Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.
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I first heard of Education Nation sometime back in late February or perhaps early March when it received a mention during a Twitter chat. I had a look at the website and although it looked interesting, my professional development days and my (self-funded) budget had both been allocated for the year. Fast forward to FutureSchools (review articles here) and I received a response to a photo I put up on Twitter.

The Learner was in an echo chamber, or so it sounded. Additionally, the room seemingly had no climate control as I had heard people complaining about the temperature over the course of the event. The Educator was the last session of the conference and so the sun was quite low when during that session and so was in the delegates’ eyes, depending on where they were sitting, during that session. The view, however, was fantastic.
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The signage could have been better. Each room did have a sign out the front indicating which one it was, however there needed to be a directional side immediately outside of the main rooms pointing to each of the other rooms, especially given that they were at opposite ends of the venue.

I did feel bad for the vendors, to a degree. The Playground was an awkward layout, with the mezzanine level taking up a fair chunk the floorspace, the main floor not being overly large, and with such a beautiful view on the deck outside. I had heard discussion from various quarters about the seemingly low attendee numbers, however, if there had been many more people in attendance, The Playground and food areas would have been very cramped and difficult to move around, and we would have seen more issues. I will not write further on The Playground here, as I have already written an article on it specifically.
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The Speakers
For me, the speakers were generally very good. There were, of course, some whose sessions I enjoyed more than others, and there were a few speakers whose sessions I felt did not hit the mark, but on the whole. If you have read the previous articles reviewing those sessions I was able to attend. The feedback I had from the other streams was generally positive. The exception, however, was The Leader stream. From what I have heard, from multiple sources, other than two or three sessions the speakers in that stream generally missed the mark, were not speaking on the topic the abstract indicated they would be speaking on, were not engaging or delivered a lecture rather than a workshop.

One delegate in that stream that I was speaking with told me how that stream had been selected specifically as the one to attend as it fit right in with this delegates Professional Development Plan and the delegate had hoped to learn more about the mechanics of leading a school. The comment that I was given was that this delegate felt that overall it was a waste of time and the two professional development days he was allotted for the year were now spent and for no benefit. I encouraged this delegate to seek out one of the event organisers to give some specific feedback, more so than would be able to be provided on the feedback forms.

Other than that, however, I heard generally positive feedback on the speakers. Particularly enjoyed and seen as beneficial from what I heard were Brett Salakas, Corinne Campbell, Prue Gill and Ed Cuthbertson, The Hewes Family, and Leanne Steed and Elizabeth Amvrazis.

There is some expectation that the last session at a conference is typically poorly attended. I personally do not understand this. If you are investing significant money in an event, then you should be staying until the end to get maximum benefit from it. I know far too many people who have left conferences early to make a flight or train home. It is akin to leaving a concert before the house lights have come back on, or a movie before the end of the credits. That said, it was embarrassing to hear that no-one stayed for the final session of The Educator stream. I cannot imagine how Elizabeth Amvrazis and Leeanne Steed must have felt. I know how I would have felt.

​The Great Debate and other Themes
The Great Debate was one of the drawcard events, I feel, for Education Nation. Looking back, however, I do not feel that it achieved much. Noone’s mind was going to be changed on the issue. Many would have taken Dr. Zyngier’s side, irrespective of what he said, just to be opposed to Dr. Donnelly, it was and will always remain a divisive issue and as many people commented on twitter, and as both Dr Donnelly and Dr. Zyngier commented during the event, we need to move past this.
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There were some interesting themes that came through over the course of Education Nation. If you have read any of the review articles, then you might have noticed some as well. The most significant theme, in my opinion, was the call for a genuine national conversation about the purpose and goals of education in Australia. It came through in most of the sessions I attended and in most of the conversations that I had outside the sessions. It was pointed out to me on Twitter that we have had a national conversation, which is where The Melbourne Declaration comes from. I disagree that it was a national conversation, however. It was a meeting of Education Ministers to develop a document that says some pretty things which sound nice. A national conversation, however? No.

I do not know how we would go about starting something like a national conversation that would have any sort of actual relevance and use, other than setting up a Change.org petition, however, which does not seem appropriate, or a Royal Commission of Inquiry,which seems like a vast overkill. I would very much like to hear feedback from my reads as to firstly, whether or they agree with the need for a national conversation about education, and secondly, what platform could or should be taken to get it started and get it, the need for it, and the results, taken seriously and listened to.

There were some other themes that came through, I thought. More needs to be done to work with the families and students in our low socioeconomic areas, we need to be more positive about teaching and recognise the successes we have more often, initial teacher education needs to be improved and strengthened to better prepare beginning teachers for their new career and to stem the personnel drain that occurs within the first five years of a teacher’s career and finally, we need to share more with each other about practices which are and are not working.

Would I attend Education Nation again? Yes. Is there room for improvement and streamlining? Of course.

If you have made it this far and have read all of the previous articles in the Education Nation series, well done and thank you for staying the journey. Now, I am off to finish writing my reports.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.

As anyone who has been to education conferences in the past knows, by the time you reach the last session, there is serious mental fatigue setting in. I was struggling a little, though a slice of excellent chocolate brownie and a hot chocolate whilst sitting on the deck at Luna Park chatting with Corinne Campbell, who had her Teacher’s Education Review (@TERPodcast) hat on, made for a nice mental change of direction. Corinne interviewed me in my role as a blogger for Education Nation, and to be honest, I do not remember very clearly what the questions were or what I said in response and I just hope that I did not sound too waffly or pompous!

​I arrived slightly late, and to the Hewes’ boys speaking about their experiences as students with PBL, acknowledging that there are many different models of PBL, but that at its core, it is more than a project. It is often touted as a project go make this or show this and teachers are then hands-off. Lee jumped in at this point and said that if you are not having students hitting the top tiers of Bloom’s taxonomy during a PBL unit, then you are not utilising PBL properly. Bianca and Lee laid out some key ideas to keep in mind when considering using PBL as part of your practice.
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The first key thing to be aware of, Lee told the audience, was that the PBL unit needs to be thoroughly planned out and that in the early days of learning about  PBL that a good PBL unit will often require as much time to plan properly as it does to actually implement it. As you and your students become more confident and competent with the process and skills required, that time is reduced, but there is a significant investment in time up front. The key to planning any good PBL unit is to keep in mind three key factors; students should be discovering, creating and sharing throughout the unit, though Lee added that a variety of verbs can replace those three.

​The driving question should be student-friendly, which was elaborated as meaning that students can confidently repeat it correctly and can understand what the question is asking and explain it to others in their own words. This also implies that there should be some sort of problem to be solved which is significant to the students. This does not necessarily mean that they are solving a local problem. The significance can be wider than just the immediate area and assessment, but it should be significant, in some way, to the students. There should also be a continual cycle of assessment for the duration of the PBL unit, assessment of learning, for learning and as learning, and this includes not only the internal assessment by the teacher but an opportunity for external assessment through online sharing of learning.

Quality resources should be planned for and utilised. This includes any kind of resources, whether it be digital, soft-copy, physical resource or a personnel resource; the use of a subject matter expert (SME) as part of the PBL unit. There is more than the textbook available, especially in the age where many questions are easily Google-able or answerable with a small amount of research.

The resources for planning, refining and assessing a PBL unit on the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) (@BIEpbl) were available and very easy to use, particularly as a starting point, and include rubrics to help assess the final learning output. Bianca and Lee stressed that we need to teach students how to read and use the rubric as a signpost throughout the unit so that they understand what will be assessed and how and can use that to track their process and that the rubrics are guided by research from Geoff Petty (@GeoffreyPetty). Part of helping students utilise them is to make them engaging, and this is where the ongoing assessment of, for and as learning comes into play.

​We were also advised to teach students how and why to use a project calendar; as part of teaching accountability, planning and forward thinking, all skills needed in everyday life, but particularly useful for managing time and resources in any sort of project. The students should be encouraged to plan out their project and fill in the due dates for milestones of their project by backward mapping the overall process after a discussion about realistic timeframes and then roles and responsibilities within the group should be negotiated. I get the impression that this would be an investment in time, up front, but that would long term, see strong dividends. Students would, with the right instruction in how to use them, be able to apply the concept across the rest of their learning and stay on top of any other assessment tasks, particularly in a secondary setting where there might be multiple tasks in play at any one time.

Part of the process of planning high-quality resources, which I mentioned above, also included booking conference time with the teacher. Lee spoke about how he encourages students to consider particular skills or concepts they will need to learn and to book in lessons with him, cooperatively with other groups, to ensure they get the instruction they need. This gives students some agency over their learning but lets them know that there are instructional sessions that they will need to complete in order to learn skills or concepts needed for the end product.

Additionally, you need to prepare students for PBL by developing specific skills such as teamwork, collaboration, presenting, conducting research and knowing how to be independent and a team player, as well as when to be both of those. Lee advocated using starbursting as a tool to help students understand the skills needed for PBL and also to help them develop teamwork criteria.

​Bianca next spoke about the importance of remaining organised before and during a PBL unit. Using Project Packets which contains unit outlines, rubrics, lists of resources and where or how to access them etc are a great way of helping students stay organised (see here for examples of what else might be in a project packet), and that these can be digital, hard copy or both. Using a project wall can also be a useful way to keep PBL units organised, as can some form of online resource management or LMS for communication and sharing of resources.

Next, we heard about the [not so] secret structure for successful PBL units.

1. A solid hook lesson with some embedded formative assessment.
2. Project outlines, a KWL chart for some more formative assessment and to allow students to make their learning visible and a loose outline of their project calendars.
3. Form project teams (teacher-selected), discuss and sign contracts, teamwork rubrics.
4. Engage in the discovery cycle which will utilise some explicit instruction, as well as teacher and student-led activities and SME visits or contact via an alternative form.
5. Move to the create cycle, which is where groups plan, prototype and test their learning output and engage in a thirty-second class share (though the thirty-second share can occur at any point in the PBL unit and should occur on multiple occasions), a gallery walk and engagement with goals, medals and missions.
6. The share cycle which requires rehearsal and preparation by the students prior to their sharing (in whatever form that takes). It was stressed, at this point, that teachers need to not micromanage this phase of the PBL unit. Students are accountable for what they have learned and the unit will only be successful on subsequent occasions with the same cohort if they know they are held accountable and that you will not swoop in at the last moment to do the work for them.
7. The evaluation phase, where students and teacher engage with an honest and frank self-assessment and reflection period about the unit, the effort put in, the outcomes and the products, the rubrics used, what worked well and what could be improved next time.

Bianca has written about the various aspects of structuring a PBL unit on her own blog. One article found, which seems to speak to some of the specifics I have covered above can be found here.

​The session was closed out with a task for the audience. In our table groups, we had to develop a brief PBL unit overview that we could take back to our context and with further planning using the tools and strategies shared with us, put into practice. We were given some examples of PBL Unit outlines created by Bianca and Lee that they provided to students as part of their own PBL teaching, one of which I have included below.

​I can certainly see the benefits of PBL now, and I feel that with some time and preparation I could develop and run a good PBL unit in my class. It is the time, as always, that is the issue and, at this point in time, I still wish to pursue flipped learning and strengthen my skills in that area. I can certainly see myself returning to PBL in the future, however, and they have given me confidence that it can be done and done very well whilst till hitting the various outcomes that we are required to hit.

This is the last of the session review articles, and at this point, the first iteration of Education Nation was done and dusted, at least from the delegates’ perspectives. I do plan to write one further article as an overall wrap-up and review to address some general feedback that I have received about various aspects of the event, and to tie in some of the themes that I saw across the conference.

If you have missed any articles in this series, please click here.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.
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As Leanne and Elizabeth were wrapping up their session, I saw a tweet that Corinne Campbell (@corisel) was beginning her session. This was unexpected, as it was about fifteen minutes before the scheduled start time for her session. I quickly collected my belongings and head upstairs, missing only a few minutes of her session. Corinne was speaking about the empowering or disempowering of the teaching profession as a result of the focus on evidence-based practice.

When I entered, Corinne was discussing the fact that metaresearch research by John Hattie (@john_hattie and @visiblelearning) shows that all interventions have an impact, however, it is the size of the impact that varies. Corinne also brought up the Teaching and Learning Toolkit by AITSL, which includes a page that outlines a series of pedagogical practices and, relative to each other, their implementation of cost, time for them to produce their overall effect as well as the overall effect size. I have included a screenshot below of what this looks like. The filters (not in the image) allow you to refine the search based on a range of parameters and the list can also be sorted high to low across all four columns. It is another tool on the AITSL website that I have never seen before and reinforces, for me, the feeling that the AITSL website is a vastly underused and under-respected toolbox; I cannot recall the last time I heard any reference, positive or negative, to it in any discussions with other teachers.

​Corinne then spoke about unintended consequences of the focus on evidence-based pedagogical practices, beginning with a burgeoning standardisation of practice without consideration for specific contexts. An example of this is the apparently mandated use of direction instruction in remote Aboriginal schools which has been in the media recently. I say apparently as I have not read the articles surrounding the issue and cannot comment either way on it.

​The above tweet was the theme for the next portion of Corinne’s presentation. The focus on evidence-based practices is leaving many experienced teachers second-guessing themselves and their teaching strategies despite having many years of experience in the classroom. This has come from, Corinne elaborated, the use of microdata within schools which is causing many teachers to doubt their own practices if they are not achieving growth in their students learning outcomes. It occurred to me at the time that teachers without confidence in themselves and their pedagogy will teach by the book and not take risks pedagogically or instill passion in their students.

Corinne then introduced the thinking of Gert Biesta (@gbiesta).

​The last sentence of the quote is, I feel, the important piece here. It relates to a theme that had arisen in earlier sessions at Education Nation; that what works in one context will not necessarily work in another. Corinne then showed us a graphic, which I, unfortunately, did not get a photo of, but which shows three ways of thinking about pedagogical practices and their impact on a student; qualification, socialisation, and subjectification, which, the way that Corinne spoke about it, was a method of thinking that encouraged questioning the purpose of education. My notes on this section are rather lacking, which is disappointing as it struck me as being an important point. I even went to the trouble of (badly) drawing the graphic in my notebook. Rather than include that messy diagram, I have included below a form of the graphic I retrieved from another site which outlines, I feel, the message that Corinne was aiming to impart to the audience.

