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It’s Complex: Working with Students of Refugee Backgrounds and Their Families in NSW Public Schools

Professor Megan Watkins and Professor Greg Noble present a research-based examination of the complexities involved in working with students of refugee backgrounds in our schools. They discuss why it is both inherently difficult and necessary for NSW public school teachers to strive to meet the needs of these students and their families . . .

In mid-2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated the total number of refugees world-wide was 27.1 million (Refugee Council of Australia, 2022). This number has risen dramatically in recent years due to the increasing number and intensity of conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia, forcing many to flee their homelands and seek safety elsewhere. Many of these refugees are under 18 years old, and many are unaccompanied minors. While Australia’s proportion of this number is relatively low, thousands of young refugees (Refugee Council of Australia, 2017) enter Australia each year on humanitarian visas and face the daunting prospect of beginning school in their newfound home with limited or no English, limited or no literacy in their first language, disrupted or no previous schooling, and the scars of trauma resulting from the experiences of war, the death of loved ones, poverty and protracted periods of displacement in refugee camps and/or one or more countries of transit (Yak, 2016). Once settled, many may be under pressure to earn an income or to help other members of their family, which affects their attendance and progress at school (Refugee Council of Australia, 2016). In addition to contending with these difficulties, issues around gender, faith and racism may affect their capacity to ‘fit in’ (Yak, 2016).

The New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education (DoE) now records that there are more than 11,000 students of refugee backgrounds in NSW schools (NSW DoE, 2020). While many of these students are located in metropolitan Sydney, in particular in the western and south-western suburbs, there is an increasing number settling in regional areas, posing considerable challenges for schools and their communities to ensure that these students’ complex needs are met. Schools are often the first point of contact with wider Australian society for young refugees, so how schools position and serve them has enormous consequences (Uptin et al., 2013).

Various community, government and non-government organisations have provided considerable assistance to schools, but a number of studies suggest that not only is far more needed (Sidhu et al., 2011; Block et al., 2014), but that further research is required to gauge refugee students’ experiences of schooling and whether current practice is addressing their needs and those of teachers (Ferfolja and Vickers, 2010).

In 2019, the NSW Teachers Federation commissioned researchers at Western Sydney University to undertake such a study to help fill this gap and to yield data to inform how they may best support teachers working in these complex environments. The report, It’s Complex! Working with Students of Refugee Backgrounds and their Families in New South Wales Schools, (Watkins, M., Noble, G., & Wong, A. ,2019) is the product of this research. Its title, drawn from a comment made by one of the teacher participants, reflects not only the complex needs of refugee students and their families but the inherent complexity of meeting these needs often within schools already grappling with the challenges of socio-economic disadvantage, increasing cultural and linguistic diversity and students with physical and intellectual disabilities. Meeting the needs of students of refugee backgrounds is undertaken alongside those of other students, making the task for teachers a complex one indeed.

It’s Complex aimed to capture this complexity. The research informing the report included interviews and focus groups with executive staff and teachers, students with and without refugee backgrounds and the parents or carers of students of refugee backgrounds in ten public schools. These schools included primary schools, high schools and Intensive English Centres (IECs) in Sydney and regional locations in NSW, with high and low populations of students of refugee backgrounds and varying numbers of students with a Language Background Other Than English (LBOTE) amongst their broader populations. The study also involved observations in classrooms, playgrounds and at school community events. In addition to school-derived data, interviews were also held with relevant personnel in organisations supporting refugee students and their families.

The study examined the challenges faced by school communities as a result of their increasing number of students of refugee backgrounds. It looked at the educational and broader needs of these students; the programs in place to support them within schools; the links between educational experiences and other aspects of the settlement process and the social contexts in which settlement occurs; the consequences for teacher workloads and their professional capacities; and a range of other issues. This article provides a broad overview of the project’s key findings with a link here to the full report for more detailed examination of these from the perspectives of each of the various informant groups that participated in the study.

One of the key findings of the research was that the needs of students of refugee backgrounds are not simply the pragmatic requirements of educational performance, these students also have complex linguistic, social, cultural, psychological and economic needs. In discussion with principals and other senior executive across the 10 project schools, the area of greatest need identified was that of welfare, not only ensuring students were fed, housed and felt safe but that there was support for those who experienced psychological trauma as, without addressing this, it was considered difficult for students’ educational needs to be met. Yet these respondents also stressed the highly individualised nature of these students’ needs with one teacher remarking: ‘all refugee students struggle but struggle in different ways. We have very capable students, students that have, you know, not as much capacity to learn as others. And some are very bright – a full range of learners’.

While not news to school executive and teachers, the research revealed how schools are much more than educational institutions. This may have always been the case, but with increasing and diversifying refugee intakes, they have become complex sites of refugee and community support, with greater expectations and challenges. As one principal commented: ‘I guess we are kind of, we have almost become a community centre, and this is something that I find quite challenging … So, we get a lot of requests that are far removed from our brief as a school’. Schools, therefore, are grappling with a range of issues that result from these greater expectations: teacher workload, professional learning, funding issues, interagency coordination and community liaison.

The research also found that there were uneven levels of expertise and support across schools, both by region and by type, and related to school and community contexts, and individual teacher’s experiences. There are schools, such as IECs, which are set up well to meet these challenges, developing significant banks of expertise and resources, and there are schools which, by dint of their location and demographics, are not well set-up nor well-funded.

Many teachers are providing additional support beyond the classroom in terms of arranging homework clubs, extra work, support services, community liaison, etc, creating increased and intensified workloads which have stressful consequences for work-life balance and some teachers’ mental health. Many teachers are providing this extra support but with varying degrees of experience and expertise. Many do not have English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) qualifications, for example, exacerbating the stressful circumstances in which they are working. Many are also finding themselves in classrooms with an increasing complexity of student populations, posing challenges for classroom teaching.

This was matched with very uneven levels of understanding in schools – amongst teachers, non-refugee students and the wider community – of the complex experiences and challenges faced by students of refugee backgrounds. Staff in schools often struggled to ‘get the right balance’ between addressing the pastoral, the academic and the socio-cultural needs of students of refugee backgrounds with huge implications for these students’ learning. One executive staff member reflected on the problem of an overemphasis on the pastoral:

“I think that when we are dealing with our students one-on-one and we start to hear and get to know them more and hear the history of where they have come from and their trauma, there can be a bit of a tendency to make excuses for them not improving academically and as strongly as they could and … I am going to use the word ’pity’, like there can be an element not from all teachers but from some teachers.”

An executive member at another school suggested such an approach raised questions about the nature of wellbeing itself: ‘So, it is striking that balance between wellbeing as welfare and wellbeing as self-esteem and achievement’.

As a consequence, students of refugee backgrounds have very varied educational experiences: some are settling well, and some are not ‘fitting in’. While most value the efforts undertaken at their schools, as do their parents and carers, many are also suffering from a lack of support. These students are also faced with the dilemma of in\visibility: they often stand out – for various reasons – but their needs are often ‘invisible’, and they can fall through cracks in the system. Many students recounted the enormous challenges of English language and literacy acquisition and often felt underprepared for their educational experiences. Many students continued to experience enormous problems in the transition from IECs to high school and there appeared little progress in addressing these issues, despite being well documented in previous research (Hammond, 2014).

Many students of refugee backgrounds reported the ongoing incidence of racism, though this is not always acknowledged by staff in schools. This racism varied in scale and type from microaggressions of other students avoiding contact and making veiled derogatory comments, to forms of structural racism often resulting from well-intentioned programs that actually reinforced these students’ lack of belonging. In one example of the former, in a school with a predominantly Anglo-Australian student population attended by a small number of refugee students of African backgrounds, a teacher referred to students making racist taunts in the form of ‘back door kind of comments’. The teacher explained how students would say: ‘So, they are asking for a black pen, like they will disguise the racism and emphasise certain things like, “Can I have a black pen?” or something like that. Whereas I shut that down immediately’.

While schools provided various forms of assistance, many continued to struggle with developing and sustaining productive relations with parents of refugee backgrounds and their wider communities.

The work of Refugee Support Leaders (RSLs), a temporary measure introduced in response to the arrival of large numbers of Syrian refugees in 2016, proved increasingly important in many schools and their broader communities. RSLs took up roles in the wake of the loss of the NSW Department of Education Multicultural Education/EAL/D consultants that occurred in 2012, a loss which has been detrimental for many schools. A pleasing development, following the publication of It’s Complex, and because of the NSW Teachers Federation’s advocacy, has been the appointment of EAL/D Leader roles seemingly filling the void of the previous Multicultural Education/EAL/D consultants. These are much needed positions which, it is hoped, are ongoing, supporting schools in meeting the EAL/D needs of not only refugee students, but the many students who require specialist EAL/D teaching.

Finally, while much work has been done to address issues around the coordination of governmental and non-governmental agencies in the area of refugee settlement, this has not always been embedded well in daily practice in schools. For this work to be consolidated and extended we must enable multiple, critical conversations – between the Department, support organisations and schools; between teachers, students, parents/carers and their wider communities – around students’ educational, pastoral and social needs, and the capacities of schools to address them. Failure to facilitate such dialogue will threaten the stability of life that students of refugee backgrounds and their families so urgently need.

A useful starting point will be looking at the full report, which can be found at:

https://www.nswtf.org.au/files/18530_its_complex_centenary_report_digital.pdf

If you are interested in applying to the It’s Complex: Working with students of refugee backgrounds in NSW public schools professional learning course run by the Centre for Professional Learning, please click here.

Block, K., Cross, S., Riggs, E. and Gibbs, L. (2014). Supporting schools to create an inclusive environment for refugee students. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 18(12), 1337-1355.

Ferfolja, T. and Vickers, M. (2010). Supporting refugee students in school education in Greater Western Sydney. Critical Studies in Education, 51(2), 149-162.

Hammond, J. (2014). The transition of refugee students from Intensive English Centres to mainstream high schools: Current practices and future possibilities. Sydney: NSW Department of Education and Communities. 

New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education (DoE)(2020) Supporting Refugee Students https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/multicultural-education/refugee-students-in-schools.

Refugee Council of Australia. (2016). Education and training. Retrieved from https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/getfacts/settlement/learninghere/education-and-training/ (viewed 13 November, 2018).

Refugee Council of Australia. (2017). UNHCR global trends 2016 – How Australia compares with the world. Retrieved from https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/getfacts/statistics/intl/unhcr-global-trends-2016-australia-compares-world/ (viewed on 13 November, 2018).

Refugee Council of Australia. (2022). How many refugees are there in the world? Retrieved from https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/how-many-refugees/ (viewed on 5 September, 2022)

Sidhu, R., Taylor, S. and Christie, P. (2011). Schooling and Refugees: Engaging with the complex trajectories of globalisation. Global Studies of Childhood, 1(2), 92-103.

Uptin, J., Wright, J. and Harwood, V. (2013). ‘It felt like I was black dot on white paper’: examining young former refugees’ experience of entering Australian high schools. Australian Educational Researcher, 40(1), 125-137.

Yak, G. (2016). Educational barriers facing South Sudanese Refugees in Australia, Refugee Communities Advocacy Network conference, Melbourne, 28 May 2016. Retrieved from http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Gabriel-Yak-RCAN.pdf (viewed 13 November, 2018).

Watkins, M., Noble, G., & Wong, A. (2019). It’s Complex: Working with students of refugee backgrounds and their families in New South Wales public schools (2nd ed.). NSW Teachers Federation.

https://www.nswtf.org.au/files/18530_its_complex_centenary_report_digital.pdf

Megan Watkins is Professor in the School of Education at Western Sydney University. Her research interests lie in the cultural analysis of education exploring the impact of cultural diversity on schooling and the ways in which different cultural practices can engender divergent habits and dispositions to learning. Megan began her career as an English/History teacher working in high schools in Western Sydney. Her most recent book is Doing Diversity Differently in a Culturally Complex World: Critical Perspectives on Multicultural Education (Bloomsbury, 2021) with Greg Noble.

Greg Noble is Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. Greg has been involved in research in multiculturalism and education for thirty years. His interests have centred around the relations between youth, ethnicity, gender and schooling, as well as aspects of curriculum and pedagogy in multicultural education. He also has broader research interests in issues of migration, ethnic communities and intercultural relations. He has published eleven books, including: Doing Diversity Differently in a Culturally Complex World (2021) and Disposed to Learn (2013), both with Megan Watkins, and Cultures of Schooling (1990).

Its-Complex-Noble-Watkins Download

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Effective Classroom Management

Helen McMahon, Michelle Gleeson, Andrea Gavrielatos & Trystan Loades consider one of the most important topics for all teachers … classroom management. Helen, in the introduction, returns to a topic that she wrote about in the 2015 edition of the JPL. Michelle and Andrea then give us the primary school perspective and Trystan discusses the high school context . . .

Introduction

Teaching is complex, no more so than when it comes to the management of student behaviour. Effective teaching can only occur when the behaviour of students is successfully dealt with at a whole school and individual class level. High standards of behaviour are essential in creating a productive and positive learning environment, as well as a safe and respectful school.

A high standard of behaviour should be expected of all students and applied throughout the school each day by everyone. From the outset it is important to understand a fundamental principle: while the public education system accepts all students, we do not accept all behaviours.

The student profile of many of our schools is becoming ever more complex and, therefore, teachers require increasingly sophisticated sets of skills to deal with behaviour in their own classes. However, it is important to understand that the management of student behaviour is also a collective responsibility, across the whole school by all staff, and in serious cases with systemic Department of Education support.

As all schools are required to develop a behaviour management plan, it is essential that this is developed collaboratively, and closely adhered to by all staff, in order to develop consistent approaches to unacceptable conduct.

Individual teachers, particularly for those who are beginning their teaching career, will usually need additional advice, support, and professional learning opportunities to acquire the range of skills that allow them to gain confidence and become professionally autonomous. Any professional learning should cover areas such as:

why engaging teaching strategies can be the basis for minimising unacceptable behaviour
how to manage persistent disruptive and challenging behaviours

strategies that could be used to de-escalate conflict situations
the need to engage parents and caregivers early and in a positive manner
the support that will be available from colleagues and executive teachers.

The NSW Department of Education’s Student Behaviour Policy (2022) states, “All students and staff have the right to be treated fairly and with dignity in an environment free from intimidation, harassment, victimisation, discrimination and continued disruption.” To ensure that schools are safe, productive, and stable learning environments it is essential that this fundamental policy position is embedded in the school culture and reinforced daily.

Classroom management – school contexts

During the liveliness and excitement of a bustling school day, there are many things out of our control. One of the things that we, as teachers, can control is how we set up our day and our classroom to ensure that we set our students (and ourselves) up for success. 

The way classroom management looks in each classroom is ultimately up to the teacher. And whether or not you are working in a school which sets clear systems, expectations and routines, there are practices for your classroom that can make the day flow in a more positive direction.

Before we launch into the what and the how, let’s start with the why. On top of knowing our content and how to structure a lesson, classroom management directly affects the conditions for student learning and effective teaching. When the learning space is organised … students’ academic skills and competencies, as well as their social and emotional development are supported and enhanced (Kratochwill, DeRoos, Blair, 2009). This aligns with the Professional Knowledge and Professional Practice domains of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (NESA 2018), specifically that teachers ‘Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments’ and ‘Know students and how they learn’. The intersection of these two standards with regards to classroom management highlights that not only do our considerations about how we arrange the learning space matter, but this, combined with a deep understanding about our students’ individual characteristics and needs, can be affected and supported by that very learning environment. What are the things we need to factor in for our students before they’ve set foot through the door for our lesson or for the day? How can we suitably reflect on our lesson plan to anticipate how we might deal with behaviours that become too excitable? How can a teacher pre-empt and identify strategies to ensure all students are engaged safely and successfully in classroom activities?

Across both primary and secondary settings, there are universal elements to classroom management. that link back to the Standards. that can help us reflect on how we best set our students up for success in their learning. Let’s take a look at a day in the life of a primary school teacher and a learning period for a high school teacher, and, in doing so, share some strategies which you can add to your toolbox to support you…

A Day in the Life of Primary School – through the lens of classroom management

Starting the day

Classroom management begins well before the front gates open for students and families. This time is quite possibly the most important part of the day with regards to effective classroom management.

