behavior. Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(4), 644-675. https://doi.org/10.2307/3094912

Goleman, D. (1999) Working with Emotional Intelligence, Bloomsbury, England.

Hattie, J. (2011) Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximising Impact on Learning. Taylor & Frances Ltd, England.

Hawkins, G. (2020) Mentally At Work, Mentally At Work, Melbourne, Australia.

Jefferson, M. & Anderson, M. (2017) Transforming Schools: Creativity, Critical Reflection, Communication, Collaboration. Bloomsbury, Australia

Lipscombe, K., Bennett, S., Kidson, P., Gardiner, P. & McIntyre, A. (2020). Leadership for Learning Frameworks. Sydney: NSW School Leadership Institute. https://ro.uow.edu.au/asshpapers/150

NSW Education Standards Authority (2022) English K-10 Syllabus https://curriculum.nsw.edu.au/learning-areas/english/english-k-10-2022/overview

John Sweller ( 1988 April – June) Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning Cognitive Science Vol 12 Issue 2 257 -285

– Cognitive Load Theory – an explanation:

https://wind4change.com/cognitive-load-theory-john-sweller-instructional-design/
https://leadinglearnerdotme.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/3-cognitive-load-theory-sweller-via-cese.pdf

Louise Turk is a classroom teacher and 2iC in the English Faculty at Woonona High School. She is a Higher School Certificate marker in English Advanced and English Standard. This is her ninth year teaching English for the NSW Department of Education. Turk is a former Fairfax journalist.

Amy Peace is the Head Teacher (rel.) of English at Woonona High School. She has been championing Public Education for sixteen years in various roles, including Teachers’ Federation Women’s Contact, Curriculum Network Illawarra (CNI) Leader and Higher School Certificate marker. Her passions are improving equity in teaching and learning and driving systemic change to improve conditions for teachers and students.

NSW-Syllabus-A-Celebration-of-Public-Education Download

Tell Me Your Story: Supporting EAL/D students in language and literacy development

Overview

The focus of this one day course presented by Kathy Rushton and Joanne Rossbridge is to develop understandings and strategies for participants who support EAL/D students in both small groups and mainstream classrooms.

Practical strategies will be provided to foster the use of English language while encouraging students to use all the linguistic resources that they bring to school, including the use of their first language. Consideration will be given to the wellbeing framework and supporting students in an inclusive environment which honours and confirms their identity, language, and culture.

Participants will:

Extend their knowledge, skills and understanding in the development of oral language with
links to the mode continuum to support English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D)
students.
Explore the relationship between spoken and written language through unpacking lexical
density and grammatical intricacy
Engage in activities to expand their strategies to develop a reading sequence with
consideration of Field, Tenor and Mode, vocabulary and language features
Engage in activities showcasing strategies in developing a ‘tanslanguaging space’ to support
literacy.
Extend their understanding on the role of joint construction in the teaching and learning cycle.

20 August 2024 at AEU ACT Branch, Level 1/71 Leichhardt St, Kingston ACT 2604

29 October 2024 2024 at AEU ACT Branch, Level 1/71 Leichhardt St, Kingston ACT 2604

Completing Tell Me Your Story: Supporting EAL/D students in language and literacy development will contribute 5 hours of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Accredited PD in the priority area of Delivery and Assessment of NSW Curriculum/EYLF addressing standard descriptors 1.3.2, 2.5.2 & 3.3.2 from the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers towards maintaining Proficient Teacher Accreditation in NSW.

$220

Joanne Rossbridge is an independent language and literacy consultant working in both primary and secondary schools and with teachers across Australia. She has worked as a classroom teacher and literacy consultant with the DET (NSW). Her expertise and much of her experience is in working with students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Joanne is particularly interested in student and teacher talk and how talk about language can assist the development of language and literacy.