​Corinne elaborated on this as her closing point. If we put in place a program which aims at improving a student’s acquisition of knowledge in a particular learning area, without paying any attention to the contextual use of that knowledge (socialisation) or the impact that knowledge may have on the student’s self-efficacy or self-perception (subjectification), then while the qualification may improve we will ultimately see a negative impact. We need to be making contextualised and informed professional judgements about pedagogical practices that will have an overall positive impact in our classroom. That was my understanding of what Corinne was saying, at any rate.
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I would have liked to have heard all of Corinne’s presentation, and for her to have had more time to elaborate on some of her ideas. I have a gut feeling, a sense of something itching away at the edge of my consciousness, that there was something in Corinne’s presentation, that I was missing; an idea or concept that would have….I do not actually know. There is a sense that I am missing something important from Corinne’s presentation, however.

Thank you for reading, as always. If you have kept up with the articles I have written as a result of Education Nation, then well done, as they have been rather lengthy articles. I can only hope that my readers have found them useful, particularly for those sessions they were not able to attend themselves. If you have missed any of the articles, you can find the consolidated list by clicking here. Take heart, however, there are only two more articles to go!

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.
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Leanne Steed and Elizabeth Amvrazis were presenting as a duet in the Digital Dimensions stream of Education Nation. They were speaking under a title that intrigued me. The short version, Technology – it’s time to reap its benefits, gave the impression that it would be a discussion of how technology is being used to direct and inform student learning. This session was very quick, or it felt very quick at least, and there was a lot to take in.

​Leanne and Elizabeth began by having the audience stand up and move around the room to inspect a series of models of learning that they had placed on the walls. There were a large range of ideas and models, including learning as skills for work and a pastorally-driven model, amongst others. We came back together to hear Leanne and Elizabeth remind us that technology is important as teachers are now in the business of forward thinking and planning and technology is here to stay.

​At this point, the audience was asked to go and stand by the poster of the thinking or learning model that were examined at the start of the session which most spoke to them. This led to a brief explanation by some audience members of why they had selected the particular model, which demonstrated that there is a range of thinking in any one room and that we need to remember this in our teaching.
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It was an interesting session, but I think the workshop version within The Learner would have been a better way to explore the topic due to the longer timeslot. That said, Leanne and Elizabeth did a great job of sharing their thoughts in the timeslot they had.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.
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Following the lunch break for day two of Education Nation, I settled in to hear Olivia O’Neill, Principal of Brighton Secondary School, speaking about Engaging Gen Y Teachers. This was a session I was looking forward to, as I knew a reasonable amount of about the reforms that had occurred at Brighton Secondary School through my interactions with Jeremy LeCornu (@MrLecornu), through both FlipConAus in 2015 and FlipLearnCon in 2016, however, I had about it from Jeremy, whose perspective is that of a teacher. This would be an opportunity to hear about the same journey from the perspective of the Principal.

Olivia explicitly said that it had been a slow and deliberate process over an eight-year period that was strongly influenced by Seymour Papert and engaged parents and students through a series of forums.The school chose iPads for pragmatism and after demonstrating they were in a position to make appropriate use the technology, earned a grant under the Digital Education Revolution, and soon discovered that though they had sufficient wireless coverage, their wireless capacity needed substantial work (see here for a rough explanation of the difference between coverage and capacity), with up to one thousand devices online at any one point in time.

We heard that the school was using a combination of Citrix Xen, Verso and Showbie to support their learning management systems and that they have, across the staff, won a number of awards for the innovative approaches being tried, which has been guided, partially by the SAMR model, but largely by the TPCK model. Olivia also spoke about the use of challenge-based learning as an important component of the pedagogical approach in the school. It is not, Olivia made clear, the be all and end all, but it does play a significant role.

Olivia then spoke, in passing, about the use of flipped learning as having played a significant role in the reforms at their school. If you are not familiar with flipped learning, you will find this page useful as a starting point to understand flipped learning. Formative assessment is now conducted using Kahoot and Socrative, with overall assessment philosophy guided by Dylan Williams’ research on assessment.  A number of teachers also record their feedback on students learning output to provide more detailed and contextual feedback to students, which has seen positive reactions from students and parents. Whilst the challenges that can occur in a room with technology do  still occur, the focus is on the pedagogy and the why of its use.

​The school also focuses on character education and providing a large variety of opportunities for students to share their learning in non-traditional ways, which has the flow-on of creating a situation where the students are active participants in their learning, producing as much as they consume, and this is driven by a questioning of the purpose of education (again, this seems to be a pattern!) and why the model of information dumping is still followed when there are so many other options.

There was some interesting information in Olivia’s presentation, and I can only assume that others in the audience gleaned a lot from it. I did enjoy hearing about a story I knew from an alternate perspective, however, I feel like Olivia went for breadth, rather than depth. I would have liked to hear more about the challenges faced in the early days of implementing the reforms; how were parents brought on board? Students? How did the senior teachers react and cope with the changes? How did she gain staff buy-in Olivia mentioned that technology pitfalls still occur, but made no mention of any strategies used to circumvent these in a technology-heavy school. I had hoped to hear more about the challenges faced from the perspective of a Principal, as opposed to what I have heard from the perspective of a teacher (Jeremy LeCornu).

I am looking forward to attending FlipConAus16, which Olivia and Brighton Secondary School are hosting, and learning more about the journey taken whilst I am there. I would like to hear feedback and thoughts on Olivia’s presentation from others who were in the session and did not already know about the changes that have occurred in Brighton Secondary School.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.
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If you have missed the previous articles in the Education Nation series, you can find them here.

Lila Mularczyk’s presentation closed out session one of day two at Education Nation and took us into the morning break. I made the decision, still feeling like I had conference brain, that I would sit out during Murat Dizdar’s (@dizdarm) presentation about the national education reform program which commenced session two. I spoke to Murat briefly who gave me permission to record it so that I could listen to it later on. When I sat down yesterday to transfer the photos I had taken from my phone and tablet to my computer, I saw an image of some carpet and, thinking it was an accidental photo of the floor, hit delete. My brain processed, about two seconds later, that it had also had the film strip icon. So I, unfortunately, have nothing to show for Murat’s presentation, for which I can only apologise.

​Following Murat’s presentation was Professor Ken Wiltshire speaking about the future of curriculum in Australia. I have only a few written notes from Professor Wiltshire’s presentation, however, there was an active Twitter conversation throughout his session, which I was involved with and have captured via a storify, which you can find here. Some of the key points that I have noted down that Professor Wiltshire sees learning as having four dimensions:

​He commented that few of the recommendations from the review of the national curriculum had been adopted and brought up a number of reforms that he felt should occur, including but not limited to an enforcement of compulsory schooling and the enactment of the National Curriculum as well as a national forum on the purposes of education, values and foundations which should underpin education.

​Further, he proposes that we need a national body, that is apolitical to be tasked with writing, reviewing, developing and overseeing education curriculum and assessment, labelling ACARA as a “…horse-trading and political body, not an education body…”

Professor Wiltshire made an interesting comment regarding initial teacher education (ITE), which you can see at the top of the below photo:

I invite you to read through the storify of Professor Wiltshire’s presentation which you can find here and invite anyone who has written about either Professor Wiltshire’s or Murat Dizdar’s presentations (or any other presentation from Education Nation, for that matter) to send me the link to include in this article.

Thank you for reading. If you have missed any articles in this series, you can find the full list here.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.

If you have missed previous articles in the Eduction Nation series, you can find them here.
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I have to confess to something. By the time Lila arrived, despite her energy and passion, I was struggling to stay focused and engaged. I had conference-brain and I missed much of what Lila said. This was exacerbated  by Lila speaking with so much energy and passion; and speed. It was difficult to keep up and my brain simply said no.So if it seems as if Lila’s presentation is a bit jumpy and the ideas only tenuously linked, that says more about my note taking and ability to focus during her session than it does about Lila’s content.

​Lila opened by remarking that if the education sectors do not work together then the students are the ones who suffer, and it is the students who matter most. Furthermore, of the countries in the OECD whose lead we historically follow socially, culturally and in regards to educational policy, namely the United States and the United Kingdom, their results on PISA testing is going backwards as well, which begs the question of whether we should be following their lead.

Lila spoke about how targeted funding, that is, funding that is targeted to specific needs and/or programs makes a significant difference within education and that for those students in low socioeconomic areas, where eighty percent of students’ families cannot afford to for the student to attend university, university offers are meaningless. She continued ( think) by  saying that we need to be looking to credible, interrogated, and reliable educational research when we make decisions about educational policies and pedagogical practices and she included John Hattie’s research in this.
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She continued by making reference to work by Ravitch (see photo above) and Pasi Sahlberg‘s (@pasi_sahlberg) unfortunately, though I suspect deliberately acronymised movement, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), which has been gaining traction here in Australia, but which was largely informed by myth.

​Lila then remarked that many of the educational practices and ideas that are translated from overseas educational systems are informed by myths, referring back to the opening discussion about the Australian tendency to follow the United Kingdom and the United states when it comes to social and cultural developments and that this holds largely true for educational policy. Thankfully, we have not yet completely gone the way of the corporate curriculum being peddled in both those countries, and about which I have heard nothing but negative feedback, scorn, and derision from educators being forced to work in those contexts. It does, unfortunately, feel like we are beginning to move in that direction. I can only hope we manage to avoid the waves being seen in the United States as a result of Pearson’s engagement with education (see here or here for example), where, in many educational jurisdictions they provide the tests, create and deliver the professional development opportunities, write and provide the textbooks and effectively populate the curriculum.

​A comment about tenure was made, with Lila remarking that she could not imagine not having permanency of employment and the uncertainty that that must bring with it.

Lila closed (as far as my notes indicate) by commenting that there is no research which credibly demonstrates a correlation between the decentralisation of educational policy and curriculum with improved academic outcomes for students.

I can only apologise to both Lila and my readers for not having a complete set of notes for this session. I underestimated how intense Education Nation would be cognitively, and it was a late night at the end of day one of Education Nation as I attended the #AussieEd Live event at Kirribilli Club (which was a fantastic night) and had then returned to my hotel to write an article. If anyone has written an article as a result of Lila’s session, or any others, please let me know, as I would be happy to include a link to any articles written from Education Nation by other delegates.

Thank you for reading and if you have missed any articles in this series, you can find them here.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.

When I read that Federal Minister for Education and Training, Simon Birmingham (@birmo) would be speaking at Education Nation, I was intrigued as to firstly, whether he would actually attend given that there is an ongoing election campaign at the moment, and secondly, what he would actually say. When he arrived, you would not know that he was five weeks into an election campaign, and looked fresh and energetic. Minister Birmingham spoke for approximately twenty minutes and then took questions from the floor for about ten minutes before leaving. Overall, I think he did well to avoid any overt political campaign rhetoric, other than one small comment, which was not in itself particularly inflammatory or accusing of the Opposition, before moving on. He also made some very sensible and thought-provoking comments. I have included here the full recording of his address, with the only editing being the introduction from myself, and a slight adjusting of the audio levels to make them more consistent throughout.

​Minister Birmingham began by relating a personal anecdote involving his daughter, Matilda, showing the persistence and enthusiasm of five-year-olds, before relating that he was glad to hear of the discussions that were taking place within Education Nation. He added that as a father, he was confident that he could provide the best for his daughter, but that as the Federal Minister for Education and Training, that his focus to be on ensuring the best for all students across the country.
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He then said something which I get the impression was rather unexpected, and which I found quite heartening.

This was a refreshing message to hear, and to be realistic, it should not have been entirely unexpected; he is in the midst of an election campaign and speaking to a room full of educators, it was unlikely he would give a negative message about education. The measures that he indicated we are above the OECD averages included education funding, literacy, and numeracy results, however, he did acknowledge that there is always room for improvement
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Minister Birmingham spoke about the long tail that we have and the falling results of students at the top end of the academic scale and that the challenges of education are largely well-known and understood, which does not make resolving them any easier. Our PISA results, Minister Birmingham commented, have dropped, in both real and relative terms and while they are not the be all, they are an important indicator that does need to be monitored.

​We were then reminded that ten years ago, the iPhone and Netflix did not exist and that Facebook was in its infancy at one year old. We do not know, he continued, what the world will look like in ten years and what the world will look like for our students in the future when they graduate, however, we do know that they will require a richness in varied skills and learning, which sounds rather similar to the now famous Alvin Toffler quote shown below.

 
​Minister Birmingham said he welcomes the discussions taking place at Education Nation and that his commitment is to make sure that Australia is driven by evidence that is credible and reliable and that appropriately reflects what can best improve student learning outcomes. This, he continued, will be supported by two key goals. The first will be to continue delivering the basics on which all learning now and in the future is based upon, though he didn’t elucidate further as to what, exactly, that meant. The second is to prepare students for the dynamic world they will be entering into as young adults. Minister Birmingham added an additional thought to this. Typically, he told us, the two goals are considered in terms of either/or, however, they should be considered as complimentary goals.
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It was here that we heard a modicum of election rhetoric, Minister Birmingham reminded the audience how much funding the Turnbull Government would commit to education, however, and I have respect for this, he also noted that while there were differences between the funding both parties had committed to, under either party, there would be an ongoing increase to education funding. Irrespective of your political stance, it would have been easy for him to make negative comments about the other side, yet he actually paid them a modicum of respect. A politically astute and rather sensible choice.

He continued past this, commenting that funding would continue to be distributed on a needs basis and that they would be working to address the challenges that education faces, specifically reading, writing and science, working to set minimum standards of achievement. This confused me a little, as I thought we already had minimum standards, as laid out as part of NAPLAN, if nowhere else. He spoke about the need to identify clear targets and address reading levels at a young age, to identify and learning difficulties in our children earlier in life.

​There will be fourteen measures put in place to lift STEM rates, including additional training and support for teachers, early years support, and the lifting of ambition for graduating students to encourage more to enter into STEM-based Undergraduate programs, though there was no mention of specific steps to ensure these occur.
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His next point, the need to address and fix NAPLAN and the way it is implemented in order to foster richer data that is more quickly and easily accessible to teachers in order to make it useful and usable, was one which I believe surprised a few. NAPLAN, from what I have heard this election campaign, has had little attention in this vein, so it will be interesting to find out more about what that looks like if the Turnbull government are re-elected.

We need to ensure, Minister Birmingham told the audience, that students receive one year of learning for one year of teaching and one way that this will be attained will be an improvement in the quality of initial teacher education (ITE). This is an area that does need to be addressed, as there are significant skills that teachers need that were not included in my own ITE, which I have written about in the past.and which I suspect are not an isolated issue.