A good habit to develop each day when you arrive at your classroom is to map out the day plan in a visual timetable, either written or with visual aids, displayed at the front of the room. This practice is an example of how to utilise Universal Design for Learning as seen in the Universal Design for Learning planning tool (2021). This framework is most beneficial for students with additional needs, however it reduces the fear of the unknown and can be beneficial for all students. Taking a moment to walk through what’s happening, on any given day, can also help you to anticipate the flow of what’s planned and review what you’ll need for the lessons for the day. Using the morning routine to locate and organise resources needed for your lessons will assist in those teaching moments to maintain your students’ focus and minimise opportunities for behaviours to unravel. Being proactive in having what you will need at the ready, or mentally noting what you need to prepare during the session break and considering how and where resources are accessed during the learning is an important aspect of classroom management related to the routines you establish and maintain in your classroom. 

Setting the tone of your learning environment

How you then organise your classroom with resources and routines inherently sets the tone of the learning environment. Giving attention and consideration to how the classroom helps to develop a culture of learning and structure is something which can often be forgotten. Setting up the learning space in a way which is conducive to teaching and learning is paramount.

It is helpful to ask questions such as ‘can students and teachers move around the room with ease?, ‘is there enough room to walk?’, ‘is the floor clear of resources?’, ‘are resources clearly labelled and packed in the appropriate place?’, ‘where will students sit for group discussions or brainstorming or modelled lessons?’, ‘what kind of noise levels are acceptable and at what times?’. 

Ideas as simple as group structures and seating arrangements can promote positive behaviours and academic outcomes (Wannarka & Ruhl, 2008). There is evidence to support the idea that ‘if students are working on individual assignments, they should be seated in an arrangement that makes interacting with peers inconvenient…for example, in rows students are not directly facing each other’. Conversely, ‘when the desired behaviour is interactive… seating arrangements that facilitate interactions by proximity and position, such as clustered desks or semi-circles, should be utilised’ (Wannarka & Ruhl, 2008). Strategically planning these structures prior to the day beginning can have a positive influence on student engagement and behaviour.

Involving your students to establish a set of expectations supports a shared understanding of what is valued in the learning environment for everyone to be able to engage in learning. It can also assist students to regulate collaboratively the classroom behaviour. What is important to one group can be vastly different to another, so this process is a crucial component to classroom management and is most successful when students have agency in determining the conditions for learning as well as the positive rewards and negative consequences that go along with these. Along with collaboratively setting up, and explicit teaching of, class expectations, each teacher will have a different system of organisation with regards to student jobs, and overall set up. It is important to be strategic in deciding which student will be responsible for each job depending on their social, emotional and academic needs. Guiding questions such as the following are helpful to ask yourself when selecting students for each job: Do any students require regular breaks? Does a particular student require a peer to assist them in executing the job? Will the students be able to refocus upon completion of the job?

As with any element of classroom management, it is crucial to model and guide students in how to successfully perform each task before expecting them to complete it independently.

Relationships sit at the heart of effective classroom management and a simple yet effective way to connect with your students, and to set the tone of the day of learning, is to greet students personally as they enter the classroom. Positioning yourself at your door, monitoring both students as they unpack and those that are settling into the room allows you to:

start the day with a positive connection with your students,

remind students of classroom expectations through specific praise of preferred behaviours, in turn supporting the transition into the formal learning space, and 
gauge the moods and mindsets your students have before the learning begins.

This, in turn, offers a “low-cost, high-yield” proactive strategy that complements the organisational elements to setting up the learning environment (Cook, et. al 2018). Coupled with your proactive measures of setting up your resources, being proactive with your students’ behaviour, and starting every day with a positive and personal acknowledgement of each student in your class, has been shown to promote higher levels of academic engagement. It also minimises, even prevents, the occurrence of problem behaviours that disrupt learning. Additionally, being perceptive to the emotional wellbeing of your students, not only as they start the day but throughout the day, and particularly following transitions, can assist you in managing behaviours through pre-corrections, further modelling or revision, or tuning in to students’ needs to support them to re-engage or regulate their behaviour.

Positive reinforcement extends the tone of the learning environment and can take varied forms without always being a tangible reward although, at times, the extrinsic motivator can help. Acknowledging and reinforcing the behaviours you expect supports students with direct feedback on what is valued, but is only effective when the reinforcement is genuine, clear, and explicit about the behaviour and given in a timely manner (i.e., straight after the target behaviour). If there are established positive reinforcement procedures in your school, it is critical that these are integrated into your own systems. Such integration, however, does not preclude the use of your own additional strategies, if required, which can be as simple as non-verbal cues and verbal praise, a positive phone call to parents, to tangible reward tokens or activity rewards. Knowing the individual preferences of your students will also inform the approach that you take for encouraging positive behaviour in your classroom. Most students will respond to the universal support and expectations for behaviours (be they the whole school or your class systems) but some students may require an individualised approach with targeted and specific behaviour goals that have positive consequences negotiated with the student and their parents or carers.

“Be the calmest person in the room”

And while giving attention to the routines and structures of our classroom allows us to exert some control in pre-empting behaviours, the only thing we can control is ourselves and to be the calmest person in the room. The key to effective routines and structures lies in modelling and explicit teaching but this begins with our own behaviours. Students are more likely to replicate calm energy if they have been shown this. The importance of being responsive over reactive, having and modelling empathy, and above all else being consistent, sits hand in hand with the positive, safe and supported learning environment that is conducive to the success of our students.

Transitions and breaks

When it comes to managing your expectations around behaviours at any point in the school day, it’s often safer to never assume your students will know how to behave. Establishing expectations not only with regards to the use of resources and interactions for group or independent work, but also around transitions requires explicit teaching through modelling. For example, if your students are expected to enter and exit the classroom quietly and in two straight lines or move from sitting on the floor to their desks, then preparing them from the outset with clear expectations and demonstrations is required, even for simple tasks such as these. Show your students what the transition looks like, sounds like and feels like so that they can experience that through practise, revising as often as needed.

While classroom management is often viewed as enacted within the four walls of the classroom, practices such as active supervision apply in the playground and have similar effect and impact in managing behaviour. The proverbial ‘eyes in the back of your head’ comes to mind. The effects of scanning, movement and proximity on supporting positive behaviour in any school setting will influence behaviour. It is important to remember that our job is to teach and that every moment is a teaching moment, whether we are in the classroom or elsewhere. Teach and praise what you want to see more of and celebrate the steps along the journey.

Managing the end of the day

The bookends of the day largely dictate the overall organisation of your classroom, and where much attention is given to setting up the day, the end of the day is equally important. Similar to the setup, pre-empting issues and being proactive is key at the end of the day – knowing that your students are going to start feeling tired and fatigued, consider what could go wrong with the planned group activity, or art lesson, and make adjustments to your plan where necessary. If you think they require some time to regulate, complete a calming ‘brain break’. If it seems as though they are lacking energy, complete an energising activity. (Although ‘brain breaks’ can be done at any time throughout the day, the end of the day is often when they are utilised most regularly).

Allow yourself plenty of time for packing up, giving yourself at least 10 minutes at the end of the day to finish calmly and smoothly with an activity before students are dismissed such as read a story/poem, play a game, silent reading or journaling, guided drawing, practise gratitude, dance or sing. The activity could be a routine one or be different every day, this is up to you and your class. Just as the expectation stands for entering the classroom, be consistent with clear expectations for how students leave the classroom when the bell rings. Think about how many students will you dismiss at once- will they be the same students at tables/desks or the students who are packed up and quiet? Supporting a positive and calm end to the day will not only support your students in finishing the day on a good note but is also good for our own wellbeing to avoid ending the day in frantic chaos.

When you need support…

With the increase of students with additional needs enrolled in public schools, over the course of a career, teachers will likely be met with students who challenge and provoke our thinking. Sometimes, when redirection and all proactive, positive systems have been exhausted or when the safety of a child, a class, or staff members is at risk, different strategies are required.

Whether or not an individual behaviour plan is required, at times, it is critical to utilise expert and experienced staff, including senior executives, for support.

Some things to remember, if and when faced with more complex, challenging and escalating behaviours, are:

remain calm – think about your tone of voice, body language, what you are saying, how you are moving, where you are positioned, 
explain why the specific behaviour is unacceptable – Is it unsafe? Is it disturbing the learning of others? Is it respectful?

don’t buy into any secondary behaviours which may arise, 
give short and direct instructions – it is helpful to use the student’s name first and then the clear, explicit direction,
follow through,
call for assistance.

Remember, once any incident is dealt with, it is important to move on and start fresh.

Students come to school to learn and they all have a right to do so in our vibrant and diverse public education system. With clear and visible expectations and routines which are reiterated and retaught consistently through a calm and predictable teacher, you set yourself and your class up for success (Dix, 2017).

Consistency

For many students, their school, and in particular their classroom, is the place where they feel most at ease, at baseline and where they can truly be themselves. Their teacher is a constant and when we act and react predictably to all situations, it makes our students feel safe. Safety allows students to remain calm, display positive behaviours and in turn, engage in learning. ‘Visible consistency with visible kindness allows exceptional behaviour to flourish’ (Dix, 2017).

A High School Context

Teaching is a highly complex activity, which, depending on which research you read, requires a teacher to make as many as 1500 decisions a day. 

As stated earlier, teachers have a core responsibility to ‘Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments’ Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (2018). Our students also have a core responsibility to ensure that they are contributing to a positive learning environment. As Helen McMahon stated in our introduction: while public education accepts all students, we do not accept all behaviours.

High schools are busy places, in which movement and transitions are an integral part of every school day. The effective management of student behaviour is critical to ensuring that our practice and pedagogy impacts positively on the learning of our students. Without it, learning cannot take place.

Three ways in which teachers can impact on student behaviour are through: routines and structures, controlling the learning environment and engagement.  

Routines and Structure

As high school teachers, we are always receiving students who are arriving from another context, be it roll call, recess, lunch or the previous lesson. Our class may be arriving as a group who were together in the previous lesson or be a group coming together for the first time that day. This poses significant challenges for a teacher who needs to ensure that the start to their lesson is both orderly and purposeful.

Paul Dix, author of When the adults change, everything changes (2017) states, “Your students might claim that they prefer to lead lives of wild and crazy chaos. In reality, it is your routines, and your relentless repetition of them, that makes the students feel safe enough to learn.”.

Managing the Start of Lessons – Explicitly teaching clear and consistent routines throughout the structure of your lesson has many benefits for you and your students. Meet students in the same way every lesson, if they line up, do it the same way every time. Greet every student, building a connection before entering the classroom. Ensure that the first contact is proactive, positive and within your control. If you search YouTube, you will find videos of teachers sharing elaborate handshake routines which are individual to each student. This would not be something we could all do, but a personal verbal greeting to all students is something we can all achieve, it could be asking about the lesson they have just left or simply a personalised greeting. These interactions also help teachers, before entry to the classroom, to pick up on issues students are arriving with.

Feeling Safe – Consistent routines and structures provide students a connection to, and a feeling of safety in, our classrooms. For students, the idea that ‘I know what to expect’ allows space for engagement in initial instructions and explicit teaching. For students who have experienced trauma and those who have additional learning needs this is critical to building a sense of trust and safety as a learner. 

Managing the End of Lessons – Our role in supporting smooth transitions is particularly important at the end of lessons. It allows for reflection on the learning which has taken place and provides support to our colleagues who will be receiving our students during the next teaching period. It also directly impacts on the safety of students and staff as they move to the next location of their day. Having a consistent routine at the end of lessons is as important as at the start of each lesson. Developing a suite of strategies such as exit tickets, routines around packing up and preparing to leave the room are vital and the important thing is to, as Paul Dix said, be relentless in your repetition of them.

Controlling the Learning Environment

Taking control of your classroom is a vital component of being a successful teacher. There is no one way to do this, and every teacher is different, however, being passive is not an option.

The NSW Department of Education’s Classroom management: Creating and maintaining positive learning environments (CESE 2020) cites research which says:

Put simply, classroom management and student learning are inextricably linked; students cannot learn or reach their potential in environments which have negative and chaotic classroom climates, lack structure and support, or offer few opportunities for active participation (Hepburn & Beamish 2019, p. 82), and students report wanting teachers who can effectively manage the classroom learning environment (see Woolfolk Hoy & Weinstein 2006, p.183; Egeberg & McConney 2018)

Layout – Assert your control of the classroom environment through the arrangement of furniture. Set up the space before students arrive whenever you can. If there are materials to distribute to allow learning activities to begin, have them on desks before students arrive. This saves time and removes opportunities for disruption.

Managing Behaviour -Exercise power to gain power and, therefore, control of the environment. Gain compliance through small instructions which are easy to follow, such as completing a simple task of collecting or getting out equipment or setting up a page in a workbook can settle a class and establish your authority in the classroom. Taking ownership of behaviour management is critical in establishing your authority. You should always know how to get support from colleagues and your Head Teacher but resolving issues yourself will always pay off in the long run. It is important to note that knowing when an issue needs to be escalated is also critical.

Seating Plans – A well-considered seating plan allows students to know where to be and for you to control where individuals are in your learning space. Some students may have specific positions described in their Individual Learning Plans (ILPs). A seating plan can allow you to establish effective group work as a supportive structure in your classroom.

Non-Verbal Communication – The use of non-verbal communication is a core skill we all need to develop; it can allow us to intervene early and get behaviour back on track without drawing attention to a student or their behaviour. This can be as subtle as eye contact at the right moment, a hand movement to suggest calming or even a smile and a nod.

Positioning – Where you place yourself at key times such as student arrival, roll marking, giving instructions, asking questions will impact on each activity’s effectiveness. Your ability to move around the room while maintaining a scanning view allows you to keep on top behaviour and levels of student engagement. Some teachers use a specific position in the classroom to manage student behaviour which is separate to positions they use for explicit teaching. Used consistently, this can even become an example of non-verbal communication as students learn to associate it with an intervention by the teacher.

Pace – Your control of the pace of your teaching and the learning in your classroom is also a key strategy in developing an orderly and effective classroom. Research has shown that a slow pace of instruction can cause significant behaviour problems. The right pace in a lesson will positively impact on student engagement and progress in learning.

Engagement

Any teacher, who has become involved in a struggle of attrition with an individual or a class around behaviour, knows that it is a negative cycle, which needs to be broken. The way to break it is always through positive engagement in learning.

Explicit Teaching – Students’ knowledge of what they are learning, and why they are learning it, impacts on their engagement. Building their ‘field’ of knowledge around a topic or specific activity adds richness and promotes genuine understanding and interest.

Modelling – Modelling an activity for a class, or group within a class, draws students into a task and provides the opportunity for a teacher to build credibility with students. A teacher sharing skills is a way for students to see that their teacher is an expert from whom they can learn.

Questioning – A skilled teacher will use a wide range of questioning techniques to develop students’ ideas, to check on understanding, to draw individuals into the learning process and to inform their own decision making on where to take the lesson next. Questions allow a teacher to take a class deeper into a topic and promote students’ skills of justifying and explaining their reasoning. Simple techniques like ‘no hands up’ or ‘think, pair and share’ place structure and enhance the teachers control of order in a classroom. The use of closed questions to check recall and open questions to promote deeper thinking and analysis will be appropriate at various times within a class’s learning. Click here for the link to the Department of Education’s section on Questioning

Participation – Designing learning activities or tasks which require active participation is fundamental to building student engagement. 

When teachers require that students participate in lessons, rather than sit as passive listeners, they increase the odds that these students will become caught up in the flow of the activity and not drift off into misbehaviour (Heward, 2003).

This idea is explored in detail by Geoff Munns’ JPL article from 2021. He said,

“We talked about students being ‘in-task’ (positively involved in their learning) as opposed to being ‘on-task’ (just complying with teacher instructions).”

No matter which stage you are teaching, being prepared, and having as much organisation in place as possible will enable any teacher to deal with the unexpected. As stated earlier a teacher will make as many as 1500 decisions in any normal school day, each one may be critical to a student’s learning or the management of their behaviour. Teaching really is rocket science.

Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (CESE 2020), Classroom management: Creating and maintaining positive learning environments LITERATURE REVIEW DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 2. (n.d.). https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/about-us/educational-data/cese/2020-classroom-management-literature-review.pdf

Cook, C, Fiat, A, Larson, M, Daikos, C, Slemrod, T, Holland, E, Thayer, A & Renshaw, T (2018). ‘Positive greetings at the door: Evaluation of a low-cost, high-yield proactive classroom management strategy’, Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, vol. 20, no. 3. 

Dix, P. (2017). When the adults change, everything changes: seismic shifts in school behaviour. (1st ed.). Independent Thinking Press.

