It’s essential to keep moving, learning, and evolving for as long as you’re here and this world keeps spinning.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
Sunata Edition 13
Principal: Ros Curtis
Editors: Karen Gorrie, Wendy Johnston
Graphic Designer: Pam Smiles
Photographer: Mitch Hollywood, Victoria Nikolova
In the modern landscape of rapid transformation, there is a paramount necessity for introspection and forward thinking to navigate the current world of work positively. The acceleration of change in this domain necessitates that career education adapts at a comparable velocity to remain effective and relevant.
It is akin to the evolution of music consumption – from the days of eight-track tapes to the modern era of cloud-based streaming – the need for adaptability and constant progression is real. The career education framework should also reflect this same agility, preparing us to operate in a dynamic work environment that is ever shifting.
By deeply comprehending the concept of career development, scrutinising various career theories, integrating personal
experiences, and examining the influence of career policies, we can cultivate a contemporary, reactive approach to career education. With a view to equip individuals with the appropriate tools for carving out their career paths in this rapidly evolving landscape, it becomes imperative to unearth insights that will help align career education with the realities of the modern world of work.
The contemporary world of work has witnessed seismic shifts, primarily engendered by technological advancements and changing societal values. Building upon the established theoretical underpinnings of the contemporary work environment and the evolving concept of ‘career’, the world
of work has undergone substantial change. One profound transformation is the shift from a stable, single-organisation career to a portfolio career. In contrast to traditional employment security, the portfolio career model champions a diverse mix of roles across numerous sectors (Bridges, 1994). This model nurtures adaptability and resilience in an increasingly unpredictable job market while accommodating the rising societal value of work-life balance (Inkson & Arthur, 2001; Guest, 2002).
Technological advancements have revolutionised work dynamics, fostering the rise of ‘global citizens’ who can engage in work from anywhere, at any time (Hoskins & Jones, 2016). This development, facilitated by the progression in digital communication and remote work infrastructure, has expanded work opportunities, leading to a more inclusive and diverse work environment (Hilbrecht et al., 2013).
Simultaneously, the expectations within the workforce have evolved. Employers encourage employees with the potential for growth and continuous learning (Bennett, 2019). This development is in sync with the increasing importance of transferable skills in today’s fast-paced work environment. Skills such as communication, problem-solving, and critical thinking enhance employees’ adaptability across various roles and sectors (Robles, 2012).
As the world of work undergoes rapid transformations, employees are increasingly seeking careers that align with their personal values, such as environmental consciousness and work-life balance (Hirschi, 2012). This shift reflects broader societal changes and has a profound influence on both the nature of work and the career aspirations of individuals. Research by Wrzesniewski et al. (1997) supports this notion, highlighting the importance of personal values in career decision-making. Individuals who perceive their work as a calling, aligning with their deeply held values, experience greater job satisfaction and wellbeing. This aligns with the concept of ‘person-job fit’ proposed by Edwards (1991), suggesting that congruence between personal values and job characteristics leads to higher motivation and engagement. Recognising and embracing the significance of personal values in career choices can enable organisations to attract and retain talent who are more engaged and committed to their work. It also underscores the need to create work environments that support individuals in pursuing meaningful and values-aligned careers.
In summary, there have been notable shifts in the realm of employment, marked by the rise of portfolio careers, the transformative impact of technology, evolving expectations, and a growing emphasis on personal values and transferable skills. These changes have fundamentally reshaped our perception of careers, accentuating the complex interaction between societal dynamics, technological advancements, and individual aspirations.
Career theories have significantly evolved in response to economic, social, and environmental changes, supporting the shifting paradigms of the respective periods.
Industrialisation during World War I and II, as well as the Great Depression, brought about significant transformations in the economic landscape. It was during this time that Holland’s Trait Theory (1959) gained prominence, advocating for the orientation of jobs with individual characteristics and the surrounding environment. This theory provided a practical approach to address the economic upheavals, wherein individuals were assigned roles based on their traits to enhance efficiency and productivity amidst challenging circumstances (Nauta, 2010).