​Debates surround educational policy are typically painted as binary arguments; we hear about public versus private education, or about STEM and coding versus traditional subjects, or about direct instruction versus experiential-based pedagogical practices. Minister Birmingham said that these all sit in a grey zone and that we should, in fact, be looking to give autonomy to our teachers, our schools, and our students to make contextualised and evidence-based decisions for the benefit of our students’ learning outcomes. Which of course brought to the fore the point that not all evidence is equal and that we need to be aware of the prejudices inherent in research, whether from the researcher or the commissioner of the research.
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Minister Birmingham closed with an idea that I suspect gained him respect throughout the room. He spoke about what he would do, what issue he would resolve; if he could wave a magic wand and fix any single issue or challenge that faces education. It would not, he said, be within schools that he would look. It would, in fact, be in the home of students, to improve the home lives of students where improvement is needed. Minister Birmingham said that whilst teachers provide the greatest influence on a student’s learning outcomes within a school, outside of the school, it is the home life which provides the biggest influence.

The session was opened up at this point to questions from the floor, which I will not cover in this article but will leave for you to listen to in the audio above.

I thought Minister Birmingham’s comments regarding a desire to address and improve the home life of students interesting. I have heard colleagues from both government and non-government, and from early childhood, primary and secondary, all make remarks about students whose home lives negatively impact their learning outcomes.

Thank you, as always, for reading this far, and I would be interested to hear your thoughts on Minister Birmingham’s address.

If you have missed any articles in the Education Nation Series, you can find the full list of articles here.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.

In the build up to Education Nation (#EduNationAu), The Great Debate, a showdown about public versus private education, was billed as one of the headline acts for the event, featuring two speakers who typically take opposing views. Dr. David Zyngier (@dzyngier) was arguing for the side of public education against Dr. Kevin Donnelly (@ESIAustralia) who was, of course, arguing for the side of private education.

As promised on Twitter, I have recorded and included here the full audio of the debate. The only editing done to it was to bring the audio levels roughly into alignment as some sections, particularly during the questions from the floor, were rather quiet in the recording.

​The Great Debate was structured as follows:

• Opening remarks from Dr. Zyngier followed by Dr. Donnelly.
• Five minutes of rebuttal from Dr. Zyngier followed by Dr. Donnelly.
• Question and Answer which were asked in a turn-about fashion to Dr. Zyngier and Dr. Donnelly:
  • Two questions submitted prior to the event
  • Questions from the floor.

Dr. Zyngier opened by talking about the negativity towards public schooling being a product which began with the Fraser Government in the 1960s, who introduced public funding for private schools, creating a sense of entitlement and privilege for the few and is an anti-democratic notion. Public funding of private education has continued since then and has resulted in a constant expansion of the private education sector.

Dr. Zyngier then invoked Joe Hockey, currently the Australian Ambassador the United States, who, as Treasurer in 2014, was quoted in the media as saying “…everyone in Australia must do the heavy lifting. The age of entitlement is over, the age of personal responsibility has begun…” but, in fact, the public funding private education is about to outstrip public funding of public education vis-a-vis the funding per student amount.

This constant growth in public funding of private education has, Dr. Zyngier argued, resulted in a growing perception of private schools as being better and played a role in the residualisation of public schools. There is now a growing disparity between funding and this should be seen and felt as a national shame as there are significant consequences for our children. There is a widening disparity in resourcing for students at different ends of the socioeconomic status (SES) scale.

The priority for the Government should be full public funding for public education to help ameliorate the lottery of birth which resulted in parents having a choice, however, the choice was only available if parents could afford the choice. Stephen Dinham (OAM) was then quoted as having said that “It is hard not to conclude that what we are seeing is a deliberate strategy to dismantle public education, partly for ideological and partly for financial reasons.” Rresidualisation feeds further residualisation, was the message I was hearing at this point.

Dr. Zyngier at this point changed tack, asking the audience who had flown on a long-haul flight overseas, and who had travelled by economy class, business class or first class. There were fewer hands up for the higher classes of course, and Dr. Zyngier made the analogy that as those who choose to fly in business or first class do not expect those in economy class to subsidise their flight, why should those who choose to send their children to a private school expect the rest of us to subsidise that choice. I am not entirely sure the analogy is a valid one, given that airlines are a business and education is an investment in the future.

I am not entirely sure the analogy is a valid one, given that airlines are a profit-based business and education is, or should be seen as, an investment in the future. It also seems a stretch to me to argue this point, particularly given that, as Jamie Dorrington, the Rethinking Reform MC remarked, that the airlines would likely argue that the upper-class prices, in fact, subsidise the economy class prices.

Dr. Zyngier argued that this is in fact what does happen in Australia, with public funding of private schools acting as a subsidy for the lifestyle choice of the parents and that we have the highest level of privatisation of education in the OECD. Dr. Zyngier continued by pointing out that countries in the OECD such as the United Kingdom and the United States, though they have privatised education institutions, and perhaps some of the most well-known educational institutions in the world, do not give any public funds to those private education institutes whatsoever.

In closing, Dr. Zyngier made two points; firstly, he noted that Australia has been reported by the OECD as having very high student achievement results as well as significantly different learning achievements between the students at either end of the SES scale, which should be concerning to us all.Secondly, and his final point, we need to come to an agreement about what it means to have a public education system, which, to me, sounds like a national conversation about the purpose and goals of education. Maybe I am just hearing what I want to hear, though.

At this point, Dr. Donnelly took the podium to make his arguments and opened by listing off the adjectives typically used to describe him; misogynistic, homophobic, and extremist and proceeded to share some of his background with the audience, revealing that he grew up in Broadmeadows, Melbourne, as a child with a father who was a member of the Communist Party, whilst he and his brother were members of the Eureka Youth Movement, which he indicated was the Youth Communist Party, and that he had “…a good Catholic mother” which resulted in, as I can only imagine, some interesting discussions at home. He then commented that he did not want to be antagonistic or vitriolic today, which, I daresay, caused some disappointment amongst the audience

Dr. Donnelly then spoke about how Australia has a tripartite education system and that this arrangement has had consensus from the major parties for some years now, and he quoted then Minister for Education Julia Gillard as saying that “…I am committed to parents’ rights to choose the school that is best for their child.”

Dr. Donnelly, remarkably, called Gonski funding a myth and said that needs-based funding had been around a number of years, which generated a number of raised eyebrows in the room. He went on to comment that the ten-year period from 1998 saw a significantly large increase in enrolments in the private education system, and that those enrollments were predominantly in the low-fee paying schools, and that while this voting with their feet movement had slowed down since 2008, the Catholic and Independent education systems received little overall funding in the 2012/2013 budget from the Government.Additionally, argued Dr. Donnelly, high-profile schools such as Kings and Melbourne Grammar are, in fact, outliers in regards to the education fees and resourcing. and that the Australian Education Union

The Australian Education Union should be arguing, commented Dr. Donnelly, not necessarily against the stances of the parties regarding the Gonski funding model, but against those states who did not ever sign off on it. He continued by noting that Julia Gillard, then Minister for Education, signed off on twenty-seven different agreements with various state education bodies, which means that there are at least twenty-seven different funding models in place.

Dr. Donnelly then broached the argument from critics of private education that private schools only get the good kids, or those with high academic ability, and discussed research that demonstrates that the SES status of a student’s family only contributes approximately fifteen to eighteen percent of the academic variance and that the Government has spent billions of additional dollars on education without seeing the expected growth in learning outcomes. He also argues that the public selective schools, selective for academic or sporting or any other reason, are a contributor to the residualisation of public schooling, but that they do not get mentioned, with private education being an easy target

A paper by the OECD which Professor Geoff Masters (@GMasterACER), CEO of ACER (@ACEReduAu), quoted in a recent paper which indicates that Australia is second only to Denmark in regards to intergenerational mobility and that another OECD report from 2008 ranked Australia as one of the most socially mobile countries.

Dr. Donnelly closed out his opening arguments by calling for a move away from the acrimonious debate and to look at high-performing schooling systems and ask what works there that might work for us in Australia, with a move towards a decentralised education structure with increased school autonomy and choice to create the flexibility and diversity in our schools to encourage schools to be innovative.

​At this point, Jamie Dorrington asked Dr. Zyngier for his rebuttal comments, however, I will leave the rebuttal from both Dr. Zyngier and Dr. Donnelly, as well as the questions from the floor, for you to listen to, as I would like to explore what we have already heard in a bit more depth.

From conversations with a few people in the room after The Great Debate, there was a feeling that no-one was actually going to change their mind based on any arguments presented today, and that there were going to be a large number of Donnelly-haters and people in the room who would support Dr. Zyngier purely based on what Dr. Donnelly has previously written and said in the media, and who would not actually be interested in hearing what he was saying. I have also heard that someone was told by their Principal they would not be given permission to attend Education Nation purely because Dr. Donnelly would be speaking.

Irrespective of what you think of Dr. Donnelly, this sort of closed-mindedness is not healthy for education debate in Australia. That sort of thinking creates an echo-chamber, where you hear only what you want to hear which creates a stagnant environment and does our students a disservice. Dr. Donnelly (and Dr. Zyngier, for that matter) made some very sensible comments today.

• We need to move this divisive debate.
• There are greater areas of importance to learning outcomes that we can address far more productively.
• Parents have a right to choose the school for their child based on any range of reasons.
• Public selective schools play a role in residualisation

I do not advocate, let me make it clear, for all of Dr. Donnelly’s views. Personally, I am still working out what my own views are on a range of topics related to education, and trying to work out who I am as an educator and where I fit in the scheme of things. This means that whilst I have made my mind up about some areas, I am open to hearing ideas from all quarters. I engaged in the Twitter conversation that was going on during The Great Debate (you can actually my laptop keys at one point in the audio!) and the reactions I was seeing were a range of adjectives between positive and negative, but I saw some that attacked the man and not the argument which is shameful and contributes nothing.

Dr. Zyngier, as I mentioned, also made some great points in his argument.

• We need to reach an agreement as a nation about what it means to have a public education system, which sounds, to my ears, like he was on the same page as Dr. Donnelly.
• Residualisation feeds residualisation
• The focus of Government education funding should be public education.

Both men threw out numbers, statistics and made references to research with no citations provided. Neither man changed anyone’s mind. The debate, though interesting, and generating a lot of interest, contributed nothing to the overall debate about education in this country. I wholeheartedly agree with Dr Donnelly when he said that “we need to move on from this debate and its acrimonious nature.” The discussions about the impact of a child’s SES background depends on which research you read, is what I drew from that facet of this argument.

We need to move on, there are important issues that need to be addressed.

If you have missed any articles in the Education Nation series, you can find them here.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.
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The fourth and final session for day one of the Rethinking Reform stream at Education Nation was rather full, as it contained both the Rethinking Reform and the Digital Dimension streams. Teresa Deshon opened the session by speaking about People of Character – Your Best Self which was a focus on the pastoral curriculum that often appears to be ignored or subsumed by the focus on the academic curriculum and what that looks like at Kilvington Grammar. Teresa began with a series of back in my day… sayings and then related that it often appears as if the character traits and virtues which were taken for granted in generations gone by, resilience, steadfastness, loyalty, persistence etc. appear to be largely missing in the current school-bound generation. This, Teresa commented, was played out in (uncited) OECD data where Australia appears in the top third of many welfare concern issues tracked.

​Teresa spoke about how there are three climate types and that all three play a significant role at Kilvington grammar and that students are able to utilise to three climates to be their best self. Within the Character Initiative, the focus is on helping students from Kindergarten to Year Six set goals based upon the character trait being explicitly taught that term, whilst in Year Seven to Twelve students, they set the goals based on the character traits, complete quizzes to measure the engagement, understanding, and appreciation of the character traits whilst engaging in an analysis of the character trait as it is portrayed throughout various types of media including news, books, and movies.

​Teresa also noted that in Years Nine and Ten, students had the choice of undertaking the ethical leadership elective subject which focuses on three areas:
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1. Sustainability, resourcefulness and lateral thinking,
2. Diversity/Celebrating and Respecting Difference, and
3. Values in Action

It was here that Teresa made a brief reference to a flipped curriculum, and even showed a stock flipped class graphic, however, the terminology was being used in a context that was not flipped learning in the sense of flipped learning that I have written about at length in the past. Teresa was actually referring to the flip made from focusing on the academic curriculum to the pastoral curriculum as opposed to flipped learning of the type I have written about previously.

Teresa’s presentation timeslot was brief and it went by very fast. There was not, for me, any particular takeaways from the session. There were no tools or strategies talked about in depth that could be applied, but anecdotal discussion of how a program was working in a particular context. The move from focusing on the academics to the pastoral side of things intrigues me, especially when you consider that the academics do still need to be attended to, however, I do agree that the pastoral issues need to be addressed. Teresa’s opening point, about the shift of pastoral concerns being from a parental burden to a teacher burden, is an issue, and I think it goes back to the need to establish the purposes and goals of education, and whether it should include pastoral issues, or whether they need to be the domain of the parent (which is in itself another debate).

As always, thank you for reading, and I would appreciate any feedback you care to offer in the comments below or over on Twitter.

If you have missed any previous articles in this series, you can find them by clicking here.

Peter Mader’s session led into lunch (which was fantastic), after which I headed off to The Learner to hear from Prue Gill and Ed Cuthbertson (@prue_g and @ed_cuthbertson) about how to encourage students to become active participants in their own learning. It promised to be an interesting session, which was unfortunately poorly attended, but from which I learned a lot. Prue and Ed have kindly made their slide deck available and you can find it here.
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They began by providing some context for the audience, indicating that they came from a low socioeconomic status (SES) area called Conder in the ACT. They qualified it by saying that low SES in the ACT is not the same as low SES in NSW or other states, but that they are, relatively speaking, disadvantaged and isolated from the rest of the region. They added that they have both been in the school, together, for some years, which is actually an unusual situation. Apparently the ACT used to have a policy in place to ensure cross-fertilisation of ideas and practices that a teacher moved to a new school every two years. The unintended consequence of this was that staffing in the school was fluid and there was constant change, resulting in it beign very difficult to build or change school culture. The practice has, thankfully, fallen by the wayside and has resulted in vastly improved relationships between staff members and between staff and students

We began by considering that we cannot empower students when teachers are not themselves empowered and were asked to consider and map on a Cartesian Plane, school practices that were low or high quality and were empowering or disempowering for teachers.

The audience spent time collaboratively filling in their own Cartesian planes and then came back together and shared the ideas. They related to us, as they added groups ideas to the plane, that they were shown this tool by Dan Meyer and that it provided a usable tool for helping a school move from across the plane to the top right-hand quadrant.

​They explored the idea that it was impossible to teach the curriculum if a teacher too busy managing behaviour issues and how teachers need to sit down at the same level as students as part of the behaviour management process, conferencing with them to discuss the root cause of the behaviour. This goes back to the theory that all behaviour has a reason or purpose behind it. The school began using the mini-conference process as a way of addressing behaviour issues constructively and that as it gained traction and acceptance from teachers, students and parents, that they were then able to use it not only to assist in resolving teacher:student issues but also in resolving teacher:teacher and student:student issues.