Egeberg, H & McConney, A (2018) What do students believe about effective classroom management? A mixed – methods investigation in Western Australian high schools. Springer International Publishing

https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworkspost2013/4105/

Hepburn, L & Beamish, W (2019) Towards Implementation of Evidence Based Practices for Classroom Management in Australia: A review of research Australian Journal of Teacher Education

https://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4177&context=ajte

Heward, W.L. (2003) Ten Faulty Notions about Teaching and Learning That Hinder the Effectiveness of Special Education. The Journal of Special Education

Improvement, L. (2021, April 29). Universal Design for Learning planning tool. Education.nsw.gov.au. https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/learning-from-home/teaching-at-home/teaching-and-learning-resources/universal-design-for-learning

Kratochwill, T., DeRoos, R., & Blair, S. (2009). Classroom Management: Teachers Modules. American Psychological Association. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/education/k12/classroom-mgmt.aspx

McMahon, H. (2015). Managing Student Behaviour [Review of Managing Student Behaviour]. Journal of Professional Learning, Semester 1, 2015. https://cpl.asn.au/journal/semester-1-2015/managing-student-behaviour

Munns, G., (2021) All About MeE: The Fair Go Program’s Student Engagement Framework The Journal of Professional Learning (JPL)

https://cpl.asn.au/journal/semester-1-2021/all-about-mee-the-fair-go-programs-student-engagement-framework

NSW Department Of Education (2022) Student Behaviour Policy https://education.nsw.gov.au/policy-library/policies/pd-2006-0316

NSW Department of Education – Questioning https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/teacher-quality-and-accreditation/strong-start-great-teachers/refining-practice/teacher-questioning/key-questioning-strategies#1.0

NSW Education Standards Authority (2018). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers – Teacher Accreditation. (rev. ed.) Retrieved from https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/wcm/connect/9ba4a706-221f-413c-843b-d5f390c2109f/australian-professional-standards-teachers.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

Wannarka, R., & Ruhl, K. (2008). Seating arrangements that promote positive academic and behavioural outcomes: a review of empirical research. Support for Learning, 23(2), 89–93. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9604.2008.00375.x

Woolfolk Hoy, A., & Weinstein, C. S. (2006). Student and Teacher Perspectives on Classroom Management.

In C. M. Evertson, & C. S. Weinstein (Eds.), Handbook of Classroom Management. Research, Practice, and Contemporary Issues (pp. 181-219). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

https://scirp.org/reference/referencespapers.aspx?referenceid=2003830

Helen McMahon is an experienced secondary History and English teacher. For much of her career she taught in the south-west region of Sydney. Helen held the position of Deputy Principal at Bankstown Girls High School before being appointed as Principal to Leumeah High School. Following her retirement as principal she returned to the classroom, teaching English at Keira High School.

Helen is the author of a popular article on behaviour management published in the very first edition of the JPL which is still available. The article was based on beginning teacher professional development courses she delivered on behalf of the Federation.

Click here to access this article.

Andrea Gavrielatos began teaching in 2015 at Bardia Public School in Sydney’s South West.  

She has worked in mainstream and special education settings. Prior to her current role she worked as a relieving Assistant Principal in an SSP which caters for students with Emotional Disturbances, Behaviour Disorders and Intellectual Disabilities. 

Andrea is currently an Assistant Principal at a large Primary School in the Canterbury-Bankstown area. She has worked in infants and primary.

Throughout her career, Andrea has supported early career teachers to establish planning/programming routines and classroom management strategies as presenter at various conferences and courses.

Michelle Gleeson began teaching in 2005 as a primary teacher and is currently acting Deputy Principal at a large primary school on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

Throughout her career, Michelle has been involved in advising early career teachers on accreditation processes and supporting beginning teachers to establish planning/programming routines and classroom management strategies as presenter at various conferences and workshops for the CPL and NSWTF.

She worked as a Professional Learning Officer at the NSW Institute of Teachers (now known as NESA) and advised teachers and school executive on designing and implementing effective processes to support the learning and development of all staff, using the framework of the Teaching Standards.

Trystan Loades has been a high school teacher for 26 years. He has held classroom teacher and executive roles in both NSW schools and schools in the UK, where he was a Faculty Head Teacher for 6 years. He is currently a Deputy Principal at Keira High School in Wollongong.

In recent years Trystan has worked closely with the University of Wollongong Master of Teaching program. He collaborated in the writing and delivery of professional learning for teachers supervising Professional Experience.

He currently leads new staff induction and support for beginning teachers at his school.

Effective-Classroom-Managament-McMahon-et-al Download

Leading Assessment Practice in Schools K-12

Overview

What does assessment practice look like in your school?

Is there an agreed understanding across the school community of the meaning and purpose of evidence, assessment theory and practice, feedback, and evaluation? How does your school implement a common approach to assessment?

Professor Jim Tognolini from the University of Sydney’s Centre for Educational Measurement and Assessment (CEMA) will lead an interactive and content-driven professional learning experience that will unpack the definitions and purpose of data, evidence, assessment, feedback and evaluation. We will explore the importance of teacher voice in assessment and how to lead a collaborative approach to assessment practice across the school community.

Over two days, this course will focus on the role of teachers and school leaders in supporting colleagues to evaluate the effectiveness of their approach to assessment.

Participants will have an opportunity to consider how to successfully lead a shift in school-wide assessment practice through a collective approach within their own school context.

This course is NESA Accredited. Please expand the ‘Accreditation’ bar for further details.

Open All

19 May and 2 June at Surry Hills

9 September and 23 September at Blacktown

14 October and 27 October, online via Zoom

All CPL courses run from 9am to 3pm.

Prof Jim Tognolini

Professor Jim Tognolini is Director of The Centre for Educational Measurement and Assessment (CEMA) which is situated within the University of Sydney School of Education and Social Work. The work of the Centre is focused on the broad areas of teaching, research, consulting and professional learning for teachers.

The Centre is currently providing consultancy support to a number of schools. These projects include developing a methodology for measuring creativity; measuring 21st Century Skills; developing school-wide practice in formative assessment. We have a number of experts in the field: most notably, Professor Jim Tognolini, who in addition to conducting research offers practical and school-focused support.

Lisa Edwards

Lisa Edwards is a school leader passionate about the potential of public education to change lives.

With over 20 years of experience with the NSW Department of Education, working in schools in Sydney’s south and southwest, Lisa is an English teacher by training, and at heart. Her leadership journey has included the roles of Head Teacher Wellbeing, Head Teacher English, and Deputy Principal. She has developed resources and presented on assessment, pedagogy and programming, working in collaboration with the Department’s secondary curriculum team, and has published and presented for the NSW English Teachers’ Association. Lisa received an Australian Council for Educational Leaders award and a Premier’s Award for Public Service for her work leading improvement in literacy and HSC achievement, and currently presents for the NSW Teachers’ Federation’s Centre for Professional Learning on leading lifting achievement and quality assessment practice.

Lisa is a strong advocate for public education and educational equity, dedicated to supporting teachers in public schools to maximise learning outcomes and, therefore, opportunities for our students.

Completing Leading Assessment Practice in Schools: K-12 will contribute 10 hours of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Accredited PD in the priority area of Delivery and Assessment of NSW Curriculum/EYLF addressing standard descriptors 5.1.3, 5.2.3, 5.4.3 from the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers towards maintaining Proficient Teacher or Highly Accomplished Accreditation in NSW.

K-12 teachers and school leaders who support and work with teacher colleagues to build capacity through collaboration.

$440 for 2 days

Please note, payment for courses is taken after the course takes place.

“Amazing presenters. Knowledgeable and relevant information that applies to transformational change regarding new curriculum.”

“Really logical and practical discussion and explanation of key principles which completely resonated.”

“Great conversations had reflecting on current school practices and the change that is needed.”

“This course was a wonderful opportunity to delve and immerse in assessment.”

The Teacher’s Voice in Educational Assessment

Confidence using Assessment Data and Statistics K-12

The Beginning of a Journey to Assessment and Data Literacy for Teachers

Understanding students’ higher order thinking skills through the lens of assessment

Viva La Difference: Exploring LGBTIQ Diversity in the Primary Classroom

Dr Lorri Beveridge, Michael Murray and Hannah Gillard explore the high gravitas and practicalities of raising awareness of intersex, sexuality and gender diverse people in the primary classroom through teaching LGBTIQ literature.¹ Teaching students LGBTIQ texts can better address students’ academic and emotional needs…

SETTING THE SCENE

The scene is a Year 6 classroom. The lesson is a novella study of a text dealing with racism,

(Pascoe, 2016). Increasingly, deep and significant class discussions are sprouting and intertwining, making the text come alive, resulting in high student engagement, that oftentimes occurs when teachers draw on quality texts in the teaching of English. Defined by Ewing, Callow and Rushton (2016, p103), quality texts are those that engage students and teachers alike, are rich in language and imagery, multi-layered and evoke a range of different communities and responses. Conversations about quality texts allow children to dive into rabbit-holes, to engage in complex and nuanced conversations they might not be exposed to inside and/or outside school, yet are so crucially important to their young lives. These conversations help children to make sense of their world in an open way, as they explore issues dialogically through the eyes of characters in texts, fostering positive wellbeing, at a safe distance. Mrs Whitlam narrates the struggles of an adolescent girl, tussling against covert racism in her daily life. The teacher in the Year 6 classroom steers the class to strengthen meaning through the complex interplay of context, narrative and character. One eloquent class member contributes at length regarding a particularly relevant aspect of the text. To encourage continuation of the important conversation string, the teacher reflects to the class, “She said, …”.

The student promptly responds, “I am a boy”, in a matter-of-fact way. Surprisingly, there is no reaction from the class. The teacher apologises profusely and moves the lesson right along. The above narrative is a real-life example of a teacher feeling under-confident and underprepared to correctly address transgender and gender diverse students in the classroom. In this paper, we argue that teaching quality LGBTIQ literature can open up an exploratory and open space for students and teachers to learn about intersex identities, and sexuality and gender diversity. Teaching these modes of diversity through literature means intersex identities and gender and sexuality diversity can be explored in a way that involves all students (those within and outside LGBTIQ communities) so that LGBTIQ students don’t feel singled out and confronted in the classroom due to questions or speculations about their difference. Teaching LGBTIQ texts can help make school a safer environment for LGBTIQ students, as well as their friends and family more broadly.

Why primary schools should support LGBTIQ students and address intersex identities, and sexuality and gender diversity

It is a reasonable expectation that LGBTIQ positive content is provided to children so they feel supported, and also so they can envision sexuality and gender diversity, for instance, as positive potentialities for themselves.

A related reason to teach LGBTIQ literature is the confronting, unacceptable and possibly all-too-familiar narrative of a child being misgendered in a classroom, which is a timely reminder to educators to reflect on how we support transgender and gender diverse students and their families. We may not be providing these students with the attention they require, and deserve, to set them up for success at school. The idiomatic expression, “viva la difference”, attributed to the French resistance movement (Vernet, 1992), encourages us to celebrate difference and diversity. Yet academic research ubiquitously points the finger at insensitive education systems, including a lack of LGBTIQ support, failure to recognise transgender identity, bullying and victimisation. These are widely regarded as contributing factors to spiralling youth suicide rates (Gorse, 2020; Lee & Wong, 2020; Turban & Ehrensaft, 2017).

Paediatric gender diversity is a burgeoning area of research (Ehrensaft, 2020; Ristori & Steensma, 2017; Henderson, 2016). Young children who are transgender or gender diverse also suffer from anxiety, depression and suicidality. A recent Canadian parent-report study (MacMullin, 2020) found that 9.1% of 6-12 year olds who expressed gender non-conformity had attempted suicide or self-harm. What is particularly notable in Australia is the marked scarcity of data on suicide and mental health for young people who are Indigenous and LGBTIQ (Henningham, 2021 p14; Rhodes and Byrne, 2021 p34). Scholar Mandy Henningham says this requires further research to recognise the impact of factors like intergenerational trauma and institutionalised racism on health outcomes for LGBTIQ and Indigenous young people (Henningham, 2021 p14). In recognising the poorer health outcomes for many LGBTIQ young people (and the need for more research), we as educators can assist LGBTIQ children and their families by creating inclusive school communities underpinned by values such as respect, acceptance (as opposed to tolerance) and honesty.

In failing to address the learning and wellbeing needs of LGBTIQ students, we are espousing a particular, mostly unintended, point of view, relegating our LGBTIQ students to the null curriculum, often referred to as the hidden curriculum (Kazeemi et al, 2020; Banja, 2020; Eisner, 1994). Schools socialise students in ways that are viewed as educationally significant, including shared values, images and beliefs (Eisner, 1994). The null curriculum is that which is not taught at school, important due to its conspiracy of silence. Pedagogy around intersex people, and those who are gender and sexuality diverse may indeed be regarded as part of the null curriculum. LGBTIQ diversity may be an uncomfortable subject for many educators to address. The null curriculum implies that being heterosexual and ‘cisgender’ (a term meaning not transgender) is normal and being LGBTIQ is abnormal. Promoting awareness of sexuality and gender diversity reduces anti-LGBTIQ stereotypes, bullying and violence against LGBTIQ students.

Mel Smith (2020) argues that public schools are fundamentally, and necessarily, inclusive and have a particular responsibility to recognise and represent the diversity of their communities in the ways they plan and execute schooling. This responsibility does not begin in high school. According to Smith, ‘the need to also incorporate LGBTIQ inclusive topics in the curriculum in primary schools is highlighted by the fact that at least half same sex attracted young people realise their attraction while in primary school (Hiller et al., 2013), and that there are often rainbow families that are not recognised, or acknowledged, in the stories that are read or the content that is covered in class’.

Practical ways primary schools can support LGBTIQ students and address LGBTIQ diversity

It takes a village to raise a child, according to an African proverb. Similarly, it takes a whole community to support LGBTIQ students in schools. We can collectively create inclusive school communities by focusing on a number of key strategies:

Neither endorse nor empower heteronormativity² or gender stereotyping³. Create spaces for discussion about being intersex, and gender and sexuality diverse. Encourage class conversations about LGBTIQ issues in ways that students can connect with, for example, relations with family. This can be achieved by making conscious decisions about what stories to read to children, setting up classrooms and school routines free of gender constraints, including enabling students to wear the school uniform they want. If teachers fail to discuss intersex identities, and sexuality and gender diversity, many students will go unsupported and find fitting in socially at school challenging. A culture of care and inclusion is necessary for successful school performance.
Explore LGBTIQ matters with young children in a safe, familiar space by reading books that reflect different family compositions, including LGBTIQ families, exploring classroom resources from a human rights perspective. In doing so, students learn that all families are special and to value diversity in our society. Students and their families have a right to see themselves reflected in books and other resources used in classrooms.
Ensure staff are well-informed and have access to, and opportunities to discuss, research-based articles about bullying, and LGBTIQ students. Professional learning provides teachers with methods to intervene and de-escalate threatening situations. Teachers need to know they will be supported because teaching content on intersex identities, and gender and sexuality diversity, is regarded as controversial by some sectors in society. That said, some students and families do not identify with the nuclear family and deserve to read about families similar to their own. Teachers need to know that they have the support of school leaders when intervening in challenging situations. Together, teachers and school leaders play an important role in challenging phobias against LGBTQ people and bullying in schools, providing support to our LGBTIQ students and their families.
Address issues of phobia against LGBTIQ students as a high priority. There is staff agreement that inappropriate language will not be tolerated, and staff will intervene to protect students from bullying and homophobia. Leadership attitudes are identified as the most influential factor in keeping LGBTIQ students safe at school. School leaders contribute to moral purpose in their schools and the wider community.
Seek feedback from openly LGBTIQ students as to whether they feel safe at school. Interview parents, counsellors, psychologists and students themselves as to how to support LGBTQ students and what assistance they require to succeed at school. (DeJean & Sapp, 2017; Dewitt, 2012).

In addition to the points raised above, we make two other important suggestions about how primary schools can be more LGBTIQ inclusive. Firstly, when developing curriculum for LGBTIQ topics and when teaching this content, teachers and education departments should be aware that there are often specialist groups and resources that should be consulted in relation to different parts of LGBTIQ communities. This is important given the distinctiveness of identities and issues faced in intersex, and gender and sexuality diverse communities. Finding out which groups and resources to consult can be facilitated by online searches, reading LGBTIQ media, attending LGBTIQ events as well as consulting with LGBTIQ groups and community members. The importance of consulting specific communities when teaching and developing curriculum is emphasised by intersex activists in the Darlington Statement- a document published by intersex activists in 2017. Here, they, ‘call on education and awareness providers to develop content with intersex-led organisations and promote delivery by intersex people’ (p8). Notably, Intersex Human Rights Australia (2021) and Intersex Peer Support Australia (n.d.) are both specialist intersex groups in the Australian context that provide things like resources, information and support regarding intersex identities. Teachers and education departments being consultative, and recognising the specificity of experiences in LGBTIQ communities, is a practical way they can make primary schools more LGBTIQ inclusive.

