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Before we begin again, I want to tell you why last year was horrendous

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures,

The education year is about to begin but I can’t let 2018 go. Not yet.

I want to share with you how last year was for me, a Kamilaroi woman, a former schoolteacher and now a university lecturer and educational researcher. My urge to share is simply because I need to be persistent and I have to keep on trying to communicate how it is for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, like me, in Australia today.

I consistently investigate the biases and taken for granted assumptions upheld in our society in my work as a researcher and I want to tell you that last year was absolutely horrendous for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.  And yet, it was also a significant year where we celebrated the strength and persistence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and we began discussions about truth telling and acknowledging the detrimental shared history of colonial Australia.

This time of the year, the lead up to January 26th, is always a nightmare for me. But last year the nightmare did not stop after January 26th. It went all year. Nowhere was safe.  Every month, we were reminded that our bodies were political, our lives in ‘need of saving’ by the coloniser and implicit and explicit racism splashed across many forums on a daily basis.  There was no escape. Let me explain.

The January 26th debate. 

I purposefully do not name this day.  The debates that occur about it on social media forums every year are an excellent example of White Privilege in action, ensuring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples know their place in wider Australian society. 

Last year it was headlines such as “Why I’m proud of Australia and you should be too” and “Australia day: Most Australians don’t mind what date it’s held, according to new poll”.  This year we got Australia Day debate: Poll reveals most Aussies want celebrations to stay on January 26.  

Within every one of the discourses triggered by these headlines is the reminder that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples need to “get over it” and “move on”.  But it doesn’t take into consideration the arguments of how January 26th is a recent date set nor recognise that the detrimental effects of colonisation continue. 

The shared history is inconvenient and again, not something that can be changed, so we are told let’s just “forget it”. Let’s dismiss the history of genocide and massacres and “move on”. 

Malcolm Turnbull said the date would not change while he was Prime Minister and it didn’t.

Ironically Malcolm Turnbull, along with his predecessor, Tony Abbott, espoused a wish to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in their Closing the Gap reports.

February

Talking of Closing The Gap, February marked the tenth year of the Closing the Gap initiative. Yet again, the annual report saw few of the goals achieved.  The National Indigenous Reform Agreement, more commonly referred to as Closing the Gap, was introduced in 2008 with the intention to address the inequities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples’ livelihoods encompassing health, education and employment. 

But in 2018, once again the reports were not positive.  Once again, the failure to achieve the targets was lamented and once again data was provided as to why governments can’t close the gap.  And the money spent, a reported $130 billion (paywalled) over the years, raised further discussions. 

Few commentators acknowledged the complexities of policy making and the lack of Indigenous voice being involved in the decision-making.  The call to be heard in the Redfern Statement by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples was lost. Some politicians even placed the lack of progress squarely with the communities (paywalled).  Such notions emphasise the political agenda of self-empowerment (that is, blaming Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perceived failures and current conditions on the idea that the people do not take up the opportunities made available to them) and silences the Indigenous right for self-determination. 

So the Australian Government abandons the policy and moves on to another review with new targets as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples wait and remain silenced.

March

Yes we were only into March when an all-White panel on the morning show, Sunrise, advocated the further removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their homes for their well-being.  One of the commentators suggested a second Stolen Generation was necessary.  The segment caused outrage throughout Indigenous communities and led to protests outside the studio.  The audacity of the panelists to feel they could speak about Indigenous issues from a position of knowing caused instant reaction.  However, it also illustrated the enactment of privilege.  Our political bodies are consistently the subject of discussion and this instance, sought to remind us that colonial Australia was not afraid to voice their solutions for the perceived ‘problem’. 

Formal complaints were made to the Australian Communications and Media Authority about the mistruths shared within the segment and in September, Sunrise was found in breach of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice.  But it was all too late.  The perpetuation of stereotypes and mistruths were already out there being normalised and re-interpreted within colonial Australia; further pushing any chance of reconciliation back.

April

In April, the dilemma of silencing and the inconvenience of Indigeneity in colonial Australia continued as Australia hosted the Commonwealth Games.  Indigenous protestors were in the news again. Protesters re-established the mantra of the ‘StolenWealth Games’ first used in 1982 protests.  Media discourses perpetuated the inconvenience of the protestors and the makeshift camp, Camp Freedom, highlighting the number of caravans, tents and so forth.

Organisers of the games emphasised how they were using fencing to ‘cage in’ protestors. The protest and activism was an inconvenient truth upsetting the celebrations of colonisation.

May

This marked one year since the Uluru Statement of the Heart, which the Turnbull Government subsequently rejected. In the outright rejection political voices aired their concerns of a perceived “third chamber of parliament” as reasoning for the dismissal, ignoring the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.  The extensive consultation process that had been funded by the Federal Government became another point of critique about the perceived exorbitant funding extended to Indigenous affairs. 

Advocacy for the Uluru Statement of the Heart has been maintained seeking to further the recommendations made.  Still, the call for a voice and space to speak into what happens in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs seems ‘a step too far’ for government with the now Prime Minister Morrison again dismissing the renewed push. 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples having a say in policy and actions that affect them is actually written in policy but, as always, it is all just words.

June

Reconciliation week falls at the end of May/early June.  The 2018 theme was ‘Don’t keep history a mystery’ and it kept the notion of ‘truth telling’ front and centre.  Embedded within the recommendations in the Redfern Statement and the Uluru Statement, the week challenged non-Indigenous Australia to question how much they don’t know about the shared history.  Denial of the historical past needs to be addressed.  We cannot have reconciliation without it.  For goodness sake, this year was the first time that Reconciliation Week had been celebrated in Tasmania!  We have a long way to go.

Still in June, another news frenzy occurred where students at a university in Australia decided to dress in blackface.  There has been a rise in this practice in recent years with models, sporting teams and so forth all being called out on their racism (or ignorance).  Although, I would suggest it is hard to argue ignorance when there has been such an influx of condemnation of such behaviours on social media and the repercussions shared on the news including suspension and so forth.  It is a position of privilege that you can feign ignorance of the stereotypical assumptions linked to blackface and post to a social media platform photographic evidence of your actions.  But even better is the almost instant disclaimers that in no certain means were the actions intending to be racist or malicious.   

July

But then came July and the world seemed bright if just for a while as we recognised the achievements and contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women during NAIDOC week with its wonderful theme, Because of her, we can.  It was a powerful theme championing the often-silenced women who have, persistently and with great strength, fought for equal rights.  The week provided opportunity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to voice their appreciation of their mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters and ancestral mothers but also, allowed space for recognition of the various achievements in all fields and disciplines. 

As an Aboriginal woman, the theme was empowering and yet humbling; reminding me of the women who faced such adversity in the past with tenacity, grace and pride.

August

In August we came crashing down with the appointment of the once self-proclaimed Prime Minister of Aboriginal affairs, Tony Abbott, as Special envoy for Indigenous affairs.  Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples shared their frustrations about the appointment and the irony of yet another white male being positioned as a knower about Indigenous affairs.  Recognition of the dramatic reductions in funding to Indigenous health, employment and so forth while he was Prime Minister seemed to counter the notion of closing the gap and yet, here he was returning to focus on attendance of remote Aboriginal Australia in schools (paywalled).

Abbott’s focus tends to be on remote Aboriginal communities and yet, the largest Aboriginal population in Australia is actually found in New South Wales where the majority live in towns and cities. So why focus on remote communities?  And why should Tony Abbott have an input into overhauling Indigenous education?

September

Yet another media frenzy around race and representation exploded in September with the publication of a political cartoon of Serena Williams featuring a stereotypical exaggeration of racial features.  The alignment to Bill Leak’s political cartoon in 2016 of an Aboriginal man not knowing his son was soon raised and again, our politicised bodies became the subject of many a forum. 

Australia’s ignorance regarding race was exposed in national and international media.  But as usual, the denial by the cartoonist and the interpretation by the editor emerged in support of their colleague and no progress was made in Australian racial relations.  Reflection on why it may be perceived as racist and/or sexist did not occur.  Instead, we were told it was the PC world gone too far.  Within weeks, the world had moved onto the next big news story but at least one Aboriginal researcher was still reeling in a year of constant disruption.

October

This was not a month of reprise.  Instead, the government took it to another level with One Nation’s leader, Pauline Hanson, bringing forward her ‘It’s okay to be White’ motion to the Senate.  And worse still, the motion was almost passed with government members voting for it.  It was a slap in the face to me.  The controversial motion spoke to the perceived anti-White racism on social media and the challenge on Western civilisation.  Commentators drew connections of the motion to the White Australia Policy.  Again, the positioning of the coloniser as the dominant norm was established placing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander on the margins.

November

Some positive news for educators arrived in November with 90+ elaborations released to assist classroom teachers to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures in the Science classroom.  Indigenous educationalists and scientists assisted in developing the list; contributing their own knowledge to help in closing the cultural gap.  Yet, this action could not escape the criticism and scaremongering of some commentators.