The school invested time in helping staff develop their professional development plans (PDPs), identifying development opportunities that met both staff and school needs and used action research to gather data on what practices were and were not working and to be able to determine the level of impact that practices were having using data.

They spoke about the need to value the passion and knowledge of teachers and to invest in and then leverage that, compromising as needed logistically. The example they gave was that a science teacher wanted to run a particular program and had built up the interest in science to the point where students wanted to engage in that program. The school leadership was able to recognise the passion and knowledge of that teacher and gave the go-ahead for the program, with a quid-pro-quo of taking on an additional class.

​The school also uses collaboratively teaching and have placed all Year Seven mathematics classes on the same line, allowing for team teaching, planning, programming, and assessing.

Another aspect of the school which I believe is fantastic is that every teacher in the school, including the Assistant Principals and the Deputy Principal, are expected to observe and provide feedback to two other teachers, as well be observed and given feedback about their own teaching practice. I have heard this concept given many names, but the underlying spirit is brilliant and promotes growth, learning, and best-practice and that it has resulted in significant growth throughout the entire teaching staff.

The school has also worked hard to remove useless and wasteful staff meetings consisting of items that belong in an e-mail. They map out the agendas for staff meetings for the full year and make them visible to the entire staff, creating an environment where e-mail meetings are reduced and promoting genuine discussion and debate on substantive issues. One of the issues examined was the use of funding and the recognition that data and accountability for the use of funding go hand in hand. To this end, funding began to be targeted to specific purposes and programs, which needed to be evaluated and the data used to determine success and the impact thereof through action research. One outcome of this was that the way rubrics were used to judge assessment tasks was changed. They are now structured and given to students indicating that by the end of the unit they need to be able to answer specific in-depth questions, rather than simply writing a report that uses a few keywords.

One area that was identified as needing improvement was in collaboration with other schools. To this end, a learning community was established with nearby primary and secondary schools. As part of this, joint assemblies are held on a regular, but not interferingly regular, basis so that when students transition from primary to secondary, the school they attend is already relatively familiar due to the community environment that has been established.

At this point, we were asked to consider what an empowered student looked like and in our table groups, discussed and explored this with some consistent themes emerging in the room.

• Safety and basic needs need to be met – relationship to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
• The ability to take appropriate risks.
• Opportunities to try, experiment, fail and reflect.
• The ability to drive their own learning.
• Hopeful of the future.

Prue and Ed also noted that if it is easy to measure, then it is probably not worth measuring, which led to a discussion about how do we measure if our students are empowered. Some tools that they use as a school include attendance rates, especially for those with historically low attendance as well as reading student reflection journals.

The discussion then moved onto an explanation of the merit and reward system that was being used across the school and that while it was working well and having positive effects, there was an awareness of Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards theory and the negative potential of extrinsic motivation. There was a discussion of the fact that some schools physically cannot get through the whole curriculum and that one way they were working through that issue was to utilise the learning by design methodology in their planning and programming, as well as peer feedback on practice.

They discovered that students were working on assignments outside of school hours, collaboratively, and diving into deep discussions on concepts that were being covered in class.

We are often told, as educators, that we need to leverage a student’s interest and teach to it. However, Prue and Ed argued that if a student likes bikes, do not give him a book about bikes and teach everything through bikes as that will only destroy the love of bikes. It is also, they said, our job to expose students to other ideas, concepts, and interests rather than allow them to become single-minded about something.

Closing out, Prue and Ed spoke to us briefly about the Giving Project they run through Years Seven, Eight and Nine, the use of a genuine student parliament which has input in the school and issues that affect students, and the last comment was from Prue; “that what works is not the right question. What works somewhere does not work everywhere.”

I enjoyed the session with Prue and Ed, their passion shone through and we heard some interesting ideas about engaging students in their own learning, stemming from a focus on improved school culture. The session was not well attended, I thought and did them a disservice, however, their enthusiasm was infectious and they engaged the audience well.

As always, thank you for reading. If you have missed the other articles in this Education Nation series, you can fidn the full list here.

“We need to find the sweet spot in our teaching.”
– Peter Mader

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.

After morning tea and some time in The Playground, I was scheduled to join The Leader stream to hear Peter Mader (@mader_peter) speak about Strategies for bridging the policy / practice divide. I was very much looking forward to this session, as it is a real problem which faces educators everywhere and hearing some strategies for working through the divide that can occur would have been ver valuable.

​I say would have been, as Peter, to his credit, was up front at the beginning and said that the abstract from the website for his session is not what his session actually was. This, to be honest, really annoyed me. I had chosen this session, as had everyone else, based on what was written in the abstract. I do not know whether an updated abstract was sent to the organisers and not uploaded, or whether Peter chose not to send an updated abstract, but I felt misled. Despite that, Peter’s session was interesting.

He opened by asking us to discuss in our table groups the question “if you could change any one educational policy  for the benefit of student right now, what would it be?” Peter asked someone from each table to share what they came up with and a range of responses and some common themes heard.

• The vast number of policies
• The language of the policies that results in a threatening and negative vibe coming from them, particularly in the accountability stakes
• The number of policies that are designed to manage risk, or to put it more bluntly, cover the relevant Department of Education in case a student or teacher is injured which has the unintended consequence of discouraging teachers from taking appropriate risks with new pedagogies and which discourage students from taking appropriate risks and learn from them
• The need to return the focus to learning and open up the tools of teaching and learning that are available (YouTube was given as an example) and the need to remove policies that interfere with learning.
• Frustration around the current staffing agreement where the filling of a position rotates between merit selection by a panel from the school and direct appointment by the department with little to no say or control about the quality of the person appointed by the relevant Department of Education and the resultant impacts on a school.
• Frustration over NAPLAN and belief by many educators that it is unreflective of the spirit of the National Curriculum, that the data is misused and misreported.

Peter identified that there seems to be a common theme across these areas, which is a feeling of disconnect between the policy writers and those who are required to operate within the constraints of the policies. He indicated that he wanted to talk about policies of leadership at the macro level that can affect change at the micro level.

His next comment was that having recently spoken to some newly graduated teachers, he found that there was little to no awareness of the importance of professional associations. He is absolutely correct. From my own experience, in my initial teacher education (ITE) program my peers and I had at the time, and largely still do not, no awareness of the professional associations available. I would qualify that by also noting that no professional associations reached out to us by sending representatives to the university to speak to us or via e-mail with the sole exception of the NSW Teachers Federation.

A list of Professional Association Networks found on the AITSL website

Peter continued by remarking that we need to find the sweet spot in teaching despite the discord and the uncertainty across the entire education sector about the perceived purposes and goals of education (there is that concept again). He spoke about there being two narratives around education and that they conflict with each other. Peter spoke about the need to co-design policy ahead of the consultation phase, i.e., if stakeholders are engaged in the development process, the consultation is less likely to throw up red flags. Typically, he indicated, the policy is written and given for review without enough time for genuine analysis and feedback to be provided ahead of the implementation, showing that it is a superficial request, with no actual interest in hearing feedback for improvement.

Peter argued that decision makers and policy writers either need to have an education background, or to have trusted and experienced people around them who have an education background. I have heard arguments on this topic from both sides, however, and it is an interesting subject. Changing tack, Peter then said that to affect change, educators need three things; relevance, reason, and resources.

South Australia, Peter’s home state, is the state with the worst cash balance in the country he told us and so questions about how to fund education were serious and relevant. Politicians, he noted, often talk about the economy vis-a-vis what it should look like and how they will achieve that goal. However, they rarely connect education to the future by talking about what education should look like (purpose and goals  again?) with any real substance, nor do they talk about how they will achieve that goal with any real substance. There is even less talk about to feed into that change and improvement with regards to ITE.
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Peter then introduced the first of the narratives that he mentioned earlier, which was the role that media commentary plays in education, yet that it also has no real connection to schools. He posited that the clickbait headlines surrounding things like NAPLAN and PISA results induce a sense of nostalgia in adults, a feeling of back in my day… and a panic that there is a need to return back to basics and drill and skill.  This, for me, was echoing comments and sentiments that Brett Salakas had made in his presentation to the Rethinking Reform delegates earlier in the morning. If our results are falling, then we need to copy what the top countries are doing because it clearly works seems to be the prevailing mindset impressed upon us by the media in its educational commentary.

Peter phrased it as the media and older generations wanting us to subscribe to a better version of the 1960s. He noted that there were some good things in the 1960s, but that we have of course moved on from then and that there were some definite poor practices in the 1960s.

Given I was born in 1983, I will have to take his word for it.

Peter quoted Ball from 2008 who apparently said that “learning is re-rendered as a cost-effective policy outcome and achievement is merely a set of productivity targets.” While the media  give the impression that education is all about NAPLAN and PISA, Malcolm Turnbull has said that “[t]here has never been a more exciting time to be alive than today and there has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian.“

Peter then asked us, in our table groups, to discuss what it is that is stopping us from shifting away from the obsession with standardised testing. There were, again, some very interesting ideas that came from the room.

• Mindsets about education and the purpose, goals and expectations therein from the community and students.
• Confusion about the new career pathway and how it is no longer a single career trajectory.
• Politicians who surround themselves with consultants who are not teachers, or who have been out of the classroom for a long period of time.
• Fear of taking risks during an election cycle.
• The different types of schools and the misfit of policy and expectation to education realities.
• The fact that the locus of control is with the politicians as they control the purse-strings.

My next note simply says YouTube: Future of Work which at the time, I must have thought would be enough information to find the video that we either were shown or that was discussed. Unfortunately, there are several videos on YouTube with that phrase in the title. I have reached out to Peter to find out who the speaker in the video was to help me narrow it down and will update this article when he confirms that for me.

Peter rounded out by commenting that learning is for life and accordingly, it should be meaningful, that we need to focus son assessment rather than testing, which are distinctly different from each other and asked us if there was, perhaps, a third option.

I was disappointed that the session was not what it was advertised as being and there was some frustration in the room about that. Speaking with one delegate, he was very disappointed as he had chosen The Leader specifically as it fits with his own Professional Development Plan and the goals of the school he is in at the moment, but that this session, as with many of the others in The Leader were a let down and that he had wasted the school’s money and two days of professional development. Overall, for me personally, whilst I was disappointed that it was not what it was advertised as being, I did find it an interesting, though at times frustrating, session.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.

I would like to begin this article by sharing a personal story, and I would like you to try to place yourself in my shoes throughout. I arrived at an education conference last year wide-eyed and more than a little naive about what  was going to see and hear from the vendors. It was my very first conference and the first time I had been exposed to an educational vendor expo. I spoke with all of the vendors who had something that intrigued me or made me curious, and they all went something like this:

“How are you?”
“Well, thanks, you?”
“Yeah, good. Have you heard of our product before? It can do x, y and z.”
“Ok, can it do p or q?”
“I don’t think so, no.”

There were also a number of vendors, actually, the majority, who made no effort to engage me, or other delegates. Their body language was closed off, their facial expressions were bored and disinterested and they appeared more interested in chatting with their colleagues on their own stand and those around them. Many of them had signage that told a delegate everything they needed to know about the product and discouraged talking to them. If you did approach those vendors, they answered the questions with product knowledge drawn from within their box of knowledge about that product.

Though I was asked questions by vendors such as what year group do you teach, what subject do you teach, and have you tried competitor A’s product? Because ours is far superior, they were superficial questions which were asked from a superficial interest, driven by wanting to sell me the product or get my details for later promotional e-mails* as opposed to wanting to understand what I am trying to do in my classroom with my students at the moment and what challenges I have that they can work with me to solve. The vendors were also, it appeared, unwilling to leave the safety and comfort of their stand to get amongst the delegates and get to know and understand them and their needs.

The vendors had no understanding of how to get to know me as an educator and my needs, challenges and goals. They knew how to rattle off their sales pitch, and could do so with aplomb. This is, I believe, a distinct difference in approach and attitude.

I suspect that many of you are, whether figuratively or literally, nodding your head in agreement at this point, as your experience with vendors at expos has been somewhat similar. I had a conversation with someone recently who pointed out that it is partially our fault, as educators, for going in and often just asking “what can it do? as opposed to going in and asking “I teach x to y students and am trying to do z but have come up against problems a, b and c. Do you have a solution?”
When I initially came across Education Nation during a twitter chat earlier in the year, one of the aspects which caught my eye was the way in which the organisers had positioned the traditional vendor exhibition floor, which they were dubbing The Playground. It sounded like it would be different.

I was excited by the prospects of this. My imagining of The Playground would be that the Vendors would not only know their products but would have an understanding of education and specific challenges in at least some of the areas that are faced on a daily basis. More importantly, though, I had imagined that the vendors would be intermingling with the delegates, engaging in discussions about education and specific contexts within which the delegates are teaching and the specific challenges we were facing.

This was not the case.
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Acer came to the Education Nation party, and had, inarguably, the largest stand there and were the official coffee provider with a barista at one end of their stand (who made consistently great hot chocolates, but from what I heard, terrible coffee).

Although I am going to explicitly use Acer as an example in this story, it applies equally to all of the vendors, not just at Education Nation, but at any educational conference. I stood in line for my hot chocolate on several occasions and not once was I engaged in conversation by an Acer representative; no sales pitch, no good morning, how are you? I did approach the Acer stand at one point with the express purpose of scoping out what they had on offer and approached a computer that had a driving computer game on display. However, what captured my interest was actually the monitor, which was a wide-screen curved monitor.

An Acer representative approached me, just as I was starting to look at the monitor and told me that the game was playable and to just use particular keys on the keyboard to drive the car. He then turned and moved away. There was no discussion, no sales pitch, no what has you interested in this computer? No what computer are you using at school or at home at the moment? Nothing. Sadly, that is not the worst part of the story.

One of the presenters at Education Nation was Nick Patsianas (@nickpatsianas), a current Year Twelve student who is also, and I use this term as a compliment, a huge computer nerd (I would only label myself as a minor computer nerd). He was engaged in a conversation with one of the Acer representatives about some of the laptops they had on display and was explaining to the representative about how a particular component of the laptop works and why that was good for him as a student. He also explained to the representative  that another feature that was purported to be in benefit, was actually a flaw, and why that was the case.

PC Locs had a stand there as well, and the representatives looked bored, disinterested and disengaged and made no effort to engage those walking past their stand, in any way unless someone actually stopped to look at a product that they had. The Brainary stand had a robot that could walk, dance and talk, and it gained some attraction, but I do not know how much genuine interest there was, and how much was due to the gimmick of the robot. Latitude Travel also showed little interest in engaging people in conversation, they certainly made no attempt to draw me in. ABI were there showing off their Snowflake system. They had a flat screen touch panel, upright, showing a simple screen, and a banner with all the info you needed to know about it.
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The representative, as did many of the company representatives there, looked bored and did not show off the fact that the flatscreen touch panel could go from full vertical to horizontal and was height adjustable, and then when he did show that off, could not explain why that would be of use to a teacher for collaborative learning and publishing of work for a wider audience.