Secondly, to make primary schools more LGBTIQ friendly, primary educators should include content that recognises the way LGBTIQ identities intersect and overlap with multiple forms of minoritised difference – for instance, being a young person who is part of LGBTIQ and Indigenous communities in Australia (Rhodes and Bryne 2021, p30). Research by David Rhodes and Matt Byrne shows a lack of attention is paid to being LGBTIQ and Indigenous in the education of primary teachers and students in Australia. Given the specificity of being part of both LGBTIQ and Indigenous communities, and the importance of educating children about Indigenous histories and cultures, teaching children about the particularities of LGBTIQ and Indigenous experiences is crucial. Understandably, Rhodes and Byrne note this practice should be backed by the inclusion of non-tokenistic content covering the intersection of LGBTIQ and Indigenous experiences in the tertiary courses for primary teaching. In addition to this, they argue for, inter alia, the amendment of school and education department policies to speak to this intersection (Rhodes and Byrne 2021, pp37-38). One cost of not educating students about LGBTIQ and Indigenous identities is the potential siloing of minoritised difference, which can perpetuate the idea that being LGBTIQ and Indigenous, for instance, are mutually exclusive⁴. Writers who are part of LGBTIQ and Indigenous communities, like Maddee Clark and Mandy Henningham, have identified this stereotype as a serious issue (Clark 2014 quoted in Henningham 2019, pp101-102; Clark 2014 quoted in Henningham 2021, p12). For instance, drawing on the work of Maddee Clark, Henningham highlights the way Clark was questioned about the very existence of people who were both LGBTIQ and Indigenous (Clark 2014 quoted in Henningham 2021, p12). When teaching about LGBTIQ experiences at the primary level, education should be inclusive of the way gender and sexuality diversity, for instance, intersect with cultural and racial difference, to reflect the realities of young people’s lives.

Curriculum links

The NSW PDHPE curriculum (NESA, 2019) addresses LGBTIQ students indirectly. Outcome PDe-1 – 5-1 relates to characteristics that make us similar and different, and how we manage personal challenges as they arise. PDe-1 – 5-2 relates to feeling safe and strategies to support self and others. Following on from here, PDe-6 – 5-6 deals with the importance of context in health and wellbeing. Similarly, PDe-7 – 5-7 describes actions that promote health, safety and wellbeing. In these COVID times, there has been a particular focus on student wellbeing, which coheres with addressing gender diversity at school.

The NSW English curriculum (NESA, 2012, 2019) also provides space for teachers to address issues of gender diversity in the classroom. Objective D, in particular, states that students will develop knowledge, understanding and skills in order to ‘express themselves and their relationships with others and their world’. The outcome for Stage 1 (Years 1-2) that occupies Objective D, EN1-11D, requires that a student ‘responds to and composes a range of texts about familiar aspects of the world and their own experiences’, including of course the LGBTIQ student’s own experience of family. By Stage 2 (Years 3-4), the equivalent outcome, EN2-11D, extends this challenge to composing and responding to texts ‘that express viewpoints of the world similar to and different from their own’, indicating that by this stage students could be exposed, through texts, to experiences of gender that might be different to their own. For Stage 3 (Years 5-6), EN3-8D requires that a student considers how ‘different viewpoints of their world, including aspects of culture, are represented in texts’. Gender diversity, an essential aspect of culture, falls neatly into the gamut of ‘different viewpoints’, but this outcome is a reminder that in English it is not gender diversity itself which is the focus but rather how gender diversity is represented in texts. Concepts endorsed in the English conceptual framework (NSW DoE & ETA, 2017), co-developed by the English Teachers Association NSW and the NSW Department of Education that support a focus on gender diversity, include narrative, character, context, representation, perspective, and point of view. Clearly the study of English in primary school provides rich opportunities for students to learn about gender diversity in relation to themselves, each other, and the world at large.

Even the new skills-oriented K-2 English syllabus (NESA, 2021), recently released but not due for mandatory implementation until 2023, recognises the diversity of learners in the classroom and requires that students ‘identify aspects of their own world represented in texts’ (Early Stage 1) and ‘identify representations of groups and cultures in a range of texts’ (Stage 1). The rationale of the English K-2 syllabus (2021) states ‘students are to engage with Australian diversity by exploring a range of texts … and a range of linguistic, cultural and social perspectives’ (NESA, p9). By engaging with diverse literature, students feel empowered to express their identities, broadening their perspectives and world views.

Significantly, all curriculum documents in NSW schools (e.g. NESA, 2019) contain learning across the curriculum content, including cross-curriculum priorities, and general capabilities, areas that are embedded in all key learning areas, identified as essential learning for all students. Teaching students about LGBTIQ diversity in the primary classroom is supported, identified and incorporated by the following learning across the curriculum content. The icons below are visual symbols that identify the particular content embedded across the various syllabi:

Cross curriculum priority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
General capabilities of critical and creative thinking, ethical understanding, intercultural understanding and personal and social capability
Additionally, other learning across the curriculum area of difference and diversity

The cross-curriculum priorities and capabilities, identified above, exemplify the high gravitas of learning about LGBTIQ diversity in primary classrooms. They are identified throughout our syllabus documents as important learning for all students.

Texts that address LGBTIQ diversity and ideas for their use in the primary classroom

Books hook us in, and it is our challenge as educators to ensure that “the right book falls into the right hands” (Old Souls Book Club, 2021). Age-appropriate books, that depict LGBTIQ characters and families woven into their storylines, expose students to the diversity of the real world. Similarly, texts that empower students to stand up for themselves and others help children to learn coping skills that assist them in dealing with situations of homophobia and bullying. Quality literature provides a safe space to expose students to LGBTIQ related topics, which some might regard as controversial, in thought-provoking ways. Schools can play an important role in countering anti-LGBTIQ sentiment and lead the way towards a better world for everyone.

Reading a great book and identifying with its characters is an enjoyable and powerful means of opening up conversational spaces with students. Many of the texts traditionally used in classrooms contain heterosexual and cisgender characters and images. LGBTIQ students do not see themselves or their families reflected in these texts. By drawing on texts that include LGBTIQ characters and non-traditional family structures, these students see mirrors of themselves. Characters are more relatable to them. Teachers are promoting self-acceptance in gender diverse students, and increased awareness in all students, curbing anti-LGBTIQ stereotypes and reducing bullying and violence against LGBTIQ students.

Appendix 1 below lists a wide range of texts for primary-aged children that address gender, sexuality and family diversity, including suggested links to the NSW curriculum, particularly English. It also provides an overview for teachers to assist them in selecting texts that address the wellbeing needs of students in their classrooms. These texts could form the basis of English units, focusing on concepts of narrative, character, context, theme and representation, perspective or point of view. Outcomes and content from other subjects, especially PDHPE, could be incorporated into these units. Note that while PDHPE curriculum fails to directly address issues related LGBTIQ experiences, there is enough scope in this syllabus to justify the inclusion of content that might promote learning for all students in relation to LGBTIQ diversity.

The books listed in Appendix 1 are but some of the vibrant LGBTIQ young people’s literature available, and we encourage teachers to be on the lookout for other age appropriate LGBTIQ texts they could teach. We encourage teachers to stay attuned for primary school texts that feature intersex identities, and that speak to the intersection between Indigenous and LGBTIQ experiences in Australia, so that students who occupy these identities can see themselves represented and feel included.

Lonesborough, G. (2021). ***The boy from the mish***. A&U Children’s.

Whilst not a primary school text, we would like to highlight the recently released book The Boy from The Mish by Gary Lonesborough by Gary Lonesborough (2021) for exploring the intersection of Indigenous and LGBTIQ+ communities.

The book is a queer Indigenous novel for readers 14 and up about a 17-year-old exploring his identity in a rural community of Australia. Finding and teaching texts that speak to the diversity of LGBTIQ experiences is crucial so that students and teachers can appreciate the heterogeneity of LGBTIQ communities.

Conclusion

As can be seen through the narrative of the child being misgendered by a teacher at the beginning of this paper, it is crucial there is greater awareness and understanding of LGBTIQ issues within primary classrooms. Teaching students LGBTIQ literature, such as the texts that we have included in our appendix, in an accepting way creates an open, explorative space where children and teachers can be educated about intersex identities, and gender and sexuality diversity. As stated, we recommend teachers stay on the lookout for texts that address the multiplicity of LGBTIQ experiences – for instance, being Indigenous and sexuality and gender diverse. Teaching LGBTIQ texts is particularly important given the way LGBTIQ literature has been described as being part of the ‘null’ or ‘hidden’ curriculum’ in schools. The invisibility of the diversity of LGBTIQ experiences can perpetuate heteronormative biases in teaching, which can result in children being unaware that being a part of the LGBTIQ community is a positive potentiality for them – one life course amongst many that is legitimate and that they can be proud of. Providing students with the opportunity to explore LGBTIQ experiences in an open, explorative way through texts is a positive move in the direction towards promoting better health and wellbeing outcomes for LGBTIQ students and teachers.

While this paper explores the power of literature to educate about LGBTIQ experiences, it is one change amongst many that could occur to make primary schools more LGBTIQ inclusive. For instance, we have discussed the importance of consulting with intersex communities regarding the development of educational curriculum relevant to that community. Additionally, education scholars David Rhodes and Matt Byrne have highlighted an array of opportunities for improving the primary school experience for teachers and students who are part of both Indigenous and LGBTIQ communities (Rhodes and Byrne 2021). This includes embedding teaching about the intersection of these identities in the university education of primary school teachers, and the modification of school and education department policies to recognise the experiences of those who are LGBTIQ and Indigenous (Rhodes and Byrne 2021, p.38-39). Doing so would improve pedagogy and encourage the celebration of ‘diversity in all its forms’ (Rhodes and Byrne, 2021 p.38).

Endnotes

‘LGBTIQ+’ is an acronym that popularly stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and more (signified through the ‘+’). The ‘+’ is intended to be inclusive of gender and sexuality diverse identities not explicitly or fully represented by the letters ‘LGBTIQ’.
Heteronormativity refers to the belief that heterosexuality, along with other dominant identities like being cisgender, are the default, preferred, or normal modes of being
Gender stereotyping is the propensity to evaluate people on the basis of their perceived gender
Numerous writers have explored how sexuality and gender diversity is something that has existed in Indigenous cultures in Australia since before colonisation (for instance, see Moon 2020; Riggs & Toone, 2017 quoted in Henningham 2019, p.103). Texts such as Colouring the Rainbow: Blak Queer and Trans Perspectives. Life Stories and Essays by First Nations People of Australia (2015), edited by Dino Hodge, is an important anthology that explores contemporary Indigenous, queer and trans experiences.

Open All

Texts that address gender and family diversity in the classroom.