For years there has been advocacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures to be embedded rather than ‘bolted on’ to the curriculum.  And yet here came the resistance.

December

Abbott started up on what to do to improve attendance in Indigenous education.  He wants the introduction of police officers within the school setting and a review of the Australian Curriculum to simplify it (read as let’s get rid off the cross-curriculum priorities and general capabilities and just focus on numeracy and literacy). You know how it goes.

I could not wait for the year to be over.  It is, well and truly.

Let’s start again soon, shall we?

Melitta Hogarth is a Kamilaroi woman who is also the Indigenous Education Lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland within the College for Indigenous Studies, Education and Research.  Prior to entering academia, Melitta taught for almost 20 years in all three sectors of the Queensland education system specifically in Secondary education.  Melitta’s interests are in education, equity and social justice.  She recently completed her PhD titled “Addressing the rights of Indigenous peoples in education: A critical analysis of Indigenous education policy”.

The image featured on this post is from Adobe Stock

Muddled thinking of Abbott Govt’s education policies undermines teachers and students

Curriculum review, Education policy, Teacher quality, Teachers' work

George Orwell wrote in 1984, “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” We are in a remarkable policy moment in Australia, where the federal government is playing a strange, schizophrenic pantomime with Christopher Pyne perfectly cast in the role as education ‘reformer’.

It wouldn’t be too fanciful to make comparisons between Orwell’s dystopic vision of a society where history and the present are continuously re-shaped for political expediency and our own current political environment. It seems that each new week brings another ideology-driven announcement that relies on a blind faith in the logic of the market, while simultaneously ignoring the large body of education research.

The construction of this schizoid approach to education of course begins with the double backflip followed by a complete disappearing act on the Gonski school funding reforms. Despite going to the election on a unity ticket, the government has managed to not only reverse its commitment to an equitable school funding model but also to put pressure on the states to find the money themselves from 2017, as part of a broader divestment agenda.

A particularly striking example of doublethink came out in May’s budget, where Pyne announced a deregulation agenda for the higher education sector. He claimed that by removing the cap on fees, it will make studying more affordable and accessible for disadvantaged students because market competition will drive fees down. Never mind that, alongside this, federal government funding of student fees will be reduced and the cost of taking out a loan substantially increased. It was unsurprising that Universities Australia and several individual universities responded with evidence to show that, in fact, students would be much worse off under the proposed changes.

A further budget doublethink moment came from the government continuing to reduce investment in research through the ARC, NHMRC and CSIRO, while making grandiose claims about curing cancer from a new medical endowment fund that would be paid for by a $7 GP co-payment. Again, it was of little surprise when respondents pointed out that those who would be hardest hit were those already most disadvantaged in the community, while calling into question the veracity of the supposedly $20 billion medical endowment fund.

As most fledgling governments do, there are a number of reviews underway. Of interest to educators are the review of the Australian Curriculum and the review of pre-service teacher education. In particular, the choice of Kevin Donnelly to lead the Australian Curriculum review puts a cloud of doubt over the whole exercise, turning it into a farce. Donnelly has long been a heavily vocal detractor of the curriculum and, as a conservative commentator, is most certainly not the un-biased reviewer that he claims to be.

Further, the extraordinarily short timeframe for the review from call for submissions to providing the report to the government (less than 6 months), combined with Pyne’s claims that any changes would be ready for the start of the 2015 school year, make a mockery of the long, consultative and critically-engaged process undertaken in the development of the Australian Curriculum.

The combined announcements of the appointment of John Fleming to the AITSL board and the expansion of the Cape York Direct Instruction program provide us with some indication of where Mr Pyne sees the future for education in Australia. The $22 million expansion of the Cape York Direct Instruction  program to other Indigenous schools seems a complete mockery of the government’s commitment to closing the gap when held against the $534 million reduction in funding to Indigenous health and education programs. Many early years learning centres have no guarantee of continued funding beyond this year, yet a top-down, one-size-fits-all, interventionist approach to the teaching of reading English will be forced onto children across the country.

There are multiple concerns with the Direct Instruction approach (see Alan Luke’s post  from 7 July) which covers these), particularly in the long-term effects of the program. One worrying concern is that students who learn to read through DI might be very capable at decoding strategies such as ‘sounding out’ words but lack the contextual and semantic knowledge that would help them to understand what they are reading.

One doesn’t need a crystal ball to predict where this is all going. Pyne is on the record claiming that he supports a back-to-the-basics approach to school. Direct Instruction is one part of that picture, where teachers stand out the front of the classroom and lecture students from a pre-scripted program. Students sit quietly in nice straight rows and comply with the instructions to perform reading and writing skill drilling. Never mind that this goes against research that has shown, time and again, that students learn best when they are highly engaged, deeply involved and in control of their own inquiries.

Of course this approach to teaching fits in nicely with the Teach for Australia programme which has also had a $22million increase in its funding. The premise of this programme along with its counterparts in the USA and elsewhere is that teachers don’t require any pedagogical knowledge  and that this lack of pedagogical knowledge and skills can be filled through supplying these teachers with pre-prepared packages of materials.

The deep inherent contradictions in these moves by this government are summed up in the introduction to their Studentsfirst website where the first sentence about “teacher quality” is that “the first step to achieving a quality education, which is so critical for the future of young Australians and our nation, is to lift the quality, professionalisation and status of the teaching profession”.

There is no evidence that this government has done anything to take this first step: indeed the doublethink illustrated here is that they have done everything they can do to undermine the status of the profession.

 

Eileen Honan

Eileen Honan

Dr Eileen Eileen Honan is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, University of Queensland. Her particular research interests include:
– the connections between teachers’ practices and curriculum guidelines;
– the interactions between home and school literacy practices particularly in relation to digital literacies;
– the development of vernacular literacy practices in Papua New Guinea and other nations in the Pacific Island region; – the development of new rhizomatic methodologies in  educational   research.

The author would like to thank Dr Stewart Riddle for his thoughtful contributions to this blog post.

Gifted primary school children need more than special classes

Gifted and talented students, School environment

Many gifted girls and boys find the gifted label stigmatising, and go out of their way to dodge the dreaded nerd status. Would these children be better off in specialised school environment? The gifted education community is sharply divided about this issue with some educators perceiving that the specialised school environment is the ideal setting for gifted children, whereas others believe that they would be better off in the regular school milieu.

Gifted children generally perform better academically in the specialised school environment. The debate that rages is about their social and emotional wellbeing, with some educators believing that the specialised environment allows gifted children to thrive, as feelings of difference are diminished. On the other hand, those educators supporting the regular school setting for gifted children believe the specialised setting negatively impacts self-esteem, which ultimately can affect some gifted children’s academic performance.

I decided to look at what happens at primary school level for gifted children. What is it like for primary aged gifted girls and boys attending schools that purposefully cater to their unique academic needs? Are they able to reveal their true identity or do they still need to mask their atypical ability to gain peer acceptance? Do gifted role and gender messages still apply?

It should be noted that in Australia at primary school level we still generally require the gifted child to socialise with same aged peers.

Instead of taking the outside researcher’s view, this study used a phenomenological framework which allowed the gifted children to voice their own perceptions about what these types of school environments did and did not provide.

While the experience of daily challenge was found to be important to the talent development process, on its own it was not enough to prevent some of the gifted children in this study from masking their giftedness.

The social context, which included the gender culture of the school, was found to play a pivotal role in the types of social and emotional outcomes they created. Schools that adopted a flexible attitude to gender allowed not only for academic success in a variety of areas, but removed the fear of stigmatisation by peers.

Importantly, gender expectations played a key role in the participants’ perception of what made a student popular or how they should behave on the playground.

For example, gifted boys attending primary schools with social contexts that supported one type of male gender identity tended to prise athletic ability above all else. In this type of school the athletic boys or jocks held sway on the playground, while the academic boys occupied the lower rungs of the playground hierarchy.  Gifted boys in this type of social context were generally confined to the wall ball court, which was a game deemed not to require much skill or athletic ability. Schools that did not accept this type of traditional male stereotype and offered boys other lunch time pursuits other than sports, such as spending time in the computer room, library or robotic club, were more likely to have a positive social context.

Gifted girls on the other hand that attended schools that offered them gifted programming, but generally supported  stereotypical females roles, described the Girly girls (girls interested in fame and fashion) as attempting to hold power on their playgrounds.

While it is well known that gifted children face these types of gender stereotypical roles in the high school setting and sometimes mask their ability in order to adhere to them, it has been generally believed that this process did not occur before adolescence.  Although not well researched, it was also generally believed that gifted children could be well supported in the talent process in schools that provided them with challenging curriculum.

This study, however, demonstrates that challenging curriculum alone does not support the talent process and that the social context of the school needs to be carefully considered.

Schools could endeavour to create optimal social contexts by working towards meeting the affective needs of their students.  The acceptance of difference through the promotion of diverse gender roles, as well as an awareness of the role the “new media” plays in the promotion of stereotypical gender identities.