Vendors, there is something you need to understand about educators. You complained we were not talking to you at Education Nation but there is a reason for that. We can find out everything we want to know about your product online. You cannot find out anything about our teaching context and the challenges we face in our specific room without engaging in conversation with us. Talk to us, not at us. Ask us what we want to be able to do and what our challenges are, rather than rattle off the specifications of the product. Leave your stands and have lunch or coffee with us. Ask us who we have just listened to speak and what we took away from that talk. Or, be even more genuine, and sit in on the talks, show an interest in education rather than just selling us products and tools and services.

Educators, there is something we need to realise about vendors. If we continue to simply ask what a product does, the vendors will continue to sell to us and talk at us. We need to go in and tell them what we want to do, whether it is a concrete function or an abstract dream. We need to share our real, genuine, everyday systemic, policy, process and people-power challenges with them to give them insight into what we face and allow them to go back to their companies and brainstorm ways of surmounting those challenges.

Until we change how we engage with the vendors, the vendors will continue to not know how to engage with us.

UPDATE: I was contacted by the CEO of a company at this event via e-mail afterwards who requested to chat regarding her company's representatives and their conduct, wanting specifics. Although I rang and left a voicemail and followed up with an e-mail I did not hear back from that person.

*There is an exception to this. Rowan and Yohan from MyEdApp engaged me in conversation very differently and did make an effort to understand my context.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.

The opening keynote for Education Nation in the Rethinking Reform stream by Brett Salakas was a very interesting and engaging start with some very interesting and valid points raised. Brett commented to me during lunch that it was very daunting being the first speaker at a new conference, and having Professor Geoff Masters (@GMastersACER) sitting front and center for the presentation amplified that.
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Professor Masters’ was speaking to the title of Addressing the Five Key Challenges in School Education that Matter to You and ostensibly, he was going to be focusing on five areas. The first area that Professor Masters addressed was the declining  PISA results, both relative and in real terms, of Australian students. This, he indicated, has been a trend that has been identifiable since 2000.

​The mathematics results are particularly disturbing, with a significant, sharp drop year on year for each iteration of PISA from 2000 to 2012. Professor Masters commented, though it may have been stating the obvious, that we need to arrest and reverse this downward trend in results. Additionally, there is a growing disparity in schools creating a situation wherein it is becoming more and more important which school students attend. Someone failed conference etiquette and asked a question mid-presentation about where the variation lies and Professor Masters acknowledged that the total variance in results can be broken into differences between schools (twenty percent) and differences within schools (eighty percent).

​Disturbingly, there is also a growing number of students who are not meeting the minimum standards; fourteen percent are not meeting the reading minimum standards, twenty percent are not meeting the mathematics minimum standards. In comparison, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Korea’s rates are between three and nine percent. The point was made that not only are our results falling year on year; but that the gap between our results and the countries around us is growing each year as they continue to improve.
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Professor Masters then dived into some Census data which indicates that one in five students are currently developmentally vulnerable due to being locked into a trajectory of long-term low achievement. I, unfortunately, was not quick enough to snap the photo, or write down the specific context, however, so I would appreciate confirmation or clarification if someone did note it down (I have reached out to Professor Masters on Twitter and am awaiting confirmation), but my memory is that the likelihood of someone being the one in five student varies depending on Indigenous status, gender and socio-economic status (SES).

For Indigenous students, they have (if my memory of the context in which the figures were provided is correct) a 42.1% of being the one in five, which is just over double that of a non-Indigenous student, who has a 20.8% chance. The gender data shows that males have a 28.5% chance of being the one in five compared to females with a 15.1% chance whilst SES status plays a role as well. A low-SES student has a 32.6% chance of being the one in five student which is in stark contrast to their high-SES counterparts, who have a 15.5% chance. Professor Masters noted that this data has not historically been collected and so we are unable to identify the long-term historical trends, but that those factors will bear watching over future iterations of the census.

The next issue raised was the status of the teaching profession, wherein it is now a less attractive career option, and the distribution of offers to Year Twelve students in relation to their ATAR attainment. Masters’ graph shows that for Science and Engineering degrees, offers are typically made at the upper end of the achievement scale, whilst for education, they are being made, typically, in the low to mid-range achievement bands. Professor Masters noted that in those countries regarded as having high-quality education systems vis-a-vis their performance in PISA, they have typically put in place policies to help them draw teachers from the upper bands of academic achievement and that we need to take steps here in Australia to arrest the current downward spiral of where we draw our pre-service teachers from academically. This sounds like a laudable goal, however, as I have indicated previously, Pasi Sahlberg writes that there is very little discernible relationship between the academic achievement of a student and their eventual efficacy as a teacher.
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We should, perhaps, be focusing on addressing the long-term decline in the number of students electing to undertake the hard subjects such as Physics, Advanced Mathematics and Advanced English and Engineering. It was at this point that Professor Masters made a comment, the underlying concept of which, has been a common thread in each of the sessions across the various event streams and the Twitter conversations.

I want to hold the exploration of the underlying thought to a separate article, as it is a thread which makes the entire Education Nation experience, for me, a cohesive one, however he included, in that comment, a further questioning of the way in which education, especially in the secondary education sector, is restrained to silos, with subject areas being held separate, and in many schools have individual staffrooms and faculty areas, and rarely, it seems from the outside, collaborate on planning, assessment or teaching and learning. Professor Masters told the room that by the time a child is in Year Three, the top ten percent of students, academically, are approximately five years ahead vis-a-vis learning outcomes.
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My over-the-back-fence-neighbour works in Early Childhood and we have had some conversations about the need for more work in the pre-Kindergarten area to identify and work with those children who have learning difficulties to ensure that when they start Kindergarten, they have the best possible chance of achieving learning outcomes, which was a sentiment that Professor Masters closed his presentation by speaking about and agreeing with.

At this point, the MC, Simon Dorrington, opened things up to questions from the floor, which were, unfortunately, rather long-winded and convoluted comments, rather than short and to the point questions. Simon closed out the session by adding to Professor Masters’ argument that we need to regain the time in the teaching day that has been lost to the extra-curricular and what he termed support activities, many of which should be the responsibility of the parents, something I personally agree with.

The first session, consisting of Brett Salakas’ and Professor Masters’ presentations, was a great launchpad for the Rethinking Reform stream of the conference. There was a lot of head-nodding going on throughout both presentations, and a level of excitement slowly developing. I would very much like to hear from you if you were also in the room for either presentation and your perspectives and thoughts on them. As always, though, thank you for reading. The next article will cover morning tea and my experiences and thoughts on The Playground.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) was through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.
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As you read this, I would like you to consider what you believe the purpose and goal of the education system should be. I will openly admit that I am a conference junky. I have written previously about my love of conferences and being in the same room as those on the same page as yourself, however, I had forgotten how tiring, both mentally and physically, they are. I am sitting in my hotel room using my phone to hotspot so I can write this, with Pink Floyd playing, still buzzing from conversations I have had, connections I have made and people from my online professional learning network (PLN) that I have known for some time, but never met in person.

​This was followed by a brief historical overview of PISA and its purpose, which he summarised as being a way of helping governments monitor education system achievements and the impacts of education. By giving all of the students, who are the same age, the same test, it sounds like it should be a good way of tracking trends and variances between countries. Yet, Brett says, it is actually that which makes it rather murky. Students sit a two-hour written test which covers scientific literacy, mathematics, reading and financial literacy.
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What this means is that the state of our education system in comparison to other countries is based on a test which takes place once every three years, and allows students roughly thirty minutes for each of the four sections, which then packages the data up in neat statistical bundles which are then able to be misused and misrepresented in the media, creating a sense of fear and concern, and a backlash, against the state of the education system in Australia.

​These headlines create this sense of worry about the state of our education system, the quality of our teachers and the worry about how we will remedy the situation. Often, it is easy to look to the leaders of the PISA results and ask the question “what are they doing? Let’s do that” and attempt to translate education policies and practices directly into the Australian context, without thinking through a range of issues that arise in doing so.
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Brett then made the quote that I have included at the top of the article, which points out that we need to take into account the cultural context of what is happening and why it is working. Brett related that when he taught in Singapore the entire education system was streamed by ability groupings into the top, middle, and bottom third of academic results and students were taught and trained to perform to a high standard. Then he made a comment, told us about a standard practice which blew my mind and which would never happen here in Australia.

Stop and think about what that means for a moment.

Year One students, most of whom will be either six or seven years old, lining up waiting for their teacher to arrive, beginning class and then not finishing until a time when I would like to be in bed. Presumably, there is going to be a period of travel time before those children arrive at home, and then actually get to bed and then fall asleep. That practice would cause uproar and outrage if suggested here in Australia. We need to find a solution that works here, for us, in our context.

Brett continued by pointing out a few facts about PISA, which he made quite clear were all confirmable on the PISA website. He reminded us that this fear-mongering and panic is based upon, essentially, a thirty-minute test (for each subject area PISA concerns itself with) and that there are a number of factors in play that are not typically talked about. He spoke about research by Alma Harris (@AlmaHarris1) that indicated many Nordic countries exclude migrants and refugees from the PISA testing and that some research shows many Asian countries prepare their students for PISA in a period of time immediately beforehand, in an effort to boost their results.
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An interesting point was then raised, which I ha not thought about, but which does make sense, which was that although the PISA tests are written in one language, they do need to be translated into a range of languages as required for each country. The very act of translating the questions can have an impact on the complexity of the question, from a cultural point of view, as well as an academic perspective.

The next issue is a phenomenon referred to as the Wild Geese of Korea, or, in Korean, Gireogi appa (literally ‘goose dad’), wherein Korean families are sending the mother and child to a Western country, to receive a Western education, perceived to be of a higher standard than a Korean education, whilst the father remains in Korea, in a small unit.The terminology applied within Korea regarding this is quite complex and structured. However, this phenomenon raises a very important question; what are the Koreans seeing about education in the Western countries, that we are not?
This segued into an amusing clip from the movie 300, the tale of King Leonidas of Spart and his eventual defeat during the Battle of Thermopylae. This clip, however, had the audio in French, with some clever subtitles. My thanks to Kelly Hollis for finding the original link

​This clip was the entry point into a discussion about the attributes we actually would like to see developed in our students. Brett related an incident that occurred at his school during an athletics carnival; specifically, the Girls one hundred metre final, which would determine the age champion for that year. Brett spoke about two girls who, for their primary education, had ben the two standout athletes, sharing honours across athletics events each year, and that this would be the decider between them. It was a significant event, with lots of parents attending to watch, as happens at sports carnivals and both girls were taking it quite seriously, the eleven-year-old Olympics, as it were.

Only a short distance into the race, one of the two girls hurt herself, pulling a hamstring. Her rival had the advantage from the start and had pulled ahead and so was not aware of what had happened, however, the other girls all stopped to check and see if she was ok. Eventually, the leading girl realised something was not right and turned around to look. Upon seeing that her rival had stopped, injured, she made a choice. Instead of continuing to take the win and the title of age champion, she went back to her rival, her friend, and did what she could to help and show concern. Brett then made a poignant statement; “every parent there at that moment knew exactly, from what had happened, why they sent their daughter to this school. That choice, that act made it clear.” 
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The education system in Singapore and the other high-performing countries on PISA tests work in their context as there are specific attributes which are being looked for. We need to decide what attributes we want to see in our children. Conveniently, Brett had an Answergarden for us to indicate the attributes that we feel are important.

​We need to stop cherry picking aspects of education systems from countries which obtain high results on PISA testing and have a real conversation about what we, as a nation, want for our students from out education system. The countries which perform, and have performed, highly on those international standardised testing have historically put educational policies in place many years before they have had their purple patch which has focused on enabling their goal for education to be achieved. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe that there has ever been a national conversation in Australia about the purpose and goals of education and how we go about achieving those goals*. Many key attributes that show up on the word cloud above, resilience, collaboration, confidence, are, Brett says, nationally imbued and are seen as typical Aussie characteristics; mateship, innovation, a fair go etc.

This quote was Brett’s final message. We need to act as beacons of light and positivity in education to stave off the darkness and the negativity, and connecting with other educators, those who are working to shine the light, is a fantastic way of helping to do that. Brett shared ten (it was actually twelve) educators who he sees as great educators to follow.

1. Kelly Hollis
2. Zeina Chalich
3. Rob McTaggart
4. Magdalene Mattson
5. Jake Plaskett
6. Gavin Hays
7. Jarryd Cook
8. The EduTweetOz rotating curator Twitter account
9. Eleni Kyritsis
10. The Authentic Learning team
11. Jane Hunter and
12. Allan Carrington

My key takeaway from Brett’s session was that we need to have the why and what conversation about education, and work to gain some sort of consensus about education’s goal in order to stop the cycle of ideological-based policies and provide some consistency of expectation and purpose. The over-reliance on PISA as a measure needs to be re-evaluated as well, as this feeds into the media fear-mongering about education and influences, negatively, the education conversation and perception.

What was your key takeaway from Brett’s keynote? What do you believe the purpose and goal of education should be in Australia? Let me know, either by commenting on this article or by tweeting me.

The next article in this Education Nation series will look at the presentation by Professor Geoff Masters (@GMastersACER).

As always, thank you for reading. IF you have missed any articles in this series, please click here.

*In the time since I published this article, I have been reminded of the 2008 Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, which I had forgotten about. Whilst it does provide a potential launchpad for a national conversation about the purposes and goals of education, it was not, in itself, a national conversation, given that it came out of a meeting of politicians.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) in June is through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.
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Education Nation is fast approaching, and this time next week, the final session of the conference will be concluding. One of the most hotly anticipated events of Education Nation is The Great Debate between Dr. David Zyngier (@dzyngier) and Dr. Kevin Donelly (@ESIAuatralia). Last week, I published an article from an interview with Dr. Zyngier, which was widely read. Dr. Zyngier is speaking on the side of public education at The Great Debate, and there are some strong arguments available for him to draw upon. This article will be an exploration of Dr. Donnelly’s responses to a series of questions similar to those presented to Dr. Zyngier. As with the previous interviews, 

​Dr. Donnelly provided a short summary of his stance on the issue of public versus private education. He posits that the claims that private schooling systems, e.g. Catholic and independent schools, are over-funded and cause residualisation of government schools, particularly those with disadvantaged students, is incorrect. He cites the simple fact that non-government schools receive significantly less public funding than government schools. For example, the below graph shows the relative expenditure across the two sectors and highlights the disparate nature of the level of public funding.

