Education Matters (Secondary): October 2018

A content rich, comprehensive, buyer’s guide for schools. www.educationmattersmag.com.au

8 - APR

NOV 201

2019

Principally Speaking: Barker College Health and fitness: Promoting physical activity at school Cyberbullying: Taking action

PREPARING STUDENTS FOR THE FUTURE

EDITOR’S NOTE

It has been an interesting time for the education sector. In late August, Scott Morrison was named as Australia’s 30th Prime Minister. As part of the cabinet reshuffle, a new Minister for Education and Training was also appointed, with the Hon. Dan Tehan MP welcomed into the role. In his first column for Education Matters (see page 58), he discusses the importance of offering the same opportunities to students in regional, rural and remote areas that is afforded to those in metro areas; revealing a series of investments to support secondary students in continuing their studies at tertiary level, regardless of where they live. Part of this funding includes scholarships for regional and remote students to study in fields such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM).

When it comes to the topic of skilling students for the workforce of the future, STEM, robotics and coding continue to dominate discussions. This has led to much talk about the under-representation of females in STEM-related fields, prompting the development of a 10-year plan to help boost the presence of females in STEM (see page 17).

Together with the current focus on skilling students in STEM subjects, more and more innovative new technologies are also continuing to emerge for the classroom, promoting an interactive and immersive learning environment that aims to help improve student engagement. At Coomera Anglican College in Queensland for example, Epson’s laser projectors have helped to create a unique 360 degree immersive learning space (see page 32).

Many forward thinking technology companies are now providing schools with exciting solutions designed to enhance classroom learning. BenQ’s interactive flat panels not only serve as a learning tool, but put student health front and centre too – with features such as an air quality sensor, smart eye care technologies and a germ resistant screen (see page 28). And Scanning Pens is assisting students with reading difficulties, such as dyslexia, to read independently by converting printed text into speech, encouraging greater levels of engagement (see page 34).

Though technologies are typically designed to enhance their environment or assist those that use them, there is always the potential for its misuse. That brings us to this edition’s Hot Topic article, ‘Taking action against cyberbullying’. Speaking with eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, and Manager at the National Centre Against Bullying, Sandra Craig, we investigate the prevalence of cyberbullying, its effects on those involved, and the evidence-based resources available for use in the classroom (see page 20). ContentKeeper also discusses how its sophisticated web filtering solutions can help schools detect harmful online behaviours (see page 26) and Jacaranda explains why Digital Citizenship Education is important for students in the technology-driven world we currently live in (see page 24).

In this issue, along with investigating what can be done to look after the wellbeing of students online, we also turn to their physical wellbeing. With rising youth obesity levels, we speak with a range of experts to learn some of the ways secondary schools can encourage students to look after and maintain their physical health and fitness (see page 52).

It’s an honour to join you for this edition of Education Matters – Secondary. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to email me at danielle.gullaci@primecreative.com.au. You can also sign up to our fortnightly email newsletter, The Whiteboard, by visiting our website educationmattersmag.com. au.

Danielle Gullaci

Editor

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education matters secondary

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contents

SECONDARY November 2018 - April 2019

REGULARS

Editor’s note 4

Advertiser’s directory

8

ASPA column

10

President of the Australian Secondary Principals’ Association, Andrew Pierpoint, talks about how school leaders can prepare themselves for current and future challenges.

News

12

Principally Speaking

16

A snapshot of some of the latest news and developments in the education sector.

Phillip Heath AM, Head of Barker College in Sydney, discusses the importance of preparing students for life after school.

Hot Topic

20

In this edition, we investigate the impact of cyberbullying, and speak with the eSafety Office and National Centre Against Bullying.

Events Diary

62

FEATURES

38 At breaking point?

When it comes to mental health, how can principals identify if they fall into the high risk category? Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at Australian Catholic University, Philip Riley, discusses some of the signs to look out for.

44 The power of marginal gains

How do things like noise and lighting affect learning in the classroom? Education expert, Professor Stephen Heppell, investigates how the small details can make a big difference.

46 Encouraging professional growth

Educational leadership expert, John Eller, looks at some of the strategies principals can adopt to develop successful growth plans with their teaching staff and implement new teaching strategies.

48 Promoting healthy relationships

A new teaching resource called Rosie in the Classroom delves into a range of topical issues that young people may want addressed but often feel too uncomfortable to ask, ranging from sexting to mental health, and friendships to equality.

50 Exploring Australia’s democratic freedoms

Cool Australia and the Australian Human Rights Commission have teamed up to produce a series of engaging and interactive lessons that aim to broaden students’ understanding of democracy and its function throughout history.

52 Discourses of self-regulation and healthism

Lecturer in Human Movement Studies at Charles Sturt University, Rachael Jefferson-Buchanan, examines the new Personal Development, Health and Physical Education K–10 Syllabus developed by the NSW Education Standards Authority.

58 The Last Word

Minister for Education and Training, the Hon. Dan Tehan; Australian Education Union President, Correna Haythorpe; eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant; and Dr Brad Gobby and Dr Rebecca Walker from Curtin University’s School of Education; offer opinion pieces on a variety of topical subjects.

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education matters secondary

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TECHNOLOGY

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

24 Jacaranda

40 AITSL

What sort of skills and knowledge do teachers and students need in order to successfully navigate the digital citizenship maze? Jacaranda explains some of the top reasons students require Digital Citizenship Education.

CEO of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), Lisa Rodgers, discusses the ongoing support the organisation provides to teachers at all stages of their career.

26 ContentKeeper

Sir Ken Robinson has been announced as keynote speaker at EduTECH, the largest education event in the southern hemisphere and Asia Pacific region.

42 EduTECH

Offering sophisticated web filtering solutions, ContentKeeper assists schools to detect harmful online behaviours to help keep staff and students safe while navigating the online world.

47 Monash As Principal at one of Victoria’s most disadvantaged schools, where staff morale was low and only a third of students completed VCE, Michael Devine knew it was time for a shift of focus and change in culture – and it’s reaped significant results.

28 BenQ The smart new RP Series of interactive flat panels

by BenQ incorporate thoughtful systems and design to promote a healthy learning environment that also encourages collaboration and immersion.

BEYOND THE CLASSROOM: HEALTH AND FITNESS SPECIAL FEATURE

30 National FutureSchools Expo Centred around the areas of technology, environment, pedagogy and curriculum, and aimed at the entire K-12 sector, the National FutureSchools Expo is Australia’s largest education showcase.

32 Epson Incorporating six Epson laser projectors, Coomera Anglican College in Queensland unveils a unique 360 degree immersive learning space called The Imaginarium.

34 Scanning Pens For students with reading difficulties such as dyslexia, reading a textbook or the questions on an exam can pose a challenge. Scanning Pens is assisting these students to read independently and become more engaged in the classroom.

HEALTH & WELLBEING

36 Institute of Positive Education Associate Director of the Institute of Positive Education, David Bott, discusses the social, emotional and academic benefits of placing wellbeing science at the heart of education.

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education matters secondary

54 PlayRope With youth obesity levels a major concern, PlayRope discusses the role of outdoor fitness equipment in secondary schools to help increase student fitness and expand physical education programs.

55 a_space Encouraging exercise among students is not only great for their wellbeing, it also has a positive effect in the classroom. As a_space explains, there is a correlation between being physically active and achieving greater academic results.

56 Willplay Play and fitness equipment designer and manufacturer, WillPlay, has launched two new fitness ranges that aim to encourage students to keep physically active at school.

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ASPA COLUMN // Andrew Pierpoint

Supporting school leaders PRESIDENT OF THE AUSTRALIAN SECONDARY PRINCIPALS’ ASSOCIATION (ASPA), ANDREW PIERPOINT DISCUSSES HOW THE ORGANISATION IS ASSISTING SCHOOL LEADERS TO NAVIGATE THROUGH CURRENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES.

Andrew Pierpoint is President of the Australian Secondary Principals’ Association – the peak body for school leaders across Australia. He was previously President of the Queensland Secondary Principals’ Association for four years.

Mr Pierpoint has had over 35 years of experience in high schools as a science teacher, Head of Department (Science), Deputy Principal and Principal, as well as having several system positions in the support of Principals. Throughout his career, he has worked in complex rural and remote communities through to large regional and metropolitan schools. He has led communities and reference groups at district, regional, state and national levels.

Mr Pierpoint’s special interests are the provision of high quality professional learning for school leaders, school leader wellbeing and he is personally highly active in school sport – particularly cricket and golf.

Mr Pierpoint has demonstrated a passion for state education in Queensland for many years and possesses an excellent understanding of the principalship from first hand experience. Most importantly, he has a genuine desire to make a meaningful difference for school leaders in the application of their ever increasing, complex roles in schools and the broader communities they work in.

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Australian public secondary schools serve a pivotal role in the various communities across the nation.

They enrich the lives of children and young people by helping them to reach their potential, play an active role in civic life, act and interact as effective global citizens, and contribute to the economy through work.

Understanding that we are leading our school communities at a time of rapid change and in a world of increasing complexity, ASPA commissioned Professor Alan Reid to write a monograph to help secondary school leaders navigate their way through these contemporary challenges. Our interest was in having him provide a resource that will help to spark educational debate and discussion about contemporary policy and practice, propose some ways forward, and provide a reference point for ASPA’s future decision making.

Professor Reid commences the ASPA monograph – Beyond Certainty: A Process for Thinking About Futures for Australian Education – by outlining its need. He argues that we find ourselves at an educational crossroad, characterised by two competing discourses. We can either support the standardisation agenda (with policy choices such as school choice, competition between schools in an education market, high-stakes standardised testing and narrowing the curriculum) or we can take a futures-focused approach (where the policy choices value flexibility, adaptability, collaboration, agility and school autonomy). The futures-focussed

education matters secondary

Planning is underway to bring together 100 leaders prior to the 2019 Federal Election in an attempt to get political agreement for the profession to be a partner in the setting of policy and key directions.

approach is characterised by student-centred teaching, integrated and project-based learning, inquiry, formative assessment and teacher autonomy.

Professor Reid’s analysis identifies that we need clarity and agreement about the purposes of schooling – he provides four in total – and an understanding of the obstacles or blockages schools face in wanting to honour these.

Importantly, Professor Reid goes beyond identifying what is wrong to show what could be. Firstly, he makes the case for us to adopt a contemporary futures-focused curriculum: one that balances disciplinary learning and interdisciplinary/ multidisciplinary/transdisciplinary learning, and one that actively promotes the development of the general capabilities and of meta-learning.

The ASPA monograph by Professor Alan Reid is

available on the ASPA website, www.aspa.asn.au.

The ASPA Board believes there is considerable potential for all educational leaders – primary and secondary, and Catholic, independent and public sectors – to agree on the key messages of the Professor Reid monograph. To this end, planning is underway to bring together 100 leaders prior to the 2019 Federal Election in an attempt to get political agreement for the profession to be a partner in the setting of policy and key directions.

Leadership is of course central to all the above. Of greatest concern is the lack of a high-quality national leadership development program that underpins the future of secondary education in Australia. Such a high-quality program would have the following fundamental elements: • An emerging leaders’ program that identifies potential leaders and hones those skills for future leadership positions.

• A high quality, leadership orientated induction program that sets out the way forward for the newly appointed leader in the respective jurisdiction. This part of the program must address school leader wellbeing (and continued school leader wellbeing) as enabling of successful leadership.

• A mid leadership career check that promotes successful leaders to mentor emerging leaders and refines leadership skills after a period of school leadership (say 10 to 15 years).

• A high-quality leader retirement program to capture the cultural and systemic leadership knowledge of the leader as he/she prepares to leave the profession.

The role of the various Principals’ Associations has never been more needed by the profession and they have a large role to play in all of the above, in collaboration with jurisdictional authorities.

The time for meaningful change for the future of Australia is now.

The issue of school leader wellbeing continues to be a pillar of ASPA and its jurisdictional affiliates.

Headspace provides outstanding support to school leaders through a five-step training package: 1. S CHOOL LEADERS AND SELF-CARE: PROACTIVE WAYS TO ENHANCE YOUR MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING This session provides preventative, practical and proactive strategies for school leaders to: • Help identify indicators of stress; • Identify potential risks and implement practical strategies to mitigate these risks; • Address potential health and wellbeing challenges; and • Access online resources, apps and services to monitor and enhance a school leader’s wellbeing.

2. EFFECTIVE WELLBEING AND RECOVERY STRATEGIES FOR SCHOOL LEADERS FOLLOWING A CRITICAL INCIDENT This session provides ‘the essentials’ to promote effective recovery for Principals and Deputy Principals post-critical incident. It includes: • Information about ‘normal’ responses to critical incidents that school leaders may experience; • Problematic responses over time; • Practical strategies addressing personal potential health and wellbeing challenges following a critical incident; and • An opportunity to apply a self-reflective process to promote recovery.

3. A SCHOOL LEADER’S GUIDE TO ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL FIRST AID TO THEIR SCHOOL COMMUNITY Principals and Deputy Principals are required to lead their school community through potentially traumatic/ critical incidents and, in order to promote timely recovery, effectively administer psychological first aid to those who may need it. This session outlines: • A process for Principals and Deputy Principals to follow in administering psychological first aid;

education matters secondary

Of greatest concern is the lack of a high-quality national leadership development program.

• Simple and effective strategies to ensure the safety of school community members; and • How to provide immediate support to staff and members of your school community.

4. M ANAGING STAFF WHO ARE EXPERIENCING A MENTAL HEALTH ISSUE: CLARIFYING YOUR ROLE AS A SCHOOL LEADER This session provides: • Noticing the signs of a staff member requiring support for mental health issues; • Proactive approaches in responding to staff with mental health issues; • How to have a conversation with a staff member you are concerned about; • Explore reasonable adjustments at work to help them get and stay well; and • Information to recognise the signs of those staff at risk of suicide.

5. S TRESS REDUCING STRATEGIES TO MANAGE ‘TRICKY’ PEOPLE IN THE SCHOOL COMMUNITY This session covers: • The types of techniques and dynamics that ‘tricky’ people in the school community may use; • Strategies to unravel complex emotional and behavioural problems that members of the school community may present with; • Ways to de-escalate ‘heated’ interactions; and • Provides practical, stress reducing strategies for school leaders.

11

NATIONAL EDUCATION NEWS

Encouraging positive change in the digital world The Office of the eSafety Commissioner has launched a

worlds – individually and as a group – by being supportive

new youth focused educational resource called The YeS

peers, sharing stories and knowing what to do if something

Project, which aims to encourage young people to be positive

goes wrong online.”

influencers and supportive friends in all of their social spaces, especially online.

She added, “It also helps teachers build their capacity in a space that can be uncomfortable and sometimes foreign – but

Aimed at 14 to 17 year olds, the program allows teachers and students to explore online issues including cyberbullying and image-based abuse; to spark important conversations and

one that is vital to understand in order to help young people navigate the online world more safely.”

Using a unique format, teachers can choose from 12

help students to solve some of the problems they are faced

standalone workshops to design a program that works for

with in their online and offline worlds.

their students and school environment.

“As young Australians continue to encounter a range of

“This comprehensive and responsive approach to eSafety

confronting and challenging experiences online, it has never

learning helps to facilitate positive, long-term behavioural

been more important to help young people positively shape

change. Students will develop skills to help lead, influence,

their digital practices and support their peers,” said Julie

mentor and support their fellow peers,” said Ms Inman Grant.

Inman Grant, eSafety Commissioner.

“Reassuringly, our research suggests that young people

This digital and social health program is mapped against the Australian curriculum, and mirrors other health education

are able to recognise the positive outcomes that arise from

initiatives, using an ethics framework to support young people

negative incidents online, like knowing how to manage these

caring for themselves, their peers and their worlds.

risks or helping a friend through online strife.

“The YeS Project aims to build on these behaviours,” she said, “empowering students to positively influence their online

Teachers can download The YeS Project free Workshop Handbook and Educator Guide, including a conversation starter video by visiting www.esafety.gov.au.

Coding challenge set to boost STEM learning A new coding program has been launched in New South

“The workplace is changing before our eyes and this challenge will prepare students for new industries which are emerging in innovative, high-tech sectors.”

New South Wales Premier, Gladys Berejiklian

12

Acting NSW Chief Scientist, Dr Chris Armstrong, added

Wales to help prepare high school students for the jobs of the

that the program will boost STEM capabilities across the

future by giving them hands-on experience in the basics of

state. “This challenge will not only enable students to see

computer programming.

first-hand how computational technology works, but also

Open to Year 7 and Year 8 students, the Premier’s Coding Challenge was launched by New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

give them a sense of how innovative thinking can offer smart solutions to real-world problems.”

Students will use a MAAS ThinkerShield coding kit.

“As part of the coding challenge students at 50 high

“We have developed the ThinkerShield to provide an

schools across the state will use a specialised coding kit to

engaging STEM learning experience. It will be fascinating

develop their programming skills,” Ms Berejiklian said.

to see how budding scientists and engineers apply this

“The workplace is changing before our eyes and this

technology in new ways,” explained President of the Trust

challenge will prepare students for new industries which are

of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS),

emerging in innovative, high-tech sectors.

Barney Glover.

“These new industries are creating limitless career

Students and teachers who take part in the Premier’s

opportunities for people with the appropriate skills and there is

Coding Challenge will receive a bronze, silver, gold or

no better time to acquire those skills than in high school.”

diamond level achievement award.

education matters secondary

10-year plan for women in STEM The Australian Academy of Science is working to develop a

business capability,” she added.

10-year plan, on behalf of the Federal Government, to boost

“The Australian Government announced the 10-year plan

women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths and

in the 2018-19 Budget – one of a suite of new measures and

address the under-representation of females in STEM at

$4.5 million in new funding to encourage more women to

schools, universities and in the workplace.

pursue STEM education and careers. This funding builds on

Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Karen Andrews, said the 10-year plan, announced by the Government in the 2018-19 Budget and to be developed by

previous investments made through the National Innovation and Science Agenda of $13 million.”