 

Katrina Eddles-HirschKatrina Eddles-Hirsch is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney. Katrina currently teaches undergraduate primary, secondary & post doctorate students in Inclusive Education.  Her research interests include the social and emotional development of gifted children, gender research and the twice exceptional student.

This blog post is based on the research paper Girly Girls, Tomboys, Athletes and Nerds: A phenomenological study of social context in the specialised school environment (2013) published in the Scottish Journal of Arts, Social Sciences and Scientific Studies, 17 (1), 88-101.

Newspapers are Bad News for Teachers

Teacher quality, Teachers' work

Newspapers are able to influence public opinion through specific portrayals of teachers that in turn work to construct particular knowledge and perceptions about teachers and their work.

So what are newspapers saying about teachers and who is saying it in the Australian press?

My current research project explores discourses about teachers and their work in the Australian print media. I identified four media constructs of teachers following a review of newspaper texts over 18 months. These media perceptions are:-

  • the need for more regulated accountable teachers,
  • teaching practices should be transparent and audited,
  • teachers are failing our young people, and they are often incompetent and reckless, and
  • teachers reap many benefits and privileges throughout their teaching careers .

These media discourses were often critical, negative, oppressive and reductionist regarding teachers and their work, with very few ‘good’ news stories being published during the timeframe of this study.

Texts that are available in the public domain can work toward influencing public opinion and political agendas. For example, campaigning newspapers consciously and systematically promote particular issues, often setting these agendas. As such, an accumulation of negative and critical media reportage about teachers is likely to erode public trust for teachers and the teaching profession. This is an unacceptable situation where a teacher’s role is made more difficult with the gaze of non-educationist onlookers ‘second-guessing’ teachers’ every move; and the status of teaching become less attractive for those contemplating their career opportunities.

The teachers I interviewed were critical of the editorials, opinion writers and commentators, rather than investigative journalists, with the teachers labelling these writings as ‘offensive and appalling in their anti-teacher messages’. It was suggested by the teachers that such news texts focused on the author’s opinions rather than ‘facts’, and that those authors who were hired by newspapers to provide the commentary aligned with the newspaper’s socio-political points of view.

Below is a brief outline of what the newspaper editorials, opinion writers and commentators had to say about each of the constructs.

The regulated accountable teacher is positioned within discourses of accountability and control, with an editorial text stating that Accountability is essential (headline) and another calling for ‘public review’ of teachers and schools (opinion writer), citing the outcomes as ‘the public’s right to know’ (editorial). An opinion writer heralded that teacher accountability ‘will root out incompetence’ in the teacher population. According to another opinion writer, achieving this requires ‘real accountability [that] depends on real consequences. Real change requires incentives and penalties’. Consequently, the notion of teacher professional accountability was often rejected in these news texts, instead, focusing on the external and regulatory elements of market, public and performative accountabilities.

Often, non-investigative media reportage focused on business-derived mechanisms such as improved ‘productivity’, educational ‘outputs’ and teacher ‘bonuses’, suggesting, as do the various levels of government, that such rigid and regulatory performative controls are more likely to produce compliant teachers, improve student learning outcomes, and consequently gauge the ‘effectiveness’ of education systems.

The media construct of the transparent audited teacher, closely linked to the regulated accountable teacher, focuses on teacher performativity and accountability. These media discourses encouraged the use of audit and measurement data to monitor and control teacher performativity. Reportage in this area emphasised school and government practices, for example, standardised national tests, that draw on student data but are extended to critique teacher practices and performance.

A number of editorials and opinion pieces suggested national testing was ‘transparent reporting’ that provided extra ‘scrutiny’ for schools and teachers and was identified as ‘revealing and useful’ for parents in the community and a ‘long-overdue mechanism of transparency’. This construct is situated within the discourses of improved transparency and teacher quality, supporting the use of ‘evidence-based’ measurement data such as NAPLAN tests, MySchool, and league tables, to attain this ‘improved’ transparency and teacher quality. Any alternative points of view regarding the above practices were often derided or discredited with the suggestions that they were ‘irrational fears’ and ‘arrant nonsense’ (opinion writer).

Opinion-style reportage focusing on the failing incompetent teacher positioned teachers within discourses that suggested a lack of teacher professionalism and teaching failure. Often, these media texts positioned teacher quality as the main cause for poor student learning outcomes, suggesting there is ‘chronic incompetency’ and ‘poor quality teaching’ in schools (opinion writers), with teachers lacking ‘commitment and talent’ (editorial) to effectively teach their students. Consequently, reportage focused on policies and practices that were perceived to improve teacher quality, for example, raising university entry standards. Often, however, this media reportage tended towards simplistic understandings of teachers and teaching, reducing educational practices to somewhat uncritical and unsophisticated representations of teachers.

The final media construct is that of the privileged reckless teacher which also positioned teachers within discourses that questioned teacher professionalism, in particular notions of ‘benefit’ and ‘misconduct’. News texts constructed teachers as privileged in relation to their short working hours, many holidays, and good pay while teachers associated the benefits of their career as relating to working with children. An opinion writer suggested, ‘Teachers, as much as they moan, are on a nice litter earner … they do have a cushy job. Teachers are already well paid.’ Consequently, such media understandings of the benefits of teaching, work towards perceptions of teacher recklessness in relation to teacher unionism and industrial action, with it often being suggested that unions ‘protect poor performers’ (editorial) and ‘mask tenured incompetence’ (opinion writer) within their membership. One opinion writer suggested, ‘Cynical, lazy, incompetent teachers [are] keeping chairs warm in common rooms, who are effectively unsackable because of the union membership’. The other element of teacher ‘recklessness’ related to stories of teacher misconduct. These stories explored media reportage involving parental opinions about teachers’ practices and school systems, teachers and physical contact with children and young people, and teachers engaging in sexual contact with children and young people.

While newspapers hold an important role in our society, there is also an obligation on their part to present balanced and equitable reportage of the issues and events surrounding teachers and their work. Consequently, newspaper practices that ignore the complexities of the teaching profession are potentially harmful to teachers, young people, schools and their communities.

AspaSML

 

Aspa Baroutsis is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of Queensland.

What Twitter offers teachers: The evidence

Social media, Teacher education, Teacher professional development

Twitter is a revolutionary new tool for many teachers. They use it to drive their professional development and to connect with other educators.

However not everyone is so enthusiastic, others see Twitter as a tedious waste of time and are not tempted to give it a go. Of course many teachers may also describe face to face professional development sessions as a waste of time.

In order to convince teachers of the possible benefits of using a new technology, such as Twitter, we decided to look for evidence of its qualities. What in particular, does Twitter offer educators? Is it worth getting involved?

We identified 30 leading educators (with an interest in educational technology) who are currently using Twitter and analysed samples of their tweets in order to determine their purpose and the possible benefits of the tweets to their followers.

We also examined a sample of tweets from the twitter streams of two popular educational hashtags: #edchat and #edtech, in order to determine what ‘followers’ may gain.

As we are associating Twitter with teacher professional development it should be noted, professional development is most effective when it :-

  • is sustained over a period of time
  • is practical and contextual and directly related to student learning
  • is collaborative and involves the sharing of knowledge and
  • is devolved so that the participants have some element of control and ownership.

 

There is also a growing body of evidence that points to the effectiveness of professional development which is initiated and controlled personally, in the form of  personal learning networks.

What we found

Twitter is a filter for educational content
The biggest category, 34% of all tweets in the sample, contained links to other educationally focussed websites or blogs. In this sense the users of Twitter are acting as a filter for educational content that is available on the internet.

Twitter facilitates positive, supportive, contact between teachers but not sustained educational conversations
The second highest ranking category was that of a personal reply to another Twitter user (25%). In many cases these replies were personal thanks to another user for a previous tweet which was deemed particularly useful.  Almost invariably tweets in this category were of a positive supportive nature, this support, could potentially be a significant boost for teachers who find themselves isolated either geographically or professionally from their colleagues.

In most cases however the replies did not have an education focus, with only 1% of all tweets in the sample falling into this category.  This finding may indicate the unsuitability of this microblogging medium for fostering sustained educational conversations; as such interactions would generally require more space and time so that developed arguments can be fully explained. 

Educator tweeters are not prone to tweeting inane meaningless comments
Only 9% of the 600 tweets examined consisted of personal comments, unrelated to educational topics. These comments were usually in relation to the user’s location or were descriptive about their activities for the day. This finding is of note, given that an oft-repeated, anecdotal criticism of Twitter is that it consists only of inane, meaningless and somewhat narcissistic personal comments. 

The majority of hashtag posts contain educational links
The use of hashtags within tweets is one way that users can collate posts under common streams of interest. The majority of hashtag posts (70%) contain links to educational websites or blogs. The remaining posts were either links to educational newspaper articles (19%), comments of an educational nature (10%) or in one case, an invitation to join a group of educators in another online.