​Dr. Donelly also decries the claim that private schools only achieve strong learning outcomes comparative to public schools because they take the best students, noting that public schools are not truly open to all. This is a valid point to make as there is a range of public schools, particularly secondary school, which are selective based on academic results, requiring a certain academic ability for enrolment into those schools, often requiring prospective students to sit an entrance exam. Additionally, Dr. Donnelly notes that many public schools are situated in suburbs which are classed as high socio-economic areas (SES) and are therefore unaffordable for many people. Linked to both arguments, Dr. Donnelly notes that the socio-economic status of a student’s family is only ten to eighteen percent of the overall factors influencing learning outcomes.

I have noted in previous articles in this series the recent discussions that have appeared in the media regarding teacher quality, and admission to and the quality of, initial teacher education (ITE) programs. Dr. Donnelly’s views on this are somewhat similar to Dr. Zyngier’s views. Dr. Donnelly cites Parsi Sahlberg (@pasi_sahlberg), a Finnish educational researcher who found that although half of the first-year ITE students are drawn from the fifty-one to eighty percent range, rendering the argument that pre-service teachers should be drawn from the academic top thirty percent, invalid. Sahlberg has also commented that “a good step forward would be to admit that the academically best students are not necessarily the best teachers.” Dr. Donnelly also notes a 2012 submission to a Commonwealth inquiry into teacher education by Professor Geoff Masters, who commented that restricting entry to ITE programs to top academic students “…is a blunt approach to improving the selection of teachers and falls well short of international best practice.”

​In addition to discussing the prospect of restricting pre-service teachers to those with the top academic results, I asked Dr. Donnelly for his views about a different method of raising the expectations of ITE programs. In Finland, ITE programs are delivered at Masters level, rather than Undergraduate level here in Australia. He explained that research conducted by Andrew Leigh into effective teaching showed that holding a Masters degree does not necessarily equate to being an effective teacher, which seems to be consistent with Pas Sahlberg’s comment mentioned, regarding the fact that there is not a causal link between the academically best teachers and the most effective teachers.

Dr. Donnelly points to Pasi Sahlberg’s findings that a teacher’s commitment and ability to engage and motivate students, along with their communication skills and, of course, subject knowledge are more influential factors in identifying effective teachers. He also points to findings in the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group report, Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers, that the level of the degree, Bachelor or Masters, is not particularly important. What is important is the quality of the ITE program and whether trainee teachers have been properly prepared and are ready to begin teaching in a class on their own. I have written previously about my own ITE program, and I would agree that there is scope for improvement

After discussing the subject of ITE, the interview turned to Finland and our relationship and seeming obsession with modelling the Finnish educational model. Dr. Zyngier is critical of this obsession, noting that Finland’s results in PISA and TIMSS have been falling in recent years. Dr. Donnelly is also critical of the way that educationalists jump on the bandwagon of whichever country is generating the best results in international testing, which has moved between Singapore, Sweden, Finland and is currently Shanghai, particularly given that Finland’s results have been falling as shown in the below images from Trends in the Performance of the Top Performers on PISA 2003-Pisa 2012.

​The above image shows that the number of Finnish students performing in the lower levels of PISA mathematics tests has increased significantly. It makes sense, therefore, that the number of Finnish students at the top end has fallen in the same period.

​Dr. Donnelly, after acknowledging Finland’s falling results in recent instances of PISA, notes that translating educational characteristics of other countries can be very difficult due to the variation in contexts. This is an interesting comment, and one I look forward to hearing expanded upon further, particularly, I suspect in the presentation by Lila Mularczyk’ (@LilaMularczyk) on day two of Education Nation, where she is examining trends in international education policy and the translation to the Australian context. Dr. Donnelly reminds us that we can learn from international education systems, however, it needs to be evidence based.
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Dr. Donnelly co-chaired the National Curriculum Review alongside Professor Kenneth Wiltshire. Given that the National Curriculum has not been implemented nationally I questioned whether or not a National Curriculum should have even been the goal for Australian education. Dr. Donnelly indicated that greater autonomy and flexibility at the local level, should have been the goal, not a one size fits all curriculum that has been torn apart and rebuilt to suit the needs of some states, and implemented as-is by others. Dr. Donnelly points out that under the Australian Constitution, the government does not have a responsibility for school education. Dr. Donnelly believes that “…we should abide by the fact that we have a federal system where all roads do not lead to Canberra.

Social media is playing an increasingly important role in the professional learning of teachers around the world. It is free, available at any time and on any range of topics, providing an alternative to the often expensive and/or boring and untargeted professional development sessions that teachers’ typically receive. Dr. Donnelly’s view is that whilst social media has a place, there is no substitute for providing teachers, particularly new-career teachers, with time to learn on the job, receive mentoring, and the time and ability to effectively reflect on and evaluate their own practice.

​I asked Dr. Donnelly was his advice to early-career teachers that would help them avoid joining the forty percent of new teachers who are shown to leave the profession within their first five years. His advice was straightforward, yet challenging to implement:

When I interviewed Professor Masters early last month, I asked him about John Hattie’s comments regarding teachers as researchers and his sentiment was that it is unreasonable to expect teachers to be both highly trained and effective educators; and highly trained and effective educational researchers. It is reasonable, however, to expect teachers to be informed users of research evidence; evidence which should be a consideration for teachers when engaging in the informal research process of evaluative reflection upon their pedagogical practice.

I asked Dr. Donnelly for his views on Hattie’s comments, and he replied that the relationship between researchers in universities and ACER, and classroom teachers, has been fractured. Dr. Donnelly acknowledges that it has been some time since he has been a classroom teacher and that he would love to see the results of academic researchers in the classroom, attempting to implement the practices they promote in their research. He sees a strong connection between theory and practice and would argue that many teachers are capable of undertaking research, which would provide the benefit of the research being grounded in the realities of a classroom.
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Dr. Donnelly presents some interesting arguments, and I very much look forward to hearing him speak in The Great Debate. Remember, you can submit your own questions for The Greate Debate by clicking here. If you have not yet registered for Education Nation then click here to register.

For the full list of articles in this series, please click here.

It is interesting timing, sitting here composing this article, with Education Nation only a week away, considering that the topic for #satchatoz this past weekend was how [do] conferences help us grow professionally. I have been amazed at the response to both my interview with Professor Geoff Masters and the interview with Dr. David Zyngier. I am excited to announce that I have just received the interview with Dr. Kevin Donnelly, who is arguing the side of private education in The Great Debate against Dr. Zyngier. You can get involved with The Great Debate by submitting a question for the moderated questions from the floor component of the Debate by clicking here.

Today, however, I want to have a look at the programs for the various conference streams. There is a lot to be excited about on the program for Education Nation, making it difficult to choose a particular stream to be involved in. Of course, each stream has a particular focus and which you will choose will vary according to your context and your needs. I am in the position of being able to move between the event streams thanks to the media pass, and it made for some very difficult choices, as I wanted to engage with at least one session in each stream across the two days.

I have included a copy of the EduNationAu Timetable, which I have put together from the separate programs on the Education Nation website to allow for seeing what was happening at any time and it showed that the events do not necessarily line up in regards to timings for each session. I have chosen the sessions I will be attending according to a few criteria:
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1. Benefit for my own practice
2. Interest in the topic or speaker
3. Engaging with a session from each event stream

​The first session I plan to attend is in the Rethinking Reform stream, and will be my first opportunity to hear Brett Salakas (@Mrsalakas) speak. He will be exploring the subject of PISA and the growing fascination with the results and our place in relation to the other OECD member nations. It promises to provide an open and frank exploration of our current relationship with PISA pipe dreams and the cultural contexts involved. Following Brett’s session  was my first dilemma.

Do I stay and listen to Professor Geoff Masters (@GMastersACER) identify and discuss the five most important challenges facing schools, or alternatively, head across to the Digital Dimensions stream to hear Simon McKenzie (@connectedtchr) identify if we have just made everything worse with the rollout of technology in schools, from both positive and negative perspectives. Simon’s session promises to be very intriguing and potentially controversial given the explosion of one-to-one and BYOD programs in recent years.

Both options are incredibly appealing, however, in the end, I decided to remain in my seat for Professor Masters’ session. Primarily due to time; both sessions are scheduled to commence at 0940, and though there is typically some fluidity in the actual timings at conferences, I wanted to avoid being that person who enters a room late and then proceeds to become the show as they attempt to find a seat, get there and then set up for the session. I look forward to reading the tweets stemming from Simon’s session, and please, if you write a blog article from that session (or any other), send me the link so that we can re-share it with the wider Education Nation PLN.

​Following the afternoon break, my first choice, actually, it was the first thing I marked down as wanting to attend, is The Great Debate between Dr. David Zyngier (@DZyngier) and Dr. Kevin Donnelly (@ESIAustralia). The debate surrounding public versus private education is a hot one, and both sides have some excellent arguments. I have not heard the two sides facing off in a debate before, and this is sure to be interesting and fiery. I have already published my interview with Dr. Zyngier and tomorrow I aim to publish the interview with Dr. Donnelly. Dr. Donnelly is well known in the media for his provocative statements, and I look forward to engaging with his responses, and to hearing the feedback on the article.

Do not forget to submit your questions about public education versus private education. There is still time!

Though my choices for the final session of day one of Education Nation were guided by The Great Debate, I am genuinely interested in hearing what Teresa Deshon has to say about the role of the pastoral curriculum in her case study; People of Character – Your Best Self. The academic curriculum takes the majority of our teaching time and Teresa’s question, “…[b]ut what of the pastoral curriculum?” is an excellent one. I am looking forward to hearing the strategies that Teresa and her colleagues have employed to change the focus  to the pastoral curriculum, and still maintained the academic curriculum learning outcomes for their students.

​At the end of day one of Education Nation, I will be attending the live #AussieEd event at Kirribilli Club (view map), tickets to which are still available. It will be my first AussieEd event, and am looking forward to it.

Day two begins bright and early, and pending Ministerial commitments, will begin for those in the Rethinking Reform forum, with an Address and Question and Answer session with the incumbent Federal Minister for Education and Training, Simon Birmingham (@birmo). I requested a pre-Education Nation interview with Minister Birmingham, which was accepted, however, with the announcement of the impending Federal election made shortly thereafter, I daresay I ended up down the priority list as neither myself nor my speaker liaison heard back regarding the interview. I am very curious to hear about his views on the future of education in Australia, as well as what questions from the floor will be accepted and how they will be answered.

The timing of Minister Birmingham’s address meant that I am unable to attend any other event streams in the morning session as I would be arriving midway through, which is never pleasant. That said, Lila Mularczyk’s (@LilaMularczyk) subsequent presentation  examining trends in education policy and the translation to the Australian context will be very interesting. I feel that this session will follow on nicely from Brett Salakas’ day one keynote address. Both keynotes will be examining the Australian relationship with global educational systems, from slightly different perspectives. I look forward to seeing what crossover conclusions the two share.

I will be spending a significant portion of day two in the Rethinking Reform session, as returning from the morning will see me settling in for two sessions which I suspect will provide a lot of food for thought. Murat Dizdar will commence the session with an examination of how some schools in the NSW public education system are adopting the national education reform platform a discussion of the operational lessons that can be taken from those schools.

Following on from Murat, is Dr. Kenneth Wiltshire, presenting an exploration of the future of curriculum in Australia. Dr. Wiltshire is not likely to hold back, having been openly critical of the national curriculum and the process through which it has been developed. Dr. Wiltshire lays blame on the doorstep of ACARA itself, specifically the structure and functioning, labelling it a largely discredited body within education circles. I am very much looking forward to hearing him speak. As an early career teacher, the future of the curriculum is a rather important topic for me and my students, both now and in the future.

​After Dr. Wiltshire’s presentation, I plan to take some time out. His speech will finish at roughly the same time as the concurrent sessions from The Leader, The Learner, and The Educator, and with all due respect to Phillip Cooke (@sailpip), who is presenting immediately after Dr. Wiltshire; a discussion of the HSC and how it prepares students for life after school is not in my area of interest at the moment. I believe that I would gain more benefit from taking some time to refresh my brain, to re-engage with my notes, get some writing done, explore The Playground and network and meet up with some educators that I have chatted with on Twitter in the past.

Following the lunch break, I will have the opportunity to hear Olivia O’Neil speak in the Digital Dimensions forum about redeveloping a school by engaging the emerging Gen Y teachers. I am looking forward to hearing Olivia speak, as I know a lot of what has been occurring at the school she is Principal of, Brighton Secondary College from conversations with Jeremy LeCornu (@MrLeCornu), whom I heard speak originally at FlipConAus last year. I am looking forward to hearing about a journey of which I already know a little bit from the perspective of the Principal, and the challenges that were faced from that vantage point and how they were dealt with.

​I plan to remain in the Digital Dimensions forum to hear Leanne Steed and Elizabeth Amvrazis as they examine the purpose of education through a lens of technology-laden classrooms and the way in which technology can empower our students.

I will then be moving back to the Rethinking Reform forum to hear someone whom I admire greatly, Corinne Campbell (@Corisel) as she speaks about the relationship between the focus on using evidence-based pedagogies and the feeling of empowerment or disempowerment by teachers. Evidence-based pedagogies are another hot topic (I quite enjoy reading Greg Ashman’s (@greg_ashman) articles in this area). If the discussions about performance-based pay for teachers come to fruition, it will be an issue of even greater importance, and make the difference, perhaps, between teachers keeping and losing their positions.

​The final Education Nation session on my agenda is part of The Educator stream, and I have chosen it specifically as it is a presentation on a topic that I am not still somewhat skeptical about. The Hewes family will be closing out The Educator with a workshop giving deeper insight into Project Based Learning (PBL). The workshop is slated to allow participants to design a PBL project, ostensibly, I presume, to take back to our classroom and implement. I am not entirely sure why I am skeptical about PBL. I suspect that a lot of it is most likely misconceptions, and I have heard some local horror stories about PBL gone wrong. That said, I am looking forward to engaging with this workshop, and hopefully coming away with a new understanding and appreciation for PBL and its place in my pedagogical toolkit.

That, as I mentioned, is the final session for Education Nation 2016. I am very much looking forward to the two days and fully expect that I will need the ensuing few days to recover mentally. What are your expected highlights for the event? Let me know via Twitter using #EduNationAu which will be the main event hashtag.

As always, thank you for reading, and stay tuned tomorrow for the interview with Dr. Kevin Donnelly.

For the full list of articles in this series, please click here.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) in June is through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.