Minister for Jobs and Industrial Relations and Minister for

the sector, would be a roadmap to create gender equity for

Women, Kelly O’Dwyer, said there are many talented women

STEM.

already working or studying in STEM careers and there are

“Getting more girls and women studying and working in STEM is a priority for the Government. We made an

great opportunities to boost women in STEM. “2018 Australian of the Year, Professor Michelle

investment in the Budget and this consultation is an

Simmons, demonstrates just what can be achieved by

important step,” said Minister Andrews, who is also a

women in STEM,” Minister O’Dwyer said.

mechanical engineer and one of the first two female graduates from the Queensland University of Technology.

“Increasing participation in STEM by girls and women

“STEM skills are critical to future jobs and to Australia’s ongoing prosperity. We can’t compete with countries around

“Increasing participation in STEM by girls and women isn’t just about equity and individual opportunity, it is about the strength of Australia’s research and our scientific and business capability.”

the world with one hand tied behind our backs – we need all

isn’t just about equity and individual opportunity, it is about

Australians to have the same opportunities to study and work

the strength of Australia’s research and our scientific and

in STEM related careers.”

Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Karen Andrews

NATIONAL EDUCATION NEWS

Supporting quality teachers in the classroom Following an extensive review of teacher registration, several recommendations have

Expert panel member Gabrielle Sinclair explained that making teacher registration

been put forward which aim to support the professional growth and recognition of

universal for all early childhood teachers is a critical step towards the recognition of

teachers, reduce red tape and give the community confidence that all teachers keep

the importance of early childhood development and education in Australia.

their children safe.

“We know that well qualified and experienced early childhood teachers make a

Education Ministers from all states, territories and the Commonwealth initiated the national review, which began in February 2018. An expert panel was appointed to lead the review and the report ‘One Teaching Profession: Teacher Registration in Australia’ was released in September.

critical contribution to the quality of children’s early development and preparation for lifelong learning,” Ms Sinclair said.

“Recognising all early childhood teachers as part of the profession through registration is an important step in acknowledging their status in the education sector.”

Findings from the review will assist in streamlining processes so that teachers can seamlessly transfer across the nation, bringing all early childhood teachers into teacher registration, and making stronger links between teacher registration and the different career stages of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.

Several recommendations make stronger links between teacher registration and the Teacher Standards at different career stages.

Expert Panel member Marino D’Ortenzio said the panel found effective teacher registration is a shared endeavour between teachers, the profession and employers.

Chair of the expert panel and deputy chair at the Australian Institute for Teaching

“To gain full registration teachers must show they meet the Proficient career stage of

and School Leadership (AITSL), Chris Wardlaw PSM said, “The states and territories have

the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers,” he said. “High quality induction

regulators that are already doing a good job at supporting the professional growth of

and mentoring is essential to support early career teachers’ transition and to gain full

teachers through registration. These recommendations provide clear and practical steps

registration.”

to maintain or improve the high standards of the profession, strengthen child safety, and streamline teacher registration across Australia.

Other recommendations relate to better aligning requirements for qualifications for vocational education and training (VET) trainers/assessors and VET teachers delivering

“Professional registration is the hallmark of a true profession and ensures that only people who meet standards of quality and suitability can be teachers.”

VET to secondary students; supporting children’s safety through better information sharing; and improving the processes for registered teachers to move between

He revealed that the expert panel consulted widely with the teaching profession, with over 6500 teachers and school leaders involved in the review. “They told

states and territories and various sectors.

The next steps will be for AITSL to work with key stakeholders and

us they are proud to teach in our schools and want to be considered part of one

education authorities to draft an implementation plan for all state, territory

profession with colleagues who are also meeting standards of quality and suitability,”

and commonwealth education ministers to consider at Education Council in

Mr Wardlaw added.

December 2018.

Trial program for students with disabilities Over 100 schools across Victoria will take part in a pilot program that aims to better

achievement for students with disabilities.

assess the learning requirements of students with disabilities and additional needs.

“Building the Education State means creating an inclusive education system

The new assessment focuses on a student’s strengths and functional needs, to

that gives students of all abilities the chance to succeed and thrive in school and

identify any adjustments or support required at school level.

life,” said Victorian Minister for Education, James Merlino.

Drawing on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health developed by the World Health Organisation, the assessment shifts the focus away from a student’s medical diagnosis, instead focusing on their educational needs.

It is based on a key recommendation from the comprehensive 2016 review of the Program for Students with Disabilities, which found that a strengthbased approach would help to maximise the level of independence and

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“It’s vital that our schools inspire a lifelong passion for learning and having a disability or additional need shouldn’t be a barrier to that.”

A range of primary, secondary, combined and specialist schools across Victoria are taking part in the six-month pilot prog.

The program is part of the Victorian Government’s inclusive education initiatives for students with a disability and/or additional learning needs.

education matters secondary

Maths teacher honoured for innovative teaching approach For her inspirational approach to fostering mathematics learning and the

engagement of girls and their mathematical success in and beyond the classroom,”

engagement of female students, a NSW teacher was named the nation’s top Maths

said Janine McIntosh, AMSI Schools Program Manager and Choose Maths

teacher at the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) Choose Maths

Project Director.

Awards, which were held in Melbourne on 7 September 2018.

Presented by BHP Principal Diversity and Inclusion, Fiona Vines, a total of ten

Driven by her passion for technology and empowering girls, Hunter Performing Arts School teacher Corrine Vingerhoed, received the 2018 Mentoring Girls in

teachers were recognised at the presentation, including two $10,000 Outstanding Teacher Awards and seven $1000 Excellence Awards.

Maths award, which includes a $20,000 prize to be shared with her school.

The 2018 Outstanding Primary and Outstanding Secondary Teacher awards went

This award recognises her leadership of a program that has used technology, robots, industry mentors and extra support to empower girls across the school.

to Singleton Primary School (WA) teacher, Sheila Griffin and Mt Waverley Secondary College (VIC) Leading Teacher and Head of Student Voice, Haley Dureau.

With 70 per cent of the school’s students being female, Ms Vingerhoed’s

Now in their third year, the national teacher and student Choose Maths Awards are

innovative approach is fuelled by the limitations of her own high-school experience

part of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute’s Choose Maths project funded

and the lack of female maths role models.

by the BHP Billiton Foundation.

Wanting more for her students, she is changing how maths is taught at

“The BHP Billiton Foundation congratulates the 2018 teacher and student winners

her school, giving students the opportunity to unleash their maths and STEM

for their outstanding achievements,” said James Ensor, BHP Billiton Foundation Chief

superpowers – with extraordinary results.

Executive. “The calibre of this year’s entries bodes well for Australia’s mathematical

“Corrine is very deserving of this recognition for her commitment to fostering

capability into the future.”

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PRINCIPALLY SPEAKING // BARKER COLLEGE

Preparing for the future PHILLIP HEATH AM, HEAD OF BARKER COLLEGE IN SYDNEY, SPEAKS TO EDUCATION MATTERS ABOUT CREATING A SCHOOL CULTURE BASED ON COMMUNITY AND GRATITUDE, AND DISCUSSES THE IMPORTANCE OF PREPARING STUDENTS FOR LIFE BEYOND THE SCHOOL GATES.

HOW HAS BARKER COLLEGE TRANSITIONED FROM ONE OF SYDNEY’S OLDEST BOYS SCHOOLS TO BECOMING CO-EDUCATIONAL? Barker College will turn 130 in 2020, when girls join us in Year 7 for the first time. Girls were actually here on the first day in 1890 when the school opened but they didn’t make the transition to the Hornsby site when we moved.

Year 11 and 12 co-education began at Barker College in 1975. That was really successful, people really appreciated it and the numbers were strong. In 2000, we extended co-education to Year 10. Then in 2016, we made the decision to transition into full co-education.

This decision was based around two strands of research. Internally, this was around the views of the efficacy of what we had been doing for over 40 years of co-education in the Senior School; looking at if it worked and if it did, why?

The second strand was a research program that looked at what the literature definitively says about what is better – single sex or coeducation? On the first strand, the overwhelming evidence was that there was an extremely high level of satisfaction from past, present and prospective students and families in regards to co-education.

The research was based on hard data, it was not speculative. When we reviewed the literature, we found that some of the research findings from before the year 2000 said that girls did better in single sex schools; but that has changed in the past 18 years. Gender is not playing the same role as it used to in regards to learning outcomes.

On the basis of our findings, we were satisfied that the timing was right for Barker College to proceed to co-education.

We live in a world where your gender is so much less of a determinant of your contribution to society beyond the school gates and we need to respond to that.

WHAT IS BARKER COLLEGE’S PHILOSOPHY AND HOW DOES IT GUIDE YOU AND YOUR STAFF? Barker College is a Christian school in the

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Anglican tradition. Purpose and mission flows from that. The long history of the school has been formed by that Christian purpose and identity, but it operates in the real world where many who don’t ascribe to that tradition still fit into the school.

We express that mission and purpose in such language that we want it to be inspiring to everybody in every purpose and every way.

We seek to inspire hope and have a global view of what hope looks like. That’s a lens through which we view all our purposes and all our decision making. Is it going to inspire every student, teacher and person that comes on site?

It is taking the idea of inspiring us to bring life into something literally. What is it that breathes into your soul and your mind? That’s what our classrooms should be like. It is unthinkable for a school to be dull or boring or a class to be something that you have to endure.

The school motto is Honor, non Honores. That means seek goodness not rewards, honour not honours, be worthwhile and contribute to the community at large, not just yourself, and do it without intention of rewards. Do what’s good for it’s own sake not what it will bring you. The process is more important than the victory. That’s a very significantly different organising principle.

And that’s not new, the founder of Barker College set that in place.

I’ve been in schools where the motto doesn’t mean a lot, but at Barker College, this one does.

It is known by the kids, by the alumni, and it is very powerful. I try to use that as an organising principle.

HOW DOES BARKER COLLEGE DIFFER FROM OTHER SCHOOLS? Most schools do things mostly the same, most of the time. All revert back to that because it’s safe.

Differences often exude in a world where people are searching for safe. Differences often seem faintly suspicious.

The literature says about 80% of what all schools do is the same. Schools should search out the 20% of what makes them unique.

HOW DO YOU PROVIDE SUPPORT AND LEADERSHIP TO YOUR STAFF? I think the starting point is trust. If I want to be trusted I have to first trust. I need to ensure I trust staff well enough to share, to include them in decision making, and ensure they have influence on strategy and purpose. The story becomes about all of us together. Once you trust, you then must empower, set expectations and get out of the way. Don’t make staff second-guess or think they are constantly searching for someone else’s mountaintop – they must find their own mountaintop.

Barker College employs 600 staff, with over 300 of them teaching staff. I’ve been blessed with some excellent staff who are miles better at teaching than I am so why would I get in the way anyway.

Phillip Heath was awarded a Member (AM) in the general division of the Order of Australia, as part of the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

You’re told how much of the curriculum you need to teach and the timetable is already defined, so what is left is the culture and the culture is like an iceberg. There is the part you see and what is beneath it, what you say you are going to do and what you actually do when it’s not on show. That’s where your culture is. I like to think that is what makes us different, not unique, but different. It all comes down to culture, that deeply laden culture that tells me to be a member of this community.

That’s where the 20% of differentiation lies.

WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF BARKER COLLEGE? It was founded by an Anglican clergyman as a little parish school, in Kurrajong in 1890. He ran and owned the school. It was then relocated to this site in Hornsby.

It was intended to provide an educational program to matriculate to the University of Sydney in an Anglican Christian setting, and we haven’t deviated from that purpose.

The school was then purchased by a lay person called Carter who in 1919 sold it to the Anglican Diocese and since then, the property has been held in their trust.

We have a distinguished record of outstanding alumni – people like film director Philip Noyce, Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil, comedian Chris

Lilly, journalist Mike Carlton, David Astle who creates the crosswords for Fairfax, cricketer Lisa Sthalekar, Sue Fear the mountaineer – some really impressive people have come through the school.

Barker College has a distinguished history and I’m conscious of being a custodian of that for some time.

IN WHAT WAYS HAS THE COLLEGE EVOLVED IN THE PAST 10-20 YEARS? The move towards co-education has been really important. The extension of and the flourishing of the co-education program has been instinctive over that period.

In the last five years, the Indigenous program has been next level and really exciting.

The robotics program over the past six years is also very important. For the last four years, we have sent students to the World Robotics Final in Texas. They have been among the top ranked teams in that. Our students have been moving around in international settings and doing really well. Their work in the robotics and STEM areas are really strong. We are doing our bit to make sure that people understand that Australian students are ingenious and effective. They bring capability and a little bit of a competitive streak too.

Some of our students will also be taking part in a robotics program in Hangzhou, China.

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HOW DO YOU ENCOURAGE WELLBEING AMONG YOUR STAFF AND STUDENTS? The school has just appointed a Director of Wellbeing and established the Thrive Program, which is built on four pillars. In the academic program its enquiry and rhetoric, as instruments to develop the mind. In the wellness space we have created two big ideas that are actually quite simple. One is gratitude, which is about being grateful for everything that happens to us, even the bad things, because they are gifts. The other thing is service, the good things for which I am grateful need to be passed on to others. These sit at the heart of the school. The Director of Wellbeing will help to operationalise these things for staff, students and parents.

WHAT ROLE DO YOU PLAY IN THE DAY-TO-DAY ACTIVITIES OF THE STUDENTS? I visit classrooms every day. I write birthday cards for every staff member and student and deliver them each day. I go to their classrooms. I sometimes direct school musicals. I don’t think you can influence a culture unless you are present.

The other thing is to seek a personal connection with as many staff and students as you can. Know their story and listen to them. I have a listening chair, with the legs sawn off and I sit there and we talk, usually they will start by saying what they think I want to hear but then we get further than that.

I strongly believe in cultural and symbolic leadership. You can’t influence a community unless you are present. There will be a thousand random things that happen in a day but do what you need to do to develop the sort of culture you want it to be.

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PRINCIPALLY SPEAKING // BARKER COLLEGE

WHAT WOULD YOU IDENTIFY AS SOME OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES FACING STUDENTS OF TODAY? We are in the best of times and the worst of times and I’m not the first to have said so. The world is so available but so complex and that makes it really hard and is having a big impact on what it is to be human.

How does an emerging adult respond to a world that purports to be so available yet so menacing at times? Finding your place in the world is enormously stressful and relentless. I think this is a new pressure that is unique to this generation. We must frame wellbeing programs around those notions, around stillness, respectfulness, mindfulness, prayerfulness, and the recognition of a deep sense of gratitude. We are living in a completely different world to anything that ever existed before.

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT EITHER AS A TEACHER OR SPECIFICALLY IN THE ROLE OF PRINCIPAL? It’s always about the students – about a life that has been touched or transformed in some way, where a student learns something they never thought they

could do, or stared down their own barrel of selfdoubt, or was on a destructive path but has reformed.

Education is about transformation, taking you from where you were to somewhere else.

I’ve also been very privileged to see so many significant moments in schools but none surpass the creation of two schools for Indigenous students. They are the moments that give me the greatest sense of achievement.

YOU HAVE BEEN RECOGNISED FOR YOUR WORK IN CREATING GREATER OPPORTUNITIES FOR INDIGENOUS STUDENTS. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE INITIATIVES YOU HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN? The first of these was the establishment of Gawura, which reached out to Indigenous children in Redfern and the inner city. It was the first school of its kind in Australia. It started in 2007 and from humble beginnings, it continues to thrive. A number of students who have been through the school have now gone to university. They are the first of their generation to become part of the leadership story for emerging Aboriginal leadership in this country.

Then in 2016, the second of these kinds of programs

Mr Heath with students from Darkinjung Barker on New South Wales’ Central Coast.

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began with the opening of Darkinjung Barker on New South Wales’ Central Coast. We started this little school focused on the same idea as Gawura – to provide for and allow our Aboriginal children to thrive. It is now in its third year, with stunning results.

Now, we are working with the remote Aboriginal communities in the Utopia homelands in Central Australia, to explore the creation of another school for Aboriginal children, in Mulga Bore, in the middle of the dessert. They are Eastern Arrernte speakers, so still speak the traditional language and practice lore. We are working with the community to honour those traditional approaches to culture and learning and adapt the Australian curriculum around those traditional approaches. We are planning to start something during the second half of 2019.

WHAT ARE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT NAPLAN AND ITS EFFECTIVENESS? I am a fan of NAPLAN. It is a diagnostic tool that is enormously helpful. If it was extinguished today, I think I would be looking for something to replace it tomorrow. There is a lot of catastrophising about

NAPLAN and that isn’t helpful. It is not so much the instrument that is the issue, but the way it is viewed and the way it is being used that is the concern.

WHAT TRAITS MAKE FOR AN EFFECTIVE AND SUCCESSFUL LEADER IN EDUCATION TODAY? I think to some extent these qualities were always necessary – but then you probably need one more that wasn’t previously the case. Great leadership depends upon a big vision, a lot of love for the community you are trying to deliver that vision to, a passionate interest in humans thriving, recognising the boundless potential of every person that comes in front of you and never putting limitations on that based on test scores or judgements. Those qualities have always been necessary in school leadership, but I think what is different now is agility.

Around the vision or strategy, be prepared to hold things loosely so that you can be responsive to the changing circumstances that are before us. Schools

Mr Heath is very involved in all aspects of the school life of his students, visiting classrooms everyday.

in 2020 will look the same yet look very different.

The other reality is that children entering schools now will still be in the workforce in 2085. We all talk about a 21st century school but really we should be thinking about a 22nd century school. Where are we

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going? We can’t even begin to imagine.

Before, if you ran a good school, and every year looked like the previous year, you were often revered.

This isn’t the case any more. We need to know what to hold onto and what to let go of.