Hashtags enable access to a wide variety of web-based resources and news without the need to interact with others or to sift through the personal communications between others.
Depending on an individual’s professional learning needs, this flexibility could be an important factor to be highlighted when introducing this medium to educators.

Twitter offers connections with a network of like-minded educators
Any teacher signing up to Twitter and following the leading educators is potentially exposed to a rich, interconnected network of other like-minded educators and is directed to a wide variety of up-to-date and relevant educational material. The collaborative and public nature of the Twitter medium allows for networks of participants to form naturally in response to common interests. Individuals can actively participate by posting their own tweets or can simply follow others to gain links to current educational resources and news

Twitter gives a user total control over the level of interaction and focus
Unlike a stand-alone professional development session, Twitter has the advantage that it can be tapped into on any day at any time, leaving open the possibility that it may lead to learning over a sustained period of time, which can be accessed at the most optimal time for each user. The medium also allows for each participant to focus on the particular educational issues that concern them at the time. In this way the Twitter medium does afford the individual user with total control over the level of interaction and the nature of the learning that occurs as a result.

The key characteristics of effective professional development could be accomplished through the use of Twitter.
Twitter can be used to establish teacher networks and facilitate access to new resources and information. Such online communities of learning could also potentially provide links between pre-service teachers and experienced educators. In this sense, the initial ‘education’ of teachers, could be enriched through participation in multiple online professional learning communities with practitioners in the field, allowing meaningful interactions beyond the traditional practicum.

Twitter is but one mechanism for online collaboration and communication among a growing number of social media sites, however, its current and growing popularity ensures that a critical mass of educators will be available for networking opportunities. These online interactions don’t replace the significance of face to face collaborations and discussions with colleagues, but the findings from this study indicate that they can be a valuable alternate means of professional self-development.

(Further research is needed to evaluate the tangible impact of teacher engagement with social media for professional development. While this study has confirmed the potential of the medium, and while there are plenty of Twitter champions encouraging wider participation, the eventual impact on learning in the classroom is untested.)

Kath HolmesDr Kathryn Holmes is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics Education in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle. She is currently the Deputy Head of School for Research.

Find the full paper ‘Follow’ Me: Networked Professional Learning for Teachers by Kathryn Holmes, Greg Preston, Kylie Shaw and Rachel Buchanan, University of Newcastle HERE.

Reid responds to Donnelly’s “inaccuracies and obfuscations”

Education policy, Independent Public Schools, School funding,

My blog of 3/8/2014 was an edited version of the opening statement I made in a debate with Dr Kevin Donnelly about independent public schools (IPS). Dr Donnelly’s opening contribution to that debate was posted on this site on 7/8/2014, to which he added the basis of the rebuttal he made to my arguments. Given the number of inaccuracies and obfuscations in that response, I felt I needed to make my rebuttal public through this blog. Thus the comments in this post need to be read in conjunction with the two earlier blog posts.  (Find links to these at the end of this post.)

I will deal with Dr Donnelly’s points under three broad questions relating to IPS.

What is school autonomy?

Dr Donnelly insists that he does not support ‘privatising government schools and running schools as profit/loss commercial enterprises’. This is puzzling given the evidence that he uses to support the case for IPS, and it reveals some real conceptual confusions.

The first and most obvious problem is that Dr Donnelly refuses to pin down what he understands school autonomy to mean. His statement ranges across community schools of the 1970s, to private schools overseas, to non-government schools in Australia, to privately managed schools in the United States, India and New Zealand, to Free Schools in England. This extraordinary confusion of structures, approaches, and styles are lumped together and treated as though they all represent a common version of school autonomy. Little wonder that Donnelly does not understand that he is promoting for-profit schools as well as not-for-profit privately managed schools – that is, privatised public education.

There are many Charter schools in the US which are now for-profit schools, the James Tooley schools in India and Africa are for-profit private schools, and in England, Minister Gove is favourably disposed to the presence of for-profit Free schools (interestingly, the Times Education Supplement recently reported that the first for-profit Free school in England has admitted it is offering sub-standard education).  Given that he uses these examples to show that Australia is ‘not alone in giving government schools increased autonomy’ – as though the existence of these models is enough to demonstrate that they work – it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that Dr Donnelly is supporting the privatisation of public schools.

English education researchers Stephen Ball and Deborah Youdell (2007) draw a useful distinction between the different ways in which public schools are being subjected to privatisation tendencies. For them, privatisation can be understood in two ways:

Endogenous privatisation which involves importing ideas, techniques and practices from the private sector in order to make the public sector more business-like and ‘independent’ of systems. This seems to be the direction of IPS in Australia, where Minister Pyne has often talked about his desire to make public schools more like private schools.

Exogenous privatisation which involves opening up public schools to be run by private individuals, corporate companies or organisations for-profit, or not-for-profit. This approach is represented in most of the overseas examples cited by Dr Donnelly.

Both forms of privatisation, founded as they are on the values of choice and competition within an education free-market, change the ways in which public schools are organised and operated. As I argued in my earlier contribution, such changes are inconsistent with the key characteristics, indeed the spirit and essence, of public education. I made it clear that I supported greater flexibility for schools at the local level in the areas of curriculum and school support, within a set of values which are consistent with a public system which fosters the common good. Flexibility in this approach is used by each school to maximise educational quality in the school, but also to collaborate across schools to make better schools and a better system for all. That is not the sort of flexibility being promoted by Dr Donnelly.

If Dr Donnelly does not support privatised public education, he needs to explain why he cites for-profit schools as evidence that school autonomy works.

What are the purposes of IPS?

It is not surprising that having a confused understanding about the meaning of school autonomy results in a confused understanding about its purposes. One would imagine from Dr Donnelly’s response that the purpose of the IPS policy is to give schools greater curriculum freedom since that purpose is the main thrust of all the ‘evidence’ he cites. For example he quotes from PISA that: ‘In countries where schools have greater autonomy over what is taught and how students are assessed, students tend to perform better’ (OECD, 2011).

He even points to his own feelings of ‘excitement, motivation and sense of collegiality’ that developed when the first group of teachers at St Helena Secondary College were ‘freed from external constraints’. I can concur with that, having been a teacher at the new open-space Banksia Park High School in South Australia in the 1970s where we tasted the same curriculum freedom.

The trouble is that is not what IPS is about. The federal government cannot give, and has no intention of supporting, curriculum freedom for schools. As a member of the two person team recommending what to change about the national curriculum ( a top-down model of curriculum change in its own right!), Dr Donnelly more than most should know that there is no intention that independent public schools will be granted exemption from implementing the national curriculum.

No, the federal government is not talking about curriculum freedom. Its IPS focus is on giving Principals greater freedom to manage budgets, resources, infrastructure and staffing. And guess what? In the same PISA research from which Dr Donnelly extracts the quote above is the sentence: ‘… there is no clear relationship between autonomy in resource allocation and performance at the country level’ (OECD, 2011). That’s right, a key finding from the very research Dr Donnelly uses, is that giving school autonomy over budgets and resources – the major thrust of IPS – does not automatically result in improved student learning.  Why would Dr Donnelly not mention that finding?

In my original statement, I raised a number of concerns about giving public schools ‘autonomy’ in public systems, in the absence of:

(a) safeguards to ensure that schools serving large populations of educationally disadvantaged students do not fall behind in resource provision; and

(b) assurances that the additional workload on principals is covered by additional resources; and

(c) strategies developed to ensure that public schools continue to collaborate to build a quality system for all, not compete in an education market where some schools are advantaged and many fall by the wayside.

In short, we need to discuss the limits of giving additional flexibility for schools to manage resources to suit local needs; and, even though it is off the government’s agenda, I would include in that discussion consideration about the level of curriculum freedom needed to enhance educational standards. The key question is how such flexibility can be managed so that it builds, not damages, the public education system as a whole. This requires renewed understandings about the characteristics of public education that as a society we want to protect and foster.

That is, this is not an argument about private schools. It is Dr Donnelly who keeps drawing invidious comparisons between public and private schools. My point is that unlike Minister Pyne, I do not want public schools to be more like private schools. I want public schools to retain the essence of what it means to be a public school. In the diverse system of education we enjoy in Australia, it is important that we differentiate the mission of school systems. I would have thought that advocates of school choice such as Dr Donnelly would celebrate that difference, not seek to create uniformity!

What is the evidence for IPS?

In my contribution to the debate, I developed some philosophical arguments against IPS and then produced empirical evidence to cast doubt on the claims that giving schools greater autonomy over budgets, resources and hiring and firing of staff, will raise the quality of education. In the main I focused on the examples of ‘school autonomy’ cited by Dr Donnelly, the majority of which come from the extreme end of the privatising public education continuum.

I showed that there was a lot of research demonstrating that Charter schools have not improved student learning outcomes, but mentioned that some studies argued that there has been improvement. My conclusion was that it was pointless to simply trade research studies, or just google and quote. Instead, it is important to examine the rigour of the research.