All quotes in this article are taken direct from the interview with Dr. Zyngier unless otherwise noted. All interpretations of Dr. Zyngier’s views are my own and any misinterpretation also mine. The Interview with Dr. Zyngier has been included for the sake of transparency. Aclarification article has been published here.

In addition to being granted an e-mail interview with Professor Geoff Masters, I have been privileged to gain an e-mail interview with Dr. David Zyngier, currently a Senior Lecturer in curriculum and pedagogy with the Faculty of Education at Monash University. There are a number of presentations at Education Nation which promise to generate significant food for thought, and which I suspect will generate heated (yet hopefully constructive) discussion and debate within Education circles.

Potentially one of the most interesting sessions scheduled, certainly perhaps one of the most provocative, is The Great Debate: Australian democracy at risk – the future of Australia’s education system, a moderated debate on the age-old topic of public vs private education, taking place within the Rethinking Reform conference stream. This debate will feature Dr. Zyngier arguing the case for public education and Dr. Kevin Donnelly arguing the case of private education. I am expecting a highly interesting debate, particularly during the (moderated) questions from the floor component. Given that there is sure to be a capacity crowd, I asked Dr. Zyngier to provide a short summary of his position on the issue.

Dr. Zyngier’s view is that the continuing rise in education funding being provided to private education is having the effect of denying a fair go to the students who need the most support in favour of students who are blessed to be born into socio-culturally advantaged families. This is a significant factor in the increasing socio-economic divide between the working class and the upper class. Ultimately, this issue may result in public schools turning into “…ghettos or sinks of disadvantage leading to an ever increasing decline in educational achievement in those schools as the flight of cultural capital takes its toll.”

The quality of teachers and of initial teacher education (OTE) programs has come under fire again over the last twelve months, to the point that just this week, a grammar training manual has been launched for teachers, again prompting a wave of backlash and criticism against the poor quality of teachers. When asked about the quality of teachers and of calls for minimum standards for entry to ITE programs, Dr. Zyngier pointed out that “Teacher education is apparently the most reviewed area of society undertaken by state and federal governments with on average at least one each year over the past 30 odd years!” In fact, a brief switch to Google Scholar returned over seventeen thousand results with the required keywords teacher education research Australia  with the articles.

“Each review makes the same basic recommendations to improve ITE – student teachers need more time in the classroom and more practical experience – but the funding required to do this is never forthcoming.”
-Dr. Zyngier

During the last few years, a number of articles have been published in the media calling for better teachers and higher quality ITE programs, particularly during the period of time when Christopher Pyne was the Federal minister for Education, though it has continued since he left that role. In Dr. Zyngier’s view, it is not the quality of teachers that is necessarily the problem, but the quality of the teaching. Dr. Zyngier’s position is that the general public have heard successive Federal Ministers for Education, beginning with Julia Gillard and continuing with Peter Garret, Christopher Pyne, and the incumbent Simon Birmingham, quote from Professor John Hattie’s Visible Learning (summary here) that the main influence on a child’s academic outcome is the teacher.

Dr. Zyngier observes that teacher impact makes up to twenty-five percent of the difference, which, though a significant impact, is not as significant as we are led to believe from Professor Hattie’s work (as seen in this article). One clear source, in my view at least, of improving the quality of teachers and the quality of teaching, is the ITE programs from which our teaching force gain their qualifications. Dr. Zyngier indicated he is on record as having stated that “…if we as a nation want to improve the standard of our teaching we must make teaching harder to access as a career.”

It is a sentiment I can agree with as there were a number of pre-service teachers in my own ITE program who openly admitted they were only there because mum and dad told them they had to get a job or a degree, and so they took the easy option. It is an indication of the rigorousness of teacher ITE programs that they are seen as being an easy option. There have been discussions about raising the minimum tertiary entrance scores (currently the ATAR), however, Dr. Zyngier indicates that this change should be made in conjunction with aptitude testing. Personally, I believe that there are changes required. However, my concern is that the personality and aptitude of a nineteen-year-old is not indicative, necessarily of the kind of teacher they will be at the age of thirty. It would, I suspect, serve to screen out some people who are categorically unsuitable to the teaching profession or those who are entering into ITE programs purely because they have told they need to get a degree or a job. Whilst I acknowledge that medicine is a different field requiring some different character traits, I believe that an examination of the entry into medicine programs would be a useful process to guide restructuring entry requirements for ITE courses.

Dr. Zyngier is a proponent of ITE programs being at the Masters level (as is the case in Finland), rather than remaining at the current Bachelor level, Though I am not sure about that, I can certainly understand the perspective, but I wonder, given the number of classroom teachers we currently have with postgraduate qualifications listed (this is shown in all public school annual reports), what impact this would have on teacher recruitment. Further, Dr. Zyngier’s view is that ITE programs should include a research component to educate teachers how to engage with and evaluate education research for their own practice. The added challenge to this is to ensure equitable access opportunities for those from under-represented communities, creating an additional layer of complexity in the process.

I agree wholeheartedly with the belief that a research component should be a requirement for ITE programs. Completing the Honours course as part of my own ITE program, though incredibly challenging, was rewarding and provided a very different perspective to research and the processes which researchers undertake as part of their work. This ability to engage with and discern quality research, understand the results and conclusions and implement them within a teacher’s specific context is particularly important given the importance of establishing the basic framework around which the entire education system is structured; the ability to read, write and understand use numeracy principles.

Finland has a high-performing educational systems vis-a-vis the OECD PISA and TIMMS testing regimes and therefore is often looked to as a beacon of educational hope. Given the disparate nature of the educational contexts in Finland Australia, is it realistic, or even fair, to uphold Finland’s educational system as something we should aspire to here in Australia? Dr. Zyngier acknowledges that Finland is very different to Australia, not least in regards to climate, geographical size, and population. The key difference, however, lies in what Dr. Zyngier terms  the policy trajectory.

Education policies in Finland are a non-political issue, being determined by education experts informed by evidence-based research. This is in stark contrast to education policy in Australia, where each new government, and even successive Education Ministers during a Government’s term in office, work to make their mark on education through either ideological or political policies. Again, in contrast to this, education policy in Finland was, and is, based upon equity first, which through a range of other policies, has led to a high-quality education system.

Teachers in Finland are highly valued. Dr. Zyngier points out that this does not equate to highly paid. The system also trusts teachers, allowing them to teach. Dr. Zyngier also wrote that privately run schools are rare (approximately two percent of primary and middle schools) and that if they charge additional fees, their public funding is stripped. Dr. Zyngier also indicated that Teacher unions are heavily involved in education and act as a significant resource for both policy and practice. This last point sounds very alien to me. As a public school student in the early 1990s, my recollection is of regular strikes and an ongoing sense of frustration and some anger from my parents towards the union due to the number of strikes and the impact it had on our education. Fast forward to today and it feels like the NSW Teachers Federation is seen as outdated and useless by many colleagues, with “what do they do for us?”  being an oft-repeated critique. A Teachers Federation that has a strong, healthy and positive working relationship with the Government and which contributes, as a partner, in the policy-making process sounds like a great environment to work in.

​The educational system that is often presented as an alternative model is that of Singapore, one of the so-called Asian Tigers (along with Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taiwan). Dr. Zyngier points out that though the high results achieved in PISA and TIMMS are discussed, how those results are achieved is not. He continued by pointing out that research indicates that almost all students attend intensive afternoon cramming schools in addition to their regular schooling and private tutors. Furthermore, research indicates that these schools are typically reserved for the elite, while in Shanghai they “…actively exclude lower performing rural students whose parents do not have the necessary residency permits that will enable them to attend…”

Interestingly, and disturbingly, students who are adjudged to be under-performing in class, are often asked to stay home on the day of testing, which is a phenomenon we have seen in Australia in relation to NAPLAN testing.

Cultural attributes have rarely been a factor in conversations or articles I have read regarding educational impacts, however, the research has shown some interesting results. On standardised testing, students from Chinese backgrounds have been found to achieve higher results than their Australia, American or European-borne peers.  Dr. Zyngier notes the implication that cultural attributes are potentially more significant than previously thoughts, indicating that it is not the school or the teacher having the most significant impact on a student’s academic outcomes, but the family.

When I began my ITE, the Australian Curriculum was in the burgeoning stages of its implementation. When it was introduced to us during those early stages, it made a certain kind of sense; one country, one curriculum. When asked if a national curriculum should have been a goal, Dr. Zyngier pointed out that Canada and the USA, two countries of comparable physical size and political structure to Australia, do not have a national curriculum. He also commented that the impetus behind the apparent importance of the creation and adoption of the national curriculum was never made clear.

His view is that  nationally agreed competencies and skills should be of higher importance than concrete factual knowledge “…which was the subject of the overtly political review led by Donnelly & Wiltshire in 2014.”  The result of the review was predetermined by the selection of Donnelly and Wiltshire:

“…cultural warriors…their selection by then [Federal] Minister [for Education] Pyne. They found too much emphasis on Asia, Indigenous Australia, the Environment and not enough reference to Australia’s European and Christian heritage, a lack of focus on the basics, and too much faddish constructivism.”
-Dr. Zyngier.

Social media is prevalent now as a source of free and readily available professional learning. I personally find Twitter to be incredibly useful as a source of inspiration, feedback on practice, a source of ideas and a way of staying in touch with research. I do, however, acknowledge that is should not be the only source of professional learning or development, nor should is it necessarily designed to replace face-to-face mentoring and professional development opportunities. Dr. Zyngier agrees that there is a role for social media and online courses as part of a teacher’s ongoing professional development. However, the needs of individual teachers vis-a-vis professional development are varied and more support and time needs to be made available to teachers to allow them to adequately access those opportunities, whether this is working alongside a mentor, visiting other schools, online courses or attending a university course. I have seen on Twitter, some teachers talking about observational rounds, wherein teachers observe each others practice to provide feedback on a predetermined goal.

The media have been consistently reporting in recent years (for example; here, here and here) that approximately forty percent of new teachers are leaving the teaching profession within the first five years. I asked Dr. Zyngier what advice he would give teachers embarking on their EdVenture so that they do not join the forty percent. He responded that teaching is only for those who can commit to working very hard, very long hours, with a high workload and who can handle being blamed for societal failings and problems. Enjoying working with children is, of course, a must. This is advice I can certainly agree with, and from conversations that I have had with other educators, it would certainly appear to be quite sound advice.

I hope that you found this article as interesting as to read as I found it to write. I also hope that you get along to Education Nation in two weeks time, at Luna Park, to hear what is sure to be an interesting and thought-provoking conference. If you have not yet done so, I would also recommend you consider attending the live AussieEd event which is being held at Kirribilli Club after the conclusion of Day One of Education Nation.

As always, thank you for reading and keep an eye out for the Education Nation conversation on Twitter under #EduNationAu.

For the full list of articles in this series, please click here,

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) in June is through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.

All interpretations of Professor Masters’ views are my own and any misinterpretation also mine. The Interview with Professor Masters has been included for the sake of transparency.
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After I had accepted the invitation to attend Education Nation in order to write a series of review articles about the event, I asked if it would be possible to conduct a series of pre-conference interviews via e-mail with some of the speakers. I was privileged to have been granted an e-mail interview with Professor Geoff Masters AO, the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) as well as head of ACER’s Centre for Assessment Reform and Innovation.

In developing the questions for Professor Masters, I felt that it would be remiss of me to not take advantage of the opportunity to ask his opinions about statements by Professor John Hattie in April 2015, where Professor Hattie indicated that he felt classroom teachers should leave education researcher to trained researchers. I recall there being quite the uproar on social media as a result of Professor Hattie’s remarks, with a great number of educators commenting that there is no reason they cannot engage with research.

Professor Masters’ view is that it is unreasonable to expect teachers to be both highly trained and effective educators; and highly trained and effective educational researchers. It is reasonable, however, to expect teachers to be informed users of research evidence; evidence which should be a consideration for teachers when engaging in the informal research process of evaluative reflection upon their pedagogical practice.

The title of the article in which Profess Hattie’s statement was published was certainly clickbait and as with most instances of clickbait, upon reading further, the statements were not as provocative as at first glance. Indeed, Professor Masters’ response to this question implies that Hattie’s sentiment that teachers should leave the research to the researchers is reasonable. Indeed, when you read further in the article, where Professor Hattie is reported as also having said “I want to put the emphasis on teachers as evaluators of their impact. Be skilled at that,” I find it difficult to disagree.

I cannot speak to the level of training that other classroom teachers have received in research. Personally, having only received an introduction to educational research through the Honours program I completed as part of my initial teacher education (ITE) (delivered by Dr. Nicole Mockler), I do not feel that I would be able to put together a large-scale strong and rigorous research project on my own, whilst also managing the day-to-day requirements of teaching and evaluating the effectiveness of my practices. That said, I do feel that I have had enough training through the Honours program to enable me to read and utilise the outcomes of research to inform my reflections, or to work with a researcher to conduct more formal research.

Professor Masters further noted that high levels of training and proficiency are required for certain types of research, which dovetails neatly with Professor Hattie’s comment that “[r]esearching is a particular skill. Some of us took years to gain that skill.” I do not have years to invest in mastering the skills to become proficient with rigorous, high-quality formalised research. I would prefer, at this point in my career, to invest that time in developing my pedagogical practice. In that frame of reference, leave the research to the researcher is not, in my opinion, as provocative a sentiment as it first sounds.

During the last four years in various staffrooms and study sessions with my colleague pre-service teachers, I have encountered a variety of opinions regarding the relationship and relevance that research has to classroom teachers. Whilst there are pockets of teachers who see the value in the relationship, by and large, educational research appears to be seen as irrelevant. Professor Masters stated that too often pedagogical practice is shaped by beliefs about what should work in the classroom and beliefs shaped by fads and fashions of the day (Greg Ashman has written about various fads and fashions in education including here, here, here and here). Additionally, I have heard the “it worked when I was in school/first started teaching/we did it this way in the 70s and 80s”  refrain regularly, with its unstated implication that it will still work.

To improve the quality of classroom teaching, and by extension, the learning outcomes for students, Professor Masters asserts that evidence-based pedagogical practices should be implemented; that is, those pedagogies which have been demonstrated through research and experience to be effective in improving students’ learning outcomes and engagement. The relationship between educational research and classroom teaching is one of sharing, with Professor Masters commenting that “[p]rofessions are defined largely by a shared knowledge base. Educational research is playing an essential role in building that knowledge base.”

It is interesting to note that there is a growing community of educators on various forms of social media sharing with their practices, both the successes and the failures, with each other, and it will be interesting to see what role the online Professional Learning Networks play in contributing to educational research in the future, both as a source of information and participants, and as a vehicle for dissemination.