From the 1950s to 2000s – a period of civil rights movement and economic boom – there was a hierarchical shift in the world of work. Career theories such as the Developmental Theory (Ginzberg et al., 1951), the Life Span Life Space Theory (Super, 1980), and the Social Learning Theory (Mitchell & Krumboltz, 1996) evolved. These theories emphasised career development over time, the impact of one’s self-concept, and the influence of learning experiences on career choices, respectively (Sharf, 2013). This era marked a shift from static job-person fit to a dynamic understanding of career as a lifelong developmental process.
The advent of the digital era, characterised by the global economy and advanced technologies, has necessitated further evolution in career theories. Constructivist/social constructionist theories have come to the fore, including the Systems Theory Framework (McMahon & Patton, 1995), Career Construction Theory (Savickas, 2005), Happenstance Learning Theory (Krumboltz, 2009), and Chaos Theory of Careers (Pryor & Bright, 2003). These theories focus on the individual’s active role in constructing their careers, the non-linear nature of career development, and the influence of chance events, thereby reflecting the complexities and uncertainties of the modern world of work (Patton & McMahon, 2014; Savickas, 2013; Bright & Pryor, 2005).
Career theories have undergone constant evolution in response to changes in the economic, social, and environmental landscapes. Starting with Holland’s Trait Theory, which emerged during the industrialisation period, to the constructivist theories that have emerged in the digital era, these theoretical developments illustrate the changing nature of work and the dynamic interaction between individuals and their work environments. As the world of work continues to transform, it is imperative for career theories to adapt and develop, offering valuable frameworks that facilitate comprehension and navigation of these changes (Patton & McMahon, 2014; Savickas, 2013; Bright & Pryor, 2005). By remaining responsive to the evolving nature of work, career theories can effectively support individuals in making informed career decisions and adapting to the intricacies of the modern labour market.
Reflecting on my career journey through the lens of the Systems Theory Framework (McMahon & Patton, 1995), I have come to appreciate the intricate relationship of various influences at personal, social, and societal levels that have shaped my career decision-making processes. Growing up in a working-class family in a regional town, I was exposed to limited career opportunities beyond the standard jobs prevalent in the area. The agricultural background of my parents and grandparents, while respectable, offered limited prospects for upward mobility and financial stability (Blustein, 2006). This context instilled in me the importance of pursuing higher education to secure a stable and secure job, reflecting the working-class values prevalent in my family.
Geographical influences played a crucial role in shaping my career options. Living in a remote area presented challenges in terms of limited access to resources, educational institutions, and professional networks (Hossain, 2011). The lack of exposure to diverse career paths and limited local employment opportunities further added to the complexity of my decisionmaking process. Overcoming these geographical limitations required a proactive approach to seek out opportunities and leverage available resources.
Financial constraints emerged as another significant factor influencing my career decisions. With four siblings simultaneously pursuing tertiary education in different states, managing the financial burden became a crucial consideration. The need for financial independence led me to make practical choices such as opting for part-time education while working to support myself (Callender & Jackson, 2005). These choices were driven by the necessity to balance financial responsibilities with educational aspirations, highlighting the impact of financial constraints on career decision-making.
The influence of technology on my career journey has been two-fold. Initially, limited access to technology in my remote area presented a barrier to exploring online educational resources and staying connected with professional networks. However, as technology advanced, it became a transformative force, opening opportunities for skills enhancement and knowledge acquisition through online education platforms (Li & Lalani, 2020). The rise of remote work and digital communication has further expanded the possibilities for engaging in work from anywhere, breaking down geographical barriers and increasing work flexibility.
My career journey, shaped by personal, social, and societal influences, has been a complex interplay of factors. It is a testament to the relevance of the Systems Theory Framework, which highlights the multifaceted influences on career decision-making processes.
Reflecting on my personal journey since graduating high school in 1995, my career development processes were significantly influenced by the lack of comprehensive career development policies and practices in Australia at the time. The limited access to career guidance services, particularly in regional areas like my hometown, posed challenges to informed career decision-making (Sweet, 2014).