HOT TOPIC // CYBERBULLYING

Taking action against cyberbullying CYBERBULLYING CAN HAVE A SERIOUS EFFECT ON THOSE INVOLVED, WITH THE POTENTIAL TO IMPACT ON A STUDENT’S SOCIAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND EVEN PHYSICAL WELLBEING. BUT WHAT ARE SOME OF THE WARNING SIGNS THAT A STUDENT IS BEING CYBERBULLIED AND WHAT MEASURES CAN WE TAKE TO HELP PREVENT IT?

Cyberbullying is the act of intentionally inciting hurt towards another person through the use of technology, such as phones or computers.

Some of the ways cyberbullying can be carried out include text messages, emails, social media, chat rooms and websites. And, the effects of cyberbullying don’t always end as soon as the bullying stops. For some, it can contribute to low self-esteem and reduced academic performance, with long-reaching consequences. eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, who commenced her five-year-appointment to the role in January 2017, defines cyberbullying as a social and behavioural issue that plays out in a technological sphere, pointing out that it is not caused by the technology itself. “With that

said, apps and social media services are misused to bully and harass others. Widely used apps by young people are generally the platforms of choice, however we know other apps, like anonymous messaging apps, can also be a breeding ground for this insidious behaviour,” she says.

“As apps and technology continue to evolve, we are working to encourage industry to better protect young users by building safety by design principles into the development process – at the outset, before a new app or product is released.”

According to Sandra Craig, Manager at the National Centre Against Bullying (NCAB), at The Alannah & Madeline Foundation, taking a restorative view of the bullying situation is a

The eSafety Office reports that 1 in 5 Australians aged 8 to 17 experience cyberbullying.

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more effective approach than simply labelling those involved in the incident as victims and bullies. “Roles can and do switch very easily – the bullying student one day can be targeted the next.

So it’s important not to demonise kids who are bullying, but to look at their behaviour and see how it can be amended,” she says.

An initiative of the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, NCAB is a peak body that aims to advise and inform the Australian community on the issue of childhood bullying and the creation of safe schools and communities, including issues relating to cyber safety.

“When we talk about restorative solutions, we’re talking about a philosophy that acknowledges that when a person does harm to another person they also harm themselves and the whole community. That harm needs to be repaired. The process of reparation means educating young people to understand that others have been affected by their behaviour and involves a plan for their future behaviour. The key thing is for the bullying to stop. This is usually all the bullied kid wants: punishment is a point of view that tends to deny growth of empathy and civil behaviour,” explains Ms Craig. “Needless to say, restorative processes are not a quick fix. While some schools expel students, there is evidence showing this is a poor outcome for the student and those close to them, at the time and into the future.”

In 2015, the eSafety Office was established with a mandate to coordinate and lead the online safety efforts across government, industry and the not-for-profit community. It is legislated to take action on any cyberbullying material that is likely

to be seriously threatening, seriously intimidating, seriously harassing or seriously humiliating to an Australian child.

Research from the eSafety Office shows that one in five Australians aged 8 to 17 experience cyberbullying, while one in four are physically bullied.

“From the 900 cyberbullying reports into our office, the average age of a target is 14, and girls report more so than boys. We also know that the majority of reports appear to be peer-based and an extension of the face-to-face bullying a child might be experiencing within the school gates,” says Ms Inman Grant.

Figures show a strong degree of equivalence between those who are bullied on and offline, and those who bully in both ways.

“There is a growing consensus that many, if not most adolescents who are victimised online or by text messaging also experience traditional forms of bullying at school,” adds Ms Craig.

She highlights a research paper titled ‘Impacts of traditional bullying and cyberbullying on the mental health of middle school and high school students’ (2015), published in the Psychology in the Schools academic journal, Vol. 52 (6); where authors Craig Hase and Simon Goldberg from the University of Wisconsin; and Douglas Smith, Andrew Stuck and Jessica Campain from Southern Oregon University; cite a number of researchers who have compared traditionally bullied and cyberbullied victims, referencing the following rates: • Juvonen and Gross revealed overlap rates of 65% in ‘Extending the school grounds? Bullying experiences in cyberspace’, as published in the Journal of School Health (2008); • Hinduja and Patchin reported overlap rates as high as 85% in ‘Cyberbullying: An exploratory analysis of factors related to offending and victimization’, as published in Deviant Behavior (2008); • While some investigators reported overlap rates to be as high as 93%.

“Here at the National Centre Against Bullying, we see bullying as a relationship based problem – that is, something has broken down in a relationship.

That having been said, the best place to address the situation and work towards restoring the relationship is within the place where the bullying occurs – most often a school, but also at sporting clubs, businesses, etc,” says Ms Craig.

Research shows a strong correlation between face-to-face bullying and cyberbullying.

“The most important thing we can do to combat cyberbullying is to prevent these behaviours from occurring by educating and equipping our young people with the four Rs of online safety for the digital age: respect, resilience, responsibility and reasoning.”

NCAB identifies several types of cyberbullying.

These include: • Assuming the identity of another person and representing them in a negative manner. For example, posting embarrassing or nasty messages that can damage their relationship with others; • Sending anonymous texts; • Posting anonymously on a website; • Mean, insulting, rude or offensive content sent directly to the target; • Spreading rumours; • Sending or distributing sexual messages or images; • Outing or sharing secrets; • Creating hate sites; and • Exclusion.

The most common types of cyberbullying reported into the eSafety Office include serious threats of harm or incitement to suicide, the setting up of fake profiles and the posting of offensive or upsetting photos. “But, young people also tell us that

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covert bullying and social exclusion are distressing forms of online drama they experience,” adds Ms Inman Grant.

While cyberbullying is often visible to peers online, she explains that it may be hidden away from parents and teachers. “Of further concern, our research shows only 55% of young people spoke to an adult, and just 8% spoke to a teacher or principal about a negative online issue. So, while it may be difficult for teachers – and parents – to pinpoint if a young person is suffering, there are signs to look out for. These include a change in friendship groups, a decline in school grades, they appear upset, nervous or secretive when using their devices or their attendance at school slips.”

Ms Inman Grant says that if a teacher becomes aware of a student who is being cyberbullied, they should follow the school’s policy or procedure on handling bullying and cyberbullying. “Generally, we encourage a trusted adult to listen carefully in a non-

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HOT TOPIC // CYBERBULLYING

judgmental manner, find out as much information as possible and ask students to collect screenshots for evidence. Encourage them to use the reporting and blocking tools on the social media service or app, and to report to the eSafety Office if the harmful content has not been removed within 48 hours. If the child is struggling to open up, encourage them to contact Kids Helpline, which can provide 24/7 confidential advice and support,” she explains.

“The most important thing we can do to combat cyberbullying is to prevent these behaviours from occurring by educating and equipping our young people with the four Rs of online safety for the digital age: respect, resilience, responsibility and reasoning.

These skills should be reinforced consistently

online behaviours; the award-winning Rewrite Your Story video series that addresses the complex issues of cyberbullying and how to deal with its challenges, accompanied by lesson plans; and the recently launched video game, The Lost Summer, designed specifically for the classroom and targeted at students from 11 to 14 years of age.

The Lost Summer is the first video game to be created by the eSafety Office. Encouraging digital intelligence and online safety skills among students, it immerses players in a futuristic environment where they are required to exercise skills such as critical thinking, empathy, resilience, respect and responsibility to complete challenges and advance through the game.

Though cyberbullying is visible to others online, it is often hidden from parents and teachers.

throughout a child’s educational experience. There are a range of evidence-based resources currently available and mapped to the National Curriculum, including online safety education resources developed by the eSafety Office.”

Ms Inman Grant points to the eSafety Office’s Young & eSafe website, which offers lesson plans targeted towards Years 9 and 10, with practical exercises to reinforce respectful and responsible

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“As we know, gamification is a great way to engage students and allow them to practice skills in a fun and interactive environment. The Lost Summer is an engaging way to get young Australians thinking about the social and emotional skills they need to navigate the online world safely. We’ve created a gamified experience that will resonate with young people as they learn the importance of digital intelligence,” says Ms Inman Grant.

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The video game also aims to address issues with in-game bullying, with research from the eSafety Office showing that 17% of those aged 8 to 17 who play multiplayer games online were bullied or abused during gameplay. “Young people are bound to encounter negative online experiences – it’s not if but when. We need to provide young people with solutionfocused strategies to ensure they can bounce back from tough situations. The Lost Summer empowers young people to be agents of positive change online,” Ms Inman Grant adds.

Both the eSafety Office and NCAB agree that the key to reducing bullying starts with prevention.

When it comes to preventing and addressing bullying, NCAB advocates a whole-school approach that involves all members of the school’s community rather than relying only on programmatic solutions.

The Alannah & Madeline Foundation’s eSmart Schools initiative, now in use at over 2300 Australian schools, is a holistic system designed to assist schools to address bullying, cybersafety and wellbeing through its organisation, policies, curriculum, pedagogy and relationships with families. The Foundation also offers ‘Connect’ seminars and workshops on topics that include cybersafety, gaming, bullying and respectful relationships.

The eSafety Office is also running a new series of professional development webinars for teachers, including modules on Preventing and Managing Cyberbullying, and Safety and Respect Online.

“As schools are often at the coalface of these social issues, they play an important role in preventing, identifying and responding to cyberbullying incidents. We encourage schools to implement robust policies and procedures for dealing with online issues such as cyberbullying, and to review these on a regular basis,” adds Ms Inman Grant. “It’s important these policies and procedures are widely consulted on – with staff, parents, and students where appropriate.

Policies should be promoted and even sent home for parent or carer’s signatures to ensure the whole school community is aware of the expectations and procedures in place should this behaviour occur. The eSafety Office provides an eSafety checklist and a parent communication and engagement strategy for school leadership teams to help improve current policies and the ways they communicate about online issues with parents.”

Protect yourself, your students and your school With Jacaranda’s new Digital Citizenship Professional Development course for teachers, school leaders and education specialists

Accredited by the Australian Children’s eSafety Commissioner, this course is for teachers who want to become responsible digital citizens and have the expertise to discuss these issues with students.

Jacaranda

Digital Citizenship PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR TEACHERS

Why do teachers need digital citizenship education?

Online safety

Curriculum alignment

Gives teachers the skills to maintain a safe online presence

Gives teachers confidence in their coverage of the ICT capability requirements

Links to student resource

Duty of care

Receive a complimentary copy of the student version per license or purchase

Provides proof of ‘duty of care’ and promotes proactive intervention of issues

Professional development

Learn the lingo

Receive a certificate worth four hours to contribute to professional development requirements

Learn the language and explore issues to better understand the perspective of students

Accredited by the Australian Children’s eSafety Commissioner, the complete online digital citizenship education tool for Year 6–8 students.

What students love about the course Engaging videos

Interactive glossary

Videos containing a mix of experts and young people describing their experiences online.

An interactive glossary is available for any terms that are not understood.

Skills checklists

Review and reflect

Checklists contain each of the ninety skills required and the tips to help achieve that skill.

Quiz review screens provide links to educational resources relevant to the question.

Quizzes, activities and games

Immediate feedback

A topic-relevant range of interactive questions, educational activities and games is included.

Concise and easy to understand feedback is provided for each question response.

Learn about the course, including pricing, features and more at

www.jacaranda.com.au/cyberpass education matters secondary

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TECHNOLOGY // JACARANDA

The case for digital citizenship education WITH DIGITAL AND ONLINE TECHNOLOGIES BECOMING MORE AND MORE POPULAR FOR THE CLASSROOM, JACARANDA EXPLAINS WHY STUDENTS AND TEACHERS SHOULD ARM THEMSELVES WITH THE SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE TO SUCCESSFULLY NAVIGATE THE DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP MAZE.

Technology enables a wonderful interchange of ideas and thoughts, provides rich learning opportunities, engages students and can streamline teachers’ workloads. Although it offers all these amazing things, it has also created a whole new world of unique considerations.

Here, we look at the top four reasons why students and teachers require Digital Citizenship Education.

REASON 1: MEET COMMUNITY EXPECTATIONS As is so often seen in the media, when a student makes a serious misstep on social platforms, the school also finds itself in the spotlight. All schools are charged with developing students’ ICT capability in the Australian Curriculum – and that includes teaching them to be safe and responsible online. While parents ideally play a vital role in supervising their children’s online

activities, in many families parents are less digitally skilled than their teenage children.

Therefore, the leadership role of schools in educating students and parents is paramount.

By empowering teachers and students with formal education, schools are meeting a ‘duty of care’ and can use that expertise to build a positive, informed culture around online behaviour.

Professional learning can assist teachers to guide students on how to use technology safely and responsibly.

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Australian children aged 10 to 14 years spend an average of 23 hours online per week outside of school.

REASON 2: DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS DO NOT WASH AWAY On average, Australian children aged 10 to 14 years have two active social media accounts and spend 23 hours online per week outside of school. Although teachers can’t be expected to supervise this activity, they are well-positioned to help students understand that everything they do online has an impact; sometimes an irretrievable one. With social media, the content students post about themselves or others can be shared, used or altered without their permission, and can very quickly escalate out of their control.

Understanding concepts such as ‘digital footprint’ and ‘digital reputation’ and being able to explain these to students is vital, because any damage to a young person’s reputation can last for years online – for example, when a potential employer searches their name during background checks. The topic of sexting and the legal issues around it also requires essential guidance.

REASON 3: HELP COUNTER CYBERBULLYING It is reported that 1 in 10 kids are bullied online and feel constantly anxious as a result. This anxiety stems

from the fact that they know they can be targeted anywhere – even in the safety of their home. The reality is, in most instances, students won’t want to talk to an adult if they are experiencing cyberbullying, and without proper education rarely possess the skills to manage these threats. Students aren’t the only ones affected by cyberbullying, teachers are also found manning the frontline when it comes to these issues. Teachers are tasked with detecting bullying and helping schools meet their student welfare obligations. Professional learning assists teachers to guide students towards safe and responsible technology use, and to successfully communicate what constitutes cyberbullying.

REASON 4: THE BUSINESS END This is the stuff that doesn’t make the news but is essential for teachers and students to know. When conducting so much of our lives on the net, it would be crazy not to understand who owns what online, how to protect our personal and student data, and how to manage our privacy settings. What’s more, teachers and students alike need to understand the correct and legal use of internet content for research.

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HOW JACARANDA CAN HELP The good news is if your school needs help with digital citizenship education, Jacaranda has two Digital Citizenship courses: one for students, Jacaranda Digital Citizenship powered by Cyberpass; and one for teachers and parents, Jacaranda Digital Citizenship Professional Development for teachers.

Both courses are approved by the Australian Children’s eSafety Commissioner and are tailored to meet the unique knowledge and skill requirements of teachers and students. Overall, the courses educate users on what it means to be responsible and safe online, while also arming teachers with the language and expertise to be able to discuss these issues further with students.

Buyer’s Guide

Jacaranda Digital Citizenship Course for students: jacaranda.com.au/dc-students Course for teachers: jacaranda.com.au/dc-teachers

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TECHNOLOGY // CONTENTKEEPER TECHNOLOGIES

Keeping students safe online THROUGH ITS SOPHISTICATED WEB FILTERING SOLUTIONS, CONTENTKEEPER ASSISTS SCHOOL LEADERS TO DETECT HARMFUL ONLINE BEHAVIOURS, SUCH AS CYBERBULLYING, TO CREATE A SAFER ENVIRONMENT FOR STUDENTS.

ContentKeeper Web Filter Pro was designed and built for primary, secondary and higher educational organisations. It provides schools with a rich set of tools to safeguard the welfare of both its students and its staff.

“Students will always seek to push boundaries. This is an important part of learning and growing up, and is vital for personal development. Pushing boundaries online can be great for learning, but can also lead to very serious consequences when the wrong boundaries are deliberately or inadvertently exceeded,” explains David Wigley, CEO at ContentKeeper Technologies.

“The internet provides massive benefits for education. It facilitates access to unlimited amounts of information: the good, the bad and the very ugly.

Filtering systems are vital, not only to keep students on track but also to protect them against harm. Whether its bullying, depression, suicide, weapons, gangs or paedophiles, the school has a duty to ensure that only age-appropriate material is accessible from school computers.”

ContentKeeper has been producing web filtering solutions since 1998. Its system incorporates a Behavioural Intent Alerting feature, which works by inspecting network traffic on its way to and from the internet. The local system administrator creates policies to protect users against access to undesirable sites, malware and other internet-based threats. When ContentKeeper detects such traffic, it will terminate the connection and display a web page to inform the user. It delivers real-time alerts to designated administrators via email or SMS so they can intervene where necessary.

ContentKeeper also generates usage reports and issues alerts to inform staff of threats to student wellbeing and safety.

“Fast reporting allows timely action where required, and the contextual report provides the information necessary to distinguish innocuous curiosity from

ContentKeeper Technologies CEO, David Wigley.

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credible danger. The reported material and subsequent contact with the student that triggered the alert will allow teachers to decide the most appropriate intervention, whether that be the immediate contact of emergency services, or a mental health plan and counselling to help the student heal,” adds Mr Wigley.

“In at least one case reported to us, the Behavioural Intent Alerting tool has allowed staff to intervene and provide counselling for a student who was considering suicide. The contextual report made it easy for the staff to determine that urgent intervention was indeed required, so the impact of that is really beyond measure. Timely intervention can be the difference between life and death.”

School leaders can monitor what students type into search engines by setting up profiles that contain certain keywords, phrases or websites that are indicators of potentially harmful behaviour. Along with using ContentKeeper’s master keyword list, they can also add their own custom indicators too.

Speed, performance and an educational focus

are among the features that Mr Wigley says set ContentKeeper apart from its competitors.

“Unlike other vendors in the market, ContentKeeper pioneered the development of its high speed, multi-gig, bridge-based filtering platform. This provides ContentKeeper with a massive advantage when it comes to speed, throughput, stability and the feature set it can offer in a cost-effective manner.”