I asked Professor Masters what his thoughts were on what stood in the way of Australian education and the heights of PISA and TIMMS testing results that seem to be the benchmark by which educational success is judged. I did so with reference to the ITE programs in Finland and the well-publicised reign of Finland at the top of the table in regards to PISA and TIMMS. Professor Masters’ response was relatively simple. High-performing countries, such as Finland and Singapore have raised the status of teachers.

Professor Masters noted that there are a number of high-performing countries who draw their teachers from the upper echelons of secondary education, typically starting with the top thirty percent and some drawing only from the top ten percent, making teaching in those countries, a highly respected and sought after career. This is not the case in Australia, where the required Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) is quite low, as highlighted in this article from May 2015 which indicates that almost a third of all pre-service teachers achieved an ATAR of less than sixty. That demonstrates the low respect held for teaching compared with some of the ATARs listed in this article from January 2014, indicating that a to enter a Bachelor of Health Science/Master of Physiotherapy degree at the University of Western Sydney required an ATAR of 99.95, or the combined law degrees at the University of Sydney and the University of NSW, both with minimum ATARs of 99.70.

The school of thought that simply increasing the minimum required ATAR to enter an ITE program will improve the quality of teachers is not necessarily true. This article from October 2015 indicates that only a small percentage of pre-service teachers enter their ITE immediately upon completion of their secondary education. However, I do not believe that Professor Masters is advocating such a simplistic solution. His comment that “…teaching is a highly respected and sought after career and these countries have succeeded in making teaching attractive to their brightest and best schools leavers…” (emphasis mine) indicates to me that it should be merely one component of the admission process.

Professor Masters observed that in teaching in Australia is trending in the other direction to high-performing countries, becoming less attractive, an opinion I agree with. Personally, I am finding that time I would spend planning and preparing for a lesson is being taken up by mandatory training modules which provide no actual training, or on paperwork which is needed for the sake of bureaucracy. I, like many other teachers around the world, am struggling to balance work and family and am left feeling guilty for not spending time with my family. Perversely, I also find myself feeling guilty for not spending the time I want on marking and writing feedback, or on planning and resourcing a lesson, (often with things from my own home or which we have purchased with our own money).

​The debate about how to improve the attractiveness of teaching as a profession is an old and ongoing one, and I look forward to hearing it discussed during Education Nation. When asked for his view on how the issue could be resolved, Professor Masters pointed out that it would require a series of deliberate policy decisions on a range of issues including teacher salaries, resourcing, and autonomy; as well as the number of admissions into ITE programs. Professor Masters noted that the countries which appear at the top of the international testing results, including Finland, limit the number of pre-service teachers each year. This article indicates that only one in ten applicants is successful in gaining entry into a Finnish ITE program.

There are also come clear benefits to restricting the number of entrants to ITE programs. You are also restricting the number of graduates, thereby helping to prevent what has happened here in Australia, where there is a glut of teachers who are unable to gain permanent employment due to the high number of graduates each year. Professor Masters’ final point was that an important factor in the perception of teaching is the academic rigour of the ITE program itself. I have written previously about my own ITE (part one can be found here), and I do believe that ITE programs, in general, can be improved, and look forward to hearing about that topic at Education Nation.

NAPLAN, which commences next Tuesday for Year Three, Five, Seven and Nine students Australia-wide, is an incredibly high-stakes testing process which has the potential to cause great anxiety and consternation amongst students, parents, teachers and policy-makers, and which invariably receives a great deal of attention in the media. When asked about why he thought NAPLAN moved from being a low-stakes test to what it is now, Professor Masters wrote that it is part of a deliberate strategy to improve performances through incentives.

These incentives appear to use the carrot and stick method, with some financial rewards for school improvement or, alternatively, the threat of intervention and sanction for poor performance, and yet, the international experience has demonstrated that school behaviour is changed when the stakes attached to tests are increased. This is shown by the annual breaches that occur during the administering NAPLAN tests, including cheating and inappropriate assistance by some teachers, and the way in which many schools prepare their students for NAPLAN, as indicated in this article. Further to this, the public release of NAPLAN allows parents to compare schools and can result in some schools losing students as parents opt to send their child to seemingly ‘better’ schools.

Professor Masters commented that high-quality tests are an important component of education, providing diagnostic data around topics or concepts that require attention, monitoring improvement over time and evaluating the effectiveness and impact of programs and interventions. The widely used Progressive Achievement Test (PAT) is an example of the kind of test that can be an invaluable part of a teacher’s toolkit.

I do agree with Professor Masters about the value of testing. At the beginning of this year, Stage Three students in my school all completed a series of diagnostic tests across reading, spelling, and mathematics. That data was invaluable in identifying those students who need additional assistance in particular areas, and plays a role in developing Individual Education Plans (IEPs) for some students, and also for discussions with parents about the student’s results and progress throughout the year. It will also play an important role in quantifying students’ growth across the year when those tests are re-administered at various points throughout the year.

My final question to Professor Masters was his advice to new teachers as they enter their classrooms pressured to ensure that their students to achieve high NAPLAN results. He responded that “[t]here are few things as important in schools as providing all students with sound foundations in literacy and numeracy.” Professor Masters’ belief that the goal should be to improve our students’ literacy and numeracy levels, and that if we do raise the NAPLAN results, it should be as a result of improved literacy and numeracy levels. The problem, he pointed out, is that NAPLAN scores can be increased in ways that do not lead to better literacy and numeracy levels.

I am grateful to Professor Masters for his time and willingness to engage in the interview process. I very much look forward to hearing him speak at Education Nation, where he is speaking to the title Addressing the five key challenges in school education that matter to you on day one. Professor Masters will also be joining Dennis Yarrington, Dr. Kenneth Wiltshire and Lila Mularczyk for a panel discussion about Student Testing on day two. If you have not yet registered for Education Nation, I would encourage you to do so by clicking here.

As always, my thanks for reading, particularly given the length of this article. Please feel free to contact me with any comments, questions or feedback via the comments section below or on Twitter.

For other articles in the Education Nation series, please click here.

I spent the first  Monday and Tuesday of the break attending a Foundation Level course for THRASS, a phonics-based literacy system. It was an absolutely fantastic two days and I feel much more confident that I can have a positive impact on my students literacy levels than I did previously. I will write a THRASS-focused article  at a later date, as I genuinely believe that it is a highly worthwhile system which can have highly positive impacts for students’ literacy abilities and understanding of the use of English.
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I spent some time planning for the upcoming term, getting my program in order, and after having attended the THRASS course, am not happy with it. I feel that the value in certain aspects of the program is not particularly high, and the course has made me question why I am implementing that spelling program in that way. I hope to be able to invest some time over the coming three days solidifying that program for the term. I also would like to spend some time revising other aspects of my overall literacy program.

Mrs Mitchell reached the halfway mark of her pregnancy during the break, and we attended the clinic for the appropriate scans to check up on Youngling. It is this scan where the ultrasound technician can provide high quality three-dimensional images of the baby, if, that is, the baby cooperates. Youngling decided to wave her/his hands a lot while we were there and so the arms covered the face. We have elected not to determine the gender, and so will have quite the surprise in a few months time.

I spent the entirety of the second week of the holidays working on an application for a full-time permanent position, which I will be submitting this afternoon. I have had some incredibly valuable and useful feedback from my Principal which has helped me refine and strengthen the application and as a result, I feel that I have a good chance to reach the interview stage of the process.

Yesterday, I returned to school for our staff development day, and discovered that the school rebuild progressed significantly during the break, with foundations and footings now being in place for a number of sections. I have included a short video clip below.

The day was quite productive overall, with the whole staff meetings completed quickly after the relevant sessions had been delivered, allowing us to break into Stage meetings. Stage Three have a large number of events occurring this term, with PSSA Knockout events, the annual Year Six Canberra excursion, weekly coding being lessons delivered by ScopeIT, a bicycle safety and awareness excursion, a First Aid course, planning and preparation for the Year Five excursion to the NSW Sport and Recreation Point Wolstoncroft site in term three and planning and practice for the school athletics carnival. A busy term indeed! That is all before you factor in the semester one student reports.

I have also been successful in gaining consent for pre-conference interview from a number of speakers at the Education Nation conference in June which I am excited to conduct. I have already completed one, with some others in progress. If you have not yet completed your registration for Education Nation, I would urge you to do so, particularly if you are interested in the Elements portion of the conference as registration numbers for that aspect are limited. Click here to register.

I spent some time yesterday rearranging the room in an effort to improve the flow and functionality of our learning spaces, which has been received well by students thus far, and was excited to hear that my sister gave birth to a healthy baby girl yesterday morning.
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I hope that your break and the return to school has filled you with excitement for the coming term, and that you are filled with enthusiasm and excitement for what is to come. As always, thank you for reading, and I would appreciate any feedback via the comments section below, or via Twitter.

Disclosure: My attendance at Education Nation (#EduNationAu) in June is through a media pass provided by the conference organisers.

I enjoy conferences, a lot. There is something about being in a venue full of people who are typically like-minded, hearing from a variety of speakers on a range of topics, coming away with pages of notes, a number of new teaching tools, ideas or pedagogical changes to implement in my own practice and the feeling of energy and excitement that permeates the air. However, there are drawbacks to conferences, specifically, around how they are structured.
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In my (admittedly limited) experience thus far, there appears to be one main style of conference structure; a range of concurrent conferences streams each loosely based on a central theme with attendees locked into the conference stream for which they registered. I have enjoyed the conferences I have attended that follow this structure, yet the loose thematic organisation enables a range of ordinarily unrelated topics to fall within one conference stream. Conversely, in the conferences I have attended thus far, within each conference stream, there has been a vast array of topics bundled which appeared quite disparate in their nature. While there have been no speakers from whom I learned nothing, there have certainly been speakers from whom I learned more than others, as well as some speakers whose presentations I largely switched off from as the topic was not in my sphere of interest.

Unlike the impression we get from Alec Guinness’ face when he hears Luke Skywalker ask about Obi-Wan Kenobi, my recollection of hearing this long-unheard name was positive. Mr. Chaffey was my physics teacher when I was in Years Eleven and Twelve (and after all these years, I still cannot bring myself to call him by his given name), the Deputy Principal of the school at that point in time and the father of a kid who was one of my best mates all through high school. He was an excellent teacher, well-respected and liked by the vast majority of the student body, and one of the few teachers whom I would have gone back to in order to show off what I have achieved since graduating if I was to do that.

Education Nation now had credibility for me; you trust and believe in something more willingly if you know and trust someone who is involved. Mr. Chaffey was a fantastic teacher and one for whom I had (and still have) nothing but respect. I also know that he would not sign on to something on a whim. If he is involved, then I have faith it will be worthwhile attending.
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So I went digging, learning about how the event would be structured, how the conference streams would be classified, who would be speaking and of course, what the costs would be. Education Nation has structured itself around ten key ideas that drive education in our country and has created a structure of two Forums and four Elements, with each focused on a different thematic challenge within education, yet all six streams contain the ten key ideas.

You can read the agenda for the two forums and each of the Elements by clicking on the relevant link below.

• Forum One: Rethinking Reform.
• Forum Two: Digital Dimensions.
• Element One: The Leader.
• Element Two: The Community.
• Element Three: The Learner.
• Element Four: The Educator.

My read of the programs across each of the six areas is that the presentations will be tightly focused around the core theme and that speakers have been asked to get gritty and real, acknowledging the issues, bringing up new issues and addressing potential avenues of opportunity to solve those issues. I recently had a conversation with one of the organisers and was told that (paraphrasing) “speakers were asked to rock the boat, do not bring the party or company line, deal with the issues and rip the band-aid off.” The thirty-minute conversation has left me more excited for what is to come.

This approach differentiates it from other conferences which I have attended, where we typically hear about a new program/app/gadget/technological solution, or some context-specific solutions to a context-specific issue that is not often transferable. Those are not bad in and of themselves, however, the near-constant rhetoric around the crisis in Australian Education requires us to think different about education, to rip the band-aid off and deal with the issues.

The structure and program for Education Nation is such that although you are registering for one of the streams, you will find that they are more tightly focused around the theme for that stream, rather than the loose association of presentations at many other conferences. So I would encourage you to register as soon as you are able, particularly for the Elements as numbers for those streams are capped

Simon McKenzie’s presentation which asks the question technology in our schools – identifying if we have just made everything worse will be an interesting presentation, and I suspect will evoke strong feelings one way or another, as will the following presentation by Leanne Steed and Elizabeth Amvrazis which is asking whether technology is making us forget what education means, which is sure to spark some interest given that the meaning and purpose of education is not at all universally agreed upon.
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The panel discussion that is scheduled for the Digital Dimensions conference which focuses on the seeming inevitability of social media in education will also be an interesting session, given the plethora of teachers who utilise social media both professionally and in the classroom.

The Community Element contains the presentation my former teacher, Mr Chaffey, will be facilitating alongside Rachael Sowden, and focuses on engaging our students’ parents as a resource for student learning. Additionally, at the outset of The Community, Matt Esterman is leading a session which focuses on how schools communicate to their community, given the plethora of platforms now available for doing so and dealing with communication expectations from parents and staff.

Education Nation is not limited to the Forums and The Elements. There will be a live #aussieEd event and The Great Debate, featuring Dr. David Zyngier and Dr. Kevin Donnelly going head-to-head on the age-old public education versus private education debate. A future article will contain more information about those events though I would encourage you to register your interest for the live #aussieEd event to assist the organisers with arranging the venue and pricing for that particular event.
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Conferences often leave you with an afterglow of conference excitement, yet the notes that are taken at conferences so often never see the light of day afterwards. I feel that this conference, with its topic tighter focus, and its spotlight on specific problems within education will create a situation where, after attending, you will be able to return your specific context with a series of steps of what you can do to begin resolving a specific problem or challenge that you are facing.

I believe that the timing is right for a conference where we stop charging forward, taking on board a raft of new ideas, pedagogical strategies, tools, gadgets and fads and pause for a moment. We, and I include myself in this statement, need to ask ourselves more often why this tool, or pedagogical strategy? Education Nation will provide an opportunity for us to work with others to explore solutions to existing challenges in our education system and our specific contexts. I know that not every challenge I face will be addressed at Education Nation, nor would I expect it to be, however, after looking through the agendas, I am confident that I will come away with ideas on how to tackle at least one of my challenges with a view to resolving it, in addition to some ideas for chipping away at some other challenges.
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On a personal note, I am very much excited to have an opportunity to see Mr. Chaffey (I just cannot bring myself to call him by his given name) again, as well as a range of other educators whom I know thanks to Twitter and my online PLN. I am also excited by the prospect of a conference which is working hard to think different and provoke constructive conversations. Will I see you there?