My career development was largely self-directed and influenced by family and societal expectations. The lack of professional career advice meant that choices were made based on limited knowledge and understanding of the wider world of work. The absence of a structured career development framework during my formative years resulted in a very linear and conservative career path.
In retrospect, career policies such as the Australian Blueprint for Career Development and the National Career Development Strategy, albeit introduced later, could have provided valuable guidance. These policies emphasise a holistic approach to career development, promoting lifelong learning and adaptability (CICA, 2020). Such policies may have offered significant support, promoting continuous learning, exploration of diverse career paths, and cultivated a more adaptable mindset. By facilitating access to resources and fostering a comprehensive understanding of career development, these policies had the potential to empower me to make informed decisions and navigate the dynamic labour market with increased confidence.
To enhance individual career development, several recommendations can be put forward. Firstly, ensuring adequate funding is crucial (CICA, 2020). This includes allocating resources for career practitioners, providing access to current labour market information, and implementing technologies that facilitate career planning. Additionally, policies should aim for equity in access, ensuring that individuals, regardless of their geographical location or socioeconomic status, have equal opportunities to access career services (OECD, 2019). Integrating career education into the curriculum is another important step, allowing students to develop the necessary skills and knowledge for effective career decision-making from an early age. Moreover, recognising the dynamic nature of the labour market, lifelong career support should be provided, extending beyond the school years to assist individuals in adapting to changing career landscapes (CICA, 2020). Finally, adopting a partnership approach by involving schools, families, employers, and communities in career development practices can create a supportive environment that offers diverse perspectives, resources, and opportunities for individuals navigating their career paths. By implementing these recommendations, Australia can establish a comprehensive and effective framework that enhances individual career development.
An examination of the contemporary world of work, career theories and policies, as well as my own personal career journey, has uncovered the multifaceted nature that is career development. The rapid advancements in technology coupled with evolving societal values have necessitated a re-evaluation of the concept of ‘career’ and the adoption of more flexible and adaptive career models. Theoretical perspectives have also developed to emphasise the importance of lifelong learning, adaptability, and individual agency in navigating the complexities of career paths. The interplay between personal, social, and societal influences has been established and well documented. Factors such as geographic locations, financial constraints, and access to resources can significantly shape an individual’s career decisions and trajectories. Exploring career policies has underscored the importance of comprehensive support and guidance and stresses the ongoing need for advancements in career development practices and policies. It is evident that continued research and policy efforts are crucial to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the evolving world of work. By recognising the multidimensional influences on career decision-making and promoting comprehensive career development initiatives, Australia can create pathways for individuals to thrive and contribute to social and economic progress.
References
Bennett, R. (2019). The future of work: attract new talent, build better leaders, and create a competitive organization. Wiley.
Blustein, D. L. (2006). The psychology of working: A new perspective for career development, counseling, and public policy. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bright, J., & Pryor, R. (2005). The chaos theory of careers: A new perspective on working in the twenty-first century. Routledge.
Bridges, W. (1994). Jobshift: How to prosper in a workplace without jobs. Perseus Books.
Callender, C., & Jackson, J. (2005). Does the fear of debt deter students from higher education? Journal of Social Policy, 34(4), 509-540.
Career Industry Council of Australia. (2020). Australian blueprint for career development. Retrieved May 20, 2023, from https:// www.cica.org.au/documents/australian-blueprint-forcareer-development/
Edwards, J. R. (1991). Person-job fit: A conceptual integration, literature review, and methodological critique. In C. L. Cooper & I. T. Robertson, (Eds.), International review of industrial and organizational psychology, 6, 283-357.
Ginzberg, E., Ginsburg, S. W., Axelrad, M., & Herma, J. L., (1951). Occupational choice: An approach to a general theory. Columbia University Press.
Guest, D. E., (2002). Perspectives on the study of work-life balance. Social Science Information, 41(2), 255-279.
Hilbrecht, M., Shaw, S. M., Johnson, L. C., & Andrey, J. (2013). I’m home for the kids: Contradictory implications for worklife balance of teleworking mothers. Gender, Work & Organization, 20(5), 455-469.