I also pointed to the narrowness of most of the research studies quoted by Dr Donnelly which purport to evaluate the educational outcomes of ‘autonomous’ schools. In the main they only use the results of national or international standardised tests as the gold standard of educational quality. Clearly such outcomes are too narrow. They tell us nothing about key aspects of education quality such as the nature of relationships, school environment or community engagement. Importantly, they do not reveal the damaging effects of Charter schools on the diversity of traditional public schools, their involvement with local communities, and their capacity to collaborate.

In his rebuttal, Dr Donnelly makes a revealing point. He accuses me of referring to Tomorrow’s Schools in New Zealand instead of the ‘school autonomy initiative’ of Partnership schools. I did so quite deliberately because Partnership schools have only just got under way in New Zealand and, as with Independent Public Schools in Western Australia, there is no empirical evidence to show outcomes either way.

I therefore chose as my New Zealand example the self-managing school initiative – Tomorrow’s Schools – which has operated for 25 years, and about which there is a lot of research evidence. In particular I referred to the recent book by Dr Cathy Wylie, the Head of Research at NZCER. In it she describes the many deleterious effects of Tomorrow’s Schools, and argues that New Zealand needs to totally rethink the school autonomy approach and return to more central and regional support for schools.

No wonder Dr Donnelly did not want to refer to that example of school autonomy, but rather mention an experiment about which there is no evidence! As someone who claims to oppose profit/loss school enterprises, he might also be interested to know that the Partnership school experiment in New Zealand involves companies, groups and individuals operating like Charter schools in the US, for-profit as well as not-for profit.

My main message to Dr Donnelly is that if he is going to promote IPS he needs to publicly clarify (a) what he means by ‘school autonomy’; (b) what are the purposes of school autonomy; and (c) what all the research evidence really demonstrates about his version of ‘school autonomy’.

My first blog post on IPS can be found HERE        Kevin Donnelly’s reply can he found HERE

alanreid-1 copyProfessor Alan Reid

Professor Alan Reid AM is Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of South Australia. His research interests include education policy, curriculum change, social justice and education, and the history and politics of public education. He has published widely in these areas and gives many talks and papers to professional groups, nationally and internationally. Alan presented the Radford Lecture at the AARE annual conference in December 2012.

 

 

Myth buster: improving school attendance does not improve student outcomes

Education policy, Indigenous education policy, Managing student behaviour, School attendance,

Does improved student attendance lead to improved student achievement?

Join prime ministers, premiers and education ministers from all sides of politics if you believe it does. They regularly tell us about the need to “improve” or “increase” attendance in order to improve achievement.

We recently had unprecedented access to state government data on individual school and student attendance and achievement in over 120 schools  (as part of a major 2009-2013 study of the reform and leadership of schools serving Indigenous students and communities) so we decided to test the widely held assumption.

What we found is both surprising and challenging.

The overall claim that increased attendance is linked with improved achievement seems like common sense. It stands to reason that if a student attends more, s/he is more likely to perform better on annually administered standardised tests. The inverse also seems intuitive and common sensical: that if an individual student doesn’t attend, s/he is less likely to achieve well on these conventional measures.

But sometimes what appears to make sense about an individual student may not factually hold up when we look at the patterns across a larger school or system.

In our research we were studying background patterns on attendance and achievement using very conventional empirical statistical analysis.  What we found in first up was that, whatever else we may hope, school level attendance rates generally don’t change all that much.

Despite officially supported policies and high profile school and regional foci, schools making big improvement in attendance rates are the exception, and are very rare.

Further, we found, the vast majority (around 76%) of the level of school attendance empirically is related to geographic remoteness, the percentage of Indigenous kids, and levels of socio-economic marginalisation. These are matters that for the most part are beyond the purview of schools and systems to change. Most importantly and most surprisingly, we found there is no relationship between school attendance and school level NAPLAN results. This is the case whether you are looking at overall levels and rates of change or the achievement of specific groups of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

The particular policy story that improved attendance will improve or bootstrap conventional achievement has no basis in fact at a school level. The policy making and funding that goes into lifting attendance rates of whole schools or systems assumes erroneously that improvements in achievement by individual students will logically follow.

The bottom line is you can’t simply generalise an individual story and apply it to schools. The data shows this.

Further, and this is important in current reform debates, we observed that the very few schools with high percentages of Indigenous children that both increased attendance and achievement also had implemented significant curriculum and teaching method reforms over the same period examined.

In other words, attending school may or may not help generally, but improving achievement depends on what children do once we get them to school.

In our view, there is no short cut around the need for substantial ongoing reforms of curriculum and teaching methods and affiliated professional development for teachers.  Building quality teaching and learning relations are the problem and the solution – not attendance or testing or accountability policies per se.

 

ladwig_james James Ladwig                        Allan Luke 2  Allan Luke

James Ladwig is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle and Adjunct Professor in the Victoria Institute of Victoria University.  He is internationally recognised for his expertise in educational research and school reform.

Allan Luke is Emeritus Professor in the ‎Faculty of Education at the Queensland University of Technology and Adjunct Professor in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada, where he works mentoring first nations academics. He is an educator, researcher, and theorist studying multiliteracies, linguistics, family literacy, and educational policy. Dr. Luke has written or edited over 14 books and more than 140 articles and book chapters.

Here is  the full article:  Does improving school level attendance lead to improved school level achievement? An empirical study of indigenous educational policy in Australia.

Kevin Donnelly replies:the Liberal Government’s policy of independent public schools will raise education standards in Australia

Education policy, Independent Public Schools, School funding, ,

(Note: What follows is an edited and expanded version of Dr Kevin Donnelly’s presentation at the recent ACSA sponsored debate titled “That the Liberal Government’s policy of independent public schools will raise education standards in Australia”.  Dr Donnelly argued in the affirmative.)

While the title of this debate describes Independent Public Schools as a Liberal Government initiative it is important to acknowledge that the desire to give government schools increased autonomy and flexibility has the support of both major political parties.

Julia Gillard, when Prime Minister, championed the then ALP Commonwealth Government’s Empowering Local Schools Reform and in a 2010 speech she argued:

“A key element of this reform is empowering local school communities to make decisions about what is best for their schools and their students rather than a centralised system run by State bureaucracies dictating staffing mix and resource allocations.”

The then PM went on to argue that the purpose of the reform was “to ensure the core decisions that make the most difference to student outcomes are devolved to schools”.

Secondly, while recent initiatives like the Western Australian Government’s Independent Public Schools (IPS) are in the news, it is also important to understand that school autonomy has a relatively long history in Australia.

In the 60s and 70s many government schools in and around Melbourne chose their own staff, developed their own curriculum and were free from centralised management and control.

Such schools were supported by the left-of-centre teacher union, the Victorian Secondary Teachers Association (VSTA), and were considered at the ‘leading edge’ of educational reform.  Often described as community schools, they included: Sydney Road, Moreland Annexe and Swinburne Annexe.

Innovations included: alternative year 12 pathways and school-based certificates, general studies, non-competitive assessment and a curriculum based on local needs.  The pedagogical and curriculum approaches, at a time when the traditional, competitive, academic curriculum reigned supreme, drew on radical educators like Neil Postman, Paulo Freire and the de-schooling movement.

The Victorian Government’s decision, during the mid-80s, to open a new style of government secondary school blending the technical and the high school traditions provides a second example of school autonomy predating Independent Public Schools.

These government post-primary schools, such as St Helena Secondary College, were given the power to appoint their own staff, design their own buildings and determine their own curriculum.  As one of the first group of teachers appointed to the St Helena I can attest to the excitement, motivation and sense of collegiality that developed as we were freed from external constraints.

I should also like to point out that Australia is not alone in giving government schools increased autonomy and around the world other examples include:

  • Charter schools in 42 US states including Florida, Milwaukee and Washington State
  • City Academies and Free Schools in England – supported by both the Tony Blair Labour Government and the current Conservative Government led by Prime Minister David Cameron
  • Privately managed schools in disadvantaged slum areas in Indian cities like Calcutta and Bombay (see James Tooley’s book The Beautiful Tree: a personal journey into how the world’s poorest people are educating themselves).

 

Before addressing the question of whether giving government schools increased autonomy will raise standards, I’d like to make a number of observations.

Firstly, and as noted by a report by the Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission, titled Making the Grade: Autonomy and Accountability in Victorian Schools, autonomy has a range of benefits in addition to whether standards, as measured by tests such as NAPLAN, improve or not.

Possible benefits include: strengthening the ability of principals and school leaders to better manage their schools, thus, improving teacher quality and effectiveness; promoting increased transparency and innovation and using resources more efficiently.

Secondly, giving schools and their communities greater control and reducing the power of governments and their bureaucracies based on the concept of subsidiarity, according to Catholic social theory, is an inherent good.