He adds that the technology has also been designed to deliver value for money to schools. The higher performance of the bridge-based design means reduced hardware requirements and lower power bills, which can translate into significant cost savings.

Through ContentKeeper’s automated systems, definitions are kept current and accurate to ensure administrators can control access to different types of content with ease.

A range of highly targeted tools complement the core web filtering functionality, allowing fine-grained control and visibility of activity on sites like Facebook and YouTube. This facilitates the removal of particular

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site elements such as YouTube’s comments section, or the Farmville application on Facebook, without applying a blanket ban to these sites.

Mr Wigley says that the need for schools to monitor and control online activity among students – and intervene where necessary – is now more important than ever before. “In the past, schoolyard bullying was largely confined to the schoolyard, or the walk home if you were unlucky enough to share a postcode with your tormentor. Being connected 24/7 allows that behaviour to extend beyond school hours.

Students using social media may be subjected to hurtful messages or other communications right up to the moment they fall asleep.”

Buyer’s Guide

ContentKeeper Technologies Ph: 02 6261 4950 Web: www.contentkeeper.com

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TECHNOLOGY // BENQ

Healthy learning PROMOTING AN IMMERSIVE AND COLLABORATIVE APPROACH TO CLASSROOM LEARNING, BENQ’S INNOVATIVE NEW RANGE OF INTERACTIVE FLAT PANELS PLACES STUDENT HEALTH AT ITS CORE.

Recent technology has paved the way for changes in the way students can be taught. In the past, teachers typically stood in front of the classroom to address their students. Innovative products such as interactive flat panels and Jamboards mean that students can now view what the teacher is writing on the board via their own device. And students can also respond immediately, so that teachers can view their answer on the flat panel screen or share it with the class in real time.

When it comes to these types of immersive visual display solutions for the classroom, technologies that promote a healthy learning environment may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But recognising the benefits that could be achieved by incorporating thoughtful systems and design, BenQ has launched its smart new RP Series germ-resistant and smart eye care interactive flat panels.

The RP Series features an upgraded annotation tool called EZWrite 5.0 that is designed to facilitate interactive learning with a tap. Along with its original features – Handwriting Recognition, Floating Tool, Calculator, Palm Eraser and Floating Tool – EZWrite 5.0 now also incorporates a Cloud Whiteboard, Dual Pens and Brush Mode, which instantly turns the interactive flat panel into a full-size whiteboard for illustrating ideas, recording notes and brainstorming.

The Cloud Whiteboard promotes enhanced interactivity by allowing teachers to collect, categorise, edit and share ideas between the interactive flat panel and mobile devices without any geographic restrictions or user limits.

Through its RP Series, available in 65”, 75” and 86” models, BenQ has become the first LCD panel manufacturer in the world to develop a flicker free, low blue light, anti glare interactive flat panel with a built in air quality sensor and germ-resistant screen.

“Students of today are constantly looking at glass – whether it be a tablet, phone, monitor, TV or laptop. Every LCD screen has a LED backlight with a light spectrum that can potentially damage eyes permanently from the increased blue light levels. It is recognised by ophthalmologists that increased exposure to blue light not only causes dry and tired eyes, but it can also potentially damage cells at the back of the eye, leading

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“The anti-glare glass surface can effectively reduce reflections, freeing students from excessive squinting with more legible text and clearer images, avoiding eye strain.” to permanent damage,” says Martin Moelle, Managing Director at BenQ Australia.

“With the RP Series, BenQ’s unique technology has been tested by an independent laboratory in Germany and is now TÜV certified which shows that it meets the relevant health standards for low blue light, flicker free and anti-bacterial technology.

Additionally, the anti-glare glass surface can effectively reduce reflections, freeing students from excessive squinting with more legible text and clearer images, avoiding eye strain and facilitating more effective instruction. We have gone the extra mile to have all of this tested and certified so our customers can rest assured that the health benefits we are claiming have been proven.”

The germ-resistant screen has been achieved through a special multi-layer coating of a non-toxic, durable nano-silver agent that kills 99% of germs upon contact. As Mr Moelle

BenQ’s TÜV-certified germ-resistant screen kills 99% of germs upon contact.

The Cloud Whiteboard encourages collaboration between teachers and students.

explains, “When someone works on these touch panels, they use their fingers to write, draw or erase.

This means any bacteria on their fingers is transferred onto the panel. Our special coating destroys most bacteria on contact.”

Adding to the creation of a healthy learning environment, the RP Series features an inbuilt Air Quality Sensor that detects the carbon dioxide intensity indoors. “Modern building design doesn’t allow for windows to be opened, so when you come into a meeting room or classroom, everything is closed. Carbon dioxide can build up, so this sensor is another aspect of our product that enables teachers to monitor the classroom and judge if the air quality is appropriate so they can act if necessary and change the air conditioning settings for example to promote air flow,” Mr Moelle adds.

When an interactive flat panel is installed into a classroom, often numerous people are required to access it. For example, an English teacher may use it for one lesson, followed by the History teacher for the next lesson. Along with its healthy learning technologies, BenQ’s RP Series also features an

Account Management System (AMS) that allows unlimited users to access their own settings. Once a user has set up their own account, they can simply log in to access their own files and apps.

In addition, the RP Series features inbuilt near field communication (NFC) hardware, which acts to further facilitate the use of multiple user accounts.

The NFC tab is built into the sound bar at the bottom of the panel. “BenQ also supplies accessories which include NFC cards. These cards look like a credit card and have a chip built into them. Users can tap the card onto the sensor and they are logged straight in – it works just like the tap and pay technology on a credit card. So long as the interactive flat panel is logged onto a network, you can login straight away to access your files,” says Mr Moelle. “If the user doesn’t have their card, they can still go to the login page and type in their name and password. The reason we built this NFC technology into our panels is so that students can’t see teachers typing in passwords. The technology is driven by the market, because teachers don’t want to risk passwords being shared with students. It is great for IT staff too, it’s all

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about time saving.”

If the interactive flat panel is connected to the internet, updates are simple too, with over the air updates sent through as a push notification alerting users that new software is available to download.

The RP Series by BenQ use 4K technology, which is the highest quality resolution currently available on the market. These interactive flat panels offer at least 30,000 hours of operation, equating to at least 10 years of use in the classroom without any maintenance or calibration required.

“Though we have only spoken about a handful of the unique features and benefits incorporated into our new interactive flat panels, there are so many other great features too – far too many to mention in this article.”

Buyer’s Guide

BenQ Australia Ph: 02 8988 6500 Web: business-display.benq.com/ en-ap/index.html

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TECHNOLOGY // NATIONAL FUTURESCHOOLS EXPO AND CONFERENCES

Shaping the future of schools COMBINING AN EXHIBITION, AND INFORMATIVE CONFERENCES AND MASTERCLASSES, EDUCATORS VISITING THE NATIONAL FUTURESCHOOLS EXPO AND CONFERENCES CAN TAILOR AN EXPERIENCE THAT BEST SUITS THEIR NEEDS AND INTERESTS.

• Future Leaders Conference: A strategic look at the future of education.

• ClassTECH Conference: Centred around using technology, teaching with technology and learning about emerging technology.

• Inclusive Education Conference: Developing a school for all, with no child left behind.

• Y oung Learners Conference: A holistic and technological view at K-12 learning and teaching practices.

• T eaching Kids to Code: Preparing teachers for the digital technologies curriculum, coding and robotics.

The FutureSchools Expo and Conferences will run on 20-21 March 2019, with masterclasses held the day before on 19 March 2019. For the full list of masterclasses, please visit the website.

Held over two days each year in March at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre, the National FutureSchools Expo and Conferences is centred around the areas of technology, environment, pedagogy and curriculum. It is Australia’s largest education showcase and is aimed at the entire K-12 sector. Along with an exhibition, it includes five parallel conferences that aim to address specific areas of the school of the future: • Future Leadership • Young Learning • Learning support and inclusive education • Teaching about and using emerging technologies • STEM, coding, robotics and the new digital curriculum FutureSchools is the sister-event of EduTECH. While EduTECH covers all sectors in education, FutureSchools is focused solely on schools. It

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aims to provide educators with ideas, inspiration and learnings that can be taken, adapted and implemented into classrooms around the nation, helping to shape the schools of the future.

The event offers a unique chance for visitors to see a wide range of solutions side-by-side, allowing them to both identify the technologies that are a right fit for them, and determine which vendors they wish to partner with.

Delegates can tailor make their own experience at FutureSchools, choosing which of the five conferences appeal to them, along with focused breakout sessions, masterclasses, interactive exhibition seminars and displays, and networking events.

Each of the five conferences has been designed to cater for senior leadership working in different roles within K-12 education. Upon registration for the event, delegates can select which of the five conferences they wish to attend:

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Buyer’s Guide

National FutureSchools Expo and Conferences Web: www.futureschools.com.au

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TECHNOLOGY // EPSON

Imagine that DESIGNED TO ENHANCE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND INSPIRE IMAGINATIONS, COOMERA ANGLICAN COLLEGE IN QUEENSLAND HAS UNVEILED THE IMAGINARIUM, A UNIQUE 360 DEGREE IMMERSIVE LEARNING SPACE.

Created as part of a new facility called The Pod, which incorporates the latest in immersive and interactive technology, The Imaginarium is designed to take learning to a whole new level – outside of the traditional classroom.

“The Pod is our future focused building. It was built partly to replace existing facilities, but also needed to provide a resource to cater for the College’s educational needs in the future. To be future focused, the building needed to be technology rich, promote high student engagement and allow students to work collaboratively,” says David Dobbie, Business Manager at Coomera Anglican College.

He describes The Imaginarium as a 360 degree immersive learning room that serves as the centrepiece of the new facility. “There was a lot of discussion about the application of virtual reality in education, with a great deal of current focus on wearable headsets, which we

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acknowledged would be a constant challenge for our younger students – so a space that provided an immersive experience without the need for wearable technology was how The Imaginarium came about. There is nothing else like it in the P-12 school space that we are aware of.”

Students from Coomera Anglican College’s Early Learning Centre through to Year 6 have been benefitting from The Imaginarium, however the school’s secondary students have also had the opportunity to explore The Pod and its immersive learning space.

With the success of The Imaginarium now clear, Coomera Anglican College is in the planning stages of developing a future focused secondary facility in the near future, which will complement and expand on The Pod. The Imaginarium incorporates six Epson EBL1300UNL laser projectors, which are combined

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with immersive interface technology, to seamlessly combine and project images at an 11:1 aspect ratio, onto a curved, custom built 360 degree wall, that extends for over 33 metres.

A seventh projector has been included into the design, which can function as a stand-alone projector to cater to traditional screen uses.

“These are high-end commercial grade laser projectors. The College has excellent IT professionals who were heavily involved in working with our audiovisual consultants throughout the project. When we posed questions about what we were trying to achieve in the space, the recommendation was that Epson was potentially the best in the market for us to achieve what we wanted, was extremely reliable and within our budget requirements,” says Mr Dobbie.

“It’s about enhancing learning and inspiring imagination. The Imaginarium is an impressive facility and we know we are having a positive impact

Epson laser projectors are used to project images onto a curved 360 degree wall.

on our students and their learning. For educators everywhere, there is a need to ensure that students are engaged, inspired, curious and creative in their learning.

Technology needs to play a part in assisting educators with this process. It is not feasible, or affordable, to provide this technology in every learning space, however we have now created a space where students

are almost forced, in a very positive way through their environment, to be engaged, inspired, curious and creative in their learning. It has been designed to be easily used by teachers, as well as allowing us to easily develop and deliver our own content, which was also an important design element,” explains Mr Dobbie.

From the moment The Imaginarium was unveiled,

it has continued to gain a great deal of attention – locally, around Australia and even overseas. “The Imaginarium has attracted quite a lot of interest as news continues to spread. There have been several schools and universities that have seen the facility and are being inspired to develop similar facilities of their own. We expect to see more of this type of facility being constructed in schools, and all levels of education in the near future,” adds Mr Dobbie.

The Imaginarium even attracted the attention of Mr Stephen Hunter, Computer Resources Manager for the International Space Station at NASA Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, who visited the College recently as part of an educational outreach program. “Mr Hunter was impressed with The Imaginarium and used the facility to engage with our students during his time at the College. With the Space and Aeronautical Industry tipped to be worth billions of dollars in the future, and the employment opportunities that come with that, our students are certainly well placed to be inspired to pursue these opportunities,” says Mr Dobbie.

When looking ahead, he adds, “Schools are still dealing with what virtual reality and augmented reality means for the future. To be effective in an education space this technology has to be multi-user, interactive and collaborative. Simulators are being used extensively in many areas including medicine, university education, gaming, engineering and the military, with pilots doing much of their training without ever flying a real plane. There is more and more simulation based training, so if it is good enough for adults, then why aren’t school-aged students getting to experience it until they go to university?

“Appropriate age-based simulation is definitely an opportunity that can be achieved by working closely with companies such as Epson. We’re living in very exciting times in terms of technological advancement.

The challenge for schools is to look at how this technology can be used in an educational setting, and then being able to implement it within appropriate timeframes and obviously budgets.”

Buyer’s Guide

Epson Australia Ph: 1300 361 054 Web: www.epson.com.au/interactive

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TECHNOLOGY // SCANNING PENS

Encouraging independence USING CLEVER TECHNOLOGY, SCANNING PENS IS HELPING STUDENTS WITH READING DIFFICULTIES SUCH AS DYSLEXIA TO READ INDEPENDENTLY AND BECOME MORE ENGAGED IN THE CLASSROOM.

The ExamReader pen allows students to read exam questions at their own pace.

Reading is a part of everyday life for most people, but for those who have reading difficulties such as dyslexia, activities like reading a textbook or the questions on an exam can pose quite a challenge.

Dyslexia is a leading cause of difficulties in reading, writing and spelling. According to the Australian Dyslexia Association, the condition is estimated to affect around 10% of the Australian population.

“And a further 10% have other reading difficulties too,” adds David Campbell, Head of Business Development at Scanning Pens Australia. “For 80 per cent of people, reading doesn’t pose a significant challenge, but for the remaining 20%, reading is an issue. Students who are identified as struggling with reading can fall behind because they often become disengaged, which can have the flow on effect of leading to behavioural issues at school. The ExamReader and ReaderPen by Scanning Pens are aimed fairly and squarely at students who have reading difficulties, including dyslexia.”

Assisted reading technology isn’t new. There are a variety of technologies and programs available to students with reading difficulties that work in the online space, allowing content to be read to them if they are using a computer or tablet. When it comes to the printed word however, options have traditionally been far more limited.

Scanning Pens helped improve this technology in the UK around a decade ago and it is now available to schools around Australia.

“Our pens convert printed text to speech – whether it be a book, magazine or newspaper.

There are not a lot of products that focus on the printed word,” says Mr Campbell.

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The pocket-sized portable pens are completely self-contained so don’t require any power source or internet connection. The user can simply scan the line of text, and the pen reads it in a human-like digital voice. These pens are capable of reading any standard font, however won’t read handwriting or text on a computer screen.

The ExamReader pen has been stripped of all additional features so that it can be used in an exam without the risk of cheating. “When it comes to exams, if a student has reading difficulties they might be entitled to a human reader. This means they have to sit the exam in a separate room because it can disturb other students.

With the ExamReader, they can be in the same room as other students and read and re-read the exam questions at their own pace,” explains Mr Campbell.

He also reveals that the ExamReader pen has been approved for use in exams by the various examination boards across Australia on a case by case basis.

“These pens are another piece of assisted

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technology that promote inclusive learning among students with reading difficulties; and we think every school should have one in its toolbox.”

The Reader Pen incorporates in-built Collins English and Primary dictionaries, along with the Oxford Spanish and French dictionaries. In addition to assisting those with reading difficulties, it can also be used by anyone learning English, Spanish or French. Pass the nib over a word and the pen can instantly display the definition and read the word out loud. In addition, the ReaderPen features voice recording functionality and storage capabilities, allowing students to capture lines of text and upload it directly to a PC or Mac. Scanning Pens offers free 30-day trials of both the ExamReader and ReaderPen to schools across Australia.

Buyer’s Guide

Scanning Pens Australia Ph: 02 8320 7161 Web: www.scanningpens.com.au

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HEALTH & WELLBEING // INSTITUTE OF POSITIVE EDUCATION

Pyramid of passion POSITIVE EDUCATION IS THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION THAT SEEKS TO HARNESS CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH FROM SOCIAL, COGNITIVE, NEURO AND LIFE SCIENCES; AND COMBINE IT WITH WORLD-LEADING PEDAGOGICAL AND EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES. DAVID BOTT DISCUSSES HOW IT IS BENEFITTING STUDENTS ALL OVER THE WORLD.

David Bott is the Associate Director of the Institute of Positive Education. He has been involved in training thousands of teachers from hundreds of schools around the world in designing, implementing and sustaining individual and whole-school approaches to wellbeing.

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In 2008, Geelong Grammar School (GGS) became the first school in the world to implement a wholeschool approach to wellbeing based on the science of positive psychology. Ten years later, Positive Education is being applied by thousands of schools all over the world as educators and researchers increasingly appreciate the social, emotional and academic benefits of placing wellbeing science at the heart of education.

Having supported more than 1500 schools around the world with their Positive Education journeys, the GGS Institute of Positive Education team is proud of its contribution to this pivotal development in education.

However, one of the many challenges faced in the early years of Positive Education was determining how to fully embrace parents in the journey. Although parents were always an important consideration, we probably underestimated the critical role they would need to play in the transformational change we envisaged.

Perhaps this is because school systems are used to innovation being a top-down process.

Senior leadership typically assumes responsibility for development and subsequent downstream communication of strategy and programming. In many ways, with Positive Education we trusted the science, embraced the philosophy and brought it to life without necessarily incorporating parents as genuine partners in the development phase.