Texts	Curriculum Links	Overview
Carr, J. & Rumback, B. (2015). Be Who You Are. Bloomington, Indiana: Authorhouse.	Suitable S1, S2. PDe-1 identify who they are PD1-1 describe characteristics that make us similar / different PD2-1 explore strategies to manage physical, social, and emotiona change English K-2 (2021): ENE, EN1-OCL-01; ENE, EN1-UARL-01	A child is born into the wrong body – one that doesn’t match the gender the child feels inside. Assigned male at birth, the child is described as having a “girl brain”. This book is designed to educate readers about gender diverse and transgender children.
Walton, J. & McPherson, D. (2016). Introducing Teddy: a gentle story about gender and friendship. London, UK: Bloomsbury.	Suitable ES1, S1. Useful text to discuss complex issues. The bear is the main character who is exploring gender identity in the text. Useful to act out and facilitate class discussion. English K-2 (2021):ENE, EN1-OLC-01; ENE, EN1-UARL-01	The main character is a teddy whose outside does not match what’s felt on the inside. A story about being true to self, friendship and acceptance. “Wear whatever makes you happy” is the main message of the text.
Gonzalas, M. (2014). Call Me Tree. Llamame arbol. San Francisco, CAL: Children’s Book Press.	Suitable ES1, S1. Multicultural text. English/Spanish vocabulary. Useful for teaching figurative language including metaphor, simile, personification. Also rhetorical questions. English K-2 (2021): ENE, EN1-CWT-01; ENE, EN1-UARL-01	The text figuratively describes a child growing from a seed, like a tree. “A seed, a tree, free to be me”. The inspiring text encourages readers to reach for their dreams and accept themselves for who they are.
Ewert, M. & Ray, R. (2008). 10,000 Dresses. NY: Seven Stories Press.	Suitable S1, S2; possibly S3. The changing use of personal pronouns when referring to transgender and gender diverse people. English K-2 (2021): ENE, EN1-CWT-01 English K-6 (2012): EN2-9B; EN3-6B.	Bailey is assigned male at birth but wishes to wear dresses-something others have told him boys can’t do. Bailey struggles when her family won’t accept her gender and dress preferences. She finally finds a friend who helps her feel confident in pursuing her dream to wear dresses and express her true identity.
Valentine, J. & Schmidt, L. (2004). The Daddy Machine. Boston, Mass: Alyson Wonderland Publishers.	Suitable S1, S2; possibly S3. A useful text to teach code and convention including punctuation, speech marks, sentence complexity. English K-2 (2021): ENE, EN1-CWT-01 English K-6 (2012): EN2-9B; EN3-6B.	Two siblings with two mums long for a father. They make a daddy machine out of junk materials and make many more daddies than they bargain for. How do they solve their problem? An extremely funny text.
Parr, T. (2010). The Family Book. NY: Hachette Book Group.	ES1, S1. Identifying words describing diverse families e.g. “Some families have two mums and two dads”. English K-2 (2021): ENE, EN1-VOCAB-01; ENE, EN1-OLC-01.	There are different kinds of families. Bright, fluoro colours characterise the illustrations in this simple text. The book has multiple layers of meaning. A lot of information is inferred in few words. It is a useful text to discuss family diversity with young children.
Arnold, E.K. & Davick, L. (2019). What Riley wore. NY: Beach Lane books.	ES1, S1. Vocabulary- building word banks from illustrations. Discussion questions: How is Riley different? How does this make others feel in the text? How does it make you feel? English K-2 (2021): ENE, EN1-VOCAB-01; ENE, EN1-OLC-01.	“Are you a boy or a girl?” the reader ponders throughout the text. Riley replies, “Today I’m a firefighter and a dancer and a monster hunter and a…”. Riley dresses according to how they are feeling, irrespective of gender expectations. The message of the text is, “We are all unique and important. It doesn’t matter whether we are a boy or a girl”. This text is a celebration of difference.
Gale, H. & Song, M. (2019). Ho’Onani Hula Warrior. NY: Tundra Books.	ES1, S1, S2. Multicultural text. Links to History syllabus: share heritage stories (ES1) investigate changes in family life (S1) identify traces of the past in the present (S2). English K-2 (2021): ENE, EN1-OLC-01; ENE, EN1-UARL-01; ENE, EN1-VOCAB-01. English K-6 (2012): EN2-9B; EN2-10C.	The protagonist doesn’t see herself as a boy or a girl, but occupies “a place in the middle”. She queries gender stereotypes and triumphs in a contemporary setting relevant to students today. The story is consistent with “Mahu” people in Hawaiian culture, who embrace both male and female traits. The theme of the text is “show respect for all people”.
Willhoite, M. (1991). Daddy’s Roommate. Boston, Mass: Alyson Wonderland Books.	ES1, S1. Large, colourful illustrations which lend themselves to teaching visual literacy. Discussion questions: What is happening in the pictures? What stands out? Why? -What feelings are portrayed in the illustrations? How do you know? English K-2 (2021): ENE, EN1-OLC-01; ENE, EN1-UARL-01.	A social story which opens a communicative space about divorce and a child’s growing understanding of homosexual love. “Being gay is one more form of love” and “Love is the best kind of happiness” are the main messages of the text.
Parr, T. (2010). The Daddy Book. NY: Hachette Book Group.	ES1, S1. Sentence building describing the diversity (and similarities) of fathers e.g. “My/ your daddy has…”. English K-2 (2021): ENE, EN1-OLC-01; ENE, EN1-UARL-01; ENE, EN1-CWT-01.	This book is about fathers who do different things with their children. Bright, fluoro colours in illustrations. Simple text. Multiple layers of meaning. A lot inferred in few words. The theme of the text is celebrating family diversity.
Richardson, J., Parnell, P. & Cole, H. (2005). And Tango Makes Three. NY: Simon & Schuster.	Suitable S1, S2. Discussion: Do the two daddy penguins act the same way as other penguin parents? How are they the same/ different? English K-2 (2021): ENE, EN1-VOCAB-01 ENE, EN1-SPELL-01 prefixes, suffixes compound words ENE, EN1-UARL-01.	This is a true story of two male chinstrap penguins who live at the Central Park Zoo, NY, and raise a penguin chick together. It raises questions about heterosexuality/homosexuality in the animal kingdom and how this might relate to humans. New vocabulary: carousel, cotton top tamarin, ice rink, red panda bear.
Newman, L. & Cornell, L. (2015). Heather Has Two Mummies. London: Walker Books.	Suitable ES1. Starting School English K-2 (2021): ENE, EN1-OLC-01; ENE, EN1-UARL-01; ENE, EN1-CWT-01. CAe3MVA makes artworks… to communicate ideas; CAe-4IVA explores how artworks and the artwork of others communicate ideas.	A useful discussion starter about starting school and learning about other peoples’ families. The setting of the text is a family consisting of two mums and a 5-year-old child who is starting school. At kindergarten, the children paint their families as an introduction to a lesson about family diversity. The main focus of the text is that each family is special, and the common link is that families love each other.
Savage, S. & Fisher, F. (2017). Are You a Boy or a Girl? London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.	Suitable S1, S2. English K-2 (2021): EN1-OLC-01; EN1-UARL-01; EN1-CWT-01. Use background knowledge of a topic to make inferences about the ideas in a text. Identify text connectives, cohesive links in text. English K-6 (2012): EN2-11D. Responds to/ composes texts expressing views similar to/ different from own.	A child called Tiny likes to dress up and does not conform to gender norms. Children at their new school keep asking them whether they are a boy or a girl. Tiny avoids the question, as they do not identify as either a boy or a girl. A useful text to introduce the topic of gender diversity with young children. Discussion: Why does it matter if Tiny is a boy or a girl? Why do you think Buster tries to bully Tiny? How do you know this?
Donaldson, J. & Scheffler, A. (2004). The Gruffalo’s Child. London: Macmillan.	Suitable ES1, S1. English K-2 (2021): EN1-OLC-01; EN1-UARL-01; EN1-CWT-01.ENE, EN1-PHOKW-01;ENE, EN-REFLU-01. ENE, EN1-RECOM-01. Identifying rhyme, rhythm in text. Word families, vowel digraphs. Punctuation including question marks, exclamation marks, quotation marks, direct speech. Opportunities to make meaning through drama. Creating story map to sequence activities in text. Building noun groups, verb groups. Narrative structure is also something to discuss.	Donaldson’s widely popular, ubiquitous texts contain witty, rhythmic verses, instantly familiar to children and parents alike. The setting of The Gruffalo’s Child, a sequel to the award-winning text, The Gruffalo (1999, 2019) is a single parent Gruffalo family in the deep, dark wood. It is unclear whether the child is male or female, and the author embellishes on this in Miller (2020). Key discussion questions: Who looks after the Gruffalo’s child? Did you wonder about the gender of the Gruffalo’s child? If so, why? If not, why not? Do you think the child’s gender matters?
Hegarty, P. & Wheatcroft, R. (2017). We are Family. London: Caterpillar Books.	Suitable S1, S2 English K-2 (2021): EN1-OLC-01; EN1-UARL-01; EN1-CWT-01; EN1-PRINT-01. Visual literacy – following story maps in text. Recording student responses and captioning illustrations in text. Identifying contractions, rhyme, figurative language, nouns, verb groups.	A simple text that elaborates on the diversity of families. The book celebrates family similarities and differences. The story in this text is descriptive, presented in rhyming couplets, with no clear storyline. However, the illustrations are multifarious and lend themselves well to modelled, guided and independent writing activities (EN1-7B, EN2-7B).
Green, B. & Zobel, A. (2020). Who’s Your Real Mum? Brunswick, Vic: Scribble.	Suitable ES1, S1. English K-2 (2021): ENE,1-OLC-01; ENE,1-UARL-01; ENE,1-CWT-01; ENE,1-PRINT-01. Modelled, guided and independent writing activity. Students write a text in Q&A format.	An imaginative text. Elvie has two mums. Both mums are equally important to Elvie. She compares her mums to superheroes. Her friend asks, “Who is your real mum?” The text is in a Q&A format. She tries to make her friend understand that both mums are equally important to her. Beautiful illustrations make effective use of colour – yellows/browns for reality, blues for imagination.
Bell, D. & Colpoys, A. (2017). Under the Love Umbrella. London: Scribble.	Suitable ES1, S1. English K-2 (2021): ENE,1-OLC-01; ENE,1-UARL-01; ENE,1-RECOM-01. Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning. Discussion: What does “Under the Love Umbrella” mean? Who do you love? Why?	A text of rhyming couplets which describes a parent’s over-arching love for their child. Familiar situations of sorrow, fear and danger are outlined, including being scared of the dark, bad dreams, frightening dogs, broken toys, arguments with friends, feeling shy, and having no friends. The text is a segue into class discussions about significant people in children’s families and how they help them… Who do you love? Why?
Beer, S. (2018). LOVE makes a family. Richmond, Victoria: Little Hare Books.	Suitable ES1, S1. English K-2 (2021) ENE,1-UARL-01; ENE,1-CWT-01; ENE,1-PRINT-01. Code and convention focus.: Understands how sentence punctuation is used to enhance meaning and fluency. Focus on figurative language e.g. “lending a hand”.	A colourful text about family diversity. There are few words in this book. The words describe happy family situations to unpack and discuss with the class. The illustrations depict the diversity of families. Discuss, “What is happening in the pictures?”
Keegan, L.J. & Stapleton, M. (2019). Things in the Sea are touching me! Gosford, NSW: Scholastic.	Suitable ES1, S1. English K-2 (2021) ENE,1-OLC-01; ENE,1-UARL-01; ENE,1-RECOM-01; ENE,1-CWT-01 Understands how text structure contributes to the meaning of texts, text organisation, narrative structure. Make a story map to visually represent the story. Sentence complexity. Phonics.ENE,1-PHOKW-01 e.g. see, me.	A child with two mums participates in a family outing to the beach. The child is scared of the water and her two mums comfort her and explain each of the sources of her fear. A story told with humour and warmth through a child’s eyes.
Shirvington, J. & Robertson, C. (2020). Just the Way We Are. Sydney, NSW: ABC Books. HarperCollins.	Targets ES1, S1. English K-2 (2021): ENE,1-OLC-01; ENE,1-UARL-01; EN1-REFLU-01. Draw on an increasing range of skills to read, view and comprehend a range of texts on increasingly challenging topics.	The text deals with family diversity, racial diversity and inclusion. The main characters are children from different racial backgrounds who describe their families from their particular points of view. This text is useful for students to see children like themselves in quality children’s literature, in an engaging narrative format. It describes the inclusive, collaborative lived experience of children growing up in diverse families, through children’s eyes.
Wild, M. & Rossell, J. (2020). Pink. Sydney, NSW: HarperCollins.	Targets ES1. Publisher recommendation is for 2-5 years. English K-2 (2021): ENE,1-OLC-01; ENE,1-UARL-01; ENE,1-RECOM-01.ENE,1-CWT-01 Recognises linking words in texts, responds to shared reading for enjoyment and pleasure. Compose texts using pictures and graphics to support their choice of words. Make connections between text and own life, retells story in sequence, identify main idea. Explore how words and pictures work together to make meaning.	The main message of this text is one of self-acceptance. The main character, Pink, is born into a family of green dinosaurs. She struggles to fit in, but her difference finally saves her and her friends. This text is the second collaboration between literary heavyweights Wild and Rossell. The first, Bog Trotter (2015), encourages children to challenge themselves to try new things. The colours in Pink comprise vibrant pinks and greens. The textures and luminosity of the illustrations make the characters come alive. This text lends itself to class discussions about how we are the same, yet different, and how difference should be viewed as a strength.
Stuart, S. (2020). My Shadow is Pink. Dandenong, Victoria: Larrikin House.	ES1, S1. That said, I have discussed the important themes of equality, self- acceptance, diversity and gender identity in this text with adults- so possibly suitable for all ages. English K-2 (2021): ENE,1-OLC-01; ENE,1-UARL-01; ENE,1-RECOM-01. Discuss how that students may have different responses to a text, explore the different contribution of words and images to meaning in stories. Share feelings and thoughts about the events and characters in text.	This text is a rhyming narrative. It is about a boy who likes to dress in female clothing yet feels ashamed when his peers at school laugh at him. The author, Scott Stuart reported on his website that he wrote the story for his young son, who, on beginning school, was bullied for dressing up like Elsa, from the movie, Frozen. Through this text, Stuart aims to raise awareness of gender identity and diversity, in doing so broadening society’s narrow view of masculinity. He aims to affirm to his child, and all children; “You are loved. Exactly as you are”.
Walliams, D. & Blake, Q. (2008, 2018). The Boy in the Dress. London: HarperCollins.	This text suitable S3. EN3-2A: Engage personally with texts, experiment and use aspects of composing that enhance learning and enjoyment, present a point of view about particular literary texts using appropriate metalanguage and reflecting on the viewpoints of others. EN3-3A Understand, interpret and experiment with literary devices; summarise a text and evaluate the intended message or theme.	A children’s book written by David Walliams, a comedian well-known for the television series, Little Britain (his first), and illustrated by Quentin Blake, well known illustrator of the Roald Dahl books. The text uses humour to explore children wearing clothes not normatively associated with their cisgender, their assigned gender at birth. Dennis, a 12 year old boy, enjoys football and fashion. His parents are divorced, and he lives with his father and brother, who do not tolerate or understand Dennis’s need to dress up in girls’ clothing. He is an ordinary boy, who lives in an ordinary town, with an unusual hobby. A humorous narrative which elicits interesting class discussions about the serious topic of gender stereotyping with pre and adolescent students.

N.B. K-2 NESA English outcomes elaborated https://curriculum.nsw.edu.au/learning-areas/english/english-k-10

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Dr Lorraine (Lorri) Beveridge

Dr Lorraine (Lorri) Beveridge is a sessional academic and independent consultant. She has published articles on aspects of teaching subject English in primary schools. Her doctoral research area is the impact and sustainability of collaborative teacher professional learning.

Michael Murray

Michael Murray is a former English teacher, head teacher and chief education officer, and working as an independent consultant in English and literacy K-12.

Lorri and Michael share a website that provides resources for teachers in subject English: https://primaryenglish.education/. Their shared passion is teaching the big ideas of English through the vehicle of quality texts.

Hannah Gillard

Hannah Gillard is a non-binary academic in the final stages of their PhD at the University of Sydney. Hannah’s doctoral research area is LGBTQ+ diversity in the workplace.

Understanding the Uluru Statement: Taking the invitation to the people through the classrooms

Thomas Mayor explains why teachers should be aware of the significance of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and outlines its history. In a thoughtful message to all public education teachers, he examines what we can do to spread the message about why an Indigenous voice in parliament must be enshrined in the Australian Constitution. . .

I have been a member of the trade union movement since I commenced my working life at the port of Darwin at seventeen years old. It is there on the wharves, through the Maritime Union of Australia, that I learnt of the value of using the leverage of unity. I have seen individual workers uniting to make change at the workplace level; I have seen ports and state branches uniting to make change at the state level; and I have seen trade unions themselves, united in very specific campaigns to make major, lasting, national change that is to the benefit of all workers.

The union movement has won many a battle for workers – from wharfies to teachers – and social justice for all. We have brought our society from one where workers were mere servants, punished for disobeying the master; we have come from a place where children were forced to labour in harsh conditions and First Nations people were slaves, to a society that now enjoys universal health care, weekends, various loadings, allowances and legislated rights. Each of these wins for the union movement and society were maligned by employers and right-wing politicians who warned of impending doom from our success. But their claims of Armageddon, should these changes happen, have been thoroughly proved as selfish fearmongering.

Workers and their communities have progressed so far because unions are organised at many levels, including at the highest political level since the establishment of the Australian Labor Party. The working class has progressed because we have built strong and unapologetically representative structures that can influence laws and policies and organise to hold employers and politicians to account.

We are always under attack because of this.

I was a 20-year-old wharfie when Prime Minister John Howard colluded with the National Farmers Federation to silence the voice of maritime workers. In the middle of the night in April 1998, Patricks Stevedores sent balaclava clad mercenaries on to wharves around the country to physically drag us from our workplaces, locking us out of our livelihoods. It was part of the Howard Government’s grand plan to silence all workers by destroying their unions.

Howard failed to destroy the MUA. Because of our long-standing structure, discipline, financial resources and the leverage of unity that the union movement had, after several months of battle on the streets and in the courts, we victoriously marched back on to the wharves to work.

Where Howard failed though, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as a collective, he succeeded. He attacked the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, a representative Voice for First Nations people. He used its flaws as a weapon, instead of dealing with its issues and building on its strengths. Since ATSIC was silenced, we have seen the Northern Territory Emergency Response, or Intervention, we have seen hundreds of millions of dollars misdirected away from the communities and services that are needed, and we have seen the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens widen. Divided, we suffer.

I have briefly described how unions have achieved great progress for workers and society in general because it is one of the ways I understand the significance of establishing a constitutionally enshrined First Nations Voice to Parliament, as called for in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It is also how I understand that at Uluru, the 250 delegates, from throughout the Australian continent, that shaped and endorsed the Uluru Statement, made the right decision, prioritising the Voice in our proposed sequence of change.

Before I go on, it is worth briefly recapping on how the Uluru Statement from the Heart came to be, and what has happened since.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart is an unprecedented national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander consensus that came from the rare opportunity – an opportunity only achieved through relentless advocacy – to conduct a well-resourced and intensive series of dialogues culminating in a national constitutional convention at Uluru. The Statement brings together the collective wisdom of over 200 years of struggle.

At that final convention in the heart of the nation, on 26 May 2017, we were 270 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from throughout this great continent and from many different First Nations. The difficulty, the hard work, the passion of the debate and the achievement on the third and final morning – the achievement of a national consensus – cannot be underestimated for its national significance.

The endorsement of the Uluru Statement was a political feat that should be recognised, celebrated and taught in schools.

The call for a constitutionally enshrined Voice was officially dismissed by Prime Minister Turnbull in October of 2017, misinforming the Australian public that the proposal was for a third chamber in parliament. But this dismissal has been turned around by the weight of numbers – by a majority of Australians who say that if they were to have the opportunity to answer the invitation to walk with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in a referendum for a Voice, they would say YES.

To turn the dismissal around, a mountain of work has been done by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advocates and our allies. A turn around that is even more remarkable because we have had few resources with which to campaign with; there has been no government support to educate people about the Uluru Statement and the reasons we gave for its proposals, nothing from which to even build a campaigning organisation. We were starting from scratch.

The Uluru Statement itself, the sacred canvas, 1.6 by 1.8 m imbued with Anangu Tjukurrpa and the 250 names of representatives, proved to be our most powerful campaign tool. The Maritime Union of Australia, at the request of Aunty Pat Anderson who led the dialogue process to Uluru, seconded me to take the canvas around the country to inspire a people’s movement. For 18 months I hit the road and everywhere the Uluru Statement went, support multiplied. Another key moment was when Wiradjuri and Wailwan lawyer, Teela Reid, challenged Malcolm Turnbull on national television exposing his ignorance.

In the Prime Minister’s electorate of Wentworth, the grandchildren of the great Gurindji leader, Vincent Lingiari, engaged with voters to explain the bungling of the great opportunity the Uluru Statement provides – the opportunity to right the wrongs of the past in a way that the people who were wronged themselves had chosen.

At the Garma festival, the late John Christopherson, an Elder from Kakadu in Arnhem Land, spoke of the hope that the Uluru Statement gives this country, how there is nothing to lose, and 100,000 years of continuous culture to gain, by enshrining the Voices of First Nations people in the constitution.

Teachers across the nation have also taken action. Without waiting for education resources, many learnt about the Uluru Statement and proceeded to teach children who have taken the message in to their homes causing the adults in their lives to accept the invitation to walk with us.

A grass roots movement has increasingly made it loud and clear that we were not going to take no for an answer to the Uluru Statement.