The principle that ‘decisions are far as practicable are made by those most affected’ is empowering as it acknowledges that teachers, students, school leaders and parents, generally speaking, have a far more realistic and credible understanding on what it is that makes their school unique.

Providing greater flexibility and control at the local level is also more efficient.  Illustrated by the roll out of the Building the Education Revolution (BER) program non-government schools, because of their autonomy and because they were not controlled by head office, achieved better outcomes for students and school communities when compared to government schools.

And, thirdly, based on the example of Catholic and independent schools, that are able to achieve stronger educational outcomes compared to many government schools even after adjusting for students’ socioeconomic background, it is possible to argue that autonomy is beneficial.

Non-government schools, by their very nature, are able to select staff, manage their own budgets and set their own curriculum focus – within general guidelines.

While not all agree that autonomy will lead to stronger outcomes there is increasing evidence, if done properly and recognising that not all schools or schools systems both here and overseas have the same potential to benefit, that autonomy raises standards.

In a 2010 paper titled, How much do educational outcomes matter in OECD countries? E Hanushek and L Woessmann conclude, “In particular, evidence from both within and across countries points to the positive impact of competition among schools, of accountability and student testing, and of local school autonomy in decision making”.

The OCED’s PISA In Focus No 9, dated October 2011, states, “In countries where schools have greater autonomy over what is taught and how students are assessed, students tend to perform better”.

A research paper titled Does school autonomy make sense everywhere? Panel estimates from PISA by E Hanushek, S Link and L Woessmann, in relation to developed countries, is also optimistic when it states,

“Our central findings are consistent with the interpretation that autonomy reforms improve student achievement…” and “…in high-income countries, increased autonomy over academic content, personal, and budgets exerts positive effects on student achievement”.

Research by Caroline Hoxby in the US and Patrick Wolfe’s evaluation of the Milwaukee and Washington DC school voucher programs (of which school autonomy is an important element) also suggest that school autonomy is beneficial.

The fact that school autonomy, when implemented in a considered and balanced way and sensitive to the ability of schools to take up the challenge, is worthwhile is recognized by the Making the Grade report referred to earlier.

It concludes, “…notwithstanding the evidential uncertainties  (chapter 3), the debate is not in fact about whether their should be devolved decision making.  Rather it is about how it should extend, through what means it should be given effect, and what accountabilities are required”.

And now, to return to the topic of today’s debate: “That the Liberal Government’s policy of independent public schools will raise education standards in Australia”.  Based on the example of the Western Australia’s Independent Public Schools, it is too early to tell.

As noted by the evaluation carried out by the Centre for Program Evaluation at the University of Melbourne, “In this early phase of the IPS development there is little evidence of changes to student outcomes”.

The evaluation does note, though, that principals and teachers involved in the IPS program are positive and optimistic.  IPS teachers, in particular, feel more professional, accountable and in control of their careers – leading to an increased sense of self-worth.

At a time when many teachers feel devalued and beginning teachers, in particular, express concerns about teaching as a career anything that can be done, such as increasing school autonomy, that is considered positively should be welcomed.

 

Some rebuttals related to arguments put by Professor Alan Reid – in no particular order.

  • Contrary to what Reid argues I do not support privatising government schools and running schools as profit/loss commercial enterprises.
  • Government schools are not open to all – selective schools enrol only those students who pass the entrance test and not all parents are wealthy enough to buy expensive homes in the enrolment zones of much sought after government schools.
  • Catholic and independent schools, and not just government schools, contribute to the common good.  In fact, research both here and overseas suggests that Catholic schools, in particular, are effective at strengthening social capital and students from such schools experience less racism and are more likely to volunteer.
  • I have previously acknowledged that autonomy is not a universal panacea – in a newspaper comment piece in the Fairfax Press, dated August 2, 2013, I state, “Of course, to argue for autonomy, diversity and choice doesn’t mean all schools and their communities are ready to take on the challenge”.
  • In my ACSA speech I referred to the very recently implemented New Zealand school autonomy initiative involving Partnership Schools.  Professor Reid, when criticizing me, confuses this new initiative with the older Tomorrow’s Schools initiative.
  • In answer to the argument that school autonomy leads to greater inequity and disadvantage the report School Accountability, Autonomy, Choice, and the Equity of Student Achievement: International Evidence from PISA 2003 suggests the opposite is the case.  It states, “The main empirical result is that rather than harming disadvantaged students, accountability, autonomy, and school choice appear to be a tides that lift all boats”.
  • Finally, and contrary to Reid’s argument that advocates of schools autonomy are mainly economists, as published in the Courier Mail the day before the ACSA debate, a survey of 804 Australian principals concluded that there is “an appetite” for more autonomy.

 

KD Kevin Donnelly

Dr Donnelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University and Director of the Education Standards Institute.  Kevin taught for 18 years in government and non-government schools.

The Abbott Government’s policy of ‘independent public schools’ will lower standards and widen inequalities in Australian schools.

Education policy, Independent Public Schools, School funding, ,

[NOTE:This is an edited version of the negative case against the Abbott Govt’s Independent Public Schools policy made by Alan Reid in his debate with Kevin Donnelly held at the Australian Curriculum Studies Association Symposium in Canberra on Friday August 1, 2014. Find a link to the full text  below.]

We enjoy a high quality public education system in Australia, however we should constantly be trying to raise education standards. There is always room for improvement, and we have a particular need to address educational disadvantage across our nation.

Importantly any educational policies we implement should benefit all, not some, Australian children and certainly should not take us backwards.

I believe the Abbott Government’s policy of  Independent Public Schools  (IPS)  is a flawed policy that will do exactly that. It is important to recognise that the concept of ‘independent public schools’ is not synonomous with the current model in Western Australia which carries the same name. Rather it is a broad concept which embodies the philosophy of choice and competition in an education free-market. There are various versions of IPS.

The central attribute of independent public schools is autonomy. From the case put by Kevin Donnelly (co-chair of Christopher Pyne’s  National Curriculum Review ) and from the literature on IPS, it is clear that autonomy can range from approaches which seek to fully privatise public schools, turning them into for-profit institutions run by companies, community bodies or individuals (Kevin Donnelly appears to be a great supporter of this notion of autonomy); to those which seek to maximise the ‘autonomy’ of the principal and the School Board to manage finances, allocate resources, appoint staff and maintain buildings and facilities, while remaining within a public system (this is Minister Pyne’s version).

What is common to both versions are the values of choice and competition. Parents and students are understood to be consumers making educational choices in a free-market. Principals and School Boards are charged with the task of maintaining and increasing market share. It is claimed that this fosters competition between schools as they vie for custom, so promoting educational quality.

I will argue that no matter which version is adopted, it will advantage some Australian children at the expense of others and will take us backwards in our quest to address educational disadvantage. Worse, I believe it will actually lower educational standards in Australia.

 

The idea of public schools being ‘independent’ is philosophically at odds with what lies at the core of public education.

Public schools are the cornerstone of our education system. They exist in every community in Australia and take all-comers. They are state-owned and funded from the taxes we pay, so they belong to all of us, helping to develop our young as individuals, community members, workers and citizens. Public schools are microcosms of the community at large, with students coming from a wide range of social and cultural backgrounds. In this melting pot students are able to learn from and with one another about diversity and difference, and learn tolerance and empathy. In short, public schools promote the common good. Not to recognise this dimension of public schools is to miss the essence of public education.

 

The Independent Public Schools policy will cause real damage to our system of public education, and lower educational standards for the following reasons:-

1. It establishes public schools as businesses. The purpose is to compete to advance the interests of the school regardless of the impact on other schools. The fact is that public schools are not businesses. They are community goods serving public purposes. When they operate as full or quasi-businesses, the most successful are rewarded, and the least successful – invariably those with the least cultural and financial resources – go to the wall. In this way, an IPS agenda confirms and exacerbates inequalities between schools.

A lot of time and money is spent on publicity and marketing at the expense of educational outcomes. This sets up principals as employers, marketers and business managers, rather than as educational leaders.

2. It allows governments to escape their responsibilities by placing greater burdens on schools, often reducing resources while setting performance targets, and then blaming schools if they are not achieved. It also exponentially raises workload as things previously done centrally or by regions are done by Principals and teachers.

3. It destroys the sense of local community engagement with each school, not just the parent community but also where the school uses the community as a learning resource and for community activities. When parents choose schools far away from the local community in which they reside the link between public schools and their local communities is weakened. It encourages parents to simply leave a school when there are perceived issues, rather than stay, work through the issues, and help to build the school.

4. It promotes schools as stand-alone entities rather than as belonging to a system. True public schools aren’t independent, they are networked; and they cooperate to build a quality public system overall, not compete to create a system where there are shining beacons of success sitting alongside schools which are struggling or failing. True public schools are fuelled by a sense of mutual obligation, not self-interest.

 

Not all autonomy is bad.