Among the many lessons we are continuing to learn about wellbeing, one of the most important is that parents are the foundation of a child’s Positive Education journey. This concept is depicted in The Pyramid of Passion.

In situations involving school-wide, sustainable development, there are four layers of stakeholders.

As schools evolve, it is imperative that direction is given from senior leadership (including school council) at the top of the pyramid. This layer provides the catalyst in the short-term and resources in the

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The Pyramid of Passion shows that parents are the foundation of a child’s Positive Education journey.

long-term that are necessary for sustainable change.

Next, the change must be supported and invested in by the teaching staff. It is this layer that constitutes the cultural bedrock of a school and the layer that directly interfaces with students. Thirdly, change needs to be effectively and sensitively communicated to students who, ideally, perceive the change as worthwhile and beneficial. Finally, parents need to be on board with the change to maximise support at school and at home.

The pyramid depicts senior leadership as the change agents most heavily invested in the schooltransformation process. However, what happens when we consider this pyramid from the perspective of an individual child’s wellbeing? Who is most passionate about little Charlie’s wellbeing?

Of course, the senior leadership care about Charlie. But in a large school, they may not even know Charlie’s name or much about Charlie as an individual.

Charlie’s teacher likely has a deeper relationship with him/her because they spend some time together.

In a secondary setting, a teacher might spend one or more hours a day with a student.

Charlie is even more invested and passionate about his or her wellbeing than the teacher, and is likely to constantly seek opportunities for personal

growth, contribution and happiness.

However, it’s possible there’s someone even more passionate about Charlie’s wellbeing – the parent. The importance that many parents place on their child’s wellbeing often exceeds their own. The principal, teachers and students matter – but perhaps the parent matters more.

The Pyramid of Passion illustrates each stakeholder’s significance in whole-school change processes and in individual wellbeing. Although parents may not drive school strategy, they absolutely constitute the foundation of a child’s wellbeing.

This is why the long-term success of Positive Education, in many ways, pivots on the involvement, support and partnership of the parent community.

This lesson can be particularly significant in secondary school settings. A combination of biological, psychological and social factors combine to make the teenage years immensely challenging for many young people. During this time, parents play a unique, crucial support role as a platform for imminent adulthood is being created.

As we have continued to learn, some of the key strategies that GGS is now employing include:

Parents play a key role in their child’s Positive Education journey.

•O ffering Positive Education parent and grandparent training and workshops; • I nviting parents to wellbeing focus days and incursions; • Forming a Positive Education Parent Committee; and • Designing a Parent-Child mindfulness workshop.

While we acknowledge that the above model is a simplification of a complex, interconnection of relational experience for each child, and that not all children are fortunate enough to have a nurturing family environment, the lesson remains pertinent for schools

– what happens at home significantly impacts the work we are doing to nurture our students’ wellbeing.

As we continue to place wellbeing science at the heart of education, let’s not forget that parents belong at the heart of each child’s education.

Buyer’s Guide

Institute of Positive Education Ph: 03 5227 6222 Web: www.instituteofpositiveeducation.com

HEALTH & WELLBEING // INSTITUTE FOR POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

At breaking point?

WITH ONE IN THREE SCHOOL LEADERS GENERATING A RED FLAG WHEN IT COMES TO THEIR MENTAL HEALTH, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP, PHILIP RILEY, FROM THE INSTITUTE FOR POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION AT AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY, DISCUSSES HOW PRINCIPALS CAN IDENTIFY IF THEY FALL INTO THE HIGH-RISK CATEGORY.

A former school principal, Philip Riley spent 16 years in schools before moving to the tertiary sector. He researches the overlapping space of psychology, education and leadership, producing over 200 publications and peer reviewed conference presentations.

He has been awarded approximately $8 million in research funding including three prestigious Australian Research Council grants. In 2010, Professor Riley’s research was recognised with an inaugural Monash Researcher Accelerator award. This award funded the first two years of The Australian Principal Health and Wellbeing Survey – the first independent research project into principals’ occupational health and wellbeing.

He also won the Dean’s Award for Excellence by an Early Career Researcher and the award for Excellence in Innovation and External Collaboration at Monash in 2011; the International Study Association of Teachers and Teaching Award for Most Outstanding Article of 2014; and the ACEL Victoria Research Award in 2017.

Professor Riley has presented international keynote addresses in Germany, Canada, Belgium, Ireland, France, Hungary and New Zealand; and numerous keynote addresses to industry groups in all states and territories of Australia. The Principal Health and Wellbeing Survey is now conducted in Australia, Ireland and New Zealand.

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The Australian Principal Health and Wellbeing Survey has been running for eight years. From the outset, one aim of the survey was to produce an immediate alert to individuals reporting elevated risk. We call these alerts red flag emails.

The bad news is that following the publication of a recent study into occupational risks, we learned that we have been underestimating the risk of individuals.

Conducted in 2017, the study by Adrienne Stauder, Katalin Nistor, Tünde Zakor, Anita Szabó, Anikó Nistor, Szilvia Ádám and Barna Konkolÿ Thege – Quantifying Multiple WorkRelated Psychosocial Risk Factors: Proposal for a Composite Indicator Based on the COPSOQ II – was published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

So, in 2017 the trigger for a red flag became more sensitive. If you received the email this year or last year but not in previous years and feel your job hasn’t changed that much, the trigger sensitivity is probably the reason you have now received one. The new risk factor is a composite psychosocial risk score (CPRS).

Now for the really bad news. In 2018, the number of red flags generated by school leaders is currently running at 37%, slightly more than 1 in every 3 principals across the country.

Stauder and the team of researchers used the medium version of the COPSOQ-II questionnaire to develop the composite risk measure. As we had already obtained six waves of data from principals in Australia using the full length COPSOQ-II questionnaire, we were able to add four additional risk factors to the composite measure using their protocols. In constructing the CPRS, variables are categorised as either: strain,

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resource or outcome. Psychosocial risk at work increases with each strain threshold reached and each resource deficit threshold identified. The risks are the increasing odds of suffering from one or more negative health outcomes (poor sleep, burnout, depression, cognitive and somatic stress, poor general health).

The CPRS is essentially a trigger threshold mechanism that reduces scores for each strain

and resource variable to ‘High Risk’ versus ‘Not High Risk’. For variables where lower scores indicate better working conditions (generally, but not always strain variables), a score of 75/100 is the threshold for concern and coded high risk. On the other hand, where lower scores indicate worse working conditions, a score of ≤25/100 is the threshold for concern, and also coded high risk. The CPRS is a simple summing of the high risk codes for each individual school leader, with higher scores representing increasing risk.

Trends show the low risk group has been steadily falling while the moderate, high and very high groups have been increasing. Many of the principals who are not receiving a red flag email are nonetheless suffering from significant sleeping problems and poor general health.

The cumulative risk from work stressors increases the chances of experiencing psychological and/or physical symptoms of poor health (high stress, high burnout, sleeping troubles and poor health).

This year, red flag emails were automatically generated for individuals whose CPRS fell into the High or Very High category, along with those who reported low quality of life or thoughts of self harm, which had been the two triggers used in previous years. So if you received a red flag in 2017 or this year, it would be wise to discuss your survey results with your GP. While a red flag is only an indicator, it is better to be safe than sorry.

Various work stressors can increase the risk of experiencing psychological and/ or physical symptoms of poor health.

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Australian Made Ph. 1300 132 047 www.willplay.com.au

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT // AITSL

Supporting teachers and school leaders LISA RODGERS, CEO OF THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE FOR TEACHING AND SCHOOL LEADERSHIP (AITSL), EXPLAINS HOW THE ORGANISATION PROVIDES CONTINUOUS SUPPORT TO TEACHERS AND SCHOOL LEADERS THROUGH ALL STAGES OF THEIR CAREERS.

Lisa Rodgers is the CEO of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL), and a powerful, respected advocate for education. Ms Rodgers was Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Education in New Zealand and held substantial posts across Justice, Health, and in service for the British Army. She is a Board Director of the Foundation for Young Australians and a member of the Advisory Board of the Asia Education Foundation.

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Secondary schooling provides the building blocks for lifelong learning. The lives of your students can be shaped by your practice and guidance, which no doubt inspired many of you to start teaching in the first place.

AITSL’s job is to support you and we do that by working with the profession, for the profession.

What this means is collaborating with you to develop the resources and tools you want and need. Among other projects, we’ve worked closely with secondary and primary teachers to build practical, professional learning resources like the Classroom Observation Strategies, a set of coaching resources, and the Essential Guide to Professional Learning series.

I’m privileged to work alongside our committed AITSL team. Many of the team are former teachers themselves; a big advantage as they continue working with you to draft national policy and develop resources. We have teachers from Australia, the UK, Singapore and Germany. This wasn’t quite by design, but having international perspective helps.

We draw on the very best evidence in the projects we deliver for you. All of our work is research based and we incorporate international best practice. Having said that, there is best practice in Australia and we don’t need to go overseas to see it. So we work on a daily basis with teachers and school leaders to build evidencebased tools and resources that help improve the practice of educators across the country.

This will be the first of several columns we’ll be writing in Education Matters, so please consider this a warm introduction to AITSL, as we all start planning for the remainder of 2018 and first term next year.

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To better understand how we support you, it’s revealing to look at our projects through the prism of the teacher lifecycle, from pre-service to lead teachers and school leaders, and everything in between.

Our best-known achievements are working with teachers and school leaders to develop and implement the landmark ‘Standards’ – the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers and the Australian Professional Standard for Principals.

These twin standards provide clear, detailed, nationally agreed definitions of what it means to be an outstanding teacher or leader, and a road map to get there.

After close consultation with the profession across all jurisdictions, systems and sectors; we’ve also developed seven additional evidencebased frameworks to support quality teaching practice across all career stages. That makes nine policies that are collectively driving national reform (see fact box above right).

Teachers and school leaders gain free access to virtually all the digital tools, resources and other services on the AITSL website.

AITSL’s most popular online resource is the 300-plus episodes of Illustrations of Practice, which are short, practical videos showing teachers examples of the Standards in action across a range of contexts. They’ve been viewed more than 1.5 million times. Also popular are these tools: • The Teacher Self-Assessment Tool, or TSAT; • T he School Leader Self-Assessment Tool, or School

leader SAT; • The Supervising Pre-service Teachers Modules; and • The My Induction App.

AITSL has developed nine foundation policies that underpin each stage of the teaching lifecycle: 1. Australian Professional Standards for Teachers 2. Accreditation of ITE programs in Australia: Standards and Procedures 3. G raduate to Proficient: Australian guidelines for teacher induction into the profession 4. N ationally consistent registration for all teachers 5. Australian Charter for the Professional Learning of Teachers and School Leaders 6. A ustralian Teacher Performance and Development Framework 7. C ertification of Highly Accomplished and Lead Teachers in Australia 8. L eading for impact: Australian guidelines for school leadership development 9. Australian Professional Standard for Principals and the Leadership Profiles

We’ve worked closely with secondary and primary teachers to build practical, professional learning resources like the Classroom Observation Strategies.

Launched in 2017, the My Induction app supports beginning teachers as they are inducted into schools, and has been downloaded 10,000 times and counting. If you have any friends about to start their first year in the classroom, make sure you tell them about it.

Because we exist to support you and promote your excellence, we’re always reaching out to you with our resources and tools through AITSL eNews (go to our website and subscribe if you haven’t already) and our Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn platforms. If you’re not following us yet on social media, give it a go and keep up-to-date with engaging and helpful information.

Right now is the perfect time of year to be getting stuck into your professional learning

plans for next year, so take advantage of our free resources to make the second half of 2018 and early 2019 easier and more effective.

I hope you have a better feel for AITSL and our passion for quality teaching and school leadership in secondary and primary schools. No matter where you are in the country, know that we have a range of resources and tools that are easy to access and use. We develop them to support your growth and positive impact on the learning outcomes of Australia’s school students.

Buyer’s Guide

AITSL Ph: 03 9944 1200 Web: www.aitsl.edu.au

AITSL supports secondary teachers and leaders in every Australian school to lead the learning of their students.

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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT // EDUTECH

EduTECH will include five congresses, eight masterclasses, over 300 exhibitors and 220 speakers.

A festival of education THE LARGEST EDUCATION EVENT IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE AND ASIA PACIFIC REGION, EDUTECH, WILL RETURN TO SYDNEY IN 2019, WITH CREATIVE THINKER AND EDUCATION EXPERT SIR KEN ROBINSON TAKING TO THE STAGE AS THE EVENT’S KEYNOTE SPEAKER.

Technology is constantly changing and evolving, with new advancements continuing to make their way into schools, impacting on the way educators teach and students learn.

In the digital world of today, trying to keep up with what’s new and how it can be used or adapted for the classroom, can be a daunting and challenging task for educators. With that being said, how can we keep up?

EduTECH brings together the latest in technology and education. Attracting over 11,000 people from across the globe, it is truly an international event, held right here in Australia.

A festival of education, EduTECH will include five congresses, eight masterclasses, more than 300 exhibitors and 220 speakers.

Spread across over 12,000 square metres of exhibition space, visitors are invited to test new technology, network with peers and understand

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how to use innovative technologies firsthand, such as robotics, drones, 3D printing and virtual reality.

Each year, EduTECH’s impressive list of speakers, comprised of world-leading education and training experts, deliver talks on thought leadership and practical case-studies across the entire education sector.

Celebrated educator, best-selling author and advisor to education departments all over the world, Sir Ken Robinson, has been announced as the keynote speaker for EduTECH 2019. Sir Ken Robinson has a long list of accolades. He received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth in 2003 for his services to the arts; his book The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything has been translated into 23 languages and sold over a million copies; and his 2006 Ted Talk video, Do Schools Kill Creativity, is the most watched Ted Talk video in history, with over 40 million views and counting.

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His immense popularity in the educational sphere is undeniable. Earlier this year, he spoke at National FutureSchools Conferences and Expo, and was also a keynote speaker at EduTECH in Brisbane in 2014, addressing sold out auditoriums at both events. EduTECH organisers are expecting his presentation at the event to do the same.

EduTECH Australia will run from 6-7 June 2019 at the International Convention Centre in Sydney, with a series of masterclasses running the day prior, on Wednesday 5 June.

EduTECH tickets are now on sale. Book early to secure a priority seat at the event. For more information, please visit the EduTECH website.

Buyer’s Guide

EduTECH Australia Web: www.edutech.net.au

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www.edutech.net.au

Charles Jennings

Amanda Hogan

Founder, The 70.20.10 Institute (UK)

Computing Education Specialist, Australian Computing Academy

Prof. Pasi Sahlberg

Jocelyn Brewer

Professor of Educational Policy, Gonski Institute for Education, School of Education UNSW

Psychologist and Creator of Digital Nutrition

Attendance of EduTECH conferences counts towards PD activities

Interested in sponsoring or exhibiting ?

Contact education@terrapinn.com or call (02) 8908 8555

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT // LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

The power of marginal gains EDUCATION EXPERT, PROFESSOR STEPHEN HEPPELL, DISCUSSES HOW THE TINY DETAILS CAN COMBINE TO MAKE A BIG IMPACT ON LEARNING IN THE CLASSROOM.

Stephen Heppell’s ‘eyes on the horizon, feet on the ground’ approach, coupled with a vast portfolio of effective large scale projects over three decades, have established him internationally as a widely and fondly recognised leader in the fields of learning, new media and technology.

A school teacher for more than a decade, and a professor since 1989, Professor Heppell has worked, and is working, with learner led projects, governments around the world, international agencies, Fortune 500 companies, schools and communities, his PhD students and many influential trusts and organisations.

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I’m typing this sitting on our old 1907 oyster smack, which we are sailing along the North Sea coast of England, on our way to a race next weekend. A wet and windy English summer’s day afloat feels a long way from EduTECH 2018. But it is a good place to begin a reflection of my inputs in Sydney earlier this year, for several reasons.

Firstly, sailing these old boats is very much a craft – no pun intended. Experience, wisdom, fresh ideas, very specific skills, better technologies and teamwork all come together in making our boat perform as well as possible. The crew are heterogeneous – they have unique strengths as individuals, but together the interaction and sum of those strengths are important. No two boats are the same – even after more than a century of development, new ideas come along. Not every boat will try out every idea. Boats are different.

Teaching too is a craft; a windy day, a lengthy term, national events, an eccentric personality, all impact on today’s community of learners. Schools too are different. That is all too easily forgotten in the scramble to find the ‘right way’ to teach or learn.

But secondly, we race our boat and, as I reflected often during EduTECH, we can learn much from sport about what is effective practice in learning too. I enjoy working on better learning with a number of our elite Olympic sports; and in doing so, I learn from them too. Much of Team Great Britain’s march up the medal table from Atlanta to Rio has been helped by two big ideas: the aggregation of marginal gains pays attention to every tiny detail, asking all the time, “how may this be better?” It really doesn’t matter what the sport is, those tiny improved details accumulate into a noticeable gain.

Thirdly, for our elite sports stars, it is very clear watching them trackside, or wherever they are performing, that everyone has a voice, offers an input, and is involved in the whole process of

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doing things better. In the bad old days when Team Great Britain could hardly win an egg and spoon race, let alone medals, there was a rigid hierarchy: coaches told athletes what to do, often by numbers, and that was what they did. Watching today there is a clear sense of dialogue, of opinions built from experience – everyone has a voice. It is often hard to differentiate the coaches from the athletes as they huddle around the data screens on their tablets.

So as we build better learning in schools and elsewhere, both the aggregation of marginal gains and the learners’ voice matter enormously. It isn’t just the meta-cognitive boost of learning about learning that is the gain here; learners have usefully been reflecting on learning for most of their lives and normally have something useful to contribute.

As a young lad told me part way through a student led project: “I’ve been in seven schools in my life so far. This is the first time anyone has seriously asked me how the learning could be better.” Then he paused and added, “But I’ve always known...”