In 2018, moved by this growing movement of people who had learnt about the Uluru Statement’s call for a Voice, the government established the bi-partisan Joint Select Committee into the Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Inevitably, the committee’s final report recommended that the Voice is the most desired reform, and that a co-design process begin.

This year, the co-design groups, appointed by the Morrison Government, have consulted with the public. Over 5000 of the submissions from individuals and organisations, from all different backgrounds and from across the political spectrum, called for the Voice question to go to a referendum. The Voice co-design final report recommended that the Government should not ignore the strong support for a Voice referendum in Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.

Polling since 2017 has indicated a continuous growth in the numbers of Australians who will vote yes in a Voice referendum. The latest polling by CT Group from August 2021, indicates 59% of voters would support a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous Voice to Parliament in a referendum.

Polling done specifically on Indigenous people has also grown. Support is now at 80%. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who say they will vote yes, what compels them is that a voice is a unifying reform.

Which brings me to my call out to teachers to join the movement simply by teaching the Uluru Statement to children and their families.

The campaign for a constitutionally enshrined Voice is the most important campaign in our lifetimes. Whether we are advocating for the revitalising and preserving of First Nations languages, or truth-telling about this nation’s history; whether we are trying to strengthen our land rights; reform the justice system; gain greater resources to teach Indigenous culture and languages; or simply have more homes built in our remote communities – all that we do depends on our ability to build leverage and use it in a way that moves the nation’s ultimate decision makers in Canberra, and then to hold them to account if they fail or ignore us.

A constitutionally protected Voice precedes truth-telling in our priorities, firstly because truth-telling is happening. Great work is being done on truth telling including in schools. But truth-telling needs a representative Voice.

What is the truth of the past without the political power to use it for our future?

A constitutionally protected Voice precedes treaty, not exclusively – treaty talks are already happening in the states and Territories. A Voice must be established with urgency to support treaty making where First Nations have chosen to do so, because in a federal system, it is the Commonwealth we must reckon with more importantly than the states.

Finally, I reiterate these words: A constitutionally protected Voice.

We must constitutionally protect a Voice because governments like Howard’s will always come along. As a union member, I know that when a collective of grass roots people make those in power uncomfortable, they will move to silence them.

ATSIC was one of many Voices we built to defy a government’s mistreatment and cruelty, to bring our voices together in a chorus that was hard to ignore. It was silenced as were the Indigenous representative bodies that came before it. It is time to unite and build a structure of unity for First Nations that can never be silenced again.

I believe we can win a referendum to protect and empower our Voice.

And the movement toward success will be built in the classrooms and schools across Australia. The words of the Uluru Statement – how it covers pre-colonisation; our connection to Country; what sovereignty means to us; what the problems are and how they are unacceptable; how we can rectify them with recognition, a Voice, truth telling and a settlement – can be used in many creative ways that will engage children and young people. If teachers can imagine ways that will provide children and young people with the means to take home the invitation in the Uluru Statement, to the adults in their lives, our research shows that the adults in their lives are likely to decide to vote YES.

The movement starts with you.

Go to www.fromtheheart.com.au to find helpful resources.

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Thomas Mayor

Thomas Mayor is a Kaurareg Aboriginal and Kalkalgal, Erubamle Torres Strait Islander man. He is a union official with the MUA and is an advocate in the campaign for a constitutionally enshrined Voice – the key proposal in the Uluru Statement. Thomas is the author of four books published by Hardie Grant Publishing, and has articles and essays published in The Guardian, Griffith Review, The Saturday Paper, and Sydney Morning Herald.

Understanding students’ higher order thinking skills through the lens of assessment

Rayanne Shakra and Jim Tognolini give clear and comprehensive advice to teachers on how to use modern definitions of assessment to better assess their students’ Higher Order Thinking Skills.

Defining Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) is no easy task. Research nearly forty years ago noted that “Defining thinking skills, reasoning, critical thought and problem solving is troublesome to both social scientists and practitioners. Troublesome is a polite word; the area is a conceptual swamp” (Cuban, 1984, p. 676). Four decades onwards not much has changed definition-wise, to clean-up the ‘conceptual swamp’. However, modern definitions of assessment have emerged that are useful in guiding teachers to better assess HOTS for students in any school year.

To produce evidence on how students think, teachers need to develop assessments that enable the students to demonstrate what it is they know, can do and value. For the purposes of this paper the focus will be on cognitive abilities and the following definition of assessment will be used. Assessment involves teachers making informed judgements based upon an image formed by the collection of information about student performance (Tognolini & Stanley, 2007). This image is used to monitor student growth (progress) through an area of learning or domain of knowledge. The higher levels of growth are differentiated by students having to demonstrate that they can do something with the knowledge that they have gained e.g., they can solve problems, think critically, evaluate the effectiveness of different strategies for solving problems.

Thinking is an internal process. Teachers cannot see this internal process, so they must depend on cognitive models and tools that can be used to categorise levels of learning. These models use verbs to describe the complexity of the thought processes students should demonstrate. Blooms’ revised taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) is one of these models.

This taxonomy is a powerful tool for teachers because it provides a way for teachers to differentiate between different levels of cognitive depth. It categorises learning into the following three domains: psychomotor, cognitive and affective. The cognitive domain. This domain involves six major categories to which students’ skills and abilities are listed from the simplest thinking behaviour, also known as the Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS), to the most complex, known as the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). The taxonomy lists the skills in hierarchal order from the LOTS to the HOTS, as in Figure 1. These skills include the mental processes of remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating, and creating.

The logic behind this hierarchy is that before students can understand a concept they must remember it; to apply a concept they must first understand it; to evaluate a process they must have analysed it; and to create an accurate conclusion, students must have completed a thorough evaluation. Students’ thinking progresses from the LOTS to the HOTS. While the skills are presented in hierarchical form, the way students’ skills are developed does not necessarily have to be linear, that is, the skills may overlap onto each other (Krathwohl, 2002).

The thought processes are usually linked to the verbs associated with the thinking level that teachers are aiming to teach or assess. The mention of the verb here is not the actual word denoting the verb, it is the thought process or action behind the meaning of the verb. If teachers want to assess critical thinking, they should not look at a question beginning with ‘criticise’, rather the focus should be on how the student is going to solve the task that is being set. That is, when the students have produced the evidence from answering the task, does their evidence indicate a higher level of cognitive functioning? It isn’t the verb but the manifestation of the response to what is requested in the task that indicates whether the students have demonstrated higher order thinking in this circumstance.

Learning, by its nature, is developmental. Teachers act as facilitators in assisting the students to grow in knowledge, skill and understanding through the teaching of subject content. As students gain more content knowledge, and can use this knowledge to demonstrate growth, then teachers are required to provide tasks that are cognitively more demanding, to tap into the higher order thinking of their students. The cognitive level needed to solve these tasks is generally referred to as the depth of knowledge associated with the task (Webb, 1997). Cognitively demanding tasks require the students to think and use the knowledge that they have gained to solve both real life problems and even conceptually abstract problems.

HOTS are not only fostered and assessed in both mainstream primary and secondary students of diverse racial and socio-economic backgrounds, but also for students in special education classes. In fact, students in years 9-12 enrolled in special education classes, and who were given cognitively challenging tasks, outperformed students without disabilities at the same year level and who were given tasks that were less challenging (King, Schroeder, and Chawszczewski, 2001). Teachers need to deliberately provide their students with tasks that academically challenge and engage them. Often teachers think that their classroom assessments incorporate higher order thinking however, most do not (Care, Kim, Vista & Anderson, 2018: Hoogland & Tout, 2018; McMillan, 2001; McMillan, Myran, & Workman, 2002). Teachers are teaching HOTS through many new pedagogical methods such as inquiry learning or Project-Based Learning, but are not assessing for these skills (Anderson, 2002).

Assessment is integral to teaching and learning (Baird, Andrich, Hopfenbeck, & Stobart, 2017). The success of HOTS development is determined by the alignment between learning outcomes to be achieved, as stated in curriculum documents, and the implemented assessments (Fitzpatrick & Schulz, 2015). The importance of teachers knowing the targeted HOTS they are teaching and assessing means that teachers need to actively engage in developing appropriate assessments and to use both formative and summative assessments together. Formative assessments provide timely, regular feedback that informs instruction as students learn increasingly complex tasks. Summative assessments are necessary to determine if standards have been met or if students can perform tasks that involve HOTS.

Devising HOTS tasks that can lead to the production of valued outcomes and can be recognised through intuitive understanding is quite burdensome. Teachers need to formulate HOTS tasks that require reasoned thinking on behalf of the students, and this is far from simple.

Therefore, it is important when planning for lessons to know where to incorporate HOTS in teaching sessions (Collins, 2014). Without prior planning, the tasks that teachers might end up requesting spontaneously may not lead to their students’ demonstrating HOTS.

Not every difficult task immediately measures HOTS. In fact, difficulty is not the same as cognitive depth. The difficulty of a task is usually determined by how many students can get the task correct. If very few students get it correct, it is a hard task for the group of students. If everyone gets it right, it is an easy task for the students.

This does not necessarily align with the cognitive depth of the task, nor the level of higher order thinking required to solve the task. Cognitive depth refers to the thought process, knowledge and skill required to solve the task. Hence planning beforehand, specifically for assessing HOTS, is key.

Professional Development and HOTS

For lasting changes to occur in education, it is imperative that teachers recognise necessary changes in learner expectations as well as the purpose of teaching: teaching students to think (Retna & Ng, 2016). In addition to the cognitive thinking models that teachers can utilise, they can also look at research that documents practices that encourage students to develop and practise higher quality thinking.

Professional development courses are a key factor in reviving teachers’ understandings and methods of implementing higher order thinking skills in our classrooms. Professional development courses should be structured in a way to provide teachers with a better understanding of what higher order thinking skills are. These courses also help teachers to conceptualise how the three categories of transfer, critical thinking, and problem solving are coherently interrelated in their instructional strategies.

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Appendix A – Tips for writing HOTS tasks

The following are some tips for teachers to think about when they are writing HOTS tasks for their students:

First, teachers should focus the load of the item on the problem to solve rather than on the content.
Second, items that require students to predict the outcome of a situation are more suited for HOTS than simply labelling or listing.
Third, give them examples and ask for the principle, or theory, they illustrate.
Fourth, design items that permit multiple interpretations or solutions.
Fifth, the skill required to respond to the item is what determines the relative difficulty, not the verb used.
Sixth, make sure that the item is written in a way that makes it very clear to the students as to what is required of them in their responses.

Appendix B – Examples of tasks that promotes HOTS in students and assess their cognitive depth

The following are some examples of assessment tasks that help to both promote higher order thinking skills and assess their current cognitive depth:

Example 1:

Suggest a method, other than a vaccine, that scientists might develop to keep us safe from COVID. Then provide a short persuasive paragraph arguing why people should support this method.

This task can be given to students in any year. It is authentic and taps into the students’ creative thinking skills. Suggesting a new method other than the current ones available assumes students will formulate or create a new method. The persuasive text assumes that students will argue and provide an evaluative judgement of why their method should be accepted widely by the public.

To answer this the students will have to compile information together in ways that they have not yet been explosed to and combine content elements to propose new solutions. The answer to this question can be done collaboratively between the students and in conjunction with the teacher. This collaboration will spark higher order thinking because the students will acknowledge that the teacher does not know the answer and will work to devise one together.

Example 2:

The following is taken from NAPLAN year 3 Numeracy

This question presents the students with an unfamiliar scenario where they must extrapolate a mathematical pattern and apply it by making connections to more than one set of information. The students have to rotate the rectangle and make the connection of how the shapes within it will also vary and change their location.

Example 3:

The following is taken from NAPLAN year 5 Reading

Students are required to make connections between the meanings presented and the text. They also need to infer the meaning of each of the answer choices according to their comprehension of the text to be capable of providing a prediction of which answer best resembles the phrase in the question.

Anderson, P. (2002). Assessment and development of executive function (EF) during childhood. Child neuropsychology, 8(2), 71-82.

Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives: Complete edition. New York, NY: Longman.

Baird, J. A., Andrich, D., Hopfenbeck, T. N., & Stobart, G. (2017). Assessment and learning: Fields apart?. Assessment in education: Principles, policy & practice, 24(3), 317-350.

Bloom, B.S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives. Vol. 1: Cognitive domain. New York: McKay, 20 (24), p.1.

Brookhart, S.M. (2010). How to assess higher-order thinking skills in your classroom. ASCD.

Care, E., Kim, H., Vista, A., & Anderson, K. (2018). Education system alignment for 21st century Skills: Focus on assessment. Center for Universal Education at The Brookings Institution.

Collins, R. (2014). Skills for the 21st century: teaching higher-order thinking. Curriculum & leadership journal, 12(14).

Cuban, L. (1984). Policy and research dilemmas in the teaching of reasoning: Unplanned designs. Review of Educational Research, 54(4), 655-681.

FitzPatrick, B., & Schulz, H. (2015). Do curriculum outcomes and assessment activities in science encourage higher order thinking?. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 15(2), 136-154.

Hoogland, K., & Tout, D. (2018). Computer-based assessment of mathematics into the twenty-first century: pressures and tensions. ZDM, 50(4), 675-686.

King, M. B., Schroeder, J., & Chawszczewski, D. (2001). Authentic assessment and student performance in inclusive schools. Research Institute on Secondary Education Reform (RISER) for Youth with disabilities brief. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED467479

Krathwohl, D.R., 2002. A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy: An overview. Theory into practice, 41(4), pp.212-218.

Lewis, A. and Smith, D., 1993. Defining higher order thinking. Theory into practice, 32(3), pp.131-137.

McMillan, J. H. (2001). Secondary teachers’ classroom assessment and grading practices. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 20(1), 20-32.

McMillan, J. H., Myran, S., & Workman, D. (2002). Elementary teachers’ classroom assessment and grading practices. The Journal of Educational Research, 95(4), 203-213.

Retna, K. S., & Ng, P. T. (2016). The application of learning organization to enhance learning in Singapore schools. Management in Education, 30(1), 10-18.

Tognolini, J., & Stanley, G. (2007). Standards-based assessment: a tool and means to the development of human capital and capacity building in education. Australian Journal of Education, 51(2), 129-145.

Webb, N.L., 1997. Determining alignment of expectations and assessments in mathematics and science education. Nise Brief, 1(2), p.n2.

Prof Jim Tognolini

Lisa Edwards

Lisa Edwards is a school leader passionate about the potential of public education to change lives.

Lisa is a strong advocate for public education and educational equity, dedicated to supporting teachers in public schools to maximise learning outcomes and, therefore, opportunities for our students.

Rayanne Shakra

Rayanne Shakra is a NESA sponsored scholarship doctoral student at the Centre for Educational Measurement and Assessment CEMA) and a sessional academic at The University of Sydney.

Supporting Students with Autism in 7-12

Overview

The Supporting Students with Autism in 7-12 course is designed to

develop an understanding of the wide range of characteristics of students with Autism;
explore a range of strategies which address the needs of students with Autism in the areas of language and cognitive development, communication skills and social behaviour;
develop specific strategies to help students with Autism access the curriculum, manage their own stressful reactions and modify their behaviours.

Participants will also develop an understanding of how to set up an effective learning environment for students with Autism.

25 March 2026, Surry Hills

27 May 2026, Online via Zoom

“I found it incredibly useful. I will definitely be implementing the strategies from today in my classroom.”

“Thank you for a fantastic day – really opened by eyes to the complexity of it all.”

“Loved the tips and useful resources. The opportunities to work in groups and share ideas.”

“Great information! Can take so much back to the staffroom.”
Members who have completed the course

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.

Completing Supporting Students with Autism in Years 7-12 will contribute 5 hours of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Accredited PD in the priority area of Students/children with Disability addressing standard descriptors 1.1.2 & 4.1.2 from the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers towards maintaining Proficient Teacher Accreditation in NSW.

Teachers in 7-12

$220 (Federation members only)

Face-to-face

JPL Article

Supporting students with Autism: Strategies that really work in the classroom

Supporting Students with Autism: Strategies that Really Work in the Classroom

“Was tailored to perfection.”

“I wish I knew about the CPL as a Uni Student/earlier in my teaching.”

“An excellent workshop, practical, lots of good ideas.”

“Rose was a great teacher, thank you!”

“Up to date terminology, research. Loved hearing from other teachers/schools.”