Hirschi, A. (2012). Callings and work engagement: Moderated mediation model of work meaningfulness, occupational identity, and occupational self-efficacy. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 59(3), 479.
Holland, J. L. (1959). A theory of vocational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 6(1), 35.
Hoskins, B., & Jones, L. (2016). The evolution of ‘global careers’: The role of work–life balance and work–family conflict. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(11), 1192-1210.
Hossain, D. (2011). The gap between the level of career aspiration and the level of achievement. Australian Journal of Career Development, 20(2), 23-30.
Inkson, K., & Arthur, M. B., (2001). How to be a successful career capitalist. Organizational Dynamics, 30(1), 48-61.
Krumboltz, J. D. (2009). The happenstance learning theory. Journal of Career Assessment, 17(2), 135-154.
Li, F., & Lalani, F. (2020). The Digital Road to Recovery: A Stimulus Plan to Create Jobs, Boost Productivity and Revitalize America. Progressive Policy Institute.
McMahon, M., & Patton, W. (1995). Systems theory framework of career development. In D. Brown & L. Brooks (Eds.), Career choice and development: Applying contemporary theories to practice (3rd ed.) (pp. 41-74). Jossey-Bass.
Nauta, M. M. (2010). The development and validation of a Hollandlike taxonomy of vocational interests in animals. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 76(2), 210-224.
OECD. (2019). Career guidance for adults in Australia: Policy review. Retrieved May 12, 2023, from https://www.oecd.org/ careers/Career-Guidance-for-Adults-in-Australia.pdf
Patton, W., & McMahon, M. (2014). Systems theory. In M. McMahon (ed.). Career counselling: Constructivist approaches (2nd ed.), (pp. 91-114). Routledge.
Pryor, R. G. L., & Bright, J. E. H. (2003). Order and chaos: A twentyfirst-century formulation of careers. Australian Journal of Psychology, 55(2), 121-128.
Robles, M. M. (2012). Executive perceptions of the top 10 soft skills needed in today’s workplace. Business Communication Quarterly, 75(4), 453-465.
Savickas, M. L. (2013). Career construction theory and practice. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (2nd ed.), (pp. 147-183). John Wiley & Sons.
Savickas, M. L. (2005). The theory and practice of career construction. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work, (pp. 42-70). John Wiley & Sons.
Sweet, R. (2014). Career development services for regional students in Australia. Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling, 33, 47-55.
Wrzesniewski, A., McCauley, C. R., Rozin, P., & Schwartz, B. (1997). Jobs, careers, and callings: People’s relations to their work. Journal of Research in Personality, 31(1), 21-33.
Now more than ever, schools must create safe and supportive environments in which positive, productive behaviours can be both taught and nurtured, inevitably leading to enhanced wellbeing and outcomes for students (Saggers & Beamish, 2017). The necessity for educators to not only focus on the rigorous development of the ‘three R’s’ but on a fourth R, relationships, has emerged as crucial for student success at school (Coles-Janess & Griffin, 2020). The ability to establish successful relationships with a range of individuals is fundamental to ongoing life success, contributing to positive behaviours and higher outcomes for students of all ages. However, in an increasingly fast-paced and technology-centred world, children are struggling relationally and demonstrating a lack of social competence (Coles-Janess & Griffin, 2020). The environmental factors impacting the lives of children today combined with data collected through school-wide and classroom-based surveys further reinforce the need for high-quality pastoral care programs as part of a comprehensive school-wide approach, as can be seen in our Student Wellbeing Framework. The addition of the value of ‘Inclusivity’ to the school’s six core values further demonstrates our commitment to fostering meaningful positive relationships for all members of the school community while continuing to create a safe and supportive school environment (Saggers & Beamish, 2020). For classrooms to be effective and efficient spaces for teaching and learning, they must also be positive environments (Sugai & Simonsen, 2020). Relationships are key to setting the tone for the classroom and wider school context, so a school-wide approach targeted at building positive relationships is crucial. In addition to the values review and revision, the introduction
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of the classroom expectations or the ‘Non-Negotiables’, as they have come to be referred, has been a vital step in promoting a positive and productive learning environment. The NonNegotiables are displayed in classrooms across the school and serve as a visual prompt for the desired reinforcement of positive behaviours to foster and maintain positive relationships (Sugai & Simonsen, 2020). The creation and maintenance of the classroom as a positive learning environment is integral to all else that occurs in this space and ensures that positive behaviour strategies support student success (De Nobile, Lyons & Arthur-Kelly, 2017). Positive relationships are not only essential for a harmonious school environment but further help to promote student learning and engagement (Greenberg, Putnam & Walsh, 2014).