So much of my input at EduTECH this year involved examples of those little marginal gains, and of the power of ‘learner led’. Encouragingly, social media was full afterwards of people reflecting on these practical and easily achievable, effective actions. So let’s explore some of them here.

Noise is a constant challenge in learning environments. Parallel window panes bounce sound, hard floors seemingly amplify it and acoustic panelling is expensive to retro-fit. The research evidence is clear that sounds – both loud or with a rapid rhythm – distract. We know this from multiple sources, for example car safety. For many teachers, maintaining a learning buzz without it becoming a distracting din, is tough. But in the example I showed from a London school, the primary children had, in each learning space, an old tablet on a stand.

The tablet ran one of many free decibel meter apps

Professor Heppell says there is much we can take from sport when it comes to effective practice in learning.

and when the noise in the space exceeded the agreed limit, the children appointed to be sound monitors for that day simply moved to the main source of the noise and pointed out the decibel readings to their peers.

The children set, owned and enforced the protocols for sound. When I showed this to children in a NSW school, where noise in the dining room was stressful and intrusive at times, their solution was fun and simple. They placed the decibel meter iPad within sight of the kitchen serving-hatch staff and, if the noise exceeded the agreed protocol for the dining room, the price tags on food were flipped over to reveal a new

and higher price. Make too much noise and the price of custard doubles.

Now that all sounds nice and simple to implement and indeed it is. But behind it there are multiple gains. Firstly, of course, things are quieter. But there is science to be learned – decibels roughly double in volume every ten. Then there is the debate about what might be an appropriate protocol for maximum noise. We are never asking here for just a guess, or an opinion; we are asking for research: what is too loud for concentrating? Where do those rapid rhythms come from (perhaps mechanical noise)? And so on. Exploring

Students from Hargrave Park School in London used a decibel meter app to monitor classroom noise.

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this with a group of children in Spain, they designed and invoked a Raspberry Pi device that flashed red on their stairwell when the noise from foot walls was too loud. STEM gains too!

A second example is light. Again a lot of data from multiple domains confirm the minimum level for general learning as better than 500 lux. (You can source all these numbers from our learnometer.net research website). Getting good light into learning spaces is a complex task – better refraction levels from paints, removing all paper from existing windows, abandoning tired old interactive white boards that need the blinds permanently lowered, and so on. Teachers are constantly amazed when their truculent group in the dark corner turn out to be bright eyed and bushy tailed once their light levels are boosted.

And so on. Marginal gains from plants boosting oxygen levels (as BYOP schools everywhere are finding), from getting soporific temperatures down, from invoking regular movement, or from standing, from zoning spaces to signal an expectation of different modes of learning (individual research, presentation, collaboration, whole group teaching, etc.) and more.

It turns out, no surprise, that children, like athletes and others, love to be involved, love to make everyone’s learning better, and love to see their own personal gains from this aggregation of marginal gains. As one teacher reflected on Twitter: “We all enjoyed making these effective tweaks to our room and blimey – it works!” Perhaps if learning was an Olympic sport, we might have got to this point sooner.

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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT // SUCCESSFUL GROWTH PLANS

Encouraging professional growth EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP EXPERT, JOHN ELLER, DISCUSSES SOME EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES PRINCIPALS CAN ADOPT TO DEVELOP SUCCESSFUL GROWTH PLANS WITH THEIR TEACHING STAFF AND COLLEAGUES.

It’s important to help colleagues and peers grow in understanding and implement new teaching strategies. Because of emerging and changing needs of learners, we need to be constantly learning and growing during our careers. Having several techniques in our teaching repertoire can help us proactively deal with situations and student needs that arise in the classroom.

In our book, Achieving Great Impact, we focus on many strategies that can be employed to help teachers learn and implement new teaching strategies. These include coaching, demonstrating new strategies, working on collaboration with peers and observing colleagues in action.

An effective strategy to help teachers improve their teaching is the development and implementation of a written professional growth plan. A professional growth plan acts as a road map, helping teachers assist in identifying their goals (the destination) and their plan to reach their goals (the pathway). A written plan provides visual support and increases the importance of the plan.

A sound professional growth plan includes several key components:

A former principal, John F. Eller is a professor of educational leadership at St Cloud State University in Minnesota and is the author/co-author of 10 leadership books through Solution Tree and Corwin Press. He is president of Eller and Associates, which conducts support for leaders internationally.

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UNDERSTANDING NEEDS When developing the plan and helping teachers or colleagues determine the goals, it’s important to understand the needs of the students and the school. If students need more academic support, then a growth plan that helps a colleague learn and implement additional learning interventions would be a direct match between the plan and the needs of the students and the school. Without this match, the teacher will not see an impact on students that provides motivation to reach the goals.

BREAK THE NEW SKILLS DOWN Breaking the larger goal into small, learnable parts helps teachers make the gradual progress that keeps them motivated to move forward. It is also easier as a colleague to recognise and reinforce the

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teacher for progress when it’s divided into small, observable steps.

BUILD ON THE TEACHER’S STRENGTHS Identifying strengths, then building a plan based on these strengths is crucial. For example, if a teacher is skilled in developing clear expectations for student behaviours, they can use the strength of focus to help them learn how to teach students to move about the room during learning activities. The movement process builds on the foundation they have established in setting other expectations in their classroom.

FOCUS ON A SMALL NUMBER OF OBSERVABLE BEHAVIOURS Being specific and focused during plan development and when providing feedback on the plan implementation is crucial for success.

Showing the teacher how to divide the students into discussion groups then helping them manage the discussions is more effective than focusing on general student engagement.

LAN AND SCHEDULE FOLLOW-UP P SUPPORT OPPORTUNITIES Without follow-up, the ideas we learn will quickly be forgotten. Including opportunities for you and the teacher to check in periodically stresses the importance of the plan and helps you to provide any mid-course corrections that are needed to keep the teacher moving forward in a productive manner.

Assisting in the development of growth plans enable school leaders and colleagues to increase the chances of success for teachers implementing new strategies in their classrooms. Effective growth planning processes build the collaborative relationship while increasing accountability to improve teaching skills. Professional growth plans can be used for small, minor refinements or to help teachers address major deficits in their performance.

MONASH EDUCATION // PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Principal at Western Port Secondary College, Michael Devine, completed a Masters Degree in Educational Leadership at Monash.

Changing focus gives teachers hope AT ONE OF VICTORIA’S MOST DISADVANTAGED SCHOOLS, A SHIFT OF FOCUS AND CHANGE IN CULTURE HAS ACHIEVED SIGNIFICANT RESULTS.

For teachers at Western Port Secondary College, it was once easy to despair. Only 35% of students finished VCE and staff morale was low.

According to the school’s principal, Michael Devine, the culture needed to change. The attitude was, “The results are bad because the kids are hopeless. I’m not interested in that. The shift I’ve tried to take is to focus on what we can achieve, and what we can do well,” says Mr Devine, who developed his leadership skills with a postgraduate degree from Monash.

In his view, that meant placing less emphasis on academic results, and instead measuring how much learning happened over 12 months. “The students may be miles behind in NAPLAN, but if you put benchmarks in place, you can grow students. It’s one year’s growth for one year’s learning,” he adds.

And it’s yielded results. Today, 60% of students finish VCE at Western Port and it has an 83% endorsement rate from parents. “It’s really important for our school because the school has created barriers against long-term disadvantage and unemployment,” explains Mr Devine.

“It’s not down to me, it’s about enabling teachers and staff, extending and growing their capacity. It’s not easy being an effective teacher at Western Port Secondary College. It probably never will be. Disadvantage is really hard. It’s a really tough job.”

Mr Devine, who was recognised as a Commonwealth Bank

Teaching Fellow last year, says it’s also about having a clear and articulate vision for his school. “One of the real beliefs I work by is our kids are worth whatever it takes. It’s about making a difference where it’s needed most.”

For Mr Devine, completing a Masters Degree at Monash in Educational Leadership was a real turning point in his career. “I was a Year 9 coordinator and became a lead teacher and we were looking at changing the way we teach Year 9,” he says.

“It was really good. It gave you the theory and the pedagogy behind the work you were doing back in the classroom. And that’s something that’s sometimes missed when you are making changes.

It gave me the opportunity to think in depth.”

Mr Devine’s degree helped him to create strategies to apply at school, and develop new ways of thinking about what he was already doing.

Throughout his studies and his career, he says the one thing that has remained with him is the belief that, “Our kids are worth it you know, every child, every opportunity.”

For more information about postgraduate study opportunities at Monash, please visit the website below.

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Buyer’s Guide

Monash Education Web: monash.edu/education/study

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CURRICULUM // ROSIE IN THE CLASSROOM

Promoting healthy relationships A NEW TEACHING RESOURCE AIMS TO EDUCATE YOUNG PEOPLE ABOUT MANY OF THE TOPICAL ISSUES THEY WANT ADDRESSED, BUT OFTEN FEEL TOO UNCOMFORTABLE TO ASK.

After an extensive public policy career, Mary Crooks became the Executive Director of the Victorian Women’s Trust in 1996. She has designed and led ground-breaking community engagement initiatives, such as the Purple Sage Project and Our Watermark Australia. In June 2012, Ms Crooks was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia, for her distinguished services to public policy and advocacy for the advancement of women. In 2016, she won the Public Policy category as part of the AFR/Westpac’s 100 Women of Influence for her years of work in shaping public policy in Australia.

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From sexting to mental health, friendships to equality, Rosie in the Classroom is a series of lesson plans and education modules, launched in June 2018. It aims to fill a gap in secondary school education by helping teachers to talk about difficult topics with their students.

“Rosie in the Classroom is about resilience and respect,” says Executive Director of the Victorian Women’s Trust, Mary Crooks AO. “It is a way in which to address the triggers of violence against women by addressing it really early on and educating young people around respectful relationships.”

She points to the Royal Commission into Family Violence report that was released in 2016. “It showed a connection between low-level everyday violence such as cat calling, to violence against women. So I think Rosie in the Classroom is very important as it addresses these issues. It’s about how to have a healthy relationship, how to be respectful and how to look after yourself. It is about young people being able to form a sense of wellbeing and look after themselves.”

Rosie in the Classroom is an addition to Rosie (Rosie.org.au), created in 2014 as an online resource targeted towards girls and young women. Rosie is the flagship initiative of the Dugdale Trust for Women & Girls, a national harm-prevention organisation, of which the Victorian Women’s Trust is Trustee.

Comprised of hundreds of articles, videos and blogs, Rosie was designed by staff members, Ally Oliver-Perham and Georgie Proud. It is named after the famous World War II poster known as Rosie the Riveter, which features the slogan “We can do it!”

Now commonly seen as an icon of feminism, the poster represented the women who worked at the factories and shipyards during World War II – many of whom produced war supplies – replacing the men who had been sent to war.

Ms Crooks AO has been leading the Victorian Women’s Trust for over two decades, and in that time

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has advocated for innovative community approaches for improving the status of Australian women and girls. In 2005, the Victorian Women’s Trust developed Be the Hero!, an online respectful relationships program aimed at teenage boys, in consultation with Northcote High School students. It has also looked at ways of building the capacity and resilience of young women by other means too – in 2010, the Victorian Women’s Trust funded and implemented the hugely successful speech and debating competition for Year 9 girls, Vida’s Voices.

In more recent years, the Trust’s focus has moved to curating online resources for young people, recognising that much of the information available is riddled with misinformation and rarely written with the best interests of teenagers. Coupled with the fact that young people are looking online for answers to their more difficult questions, and a rapid increase in social media use among younger generations, Ms Crooks felt it was time for the Trust to act.

Students can reflect on the drivers of unhealthy relationships and discuss characteristics of healthy relationships.

Rosie in the Classroom covers topics that include friendship, self-awareness, social awareness and social management.

She asserts that although the ways in which students use technology and social media have had an impact on the issues faced by the young women of today, many of the underlying problems have remained unchanged. “In some ways, many of the issues are universal. I often have quiet moments of reflection where I realise that young women today are dealing with many of the same issues I dealt with at high school. Objectification of women and girls, and being treated as a sexual object is still happening today.

“Although those things haven’t changed, the huge difference is in the way students use technology. As an example, easy access to pornography has had a big impact on how young people perceive a healthy relationship to function. I think there have been some significant impacts as a result of that. There are some practical things that are really disturbing such as an increase in inquiries about labiaplasty, because young people think that it’s normal for a vagina to look a certain way. This has an impact on young women’s relationships, and that is not only confined to heterosexual relationships. There is also the depiction of power relationships through pornography, where women are having things done to them rather being an active participant. It normalises violence.”

Ms Crooks adds that the proliferation of images

online that depict women in a certain way has been heightened by image-focussed social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat. “This is something women are having to deal with today that they weren’t dealing with even as recently as 10 years ago,” she says.

“But although technology heightens many of the issues that were already there, I think access to technology has been a positive thing for women too, as it makes resources readily available. Something like the Rosie website offers a whole world of resources for young women.”

Ms Crooks believes Rosie in the Classroom contributes to what was a critical gap for students.

“Last year was the first year that the Victorian Government launched the Respectful Relationships curriculum, and Rosie works beautifully alongside it. From my discussions with educators, depending what school you went to, you might get a little bit of information about the sorts of issues faced by young people, and in particular young women, but up until the past year or so, specific education about healthy relationships and looking after yourself was missing.

This set of resources is really important because it is freely available online for teachers and it’s very easy to use. We know that teachers are often time poor, which is why we create resources that are ready to be

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implemented in the classroom,” she says.

Though Rosie in the Classroom has been written and designed for students from Years 7-10, Ms Crooks believes its appeal stretches much further.

“There is no reason why it can’t be used during VCE too, especially the classes on meditation and yoga.”

The series includes seven flexible education modules that can be incorporated into a wide variety of subjects – from pastoral care and health, to English and Humanities classes. “One of the key aspects of Rosie in the Classroom was to ensure it was quite flexible in terms of where it can be used and where it can fit in,” adds Ms Crooks. “Any skillful educator would be able to clearly see the variety of ways these lesson plans can be incorporated into the curriculum.”

According to Ms Crooks, the benefits of Rosie in the Classroom extend far beyond each of the individual lesson plans. “These resources enable honest dialogue with young people, helping them to build the skills and capacities for transitioning to adulthood with greater ease.”

For more information

Rosie in the Classroom Web: www.rosie.org.au/rosie-in-theclassroom/

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CURRICULUM // COOL AUSTRALIA

Exploring Australia’s democratic freedoms OFFERING ENGAGING, INTERACTIVE LESSONS FOR SECONDARY STUDENTS ACROSS AUSTRALIA, A NEW ONLINE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE ALLOWS TEACHERS TO EXPLORE THE NATION’S DEMOCRATIC FREEDOMS WITH THEIR CLASSES.

Created through a partnership between education not-for-profit Cool Australia and the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), The Story of Our Rights and Freedoms is linked to the Australian Curriculum.

Cool Australia helps teachers find fun ways to critically engage, involve and switch on young Australians to learn for life. The organisation offers 1200-plus free online lessons as well as 40-plus affordable professional development courses for early learning, primary and secondary educators.

Head of Education, Chris Vella, said the 18-lesson unit for Years 7-10 will broaden students’ understanding of democracy and its function throughout history with captivating curriculum for

history, and civics and citizenship classes.

“Students need a deep understanding of democracy if they are to become active and informed citizens. All the lessons include videos and activities about human rights with a focus on relevant legislation and particular issues that affect people both locally and internationally,” he explained.

Cool Australia first teamed up with the AHRC in 2016 to launch Magna Carta – primary and secondary lessons exploring the evolution of democratic ideas and principles stemming from the Magna Carta.

“This experience showed us that teachers and students are hungry for more engaging content in

The Story of Our Rights and Freedoms was created by Cool Australia and the Australian Human Rights Commission.

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this area,” Mr Vella says. “We strengthened this partnership and have worked together to create another 18 free lessons that explore key features of the Australian government, and how those systems act to protect the rights and freedoms of all Australians.”

The launch of the Story of Our Rights and Freedoms coincides with the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the defining document for human rights in the modern age.

AHRC President, Emeritus Professor Rosalind Croucher AO, says education has the power to bring about positive change in communities across Australia. “Our newest series of resources,

Created for Years 7-10, each lesson includes videos and activities about human rights.

developed in partnership with the curriculum experts at Cool Australia, will support Australian teachers and students to deepen their understanding of the importance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and some of the other core elements that underpin the protection of our rights and freedoms in Australia today.”

The Story of Our Rights and Freedoms package is organised into units for each year level.

Year 7 lessons explore key features of our government, and how those systems act to protect the rights and freedoms of all Australians. The lesson Constitutional Referendum in Action makes connections between the referendum process and our rights and freedoms. Students role play the constitutional process from the moment a citizen raises a concern, through to voting ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in a referendum.

For Year 8 classes, students look at the rights of citizens and how we can actively and responsibly participate in democracy. The lesson Democratic Dissent considers the democratic right to vote, and what it feels like to be excluded from it. Students work in groups to research Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and women – two groups that struggled for the right to vote.

The Year 9 lessons examine systems of

government and how our rights and freedoms are enshrined within them. In the lesson Understanding Conciliation, students consider what discrimination is and how it can be addressed. They look at discrimination case studies and explore situations where conciliation could be effective.

Year 10 classes explore the transformation of the world throughout the 20th century, with a focus on the demand for and realisation of rights and freedoms.

The lesson Struggle for Rights and Freedoms Around the World focuses on the African American civil rights movement. Students organise key events within the USA civil rights movement into chronological order.

They research significant figures and create exhibits for a class gallery walk.

During the lesson The Struggle for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Rights and Freedoms, students engage in a Socratic Seminar to discuss the influence of Charles Perkins on the struggle for rights. They also research the events that prompted the National Apology to the Stolen Generations.