Supporting Students with Autism in K-6

Overview

The Supporting Students with Autism in K-6 course is designed to:

develop an understanding of the wide range of characteristics of students with Autism ;
explore a range of strategies which address the needs of students with Autism in the areas of language and cognitive development, communication skills and social behaviour;
develop specific strategies to help students with Autism access the curriculum, manage their own stressful reactions and modify their behaviours

Participants will also write a social story that addresses the individual needs of students; and develop an understanding of how to set up an effective learning environment for students with Autism.

2 June 2026, Online via Zoom

18 May 2026, Surry Hills

Dr Rose Dixon

Completing Supporting Students with Autism in Years K-6 will contribute 5 hours of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Accredited PD in the priority area of Students/children with Disability addressing standard descriptors 1.1.2 & 4.1.2 from the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers towards maintaining Proficient Teacher Accreditation in NSW.

Teachers in K-6

$220 (Federation members only)

JPL Article

Supporting students with autism: Strategies that really work in the classroom

Supporting Students with Autism: Strategies that Really Work in the Classroom

“It was an amazing course! Rose was an excellent presenter.”

“This was invaluable day of professional development for me. I enjoyed meeting so many competent teachers who shared their experiences.”

“Thank you very much for the very through and informative sessions. I’ve learned a lot.”

“I thoroughly enjoyed this PL. Thank you for a wonderful day filled with eye opening learning.”

“A great seminar where I gained a lot of strategies for my toolbox.”

Show an Affirming Flame: A Message to the Profession

Paul Brock looks at the past and to the future and provides a profound message for all public educators…

“Any weakening of universal public education can only be a weakening of the long-standing essential role universal public education plays in making us a civilized democracy.”

John Ralston Saul, “In defence of public education”, Speech to the Canadian Teachers’ Federation Whitehorse, Yukon, July 13, 2001.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

G Santayana, The Life of Reason, New York, Collier Books, 1962

My longtime esteemed friend and colleague, Denis Fitzgerald, has invited me to write an article on the theme “A Message to the Profession”.

What follows is a fairly personal, eclectic collation of ideas / passions / pleas that I would include in any such message in my reflection over my past nearly five decades as a member of what the OECD has accurately described as the “knowing and caring” profession.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

If there is any one constantly recurring theme in those four decades, it is that we educators have so often been under attack by those who see us as perpetrators of inadequate or declining standards. Let me give one NSW example from the first decade of the last century.

“The wholesale substitution of ‘modern methods’ has been found to be unwise. The defects apparent in school children at the present day are summarised thus: a) The children are not thoroughly grounded in essentials; b) They are not accurate in their work. Business people in Sydney…. find these and similar defects in the children they are at present taking into their employment and they attribute them largely to the new methods of education.”

This is an extract from an editorial in The Catholic Press, a New South Wales publication, in 1909.[i]

Seventeen years ago I wrote a monograph on some of the myths of declining standards in literacy within an historical context, Breaking some of the myths – again (DET, Sydney, 1998). What follows is an extended quotation from that monograph – the substantial ‘message’ of which, I believe, retains its salience in 2015:

“But it does not matter where you dip into the history of education, you will find thunderous roars of utter conviction that standards are ‘now’ palpably worse than they were a generation ago. The 1990s Jeremiahs hearken back to the 1950s. It is necessary, however, to apply an informed historical perspective to untrammelled cries of gloom and doom. For example, if you go back to the newspapers of the so-called ‘good old days’ of the 1950s you will find identical lamentations for contemporary disasters, and calls for a return to the presumed halcyon days of the 1930s.

“So, let us go back nearly 50 years to those ‘good old days’ and listen to the comments of the Chief Examiner in English for the 1948 Leaving Certificate examination, Professor Waldock, thundering about the students sitting for the Leaving Certificate in 1946: “It is disappointing to find that students imagine they can pass a Leaving Certificate Examination without being able to write a sentence”. [ii]

Reviewing what he had seen in the 1948 LC Examination he lamented:

“Examiners again stress the weakness is spelling. Here are some of the words that seem to confound large numbers of students [nearly 80 words followed including those such as “tragic”, “practical”, “clever”, “hungry”, “persuade”, “believe”, “enemies” and “sensitive”]…..It was felt too that errors in grammar and syntax are still too common. It seems that many pupils are conversant with the correct theory of good usage, but from lack of practice or attention continue to commit the old mistakes. …The examiners…feel that candidates are still very weak in fundamentals – that far too many, for example, do not know what a noun is, let alone an abstract noun.” [iii]

Professor Waldock’s successor, Professor Alec Mitchell, declared in 1950 that he agreed with the withering criticisms made in the Norwood Report of 1941 on “the serious failure of the British secondary schools to produce literate students” and declared that, without a doubt, the same situation existed in NSW in 1950. [iv]

Let us not forget that these Leaving Certificate students were the creme de la creme. In the 1940s and early 1950s, of every 100 students commencing 6th class only fewer than twenty or so completed their Leaving Certificate five years later. For example, of the 50,000 who enrolled in first year government high schools in 1948, only 16.1% survived to commence their LC year in 1952. [v] The comparable figure today, of course, is around 70%.

Ah, but how the right wing media pontificators and so many talk-back radio disc jockeys love to hark back to the mythical ‘good old days’ when, they assume, everything was wonderful.

This process of lamentation for the present and exhortation for a return to some mythical halcyon past era can be traced continuously back into the 19th century and beyond. George Elliott, President of prestigious Harvard College, bitterly complained in 1871 that:

“…bad spelling, incorrectness as well as inelegance of expression in writing, ignorance of the simplest rules of punctuation and almost entire want of familiarity with English literature, are far from rare among young men of eighteen otherwise well prepared for college.” [vi]

One of the many modern scholars who have discussed the ‘declining standards’ myth, the American Andrew Sledd, has observed that:

“The discussion of this [declining standards myth] is not timely – it is timeless; for although Newsweek certified our crisis a mere decade ago …no fewer than five consecutive generations have been condemned for writing worse than their predecessors. By now our students should hardly put processor to paper; it’s a wonder they can write at all.”[vii]

Another American historian of literacy practices, Harvey Daniels traces this pattern back as far as George Puttenham’s despair about the declining standards of literacy amongst the young of his day in 1586! Daniels sums up in this way:

“To conclude: literacy has been declining since it was invented; one of the first ancient Sumerian tablets deciphered by modern scholars immortalised a teacher fretting over the recent drop in (standards of) students’ writing. It is Sledd’s cryptic conclusion that ‘there will always be a literacy crisis, if for no other reason than because the old never wholly like the young’.” [viii]

If I were revising this today, I would do some ‘tweaking’ to take account of the significant developments in the intervening seventeen years – especially recent years. However, to reiterate what I wrote prior to the commencement of the previous extended quotation, I believe it retains its fundamental salience in 2015. While there is a continuous need to ensure the quality of contemporary education, too often contemporary critics look back to the past through rose-tinted glasses, and at the present through black-tinted glasses.

When planning for the future we should retain what has been demonstrated to have been successful in the past and the present, and to transform or reject the rest! I believe that there should be at least four interdependent and interrelated basic principles that should underpin all quality policy developments in school education – now and into the future. They are: authentic research; genuine scholarship; acquired wisdom based on the collective expertise and experience of outstanding practitioners; and what is often called ‘nous’.

Authentic Research

There is considerable educational research that merely confirms what good teachers, principals, and educators in many contexts have known or suspected for quite a while. For example, the research that has demonstrated that the quality of teaching is the most significant within-school factor in the quality of student learning; that within-school differences are often more significant than between-school differences; that the quality of leadership exercised within a school has a significant impact on the quality of learning and teaching in that school. And so on. These are really ‘no brainers’ these days.

When researchers seek to establish a compelling link between cause and effect in research, it is always necessary not to confuse causality with correlation. When reading the outcomes of any particular piece of educational research, it is always necessary to stress the importance of context when assessing the value of that research. For example, one should generally respond cautiously to any black or white research pontifications about the significance of any one, isolated, factor within the rich and diverse landscape that constitutes teaching and learning.

We must always exercise our critical powers when reading research. The questions that always should arise include the following. Who undertook the research? What is their reputation? What was the purpose of this research? What was its context? What methodology was used? What were any underlying assumptions? Who funded the research? Who may have benefitted from it? What data was included? How is the research intended to be used? Was data excluded? And so on.

Genuine Scholarship

The second fundamental source is genuine scholarship, ie the ideas, speculation, imagination, creativity, innovation and so on, generated and articulated by thinkers who would not fit into the mould of evidence-based researchers. For example, my friend Professor Peter Freebody has named a number of towering figures who have made great impacts upon / contributions to education – but none of whom had ever undertaken what could be called an ‘experiment’. Peter illustrated this point by reference to famous scholars and thinkers such as Jean Piaget, Shirley Brice-Heath, Benjamin Bloom, Ralph Tyler, John Dewey and Maria Montessori.

Acquired Wisdom

The third is the wisdom distilled from the reflection over their experience by excellent teachers, Principals, and other school leaders who may never have undertaken evidence-based research, who may never have published in the scholarship genre, but who are able to abundantly irrigate educational theory and practice because of their own reflected-over expertise and experience.

Nous

The fourth is practical, good old fashioned strategic nous, which might be described as that down to earth, insightful, flexible exercise of common sense, fully aware of the complexities of the relevant context.

I now turn to a number of other issues.

Beware the “institutionalizing of value”

Always push back against what the splendid sociologist Ivan Illich described as the “institutionalizing of value”. He illustrated what he meant by the term by referring to an historical situation in which a ‘pioneer’ would see the need for children to have schooling, but which was denied to them. He / she then built a school for these children. Then another school for other children lacking access to schooling. And so on. Over time “institutionalizing of value” would occur if the structures shifted from having a prime focus on the needs of the students towards a focus on the needs of the teachers; and then, as the organisation got larger, on the needs of larger organisations; even of governments. But our whole role as educators should be to focus on the learning needs, skills, talents, capacities, values, and so on of every student.

What is necessary is not always sufficient

Of course the skills of literacy and numeracy are absolutely basic goals of school education. But while absolutely necessary, they are not sufficient. Fulfilling only basic needs is rarely enough. Shakespeare’s magnificent play King Lear provides us with an insight into the insufficiency of addressing only needs. After haggling with his two evil daughters [Goneril and Regan] over how many retainers he really needs – involving a Dutch auction commencing at fifty, then twenty-five, then ten, then five and finally one – a distraught Lear cries out:

O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars

Are in the poorest thing superfluous.

Allow not nature more than nature needs,

Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady.

If only to go warm were gorgeous,

Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,

Which scarcely keeps thee warm

(King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4)

Human life becomes cheapened when human aspiration and achievement do not exceed the basic animal needs. Education becomes cheapened if we stop at fulfilling only basic needs. We must seek to develop in our students not only skills, but also their knowledge, understanding, values, talents, creativity, imagination, and so on – all the richness articulated in our splendid national educational manifesto, the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young People.

Practising what we preach

We public educators must practise what we preach. We have to live out our explicitly defined core values as public educators which, in NSW, are: integrity; excellence; respect; responsibility; cooperation; participation; care; fairness; democracy.

Above all, we have to be fair dinkum in striving to close the gaps between rhetoric and reality. For example there is an admirable aspirational goal to have an excellent teacher in every classroom in every public school. We know that in this case our deeds have not yet met our rhetorical aims.

How refreshing and correct, therefore, was NSW Minister for Education Adrian Piccoli’s announcement on November 7, 2014 that, according to Alexandra Smith’s article in The Sydney Morning Herald “for the first time, every public school teacher in NSW will have mandatory performance reviews in a push to lift teaching standards and ensure ‘the very best teachers get better’ while underperforming teachers are removed from classrooms.”[ix]

Alexandra Smith’s article went on to say that, “In an unprecedented agreement between the state government and the NSW Teachers Federation, all teachers will have a performance and development plan and will need to do 100 hours of professional development every five years to retain their accreditation.” Ms Smith’s article continued, “A new approach for principals to deal with underperforming teachers will also be introduced, which will mean teachers who fail to perform in the classroom can be stood down in 10 weeks, about half the time it takes for a principal to tackle poor performance.” [x]

The crucial importance of the precise use of the English language

It is absolutely essential that educators be as precise as they can in the use of the English language, most especially – but not exclusively – in its written form, for communication with others.

In 1990, during my time as an advisor on the personal staff of the then Commonwealth Minister for Employment, Education and Training, John Dawkins, I drafted the Preface to the Hawke Government’s Australia’s Language and Literacy Policy Green Paper – The Language of Australia: Discussion Paper on an Australian Literacy and Language Policy for the 1990s. Dawkins agreed to affix his signature to the Preface I had written for him.

In the opening two sentences – which I consider to be among the best two sequential short sentences I have ever written – I attempted to articulate the power and significance of language in the following words, which I still hold to be true today.

It is through language that we develop our thoughts, shape our experience, explore our customs, structure our community, construct our laws, articulate our values and give expression to our hopes and ideals.

We aspire to an Australia in which its citizens will be literate and articulate, a nation of active, intelligent readers, writers, listeners and speakers. Such a nation will be well educated and clever, cultured and humane, and rich and purposeful, because of the knowledge, skills and values of its people. [xi]

As educators and as educated citizens we have a responsibility to be lucid in the ways we express our thoughts, ideas and values. Sludgy, clichéd, jargonistic, careless, imprecise language is evidence of sludgy, clichéd, jargonistic, careless, imprecise thinking.

A number of miscellaneous issues

Don’t be beguiled by those who regularly use hindsight as a defence for misjudgement when the real failing has been their lack of foresight.
Throughout my career I have found out if a theory does not work in practice, there is something wrong with the theory, or the way in which it has been put into practice, or both.
Don’t place work above your commitment to significant personal relationships / family.
When providing advice to those who seek or need to hear it, always strive to ensure that, as far as possible, it is frank and fearless advice.
Perhaps even more importantly, to ensure that those over whom you have some professional authority feel confident enough to provide you with frank and fearless advice.
As one of my former Directors-General, Andrew Cappie-Wood, once pointed out to me, in large [and not so large] organisations, a major problem can be not so much that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, but that the left hand does not want the right hand to know what it is doing. An organisation as large as the NSW Teachers Federation, or the NSW Department of Education, would not be immune from this potential threat. On an even larger international canvas we have witnessed the sometimes catastrophic consequences of government intelligence agencies fervidly refusing to share their intelligence information with their so-called colleagues in other agencies.
No matter what happens during your day at work, the sun will almost certainly go down on that day and, almost certainly, rise again on the next.

Is Education the answer?

Quite a few years ago the ABC TV news included what turned out to be a very short interview with an African lady in a war-torn, drought-ridden, poverty-stricken African country – holding her very young, ailing child in her arms. When asked what she needed, the woman replied – simply yet so complexly – “food and education”. With this aspiration for education as a fundamental driver for societal reform, I concluded my Keynote Address at the 2012 Annual Conference of the NSW Secondary Principals Council as follows.

In quite a few of my speeches in recent years I have pointed to education as perhaps the most powerful 21st century force to combat and eventually defeat the injustices, evils, poverty, hunger, abuse of women, triumphs of religious intolerance and bigotry, sexual slavery, wars and famines, and so on. However, today, looking at the relentless persistence of so much of these obscenities in the world, that optimism and hope is somewhat diminished.

But I am also reminded of that superb poem “1st September, 1939”, written by the great Anglo-American poet W H Auden, in which he expressed his profound fear, on the edge of despair, as he reflected on the almost certain consequence of Hitler’s invasion of Poland on that day – the outbreak of what would become the Second World War. Yet in that very powerful and moving poem, he found something to cling to in his final stanza.

Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

Colleagues and friends, I put it to you that although we educators cannot defeat the macro forces that inflict such misery on so many people on this planet, surely we can continue to be “ironic points of light” – “ironic” in the sense that we retain the capacity to critique “our world”. That we are “just” men and women who exchange our “messages” of human dignity, aspiration, hope, respect and all of those other values championed by public education. Who, “beleaguered by the same / Negation and despair”, nevertheless continue to show to our students, to one another, and – as educated citizens – to our local, national and international communities, “an affirming flame”, cherishing our belonging to the “knowing and caring” profession.

Putting it all in a nutshell

Having being diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in 1996 and having been given three to five years to live, I feared that it was likely that I would not live long enough to see my daughters, Sophie and Amelia, complete their schooling.

In 2000 I was asked to give a Keynote Address on “Towards Conserving and Transforming the School Teaching Profession” at an international conference.