School-wide positive behaviour interventions and supports can develop and teach behavioural expectations by providing specific and actionable strategies that students can easily employ (Steed & Shapland, 2020). Additionally, opportunities for positive reinforcement and rewards for students engaging in these behaviours feature in our approaches, such as values stickers in the primary school and commendations through the pastoral care entry system in the secondary school. Students benefit from the opportunity to be recognised for contributing to the school culture and modelling the St Margaret’s Way. This positively reinforces their behaviour through recognition, reward, and acknowledgement (Sugai & Simonsen, 2020). The sharing of this information through digital platforms such as learner profiles and face-to-face interactions, including parent teacher interviews, can result in these behaviours being nurtured at home. This serves to strengthen the benefit and fidelity of parent participation in and adoption of school-
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Be actively engaged in learning for the whole lesson, avoiding distractions. For example, ensure you follow the rules around mobile phone use; use laptops for learning only; only using headphones when directed by teacher; and, do not leave the classroom for water, the toilet and the health centre.
based approaches (Lane, Oakes & Magill, 2014). When the mission of the parent and school community is aligned, the potential for achieving positive relationships and environments is significantly increased (Lane, Oakes & Magill, 2014). The home-school partnership cannot be underestimated in its potential to enhance the impact of teaching proactive and positive social skills (Oliver, Lambert & Mason, 2019).
Crucially, especially in all-girls’ schools such as St Margaret’s, the praise and positive reinforcement of desirable behaviours should redirect student energy away from ‘teacher-pleasing social skills’ (Coles-Janess & Griffin, 2020, p. 63) as more meaningful, lifelong approaches to positive relationships and behaviours are acquired and valued. Behaviours that support successful peer relationships and are pro-social, such as sharing, loyalty and cooperation, should be promoted (Coles-Janess & Griffin, 2020). Additionally, students will develop self-motivation to demonstrate these behaviours, which is a significant factor in the successful adoption of whole school approaches such as the Non-Negotiables and the school values-driven St Margaret’s Way (Van Camp, Wehby, Copeland et al., 2021).
Social skills training and the development of positive relationships are increasingly important for young learners as they navigate what is expected of them as both students and people into the 21st century and beyond (Jolstead, Caldarella, Hansen, et al., 2017). The Non-Negotiables and the St Margaret’s Way, taught and modelled explicitly by our classroom teachers, have the potential to foster rewarding relationships and create an environment in which all can flourish and benefit from the power of positivity in education.
References
Coles-Janess, B., & Griffin, P. (2020). Interpersonal competence for students with additional needs. In P. Griffin & K. Woods (Eds.), Understanding students with additional needs as learners, (pp. 59-70). Springer, Cham.
De Nobile, J., Lyons, G. & Arthur-Kelly, M. (2017). Positive learning environments: Creating and maintaining productive classrooms. Cengage.
Greenberg, J., Putman, H., & Walsh, K. (2014). Training Our Future Teachers: Classroom Management. Revised. National Council on Teacher Quality.
Lane, K. L., Oakes, W. P., & Magill, L. (2014). Primary prevention efforts: How do we implement and monitor the tier 1 component of our comprehensive, integrated, three-tiered (CI3T) model? Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 58(3), 143-158.