The Story of Our Rights and Freedoms lessons are built with accessibility in mind and are compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.

Like all Cool Australia lessons, this package builds 21st century skills to help young people to connect and

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The lessons focus on various issues that affect society, both locally and internationally.

contribute to an ever-changing world.

The lessons develop critical thinking, empathy, team work and cultural understanding. Importantly, students are taught to consider how their decisions impact on other people.

“Each lesson involves a range of dynamic activities that encourage students to communicate, collaborate, and take initiative to become more engaged citizens,” added Mr Vella. “The aim is for students to develop the knowledge, attitudes and skills to apply human rights in everyday life.”

For more information

Cool Australia Ph: 1300 853 810 Web: www.coolaustralia.org AHRC lessons: http://bit.ly/2Mvm99z

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BEYOND THE CLASSROOM // HEALTH AND FITNESS

Discourses of self-regulation and healthism CHARLES STURT UNIVERSITY LECTURER, RACHAEL JEFFERSON-BUCHANAN, EXPLORES THE STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF THE NEW PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT, HEALTH AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION (PDHPE) K–10 SYLLABUS.

Rachael Jefferson-Buchanan is currently a lecturer in Human Movement Studies (Health and Physical Education) and Creative Arts at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales. For the last 30 years she has taught and lectured in primary and secondary physical education in the UK, Switzerland and Australia. Ms Jefferson-Buchanan was also the lead physical education consultant for Cambridge Assessment International Education during this time, designing national curriculum and related professional development in Egypt and Kazakhstan.

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My current research considers physical education curriculum and associated sports policy in the UK, across a time period of nearly 120 years. I have adopted a genealogical approach, focusing on the historical discourses through which different forms of governing are constituted. In so doing, I have explored ways in which certain discourses give rise to historically specific forms of knowing and governing the body in physical education, and I have examined the power effects that underpin these. The selected methodology unsettles the ‘taken-for-granted’ in contemporary physical education, troubling rather than cultivating consensus, and thereby illuminates how this school subject’s pedagogy and practice construct the body.

Although my genealogical research focuses on the UK, it has inherent connections with the new Australian PDHPE K–10 Syllabus developed by the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA), perhaps due to colonial ties between the two countries. It is therefore possible to examine various discourses that have emerged in the UK physical education context and apply these to the new Australian PDHPE syllabus. A particularly significant aspect to note in the latter is how the syllabus has been structured. In essence, it is shaped by five propositions, organised into three content strands, with a focus on three PDHPE skill domains. Figure 1 provides an illustrative representation of these elements and their relationship.

What becomes evident from this simple visual is how extensively self-regulation, coupled with healthism, have permeated the new Australian PDHPE syllabus. Indeed, self-management skills, along with interpersonal skills, and movement skills, form the foundation of the syllabus content.

They are encircled by three content strands, of which two are health-oriented. In the third strand,

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Movement Skill and Performance, health also rises to the fore. Herein, traces of healthism are able to be distinguished, whereby an individual’s sense of personal responsibility and their body as sites of intervention and regulation are targeted.

In working under the assumption that everyone should endeavour to maximise their own health, healthism suggests that the individual has a choice when it comes to preventing their body from becoming diseased. As a result, healthism is often alluded to as an advanced liberal doctrine that unites public health objectives with individuals’ aspirations for personal health and wellbeing; this, despite the fact that socioeconomic status is strongly associated with risk of disease and mortality.

Interestingly, healthism and personal responsibility are two core discourses that tend to dominate contemporary physical education in the UK. However, as explained above, the notion of ‘self-management’ is explicitly stated (and concomitantly accepted) as a core skill domain in the Australian PDHPE syllabus. In contrast, only smatterings of this are embedded in the UK syllabus through the Key Stage statements and one of the four key concepts entitled ‘healthy, active lifestyles’. In the latter it is confirmed that students need to recognise the importance of regular physical activity and its impact on physical, mental and social wellbeing. This implicitly suggests that individual conduct, attitudes and emotions are the relevant symptoms needing attention in health behaviours. In similar ways to the Australian PDHPE syllabus, discourses consequently reveal themselves to be individualistic and regulatory in nature.

It is in the Australian syllabus strand ‘Healthy, Safe and Active Lifestyles’, which focuses on the interrelationship between health and physical activity concepts, that healthism and self-

regulation discourses broaden to involve community.

The syllabus states that students are required to “develop the knowledge, understanding and skills to empower them to make healthy and safe choices and take action to promote the health, safety and wellbeing of their communities. They engage with a range of health issues and identify strategies to keep them healthy, safe and active.” This affirms that the individual has personal responsibility for their state of health, but this discourse has now been extended to include community obligations.

This is akin to my research into curriculum changes in the UK from 1970 to 1998, where the body, through the technology of physical education, became a ‘solution’ to government’s desire for greater self-regulation and enhanced moral attributes in its citizens across this epoch. The self-regulation that subsequently emerged from the late 1990s/early 2000s can thus be traced to a problematisation of welfarist rationalities of governing that occurred in the early 1970s. This resulted in ruling authorities (government and others) increasing emphasis on governing physical

activity – and conduct more broadly – through communities. Fostering national growth through social responsibility has since filtered into national state documents such as physical education syllabuses.

Taking these matters into account, it might be ventured that broader (macro) power structures which operate in society filter down to govern the technology of physical education at the micro level.

While health has been an integral part of physical education curriculum content since the early 20th century in Australia, it was not until the 1990s that health promotion became increasingly prevalent in the public policy arena. This resulted in a new health consciousness and a discursive shift towards personal responsibility. The Australian PDHPE curriculum has seemingly embraced such healthism by placing its three skill domains as the core content from which the body might be constructed.

Accordingly, students’ individual behaviours become the mediator of personal health, and the health ambitions of ruling authorities are able to be realised. It might therefore be proposed that the new

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Figure 1: Diagram from the Australian PDHPE K–10 Syllabus, developed by NESA.

Australian PDHPE curriculum merely reconstructs old health concepts, breathing new life into them through its contemporary discourses of self-regulation and healthism.

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BEYOND THE CLASSROOM // HEALTH & FITNESS

Outdoor gyms helping to tackle obesity A GROWING TREND IN YOUTH OBESITY LEVELS HAS SEEN FITNESS AT THE CORE OF PUBLIC DISCUSSION OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, WITH MANY GOVERNMENTS SUBSEQUENTLY REVIEWING POLICIES AND PROGRAMS TO COMBAT THE INCREASINGLY INACTIVE LIFESTYLES OF OUR CHILDREN. When creating an outdoor gym, the equipment should offer a range of different workouts.

A school playground can play a significant role in developing positive attitudes towards physical activity. The right school playground can promote exercise, foster positive behaviour and assist in social development. This has also been recognised by many principals and education providers.

According to the Physical Activity Strategy 2018-2023 report from VICHealth, “Young people aged 12-17 years participation in physical activity halves during adolescence (down from an average of 120 minutes to just over 60 minutes

PlayRope has seen growing interest in secondary schools installing outdoor gyms.

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a day) with sport participation levels dropping suddenly at around age 15.”

The report notes that children and youth who are physically active are also more socially active, demonstrate reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety and tend to perform better at school. It also highlights the transition to and from secondary school as being “key life stages at which to influence behaviours that establish lifelong healthy habits.”

PlayRope, a supplier of outdoor fitness equipment, has seen a significant increase in secondary schools installing outdoor gyms to help increase student fitness and expand their physical education programs.

This is being supported through various State Governments across Australia, which are renewing physical education programs in schools.

For example, the NSW Department of Education is currently trialling a new program in 76 state and catholic schools across the state. The program includes classroom weigh-ins and fitness levels in report cards and requires teachers to ensure that

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their students are active for at least 50% of all physical education classes.

As PlayRope asserts, an outdoor gym presents a great opportunity to boost fitness on the school grounds and in the community at large.

When designing a gym, PlayRope says it is good practice to offer a range of different workouts, typically picking a couple of pieces of equipment that target each of the following areas: cardio, toning and strength.

Using its extensive experience in providing outdoor equipment and design solutions, PlayRope provides a range of outdoor gyms and playgrounds for schools, helping to transform a school’s vision into reality.

Buyer’s Guide

PlayRope Ph: 1800 767 529 Web: Playrope.com.au/schools

HEALTH & FITNESS // BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

Healthy body, healthy mind ENCOURAGING STUDENTS TO GET OUTDOORS AND EXERCISE AT SCHOOL IS NOT ONLY GREAT FOR THEIR PHYSICAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING, IT HAS A POSITIVE IMPACT IN THE CLASSROOM TOO, PROMOTING ENHANCED CONCENTRATION AND COGNITIVE FUNCTION.

The Australian Department of Health recommends that children and young people aged between 5 and 17 years take part in at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity each day.

“High school students typically don’t have access to the playgrounds they had at primary school. Incorporating an obstacle course, monkey bars or a courtyard dedicated to fitness equipment ensures secondary students can still play and workout at the same time. An outdoor gym creates another social environment that helps to eliminate exclusion,” says Candyce Wright, who recently joined innovative playground and outdoor fitness equipment company, a_space, after spending over a decade working as a personal trainer.

She says there is a distinct correlation between students who are physically active and those who do well at school. “Students’ grades are improved because being physically active means you work with different parts of your brain, improving cognitive and scholastic performance.

Using the monkey bars and going from one bar to

the next or walking across a balance beam – these sorts of activities make students use their minds in a way they wouldn’t need to inside the classroom.”

Ms Wright points to a study conducted in Copenhagen by 24 lecturers and researchers in 2016. It focused on the benefits of physical activity for people aged between 6 and 18 years-ofage. “The research involved children from eight different countries. It showed that physical activity in children and youth improved not only fitness health but also improved cognitive functioning and helped students retain information,” she explains.

Likewise, a joint research report conducted in 2012 by the University of Canberra and the Australian National University called ‘Schools with fitter children achieve better literacy and numeracy results: Evidence of a school cultural effect’ also highlighted the correlation between physical activity and better academic results.

With rising obesity levels among our nation’s youth, more and more schools are recognising the benefits of offering outdoor fitness equipment to students.

Studies have shown that physical activity among students has a positive effect on academic performance.

Offering fitness equipment to secondary students at school provides a space where they can play and exercise at the same time.

“Schools are more open now to acknowledging the fact they need to teach kids about the importance of balance between the mind and body from a young age. They are acknowledging how different kids learn. PE teachers are encouraging kids to be more active, the next level is offering the option for students to workout. The a_space Fitness Extra range is perfect for secondary students because it provides challenge beyond a normal curriculum,” Ms Wright adds. a_space’s outdoor fitness range offers equipment for a range of ages and fitness levels.

Equipment can be installed individually or combined to create an outdoor gym. The company’s designers work closely with schools to customise a space that best suits the needs of the school and its students.

“The opportunity to move allows their brains to strengthen and grow by increasing the blood flow through the body,” says Ms Wright. “This is associated with memory and problem solving.”

Buyer’s Guide

a_space Australia Ph: 1800 632 222 Web: www.aspaceto.com.au

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BEYOND THE CLASSROOM // PLAYGROUNDS

The Will-Fit range has been developed to encourage efficient and effective movements among users.

Thinking outside the square WILLPLAY HAS SPARKED THE IMAGINATION OF ITS USERS WITH ITS NEW WILL-FIT AND URBAN WARRIOR RANGES, WITH SCHOOL SPECIFIC DESIGNS AIMED AT CHANGING THE WAY WE VIEW FITNESS AND PLAY IN SCHOOLS.

Studies have shown that increased physical activity leads to better health and mental fitness outcomes in children. When it comes to physical activity, WillPlay explains that less than 20% of Australian children aged 5-17 are meeting the national daily physical activity guidelines of accumulating at least 60 minutes of moderate vigorous physical activity (MVPA).

Well planned physical activity ensures students are meeting or exceeding the recommended levels of MVPA. It can also improve student’s core strength, which has been linked to increased educational outcomes through simple improvements to posture and increased attention spans.

Getting students moving in the great outdoors is what the Will-Fit range is all about. Developed to promote efficient and effective movements, Will-Fit is designed to increase health and fitness. Manufactured from powder-coated G304 stainless steel, the range not only looks great, but is durable and low maintenance; with options suitable for different ages and fitness levels.

A well-designed fitness area that

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incorporates dynamic exercise equipment, as well as activities to develop balance and coordination, assist in creating the basic building blocks for a fit and active adulthood.

The new Urban Warrior range has been designed to bring out the little Ninja in all of us and allows schools to benchmark and track fitness outcomes in students from Prep to High School. This range doubles as conventional play equipment for use outside of class time but comes into its own for a fully structured fitness program.

WillPlay is a 100% Australian owned family business based in Bundaberg, Queensland. It has extensive experience in the design and manufacture of play and fitness equipment for schools all over Australia.

WillPlay continues to research new manufacturing techniques and new materials to ensure it supplies customers with the best in quality and value.

All WillPlay systems are built using recycled or recyclable materials, ensuring commitment to better, safer play and fitness for future generations. WillPlay has aligned with raw

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material suppliers that specialise in recycled and recyclable materials. All suppliers have documented sustainable practices and are audited for compliance.

From design and certification through to installation and softfall flooring, WillPlay’s experienced designers, project managers and installation teams ensure that your fit for purpose fitness or play system is completed on time, the first time. WillPlay’s fully audited ISO quality systems provide a smooth transition to handover and its dedicated after sales support ensure many safe years of fitness play.

WillPlay offers a full design and construct service and complete turn-key packages including equipment, softfall and shade structures. With representatives and installers all over Australia, WillPlay can turn your next project into something other schools will be envious of.

Buyer’s Guide

WillPlay Ph: 1300 132 047 Web: www.willplay.com.au

educationmattersmag.com.au educationmattersmag.com.au is a leading source of breaking industry information. The website is updated daily with news, policies, governance, curriculum and editorial from leading authorities, industry experts and ministerial decision makers.

All advertisers in Education Matters Magazine are given the opportunity to have a

Education Matters Premium School Suppliers Directory

premium profile page in the Premium School Suppliers Directory. The Premium School Suppliers Directory has a userfriendly interface making it easy for educational professionals to search for products and services they may require for their school.

for further information, contact: Chelsea Daniel-Young

Mobile 0425 699 878

This is your one stop shop for anything your school or learning facility may require. You can browse any category or use our search function to find what you require.

Email chelsea.daniel@primecreative.com.au

THE LAST WORD // Minister for Education and Training

Contributing to our future Every Australian deserves access to a quality education and the opportunity to succeed, no matter where they live, writes the Hon. Dan Tehan MP, Minister for Education and Training.

The almost 400,000 students living in regional, rural and remote Australia have the same potential as those in the metro areas, however the achievements of these students have lagged behind urban students.

The Australian Government is committed to delivering an education system funded to meet the needs of every student and empowering them to reach their full potential.

Our Government’s expenditure on school education is $309.6 billion over the period 2018 to 2029, representing an increase of $37.6 billion to schools in our schools package.

Funding for each student will grow on average by 62.6 per cent. Funding for state schools will grow by 101 per cent, and funding for non-state schools will grow by 70 per cent over the package.

We know it costs more to educate students in regional, rural and remote areas than it does in city-based schools.

Our efforts to turn record investment into improved results, particularly in regional, rural and remote areas, is going to take a concerted effort beyond just government; it will need parents, teachers, school leaders and entire communities to get behind it.

Last year, we commissioned Emeritus Professor John Halsey of Flinders University to produce the Independent Review into Regional, Rural and Remote Education (IRRRRE). The Government has accepted all 11 of the report’s recommendations.

Alongside the recommendations, Professor Halsey suggested 53 actions as examples of what could be done to implement these recommendations.

Many of these specific actions intersect

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with work in progress, future plans and funding arrangements, and cross various levels of government.

Professor Halsey’s goal to enhance access, outcomes and opportunities in regional Australia is one all Australians should share. Helping to lift student engagement and results in rural and regional Australia benefits us all, with better employment outcomes, productivity and economic growth.

In response to the review, the Australian Government will provide $96.1 million over four years, including expanding availability of sub-bachelor and Commonwealth-supported bachelor places at regional study hubs, and increasing the Parental Income cut-off for Youth Allowance’s regional workforce independence criteria.

It is expected 75 per cent more regional students will qualify for Youth Allowance under these criteria.

The Government has also committed $16.7 million over four years to help establish and maintain up to eight communityowned, regional study hubs across Australia.

These hubs will provide study space, video conferencing, computer facilities, and pastoral and academic support for students studying via distance at partner universities, improving access to higher education.

The $14 million for more places announced this year will support an additional 500 bachelor students to study there.

A further $123.6 million has been committed over five years for additional Commonwealth supported places at regional universities, specifically University of the Sunshine Coast (Moreton Bay),

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Southern Cross University (Coffs Harbour) and the University of Tasmania’s Northern Transformation Project.

We delivered on our 2016 election commitment through our $152 million Regional Student Access to Education Package, which included $24 million for scholarships to support 1200 regional and remote students to undertake science, technology, engineering, mathematics, health and agriculture studies.

Through the Regional Budget Statement, the Government will report each year on progress in delivering improved access, outcomes and opportunities for regional, rural and remote students.

We want to see the results of these measures to ensure that students are achieving the best outcomes.

With the evidence provided by the IRRRRE report, and additional input such as David Gonski’s ‘Through Growth to Achievement: Report of the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools’, we are on the path to an education system that is student focused, results driven and funded according to need.

The Australian Government is making a lasting and real difference to the opportunities provided to regional, rural and remote students, enabling them to make their unique contribution to the future of our country.

AEU // THE LAST WORD

Putting the curriculum cart before the teaching horse Federal President at the Australian Education Union (AEU), Correna Haythorpe, discusses the need to focus on our teachers before thinking about reviewing the national school curriculum.