I support autonomy where it means providing greater flexibility for schools (eg., greater curriculum freedom), but within a set of values which are consistent with a public system which fosters the common good. Flexibility can be used by each school to maximise educational quality in the school, but also to collaborate across schools to make better schools and a better system for all.

 

So where is the evidence that Independent Public Schools will improve standards?

IPS is a policy in search of evidence. To start there are significant issues associated with the research methodology used by those promoting IPS.  It is not sufficient to google a few studies which appear to support a pre-determined position, without evaluating the rigour of that research and the ways in which it is used.

Problems with the research methodology

I make the following points about the evidence that Kevin Donnelly has proffered:

Kevin doesn’t bother to differentiate between different forms of autonomy. He simply draws from and generalises across the autonomy continuum, randomly using examples from fully privatised public school models to quasi-private models. This is problematic, to say the least.

Kevin generalises from research conducted in a range of countries and cultures assuming that if it works in one context it will work in another. This of course is a basic research error. There are real problems in taking research findings from one cultural setting and transferring them to a completely different policy approach in another cultural setting, as though the findings are tablets of undeniable wisdom which are universally applicable.

Most of the researchers that Kevin quotes (eg Hanushek, Woessmann, Hoxby, Fuchs) are not educators – they are Professors of Economics. Invariably the research is statistical where the sole measure of education quality is narrow standardised test results – it tells us nothing about key aspects of education quality such as the nature of relationships, school environment or community engagement, let alone learning areas such as the arts and technology.

The most damning flaw is that Kevin assumes correlation implies causation. He seems to think that wherever there is a ‘good’ educational outcome in the presence of school autonomy, then there is a causal relationship, even if that has not been the focus of the research. This is a grievous research error.

These research flaws are significant issues for public policy claiming to be ‘evidence-based’. However, for the sake of the debate, let’s assume that such research does tell us something about the effects of autonomy that can be applied in Australia.  Even then the evidence doesn’t stack-up.

 

Claims there is international evidence in support of IPS are wrong

When announcing the IPS policy, Minister Pyne claimed that there was international evidence, based on PISA data, which supports greater autonomy for schools. In fact, that research actually shows that:

….school systems that grant more autonomy to schools to define and elaborate their curricula and assessments tend to perform better than systems that don’t grant such autonomy…. In contrast, greater responsibility in managing resources appears to be unrelated to a school system’s overall performance’ (PISA 2009 Results: What Makes Schools Successful? – Resources, Policies and Practices, Vol. 4: 52).

This of course is the complete opposite to what Minister Pyne is proposing. In his policy the focus is on managing budgets and resources. Far from giving more curriculum freedom as the PISA research suggest should happen, schools must conform to state and national system-wide curriculum guidelines.

 

Clearly the PISA research won’t help the IPS case. So what other international evidence is there?

Kevin uses overseas examples of school ‘autonomy’ in places as varied as the United States, UK, and Africa. In the main, this evidence comes from the extreme ‘privatising public education’ end of the autonomy continuum. This includes models like Charter schools in the United States and Free Schools in England and Sweden, where governments have outsourced the operation of public schools to private corporations, individuals, community organisations, and so on. These schools seek to attract students from traditional public schools across large areas of cities, promising miraculous results.

Well, at best there is mixed evidence that these schools improve educational outcomes; and a lot of evidence about a number of troubling long term effects of unbridled autonomy, not the least of which is that it tends to exacerbate educational inequality. I can give you examples from each of the countries Kevin has named, but I will largely confine myself to Charter schools in the US.

 

United States: Charter Schools

Charter schools in the US receive public funding but are bound by an individual school charter and not by government regulations that apply to state schools. Started about 25 years ago, they are run by education management organisations and not-for-profit groups. They have sought to reduce costs by hiring less experienced teachers; paying teachers and staff less, increasing class sizes, and standardising curriculum. Many pride themselves as having a ‘back to basics’ approach, with constant assessment and performance pay for teachers. By 2012, there were approximately 6000 charter schools with over 2 million students in the US.

It is precisely because the charter sector is comprised of thousands of different entities, it is difficult to generalise about them. They range from schools which run like boot camps, to those which boast progressive pedagogies of the sort despised by Kevin.

As usual, the studies rely on standardised test results. In terms of student learning outcomes, the best that can be said about Charter schools is that the results are very mixed.

Most studies conclude that on average the scores on standardised tests are no different if charter schools and public schools enrol the same kinds of children.

In 2009, the performance of Charter Schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia was assessed by researchers at the Centre for Research on Educational Outcomes (Credo). They found that:

..a decent fraction of charter schools, 17%, provide superior education opportunities for their students. Nearly half of the Charter schools nationwide have results that are no different from the local public school options, and over a third, 37%, deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their students would have realised had they remained in traditional public schools.

This report was consistent with the results of five independent government reports completed between 2003 and 2007. It is possible to find studies which show that Charter schools have improved educational outcomes, such as research by Caroline Hoxby in New York, and the most recent CREDO report (2013), but the research methods used by both have come under strong criticism. However, for every piece of research that Kevin cites, I can produce research which shows the opposite. For these reasons it is pointless to cherry pick research to make the case one way or the other, without looking at the rigour of the research. You can’t just google and quote.

 

The adverse effects of Charter schools which have become big business in the US.

But the research is clear about the adverse effects of Charter Schools which have become big business in the US. A number have started up for-profit chains (e.g., KIPP, GULEN, EDISON), franchising education like Kentucky Fried Chicken. This may not worry Kevin, but it truly worries me, not least because the research tells us that in order to turn a profit many Charter schools engage in practices which would not be tolerated in a public education system serving the common good. For example:

In order to attract custom and improve results, many exclude the weakest students, and enrol lower proportions of disability students and English language learners than traditional public schools. One Charter school in Washington DC had an expulsion rate 28 times as high as the local public schools.

Many hire unqualified teachers, and spend more on administration and less on teaching than traditional public schools.

A number have been mixed up in shady real estate deals, and been closed down because of corruption, embezzlement or bankruptcy.

 

A number of research studies demonstrate that Charter schools diminish three of the most powerful characteristics of public education: diversity, community and collaboration.

First, they tend to segregate by race and class.  Charter schools are more racially segregated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the US. In some areas white students are overrepresented in charter schools while in other charter schools Black and Hispanic students have little exposure to white students.

Second, they destroy local community involvement in public schools as children travel across cities to get to their school of choice.

Third, they have severed any sense of a supportive public system. In an era of high stakes testing, Charter Schools compete, not collaborate with, their public school peers.

 

The failure of Free Schools, a similar model, in the United Kingdom.

Three years ago the UK Minister of Education, Michael Gove established hundreds of Free Schools citing the usual claims that giving principals the power to hire and fire staff, would cause standards to rise. In fact, it seems to be going the other way. A recent OFSTED report shows that the failure rate of free schools is running at three times the national average for state-funded schools. Overall about 78% of state schools are rated as good or outstanding by OFSTED, compared with 68% of Free Schools.

 

Tomorrow’s Schools in New Zealand are not a success story.

Kevin cites the highly devolved New Zealand model, Tomorrow’s Schools, as a success. Leading New Zealand researcher Dr Cathy Wylie (the Head of Research at the NZCER) argues that the self-managing schools model has not resulted in any significant gains in student achievement, new approaches to learning, or greater equality of opportunity since it started in 1989. Instead it has had a number of predictable deleterious effects, such as:

  • creating a system of fragmented schools, where self-interest is dominant;
  • creating competition between schools making it harder for those schools at the bottom of the local competition market;
  • making the principal largely a business leader rather than an educational leader managing property and finances, and marketing;
  • maintaining and widening large gaps in student achievement between rich and poor, with no gains in student achievement overall.

Wiley suggests a return to more central and regional support for schools in New Zealand.

 

Lack of Australian evidence that school autonomy improves outcomes.

What of the Australian research evidence? The Grattan Institute whose previous reports Minister Pyne has quoted enthusiastically, has published a research report which explores the claims about school autonomy and concludes that:

On autonomy, Australia and other countries have the wrong strategy. The world’s best systems have varying levels of autonomy. But it is not central to their reforms. …..Autonomous schools in Australia and other countries are no better at implementing these programs than are centralised schools (from Myth of Markets).

The same conclusion has been reached in a number of other Australian studies. The Productivity Commission’s 2013 report reviewed the literature on autonomy and found ‘… mixed impacts from delegating decision-making authority to schools’; and that greater autonomy for schools is associated with an exacerbation of inequalities.

Kevin has given us another angle on the Australian evidence – the claim that private schools perform better in terms of student outcomes than public schools, and that this can be put down to their greater level of ‘autonomy’. Not only has he again attributed causation by simple correlation without the research evidence, but his basic premise is wrong.

Recent Australian studies contest the premise. Chris Ryan for example in a research study published last year in the Economics of Education Review examines the decline in student achievement as measured by PISA results over the last decade, and found that declines in maths and reading literacy were more apparent in private schools than in state schools.