Oliver, R. M., Lambert, M. C., & Mason, W. A. (2019). A pilot study for improving classroom systems within schoolwide positive behavior support. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, 27(1), 25-36.
Beamish, W., & Saggers, B. (2020). Positive Behaviour Support: An overview of the three-tiered framework. In B. Saggers (Ed.), Developing Positive Classroom Environments: Strategies for nurturing adolescent learning, (pp. 3-19). Taylor & Francis.
Steed, E. A. & Shapland, D. (2020). Adapting social emotional multitiered systems of supports for kindergarten classrooms. Early Childhood Education Journal, 48, 135-146.
Sugai, G., & Simonsen, B. (2020). Reinforcement foundations of a function-based behavioral approach for students with challenging behavior. Beyond Behavior, 29(2), 78-85.
Van Camp, A. M., Wehby, J. H., Copeland, B. A., & Bruhn, A. L. (2021). Building from the bottom up: The importance of tier 1 supports in the context of tier 2 interventions. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 23(1), 53-64.
Complete your set homework (and if no homework is set, review work/do assignments).
5 Take responsibility for your own learning, be proactive and check the POD and your emails daily.
Understand and accept groupings in class will be selected by your teacher.
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7 Communicate respectfully with all members of staff and each other using appropriate tone, names, and times. Email etiquette is to be used, including appropriate format and response times.
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Wear uniforms correctly including following the rules of sun safety by wearing your hat during breaks and before and after school. Do not chew gum. Food or drink (other than water) must not be consumed in classrooms and hallways.
In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the ... Anyone? Anyone?...
The 1980s teen classic movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off includes a scene in which a high school economics teacher delivers a monotone lecture on the relevance of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. The teenagers in front of him are slack jawed and glassy eyed, unresponsive to the teacher’s attempts to get ‘anyone, anyone?’ to respond to his questions. He ploughs on regardless, supplying all the answers himself; the students continue to stare with a mixture of boredom and confusion. They appear to have stopped blinking.
It’s a hilarious scene, but one which perhaps contains an uncomfortable grain of truth for teachers. Many of us will be familiar with having our questions greeted with an awkward silence, grateful to the handful of students willing to speak up: ‘Thank goodness – someone knows the answer!’
It is here I think about how my own teaching was transformed by Cold Calling. This is a practice that originated from Teach like a Champion author and managing director of the USbased ‘Uncommon Schools’ Doug Lemov. With Cold Calling, students are called on to respond to the teacher’s questions, even if they have not raised their hand. I find Cold Calling a powerful technique, not only for the academic rigour it brings to the classroom, but for the way in which it promotes inclusion. With Cold Calling, everyone’s contribution is valued; everyone’s voice is heard.
Fundamentally, Cold Calling is a tool for formative assessment. Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction (2012) guide teachers to present information in small chunks and to regularly check for understanding. Asking only those students who have raised their hands produces a very small sample size with which to ‘check’ that the whole class has understood. Cold Calling means teachers can gauge the level of learning on a much wider scale. It acts as a hinge point: is the class ready to move on, or do we need to pause, to clarify, to re-teach? Any misconceptions, likely to derail us later, can be headed off here. Importantly, Cold Calling is about getting all – not just some –students to think. To this end, giving ‘wait time’ after a question is crucial. Lemov (2021) asks us to consider what happens when a teacher names a student before they pose a question. In my classroom, this might sound something like: ‘Charlotte, give me one reason why the Nazis rose to power?’ At that point, everyone who isn’t Charlotte has instantly switched off. Posing the question first makes a difference: ‘I’m looking for one reason why the Nazis rose to power. I’ll give you two minutes to think, and then I’ll call for some answers.’ In this second scenario, everyone is required to give the question some thought. As education consultant and author Tom Sherrington (2021) writes: ‘Unless you are cold calling, lots of children learn not to think very hard.’
Cold Calling is about accountability, but it isn’t, as Lemov says, a ‘gotcha’, aiming to put people on the spot. This is an oft-cited concern about Cold Calling. When a question appears to pounce on a student unawares, this becomes a ‘lethal mutation’ of Lemov’s original idea. Such concerns, however, mean some students never participate in discussion. Teachers worry about appearing to terrify less confident members of the group, lest those students feel themselves ‘picked on’.