Those who want to reform our national school curriculum should take a deep breath. Before we start changing the syllabus, we must first ensure that we have done everything we can to let our students access a broad curriculum by giving our teachers a chance to really teach.

It’s hard to talk about education without being pulled into the curriculum debate. Should STEM subjects be front and centre? Are languages the way of the future? Should students be grounded in the basics of literacy and numeracy?

The answer is that they are actually the wrong questions. What is generally forgotten is the central, and vital role teachers play in the curriculum debate.

You can have the best school curriculum in the world, but without fully qualified and well supported teachers to deliver it, our students will not benefit.

Before focusing for too long on whether our schools should prioritise STEM or literacy and numeracy, we really should prioritise our teachers.

Recruiting and training sufficient numbers of teachers to give students access to a broad curriculum sometimes seems to be an afterthought of governments. A clear example is the number of teachers currently teaching subjects outside of their core specialty. Surveys show between 20% and 40% of teachers teaching mathematics are teaching out of field. Clearly this isn’t ideal.

Resourcing is a huge issue when it comes to supporting teachers. Data from the OECD Programme for International School Assessment and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study from 2017 showed Year 8 maths and science students in adequately-resourced schools performed significantly better than those in under-resourced schools. The studies also showed staff shortages are six times more likely to impact students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and

these students are three times more likely to be at a school where poor infrastructure impacts learning.

The original Gonski school funding agreement recognised this. Principals, teachers, support staff and students in public schools were going to benefit from the biggest investment of needs-based funding in a generation. 2018 was finally going to be the year that they received the resources that would allow them to reduce teacher shortages and enable students to really explore the curriculum.

Unfortunately this focus on needs-based funding and investment in teaching in public schools ended under the Federal Coalition. Public schools have experienced $1.9 billion in cuts, while earlier this year a senior secondary curriculum review was announced by the Commonwealth as part of the draft National Schools Reform Agreement (NSRA).

Putting aside the fundamental problems with the NSRA for now, the fact that the Morrison Government is focusing on curriculum reform instead of investing in teacher development is putting the cart before the horse. Surely we need fully-qualified teachers teaching their preferred subjects before we are in a position to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum.

Earlier this year the Federal Government acknowledged a problem with falling numbers of school student STEM enrolments and highlighted STEM teacher recruitment as a priority. However the government did not provide any long-term solutions and failed to produce a comprehensive plan to fix teacher shortages.

Any approach to addressing falling enrolments in subjects must be part of a comprehensive plan to ensure all public schools are properly resourced.

The best thing Prime Minister Morrison could do to help the teaching profession to improve student outcomes is not to push through a premature

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curriculum review, but to restore the $1.9 billion taken from public school funding in 2018 and 2019 by his government.

We also need a concerted strategy to improve the recruitment and retention of teachers across all curriculum areas, involving comprehensive workforce planning, targeted Initial Teacher Education recruitment, better pay and conditions for staff, and attraction and retention measures to provide fully-qualified teachers for schools experiencing shortages.

The solution isn’t just relying on technical solutions such as ‘teaching by video’ or employing people without proper teaching qualifications, such as through the Federal Coalition backed ‘Teach For Australia’ (TFA) scheme.

The TFA program recruits professionals from the private sector to teach in public schools. It has cost taxpayers $77 million so far, with only 124 teachers trained during the first five years of the program still working in schools.

Programs producing under-qualified teachers are not good for building a strong learning environment. Surely fixing this issue is a higher priority than pushing through an ideologicallymotivated review of the national school curriculum.

Most importantly, any change to the curriculum must be driven by and fully involve the teaching profession. Teaching is our craft and our passion. If we can get this right, then generations of students will reap the benefits.

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THE LAST WORD // Office of the eSafety Commissioner

Online safety education: Targeting behaviours rather than technologies eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, talks about the prevalence of cyberbullying among young Australians and the importance of online safety education for students.

I recently had the opportunity to present to a group of Australian education leaders about the work of the eSafety Office in addressing the range of online ills we see playing out on technology, including cyberbullying and image-based abuse.

While preparing for this discussion, I could feel multiple tabs opening in my brain as I contemplated the key skills I want my own children to possess while navigating the online world, drawing from evidence-based knowledge of strategies that work versus strategies that don’t. As a parent, I know I represent the frontline of defence in keeping my kids safe online but I want these important lessons and skills to be taught and reinforced throughout my children’s educational journey as well. This is particularly relevant as they begin to use technology for learning in and out of the classroom, in preparation for the workforce of tomorrow.

Research conducted by the eSafety Office tells us that one in four Australian children are physically bullied and one in five young Australians experience cyberbullying. Not surprisingly, most of the 900 cyberbullying reports into our office have been peer-based and an extension of the face-toface bullying a child might be experiencing within the school gates. It is important that these online behaviours are addressed in tandem with root causes of the social conflict.

Based on this knowledge, we know the best thing we can do for our young people to combat cyberbullying is to target the behaviours by educating, empowering and equipping them early on with the ‘4 Rs of Online Safety’ – respect, resilience, responsibility and reasoning. If we get the educational and cultural change programs right, hopefully, we will encourage our young people to do a few key things in the face of cyberbullying: • When safe to do so, stand up for peers online, be

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a positive ‘upstander’ rather than a ‘bystander’; • Report serious cyberbullying to the social media site or eSafety office; • Speak to a trusted adult (or peer) without feeling stigmatised as a ‘dobber’; and • Understand that they are not alone and that there is no weakness in seeking support.

My thoughts also turned to what types of education programs we should be advocating for as best-practice in driving behaviour change.

I recently had the opportunity to listen to a presentation and research by David Finkelhor from the Crimes Against Children Research Center, which scanned the research environment to uncover the educational interventions that work well to promote safe online behaviours. His research comports with the observation, evidence base and evaluation the eSafety Office has conducted over the past few years. The following methods were found to be generally ineffective: programs that are too brief, discreet lectures, single exposure videos and a reliance on stern warnings and fear mongering.

At the eSafety Office, we believe consistent, age appropriate and positive approaches to education and awareness are key to prevention. To this end, we strive to deliver pragmatic, solutionsfocused online safety advice and develop resources delivered through various platforms, using different approaches. The available research is helping us develop an evidence base to understand what works well and enrich our educational outputs. In brief, these successful interventions tend to include: • Multiple exposures to online safety, using varied platforms including videos, games, posters, class discussions and parental engagement; • A focus on specific skills along with opportunities to practice these skills; • Early education prior to onset of targeted

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behaviour guided by well-trained educators; and • Monitored implementation and improvement of programs through evaluation.

At the eSafety Office, we work to incorporate these proof points into the range of programs we deliver, while also working to ensure they are mapped to the Australian curriculum. Some of these initiatives include our Virtual Classrooms program that has reached over 240,000 students and teachers; our wide range of classroom resources, including our award-winning Rewrite Your Story video series; our Young & eSafe site; our new multi-player video game, The Lost Summer; our series of national professional learning webinars for teachers; and our iParent portal and Screen Smart Parent Tour to help parents and carers understand online risks and how to manage these risks.

Ideally, online safety education and related education, like respectful relationships education, should become a fixture of the K-12 curriculum.

This eSafety education should be delivered consistently across the nation. But this education, and modelling of positive online behaviour, needs to begin at home with parents and carers.

Unless these bad behaviours are targeted and positive online behaviours consistently enforced, we are going to face a losing battle. If we ban a technology or device, our kids will surely find a way to circumvent those restrictions. They need to be armed with the skills to navigate their online worlds safely, responsibly and respectfully.

Curtin University School of Education // THE LAST WORD

‘Tradie to teachers’ program devalues the profession Teaching qualifications and Initial Teacher Education courses in Australia have been a site of Federal Government intervention in recent times, write Dr Brad Gobby and Dr Rebecca Walker, Senior Lecturers from the School of Education at Curtin University.

The High Achieving Teachers Program (HATP) is the Federal Government’s latest intervention into Teacher Education. Recently put out to tender, the HATP program addresses teaching workforce shortages, particularly in science and mathematics education and ICT, where there are high incidences of secondary teachers teaching ‘out-of-field’ in schools. HATP is a fast-tracked employment-based pathway into teaching, with many to be placed in schools rated below the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage national median.

The program is a spin-off of the Commonwealth Government-supported Teach for Australia (TFA) program, which has been funded to the tune of $70 million. These types of programs can be traced to the United States and the Teach for America program, which places unqualified and minimally qualified teachers into classrooms.

The benefits of such programs are inconclusive at best, and troublesome at least. Teachers in such fast-track programs in the United States are often unprepared, unsupported and have a low retention rate. According to respected Professor Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University, uncertified teachers are also less effective than certified teachers. Of course, this is to be expected when you place people with nominal pedagogical and curriculum knowledge and experience in a classroom of 30 students from diverse backgrounds and with varied needs. We know very little about the effectiveness of such teachers in Australia and about their impact on those people we hear least from but do the most in schools – the students.

What is especially troublesome about the HATP program is that, unlike TFA, HATP candidates

will not need a university degree to teach. It is open to anyone with “professional or academic experience gained outside of teaching”.

While school students might benefit from being taught by teachers with recent industry experience or specialist STEM related qualifications, we need caution about the effect of this apprenticeship model of learning to teach.

Of great concern is that programs like HATP encourage a technical view of teaching, where teaching is reduced to a method or universal set of strategies for delivering a prescribed curriculum.

In this view, teachers do not need to situate their practice in its substantive cultural, historical or intellectual context, nor engage with systemic issues around education, like poverty and funding.

Teaching is apparently simpler than that, and any ‘Joe’ can pick up the trade from observing ‘masters’. Imagine expecting dentists to learn on the job without extensive study of their field.

This impoverished view of teaching feeds into the poor perceptions many have of the teaching profession – that anyone can teach in any context with the right grab-bag of tools. But teaching is complex and demanding and one cannot and should not simply replicate the form of teaching they experienced as a learner, which many novices are prone to do.

Our book Powers of Curriculum: Sociological Perspectives on Education (Oxford University Press), makes this case. It argues that teachers must learn to navigate the social, cultural and discursive complexities of the educational domain and their relationships with students and communities. To do this, teachers need to be equipped with a broad range of educational knowledge and practical wisdom drawn from

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studying foundational and contemporary philosophers, theorists and researchers of education. One wonders the extent to which the pressures of learning on the job under the guidance of already-pressured teachers affords HATP candidates the opportunity to become intellectual workers capable of reflecting on and disrupting their practice and the implicit theories that drive them.

In effect, pernicious programs like TFA and HATP undermine and cast suspicion over the quality of the nation’s teacher education courses and the teaching profession. Indeed, at a time when governments need to better resource public schools, teacher education courses and raise the status of teaching as a profession, they have instead chosen to fund this band-aid solution which erodes the status of teachers by undervaluing their qualifications and professional knowledge. This reminds us of Linda DarlingHammond’s observation of effective teaching and the professional knowledge that underpins it, “Ensuring student success requires a new kind of teaching, conducted by teachers who understand learning and pedagogy, who can respond to the needs of their students and the demands of their disciplines, and who can develop strong connections between students’ experiences and the goals of the curriculum.” We might reasonably ask how this can occur when HATP candidates are teaching first?

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EVENTS

THE INCLUSIVE EDUCATION SUMMIT 26-28 October 2018 Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC www.deakin.edu.au An in-depth look at educational democracy, where attendees come together to consider human rights with regards to inclusive education.

AIS STUDENT WELLBEING CONFERENCE 9 November 2018 Manly, Sydney, NSW www.aisnsw.edu.au A conference for K-12 staff that brings together evidence, resources and ideas centred around wellbeing.

STAFF AND STUDENT WELLNESS AND WELLBEING CONFERENCE 12-13 November 2018 Rendezvous Hotel, Melbourne, VIC www.informa.com.au/conferences/education/all/ Showcasing examples of best practice when it comes to both student and staff wellness programs, the conference will also look at some of the legal and moral responsibilities of schools.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY CONFERENCE 19-21 November 2018 Burswood, Perth, WA www.mawainc.org.au/primary-secondaryconference The Mathematical Association of Western Australia will host the inaugural Primary Conference, held together with the Secondary Conference.

MAV ANNUAL CONFERENCE 6-7 December 2018 Bundoora, Melbourne, VIC www.mav.vic.edu.au/conference.html The Mathematical Association of Victoria Annual Conference brings together mathematics educators, policy makers and curriculum experts to share their expertise and ideas.

NATIONAL SCIENCE TEACHERS SUMMER SCHOOL – CANBERRA 7-11 January 2019 Australian National University, Canberra, ACT www.nysf.edu.au/programs/nstss A five-day professional development program for new and experienced secondary science teachers.

ACHPER INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 14-16 January 2019 AIS Canberra, ACT www.achper2019.com Focused on health and physical education, the 31st ACHPER International Conference brings together health and physical education teachers, sport educators and coaches, and health practitioners.

NATIONAL SCIENCE TEACHERS SUMMER SCHOOL – BRISBANE 14-18 January 2019 University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD www.nysf.edu.au/programs/nstss A five-day professional development program for new and experienced secondary science teachers.

INTERNATIONAL STEM IN EDUCATION CONFERENCE 21-23 November 2018 Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD www.stem-in-ed2018.com.au An event that encourages delegates to explore and create new ideas about integrated STEM education.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EDUCATIONAL QUALITY AND INNOVATIVE TEACHING MODELS 1-2 February 2019 Hotel Grand Chancellor, Melbourne, VIC waset.org/conference/2019/02/melbourne/ICEQITM Bringing academic scientists, researchers and research scholars together to exchange ideas and share their experience and research.

ICME 2018 3-4 December 2018 Surry Hills, Sydney, NSW www.waset.org/conference/2018/12/sydney/ICME The International Conference on Mathematical Education brings leading academic scientists, researchers and research scholars together to exchange ideas and share experiences.

ALIA INFORMATION ONLINE 2019 CONFERENCE 11-15 February 2019 Hilton Hotel Sydney, NSW https://www.alia.org.au/events/informationonline-2019 The Australian Library and Information Association conference offers the opportunity to speak with key library and information service professionals.

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VCE SCIENCE CONFERENCE SERIES 12-15 February 2019 La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC http://www.sciencevictoria.com.au/confVCE.html Conducted by Science Victoria, on behalf of the Science Teachers’ Association of Victoria Inc. (STAV), sessions focus on Biology, Chemistry and Physics.

NATIONAL FUTURESCHOOLS EXPO + CONFERENCE 19-21 March 2019 Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre, VIC www.futureschools.com.au Australia’s largest education showcase, focusing on the areas of technology, environment, pedagogy and curriculum.

MARZANO RESEARCH SUMMIT 28 March 2019 Brisbane, QLD www.solution-tree.com.au/event-list/marzanoresearch-summit-brisbane Aimed at F–12 educators, the event translates Dr Robert J Marzano’s 50 years of research into practical strategies for the classroom.

LANGUAGE, LITERACY AND LEARNING CONFERENCE 4-6 April 2019 Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, WA literacylanguageconf.com Aimed at those with an interest in improving literacy and numeracy outcomes among students, including teachers, principals, school psychologists, speech pathologists and occupational therapists.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON E-LEARNING & INNOVATIVE PEDAGOGIES 2-3 May 2019 Hotel Grand Chancellor, Hobart, TAS ubi-learn.com/2019-conference Presented by AADES and Common Ground Research Networks, the theme for this year will be From the Ends of the Earth to Connected Learners.

EDUTECH 5-7 June 2019 International Convention Centre, Sydney, NSW www.edutech.net.au The largest education event in the Southern Hemisphere, bringing professionals together to learn, debate, exchange ideas and be inspired.

ACEL & CORWIN PRESENT JOHN HATTIE & DOUGLAS FISHER AS THEY PRESENT TOGETHER VISIBLE LEARNING: DEVELOPING ASSESSMENT CAPBABLE VISIBLE LEARNERS

Maximizing Skill, Will & Thrill

Plus LIVE Streaming to Melbourne - visit acel.org.au/VL for more information DAY 1: Sydney November 26 John Hattie & Doug Fisher Workshop

DAY 2: Sydney November 27th Doug Fisher Individual Workshop

DISCOVER:

DISCOVER:

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The best way to introduce students in your school to self-assessment, and how to provide ample opportunities for them to apply it to their own learning The cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational strategies that fuel student progress How to create a classroom environment that views mistakes as a chance to learn The alignment of high-impact literacy practices, as defined by Hattie’s seminal work, with phases of learning, will get you working smarter not harder.

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What it means to be an efficacious teacher and to ensure that students are assessmentcapable, which means that students understand their current level of performance and compare that with the desired level of learning.

That using the right approach at the right time can help you more intentionally design classroom experiences that hit the surface, deep, and transfer phases of learning and more expertly see when a student is ready to dive from surface to deep.

That assessment-capable learners and their teachers select direct, dialogic, and independent learning approaches they know will help attain their shared learning goals.

That assessment-capable learners seek feedback from others, provide others with feedback, and monitor their learning from acquisition through consolidation to mastery.

REGISTER AT ACEL.ORG.AU

With Epson, 100% of your class can focus on your lessons.

ON A 70” DISPLAY ONLY 42% SEE IT ALL – GO BIG WITH EPSON When you are looking to inspire the next generation, ensure you engage your audience right to the back of the room. Research confirms that audiences are missing out when viewing content on a 70-inch flat panel TV versus a 100-inch projector screen*.

You put too much hard work in to your lessons to fall down in the last mile.

Influence starts with you and ends with a screen size that matters.

For more information visit: www.epson.com.au/gobigwithepson *Leading 70-inch class 4k resolution flat panel in a 22’ (width) by 27’ (depth) classroom-style arrangement. When asked to copy down six short items of information from slides being displayed, 58% of students ages 12-22 copied at least one item incorrectly. Based on an independent, quantitative study conducted by Radius Research in multiple U.S. markets.