When I was preparing that talk I asked Sophie, who was not yet nine and in Grade 3 at Oakhill Drive Public School – along with our other daughter Amelia, who was then five and in Kindergarten – to write down her ideas on what makes a good teacher. So off she went to her computer, and this is what she wrote, aided in a few instances only by the use of the spell-checker. I was so impressed, that I asked her if I could use it in my Address. “OK Dad”, she said. This is what she wrote.

What Makes A Perfect Teacher

My name is Sophie Brock and I am nearly 9 years old. I think what makes a perfect teacher is when the teacher encourages the students to do their best and instead of treating each other like strangers make sure you get a chance to spend some time with each student. As a teacher you should know what you are doing all the time and be keen on what you teach, otherwise don’t teach at all. My kindergarten teacher Jenny Tipping and my Year Two teacher Margot Hillhouse are at Narellan Vale Public School and they are fantastic teachers because they gave me challenging work and didn’t give me the most boring work like some teachers, but I won’t say who. The most important thing about being a teacher is that you try and help every single one of your students enjoy learning, reading, writing and joining in with activities. So, that is what I think makes a perfect teacher.

In 2004, four years after Sophie wrote this, I decided to set out my aspirational ‘instructions’ for the future teachers of our children at the end of the chapter on public education in my autobiography, A Passion for Life (ABC Books 2004) – most of which I typed with the one remaining finger that then still worked. Absolutely deliberately, Sophie and Amelia were both educated only in comprehensive, co-educational public schools.

This is what I wrote.

Therefore, not just as a professional educator, but as a Dad, I want all future teachers of my Sophie and Amelia to abide by three fundamental principles that I believe should underpin teaching and learning in every public school.

First, to nurture and challenge my daughters’ intellectual and imaginative capacities way out to horizons unsullied by self-fulfilling minimalist expectations.

Don’t patronise them with lowest common denominator blancmange masquerading as knowledge and learning; nor crush their love for learning through boring pedagogy. Don’t bludgeon them with mindless ‘busy work’ and limit the exploration of the world of evolving knowledge merely to the tyranny of repetitively churned-out recycled worksheets. Ensure that there is legitimate progression of learning from one day, week, month, term and year to the next.

Second, to care for Sophie and Amelia with humanity and sensitivity, as developing human beings worthy of being taught with genuine respect, enlightened discipline and imaginative flair.

And third, please strive to maximise their potential for later schooling, post-school education, training and employment, and for the quality of life itself so that they can contribute to and enjoy the fruits of living within an Australian society that is fair, just, tolerant, honourable, knowledgeable, prosperous and happy.

When all is said and done, surely this is what every parent and every student should be able to expect of school education: not only as delivered within every public school in NSW, but within every school not only in Australia but throughout the entire world.

(P Brock, A Passion for Life, ABC Books, 2004 pp. 250-251)

As I was ‘writing’ this, I realised that I was compressing into a few paragraphs all of the knowledge, understanding, values and skills, in effect my fundamental philosophy on school teaching and learning – that I had advocated and hoped I would continue to advocate – in so many pages and in so many speeches over so many years. But this time, I was articulating it in a so powerfully personalised context.

So, in view of the teaching expectations I had set down for the journey of our children, did NSW public education fulfil my hopes and directions I set down in my autobiography eleven years ago? Too right it did!!

Sophie and Amelia both attended Oak Hill Drive Public School and Cherrybrook Technology High School: Sophie commenced her schooling at Narellan Vale Public School when we lived at Narellan before moving to Castle Hill. They both achieved brilliant results in their HSC.

Sophie, now twenty-four, is in the third year of her PhD at the University of Sydney – after securing First Class Honours in her BA – and Amelia, now twenty, is in the third year of her undergraduate degree at the University of Sydney. With my wife Dr Jackie Manuel, being an Associate Professor in that University’s Faculty of Education and Social Work, and my being an Adjunct Professor in that Faculty – we are pretty much a University of Sydney family!

Both Sophie and Amelia achieved brilliant HSC results. Incidentally, as soon as we learned of Sophie’s results at the end of 2008, whom do you think I rang first to thank (after ringing our family)? It was her very first teacher – Mrs Jenny Tipping who had taught Sophie in Kindergarten in 1995 at Narellan Vale Public School so superbly. And who was still teaching Kindergarten at that very same school all those years later, when I rang her.

As I thanked her for giving Sophie such a wonderful schooling platform, she began to cry with gratitude. I got the feeling that primary school teachers, and especially Kindergarten School teachers, don’t often get such a phone call!

I believe that what I wrote in 2004 has as much validity today – eleven years later – in scoping the aspirations of parents and the achievements of our finest teachers. And I further hope – while acknowledging that there will be so many changes in what we call ‘schooling’ in the intervening years – that in eleven years time those aspirations will still have retained their fundamental salience.

Indeed, it is my fervent hope that public education – even though it may have heavily changed in its architectural forms, in its breadth and depth of content, and through imaginative, innovative and creative modes of teaching and learning – will continue to flourish well into the 21st century as well.

The author of this refereed article, Dr Paul Brock AM is Director, Learning and Development Research, at the NSW Department of Education, and Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney

[i] Cited by Dr Shirley Smith in “School and the Educated Parrot” which was subsequently cited by Margaret McDonnell in a Letter to the Editor in The Australian, 11 May, 1987, p.8.

[ii] Waldock, A.J, “Leaving Certificate Examination, Examiner’s Report, English – Pass Paper 1946”, The Education Gazette, 1st April, 1947, p. 129.

[iii] Waldock, A.J, “Leaving Certificate Examination, Examiner’s Report, English – Pass Paper, 1948, unpaginated, Private Papers of D.B. Bowra stored in the library of the then Sydney Teachers’ College, later known as Sydney College of Advanced Education – Institute of Education, and now incorporated within the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney.

[iv] Board of Secondary School Studies, “Minutes of Meeting”, 28 June, 1951, p. 295.

[v] Wyndham, Harold S., (Chairman), Report of the Committee Appointed to Survey Secondary Education in New South Wales, Government Printer, Sydney, 1957, p. 88.

[vi] Cited in Daniels, H. Famous Last Words: The American Language Crisis Reconsidered, Southern Illinios UP Carbonale, 1983, p. 51.

[vii] Sledd, A., “Essay Readin’ not Riotin’: The Politics of Literacy”, College English, 50, 5, 1988, p. 496.

[viii] Sledd, A., “Essay Readin’ not Riotin’: The Politics of Literacy”, College English, 50, 5, 1988, p. 496.

[ix] Alexandra Smith, “NSW public school teachers to undergo performance reviews”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 November, 2014, p. 4

[x] Alexandra Smith, “NSW public school teachers to undergo performance reviews”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 November, 2014, p. 4

[xi] Dawkins, J.S, The language of Australia: Discussion Paper on an Australian Literacy and Language Policy for the 1990s. Released by The Hon. John Dawkins Minister for Employment, Education and Training December 1990, p. ix

History of The Fair Go Program: A Brief Overview

Katina Zammit is Deputy Dean and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, at Western Sydney University. She has been involved in the Fair Go Program since it began under the leadership of Geoff Munns, working with colleagues on School is for Me, Engaging Middle Years Boys in Rural Educational Settings, Teachers for a Fair Go and Schooling for a Fair Go. Similarly to other researchers, she has presented this work at conferences and published widely. Her interest in the ‘Insider School’ and engaging messages for teachers continues with the Leadership for a Fair Go project. In this article, Katina provides an historical overview of the projects that encompass the Fair Go Program.

Historical perspective, including development of engagement MeE

Teachers in Greater Western Sydney and academics at Western Sydney University (previously University of Western Sydney) have a focus on social justice and equity, for improving educational outcomes for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. I remember the beginning of the Fair Go Program and being invited by Geoff Munns to be a member of a team of academics working with teacher-colleagues who were implementing and evaluating changes in their classroom through a focus on student engagement. Each academic had their own area of passion: literacy, social studies and Human Society and Its Environment (HSIE), community connections, technology. Working with Helen Woodward, Geoff Munns introduced the Insider Classroom as a framework for teachers to use in both the planning of learning experiences and in the processes within a classroom that promote student engagement in learning. From the outset, teachers were positioned as co-researchers, a principle carried through all the projects that are encompassed by the Fair Go Program (FGP) (see Fig. 1, Fair Go Program Timeline).

The subsequent Engaging Messages for Students framework was conceptualised by drawing upon:

the initial work of the team, supported by the NSW Department of Education and Training’s Priority Schools Program (PSP). Our reflections on the teaching practices that promote student engagement in learning and that see education as a ‘potential’.
the research findings of others (such as Bernstein, 1990; Bernstein, 1996; Education Queensland, 2002; Haberman, 2010; Hayes, Lingard, & Mills, 2000; Newmann & Associates, 1996).

Initially, disengaging messages were identified around the discourses of power that are embedded in teachers’ classroom practices, (for example, with respect to students’ knowledge, ability, control, voice, and place). We focused on practices that teachers were using that interrupted or disrupted these negative messages around students’ knowledge, ability, and so on and thought about how to shift these to engaging messages to students. A result of this collaboration with the PSP was the book, School is for me (Fair Go Project Team, 2006), and other individual and co-written articles, papers and presentations.

The next Fair Go-related project was the Motivation and Engagement of Boys project, funded through the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training, which drew upon 15 sites, across Australia, identified as having successful educational outcomes for boys with a focus on low SES contexts (Munns et al., 2006). The project overlapped with School is for me, building on the initial two FGP frameworks. Martin’s (2002) work on motivation and strategies to enhance individual students’ engagement in learning was adapted into the Fair Go Program’s pedagogical frameworks as an additional component for teachers to consider in designing the learning for their students. The Motivation and Engagement (MeE) Framework (focused around notions of Motivation, Insider Classroom and Engaging Messages), developed by Munns and Martin (2005), was used as a conceptual framework to analyse and describe the practices at these sites that contributed to the success of boys.

The MeE became the basis for the professional learning of teachers in both the 2007-2008 Engaging Middle Years Boys in Rural Educational Settings project and the action research each teacher undertook in their classrooms to improve boys’ engagement in learning (Cole et al., 2010). The project was funded by the NSW Department of Education and Training’s Priority Schools and Equity Programs unit and involved primary and secondary teachers in three regions of rural NSW: Riverina, New England and Illawarra/South Coast.

In 2008, the three-year Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project known as Teachers for a Fair Go began, in collaboration with the Department of Education and Training’s PSP. The project involved 28 teachers throughout NSW in PSP schools who were regarded by their peers as exemplary in engaging low SES students. The MeE Framework was deployed as the data collection tool to record observations of each class. The teachers and academic team worked together on cross-case analysis of the 28 case studies on negotiated themes. The main outcome from this project was the book: Exemplary teachers of students in poverty (Munns et al., 2013).

Following on from Teachers for a Fair Go, five primary schools in south western Sydney initiated the Fair Go from the Get Go project in 2010-2011 for new teachers working with the MeE Framework. With the support of academics from Western Sydney University, the new teachers decided on a question based on an aspect of the MeE Framework they wanted to investigate in order to improve their students’ engagement in learning through their teaching practices.

The project, Schooling for a Fair Go, while continuing the principles of teachers as researchers and focusing teacher investigations on an aspect of the MeE introduced a mentor-mentee model of professional learning. The mentors were originally drawn from teachers who had been part of the Teachers for a Fair Go project; they mentored another teacher at their school or a colleague in another school. The mentee later became a mentor for a teacher at another school as different phases of the project rolled out. In addition, in Schooling for a Fair Go, a number of schools focused on building the capacity of all staff to investigate their teaching practices. They used the MeE to frame individual teachers’ research with mentors or coaches working alongside. At the end of the project in 2014, 24 schools in south west Sydney had been involved. One of the outcomes from this project was the publication, Engaging schooling: developing exemplary education for students in poverty (Sawyer et al., 2018).

Based in schools involved in the final stage of Schooling for a Fair Go, the Leadership for a Fair Go project is in its infancy. It expands the focus from teachers per se to consider the processes that a leadership team in a school employ to build an Insider School that promotes and embeds Engaging Messages for Teachers in their leadership practices (Zammit, 2017). The initial findings from Leadership for a Fair Go suggest that schools that adopt an Insider School disposition also promote teachers as researchers through their whole school practices and can often ignite further passion around teaching practice.

Acknowledgements

Members of the Fair Go Team at Western Sydney University would like to acknowledge the contributions of Professors Mark McFadden and Susan Groundwater-Smith, who were critical friends at important stages of the research program: Mark during the development of the ‘e’ student engagement frames and associated discourses of power, and Susan at a number of critical points of Teachers for a Fair Go and at the beginning of Schooling for a Fair Go.

References:

Bernstein, B. (1990). The structuring of Pedagogic Discourse: Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 4. London: Routledge.

Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. London: Taylor & Francis.

Cole, B., Mooney, M., Munns, G., Power, A., Sawyer, W., & Zammit, K. (2010). Engaging Middle Years Boys in Rural Educational Settings. . Retrieved from http://researchdirect.westernsydney.edu.au/islandora/object/uws:26941.

Education Queensland. (2002). Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study, Coorparoo.

Haberman, M. (2010). The pedagogy of poverty versus good teaching. Phi Delta Kappan, 92(2), 81.

Hayes, D., Lingard, B., & Mills, M. (2000). Productive Pedagogies. Education Links, 60, 10-13.

Martin, A. (2002). Motivation and academic resilience: Developing a model for student enhancement. Australian Journal of Education 46(1), 34-45.

Munns, G., & Martin, A. (2005). Its all about MeE: A motivation and engagement framework. Paper presented at the Annual conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Sydney.

Munns, G., Arthur, L., Downes, T., Gregson, R., Power, A., Sawyer, W., Singh, M. Thistelton-Martin, J. & Steele, F. (2006). Motivation and Engagement of Boys: Evidence-based Teaching Practices. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED536215.pdf (for the main report) and https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED536198.pdf (for the appendices).

Munns, G., Sawyer, W., Cole, B. and the FairGo Team (2013). Exemplary Teachers of Students in Poverty. London: Routledge.

Newmann, F., & Associates. (1996). Authentic Achievement: Restructuring Schools for Intellectual Quality. San Francisco: Josey Bass.

Sawyer, W., Munns, G., Zammit, K., Attard, C., Vass, E., & Hatton, C. (2018). Engaging Schooling: Developing Exemplary Education for sSudents in Poverty. London: Routledge.

The Fair Go Project Team (2006). School is for Me: Pathways to Student Engagement. Sydney: NSW Department of Education and Training.

Zammit, K. (2017). Re-envisioning education through a whole school approach to leading student engagement: The insider school. Paper presented at the Re-Imagining Education for Democracy, University fo Southern Queesnland, Springfield.

References

About the authors

Introduction

Classroom management – school contexts

A Day in the Life of Primary School – through the lens of classroom management

Starting the day

Setting the tone of your learning environment

“Be the calmest person in the room”

Transitions and breaks

Managing the end of the day

When you need support…

Consistency

A High School Context

Routines and Structure

Controlling the Learning Environment

Engagement

References

About the authors

Overview

Course Dates

Presenter

Prof Jim Tognolini

Lisa Edwards

Accreditation

Target Participants

Fee

Member Reviews

SETTING THE SCENE

Why primary schools should support LGBTIQ students and address intersex identities, and sexuality and gender diversity

Practical ways primary schools can support LGBTIQ students and address LGBTIQ diversity

Curriculum links

Texts that address LGBTIQ diversity and ideas for their use in the primary classroom

Conclusion

Endnotes

Appendix 1

References

About the Authors

Dr Lorraine (Lorri) Beveridge

Michael Murray

Hannah Gillard

About the Author

Thomas Mayor

Rayanne Shakra and Jim Tognolini give clear and comprehensive advice to teachers on how to use modern definitions of assessment to better assess their students’ Higher Order Thinking Skills.

Professional Development and HOTS

Appendix

Appendix A – Tips for writing HOTS tasks

Appendix B – Examples of tasks that promotes HOTS in students and assess their cognitive depth

References

About the authors

Prof Jim Tognolini

Lisa Edwards

Rayanne Shakra

Overview

Course date and venue

Member Reviews

Presenter

Dr Rose Dixon

Accreditation

Target Participants

Fee

Delivery

Resources

JPL Article

Supporting students with Autism: Strategies that really work in the classroom

Member reviews

Overview

Course Dates and Venue

Presenter

Dr Rose Dixon

Accreditation

Target Participants

Fee

Resources

JPL Article

Supporting students with autism: Strategies that really work in the classroom

Member Reviews

Paul Brock looks at the past and to the future and provides a profound message for all public educators…

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

Authentic Research

Genuine Scholarship