This is understandable; asking students to speak in front of their peers means asking them to take a risk. But without it, students can become passive. Cold Calling actually creates a more inclusive classroom culture. Thinking time can be done in pairs, giving an added layer of support. Together, students can check and develop their first thoughts. This initial discussion is a confidence-building rehearsal for the bigger arena of whole class feedback. By circulating during thinking time, teachers can prompt those struggling to get off the mark and build confidence by praising an idea, laying the groundwork for students to share with the class, knowing their idea is on the right track.
What has really changed my practice has been seeing Cold Calling as less, well, frosty. Sherrington (2021) uses the phrase ‘warm, invitational calling’. Now I invite someone to open the discussion rather than asking them to provide an answer. By saying ‘Alex and Kirsty, what were your first thoughts?’ or ‘Isabel, can you start us off?’, the onus isn’t on the student to have the definitive answer, but to open a conversation that can then, with other contributions, reach a deeper level of thinking.
Laying the groundwork like this for a broader conversation also allows slightly ‘off beam’ or even wrong answers to be acknowledged. Responses can be redirected without students feeling crushed. When we are not looking for a perfect, fully formed answer, the door is open to approach from many directions. This doesn’t mean less rigorous discussion; we can still aim for precision but value the process as much as the result.
Cold Calling also serves a much wider purpose, one which extends beyond the classroom. Confidence is not a trait but a set of beliefs we hold about ourselves. As performance expert and author of ‘Do Hard Things’ (2022) Steve Magness puts it, ‘real confidence demands evidence’. Each time we Cold Call a student, we help them to create that evidence: they can speak out in front of others, they can make themselves understood. Cold Calling proves to students that they are worthy of a seat at the table where people discuss clever, interesting things.
Cold Calling is more than a way to avoid a sea of blank faces in our classrooms. It is an inclusive, supportive practice that communicates to students our high expectations. Every question asked is an opportunity to say, ‘we know you can meet them’.
References
Lemov, D. (2021). Teach Like a Champion 3.0: 63 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Magness, S. (2022). Do Hard Things: Why we get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness, Harper One, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know, American Educator, Spring, 12-19, 39.
Sherrington, T. (2021). Cold Calling: The #1 strategy for inclusive classrooms – remote and in person. Teacherhead. https:// teacherhead.com/2021/02/07/cold-calling-the-1-strategyfor-inclusive-classrooms-remote-and-in-person/
In August 2022, I was fortunate to spend a week at Methodist Ladies College Claremont (MLC), in Perth, as part of St Margaret’s ceTLe teacher exchange. The wild west lived up to its name, with rainy and windy conditions for the duration of the week. However, this did not dampen my spirits as I was excited to experience a different school and absorb as much as possible.
My time at MLC allowed me to see many aspects of the school. From the boarding house and Humanities and HPE classrooms through to meetings with their school psychologists, chaplain, Head of Wellbeing and Heads of Year, the community of MLC is similar to ours – one that embraces visitors and unequivocally shares their passion and knowledge. Months later, I still find myself saying ‘When I was on exchange…’ or ‘I learnt this from the staff at MLC …’. Thank you to the leadership team at both St Margaret’s and MLC for affording me the opportunity to participate in this exchange. Additionally, thank you to the staff members at MLC, who allowed me into their classrooms and boarding house and generously shared their time, experiences, and knowledge. Finally, an extended thank you to my exchange partner, Jacqui, who went above and beyond in ensuring the best possible experience of both MLC and Perth.
While there were several highlights during the week, including attending the Western Australia Primary State Cross Country Championships and being invited to partake in the Year 10 ‘City after Dark’ tour – a tour through Perth’s CBD run by two police officers, which teaches students how to stay safe on a night out, my favourite and most thought-provoking moment from the week occurred during an observation of a Year 8 Health and Physical Education (HPE) class.