Other studies – such as Luke Connolly’s research using the 2008 and 2010 NAPLAN results of 15,000 year 5 students and 11,000 year 3 students have found that the NAPLAN scores of students from Catholic and other private schools did not statistically differ from those in public schools – after controlling for factors like household income, health indicators and parent education levels.

 

The West Australia’s model of ‘independent public schools’ is not evidence that IPS works.

At first, Minister Pyne claimed IPS had improved student outcomes in Western Australia. Howevere Melbourne University was commissioned last year to conduct an evaluation of the early years of the IPS reform. Their report stated very clearly that up to now ‘… there is little evidence of changes to students outcomes …’ (and indeed they reported many teachers saying that there had been ‘no change in teaching practice’ since their school had become ‘independent’).

Undeterred by this set-back, Minister Pyne recently turned to his latest evidential life-boat – the small increase in the proportion of students attending public schools in Western Australia which he claims points to the success of IPS. But once again the evidence fails him.

The fact is that over the past three years the mining boom in WA has produced an estimated increase in the population of about 1500 per week, with a consequent increase in the school population of about 10,000 per year. It is this increase which has produced the growth in numbers in public schools, not IPS. And the increase has been across the board in schools which are non-IPS and IPS. Grasping at disconnected fragments of evidence to justify already-determined policy is not the way educational policy should be made.

 

Conclusion

Treating public education as though it is a business designed to make profits rather than a public good which benefits the entire community is to betray its essence. The strength of our public schools depends on their collectivity, cohesion, connection to community, collaboration, and diversity. Destroying these characteristics will not raise standards, it must lower them and widen the inequalities which currently exist in our schools and the wider society. The policy of IPS could irreparably harm our public education system which is so central to the development of Australian society and its democracy.

 

alanreid-1 copy  Alan Reid

This is an edited version of the negative case made by Alan Reid in his debate with Kevin Donnelly held at the ACSA Symposium in Canberra on Friday August 1, 2014. Find the full text  HERE

Professor Alan Reid AM is Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of South Australia. His research interests include education policy, curriculum change, social justice and education, and the history and politics of public education. He has published widely in these areas and gives many talks and papers to professional groups, nationally and internationally. Alan presented the Radford Lecture at the AARE annual conference in December 2012.

 

 

What’s new about dyslexia?

Learning Differences, Teacher education,

A learning disability may be thought as a kind of ailment, difficulty, trouble, condition, even an illness in the eyes of some (with, sometimes, special gifts notwithstanding), and as such a special education teacher is a type of clinician.

Special education teacher as a clinician

We have a dictum in clinical medicine that states that we use treatments because they work, and not necessarily only because they make sense, and, as a corollary, we do not use them if they do not work, even though theory says they should work (change the theory!).   Nonetheless, it is fun to have theories and it is useful to have them as a way, at least, to devise new treatments (hoping that they will work). And, clinicians are commonly interested in the causes of the illness or condition they work with. In the case of developmental dyslexia, and unlike the situation in the 80s and before, many scientists have become interested in dyslexia and its causes, and many theories have emerged, some of which may now be contributing to new ideas for treatments.

Theories and new ideas about dyslexia

Everyone intuits that reading comes through the eyes (unless you are reading Braille), and therefore the visual system could be implicated in dyslexia. As it turns out, based on more recent research, the visual system may indeed be dysfunctional, although it is not clear to what extent the visual problem contributes to the reading difficulty. Some recently published scientific papers show that manipulating the way visual information is provided during reading improves the success rate. Other articles show that playing some action games on your computer or handheld device improves reading ability. Still others have failed to demonstrate significant visual problems in dyslexia and have discarded this as a fundamental explanation. The truth must exist somewhere in the middle, and at least one explanation may be that not all dyslexics are the same.  A convenient and ecumenical hypothesis would be that several systems contribute to learning to read and to reading (not entirely the same thing), and that mixes of deficits in all of these systems are needed for the clinical problem to emerge. In that case, helping out any one of the systems may be enough to get the problem somewhat taken care of.

A majority of researchers (whom the visual fans consider to be a mafia because they are powerful nowadays) are more inclined to blame the language system as the primary cause of dyslexia and pooh-pooh any visual explanation.

Phonetics and dyslexia

There are oodles of data showing some form of language problem in dyslexics, most of which having to do with phonology. Phonology is the study of the sound-structure of a language, and dyslexics have problem playing with language sounds (as in pig-latin and rhyming, for instance), which suggests that they do not know them well enough. However, phonology itself is a complex concept that contains sub-parts, which begs the question as to what part of phonology is involved. Some researchers, including this writer, believe that phonology can be subdivided into phonological grammar and phonetics, which are somewhat independent from each other in principle and in the brain systems that support them. The phonological grammar is the part of phonology that has to do with what sounds go together legally in a particular language (for instance, in English no word has the structure “lc” at the start, but “cl” is allowed, e.g., click, clack, clock). It appears that dyslexics are capable of learning these types of grammatical rules.

On the other hand, they are bad at speech perception, and, in one study, they even showed difficulty distinguishing a natural language from a machine-generated one. As this part of phonology, phonetics, implicates perception, rather than only the cognitive aspects of language, it is reasonable to suggest that dyslexia may originate from the dysfunction of very low level acoustic processors in the brain, soon after a sound first impinges on it at the brainstem, just in from the inner ear.

What does study of the brain have to say about these questions and debates?

Well, the study of the brain is a treacherous as the study of anything else, in that the scientist is prone to find things she can think of, and more rarely discovers things she did not suspect; she is also limited by the tools she has at her disposal. Most brain scientists who study dyslexia nowadays look at the function of the brain while the dyslexic is carrying out a language task.

For this, functional imaging with a magnetic resonance imager is used (like the one your physician uses to diagnose the cause of a headache, for instance, but used in a different way). First, the look is already biased, because language is emphasized (with rare exceptions in the field). Second, the look is biased, because it focuses on the function of the cerebral cortex (the highly folded rind containing most of the brain cells, or neurons, covering the cerebrum, which has grown out of proportion in human beings). It tends to miss the deeper parts of the brain, and misses the brainstem altogether, where more of sensory and perceptual experiences are processed.

There are clearly differences in the ways the brain functions when faced with a language task in dyslexics compared to good readers. For instance, the processing that should be mostly mediated by a given region of the cortex, is displaced both to other regions in the same hemisphere of the brain and to the other hemisphere, which means that the language circuits are altered. Areas that should be quiet during the task are not quiet, and those that should be highly activated are less activated, or not activated at all.

What do these differences mean?

We know that dyslexics read differently already. If the brain tests don’t show it, there is something wrong with the brain tests. Further, the tests have to go beyond showing differences which we already know exist. They have to tell us about mechanisms, the knowledge of which might help us with diagnosing dyslexia earlier, earlier at least than a child’s ability to read, even speak. This is because in dyslexia, as with other developmental cognitive conditions, early diagnosis promises better prevention and treatment. Another potential use of this kind of brain research would be to help us to differentiate among different types of dyslexia, presumably with different treatment approaches, which the reading tests alone may not be able to do. Finally, an altogether different type of scientist is looking for fundamental causes.

What are the genetic and environmental elements that predispose a child to dyslexia?

Some progress has been made in this regard, although I must say that progress has tangibly slowed down in the past couple of years. In order to discover a so-called dyslexia risk gene, it is important to examine literally thousands of people, and this presents a logistical problem for researchers. Some risk genes have been found and confirmed in more than one study (this is important). These genes, interestingly, point to pathways involved both in the structure and function of brain cells (neurons). They involve both neurons in the cerebral cortex and neurons in the deeper structures noted above. In some cases, the neurons may be noisy and unable to represent fine sound distinctions.

This is potentially very exciting, but still too early to make a great deal of. Potential outcomes of this research, if it pans out, would be medications that decrease the neuronal noisiness.

However, it should be stressed that the best therapy in this case would be to quiet down these neurons together with exposing the child to special education. It is not different from what I tell my patients with attention deficit disorder: “Look, this medicine will make your brain more suitable for learning in the classroom and while reading, but it won’t learn for you; you still have to study!

 More is coming

There is a lot more about dyslexia research, and one of the most exciting parts of it is that it dovetails nicely with biological research on other learning and developmental disorders. So, there are lots of people working to make things better. Moreover, there are lots of people making sure that the research is good.

In the end, what we want to do is to diagnose the risk earlier and plug the young children into programs that will lessen the impact of whatever negative neurobiological burden they were born in, while at the same time spending more time developing their particular genius.

 

Professor Albert M. Galaburda is currently in Australia and will be presenting at the  The Learning Difference Convention in Sydney on 6th & 7Th August at Rosehill Gardens Racecourse.

 

al Professor Albert M.Galaburda

Professor Albert M. Galaburda Harvard University USA, is the Emily Fisher Landau Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience Harvard Medical School Co-Director of the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Interfaculty Initiative Harvard University Chief, Division of Cognitive Neurology.