Kathy Rushton is interested in the development of language and literacy especially in disadvantaged communities. She has worked as a classroom teacher and literacy consultant and provides professional learning for teachers in the areas of language and literacy development. Her current research projects include a study of multilingual pre-service teachers and the impact that teacher professional learning has on the development of a creative pedagogical stance which supports translanguaging and student identity and wellbeing.

Primary and Secondary teachers who support EAL/D students in both small groups and mainstream classrooms.

Teacher Librarians

Supporting Students with ADHD in K-6

Overview

The Supporting Students with ADHD in K-6 course is designed to support teachers to:

develop an understanding of the wide range of characteristics of students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD);
explore a range of strategies which address the needs of students with ADHD in the areas of language and cognitive development, communication skills and social behaviour;
develop specific strategies to help students with ADHD access the curriculum, and
develop an understanding for the need for explicit instruction in the essential components of literacy in every classroom every day.

Online (Term 4)

Tuesday 19 November 2024

Dr Rose Dixon

Dr Roselyn Dixon has been a special education teacher in both mainstream and special education settings in primary and secondary schools. Rose has been in academia and involved with Inclusive Education for more than 25 years. She has published research in the fields of social skills and behavioural interventions for people with a range of disabilities including students with Oppositional Defiance Disorders and Autism.

She has been actively involved in examining the relationship between digital technologies and pedagogy in special education and inclusive classrooms for students with Autism as well as the implications of the NDIS on people with disabilities in rural and remote communities. Rose is an Honorary Associate Professor at the School of Education, University of Wollongong, where she was previously the Academic Director of Inclusive and Special Education. She continues to support doctoral students in Inclusive and Special education with a focus on Autism.

Primary teachers

Special Education teachers

School Counsellors

Learning and Support Teachers

$220 (Federation members only)

Online

Lorraine Beveridge makes the case for high quality writing experiences in every classroom…

Historical overview of learning to write

Strategies that improve the teaching and learning of writing

Teaching writing in the digital age

Turning around school writing results: a case study

Leadership strategies

School-level strategies

Teacher-level strategies

The “neglected R”: onwards and upwards

Endnotes

References

About the author

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

References

About the Author

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

Fast policy and policy borrowing

Ideological entrepreneurs

Political framing

The game board of Social Media and Old Media

Our case study: From Rufo to Latham

So what?

References

About the Authors

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

What does the research in Aboriginal education tell us?

Acknowledging yet overcoming the challenges of doing this work

Educational policies supporting Learning from Country

The Learning from Country Framework

Conclusion

References

Appendix

About the Authors

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

Key ingredients of effective Professional Learning

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

Features of Co-designed Professional Learning

Outcomes of co-designed professional learning

Where to get research support?

References

About the Authors

In a world of rapidly advancing Artificial Intelligence, Leslie Loble and Kelly Stephens provide teachers with a framework of questioning when making decisions on using edtech to enhance teaching and learning. . .

Five Key Questions to Consider

1.Which tool or resource should I choose?

2.(How) Does this app help me understand more about my students’ learning?

3.(How) does this application help me teach the full range of students in my classroom?

4.What type of AI does this application include?

5.What data or information should I put into an app?

Conclusion

Endnotes

References

About the Authors

Geoff Gallop challenges us to commit to the aspirational goals of ‘excellence’ and ‘equity’ in education in a world of meritocratic hubris. . .

Sahlberg and Cobbold

Fairness and Public Policy

Do Schools Matter?

A Meritocracy?

Strengths of Government Schools

Definition, measurement and reporting

Endnotes

References

About the Author

The recent introduction of a new syllabus spurred this English Faculty to build and embed trust, transparency, and collaboration as the drivers of a cohesive and effective staffroom. Amy Peace and Louise Turk take us through the processes…

How To Build A Harmonious And Productive Workplace Culture

References

About the authors

Overview

Session details

Course dates and venue

Accreditation information

Fee

Presenters

Target Participants

Overview

Course Dates and Venue

Presenter

Dr Rose Dixon

Target Participants

Fee

Delivery

5.What data or information should I put into an app?