Amanda Robertson, affectionately known as ‘Robbo’, has been teaching Health and Physical Education at MLC for 13 years. Not only is she a formidable HPE teacher, who has her students engaged and enjoying physical activity for the entire lesson, but she is also an experienced AFL coach. When we met, it had just been announced that Amanda would form part of the coaching contingent for the West Coast Eagles AFLW team in their inaugural season in 2023. Originally from Hong Kong, Amanda moved to Australia for her tertiary education. Upon commencing at MLC, Amanda noticed that she was going to have to teach AFL. Having never even seen an AFL game, she joined her local club and began playing to learn more about the sport. All these years later, along with her impressive AFLW coaching experience, she still plays and is a life member at Claremont AFL club.
Robbo didn’t have Year 8 HPE on her 2022 timetable, yet here she was, happily out on the field running a lesson during her spare. She wasn’t covering for anyone, the timetabled HPE teacher was still present and assisting, but she was teaching students how to tackle during an AFL game appropriately and safely. When I asked another HPE teacher why Robbo had given up her spare to help teach that unit, she replied, ‘Oh, it’s just what we do. If someone knows a sport better than the teacher of that class, we’ll help out. It works out better for everyone and the girls get a better experience.’. This observation highlighted two things for me. Firstly, the HPE faculty at MLC were obviously very generous with their time, were quality educators, and had the best interest of their students at the forefront of their mind. Secondly, it really emphasised the importance and relevance of having ‘expert teachers’ in HPE on a multifaceted level.
As an AFL newbie, I watched on in awe as she stepped through the components of tackling, starting simply and progressing as students mastered the basic components. If this was a typical classroom environment, what she was doing would be labelled as ‘gradual release’. She highlighted to students what they needed to do to tackle safely and how to approach the physical movement to result in maximum efficiency. There was a minutia of details that, if I was required to teach this skill,
I would have missed, which cumulatively, would have resulted in a less comprehensive learning experience. Data suggests that nearly a third of females stop playing organised sports by age 15, reaching up to two-thirds by the time they are 20. Physical activity is critical to positive mental health and wellbeing and, fortunately for us, girls spend significantly more time participating in physical education in an all-girls’ environment (Wallace et al., 2002). The subject HPE is so much more than playing games, and it would be remiss of me not to highlight that we are in a unique position where we can promote a skillset that benefits adolescents’ health and wellbeing on a broad spectrum – something, I know, in which all HPE teachers take pride. Therefore, it is important to recognise that the learning experiences we create for our students on the court, in the pool or on the field can be the catalyst for a higher level of engagement in physical activity and allow adolescents to feel confident and competent in moving their bodies and reaping the benefits of physical activity for their entire life.
While the value of having extensive content knowledge is applicable in any subject and classroom, I think in HPE this is more complex. Having an in-depth understanding of the physical education components of HPE studies cannot simply be achieved through reading a textbook or manual on how to complete a specific physical skill. Due to the teaching and learning of hands-on skills, HPE teachers need to have an in-depth understanding of the practical components of the curriculum, its associated physical skills, and how to teach the skill with the utmost precision. In most cases that I have seen, this intricacy of knowledge and high level of understanding of appropriate physiological application, thus maximizing the learning experience, is typically gained by an individual after years of participating in or coaching the specific sport.
I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to teaching my HPE class how to partake in long-jump, or play soccer, all my knowledge comes from reading coaching manuals and watching YouTube videos. But, when I teach netball, a sport I have spent more than half my life coaching and playing, my students are going to receive a more detailed and thorough learning experience and are more likely to have a higher level of engagement.
While I don’t have a suggestion on what can be mitigated to equip HPE teachers with extensive knowledge of every sport taught in our curriculum, I’ve quite enjoyed the pondering what has stemmed from standing on the oval at MLC watching Year 8 HPE.
Reference
Wallace L., Buchan, D., & Sculthorpe, N. (2020). Activity Levels of Girls in Single-Gender and Mixed-Gender Physical Education, Retrieved August 11, 2021, from https://www.agsa.org. au/research/activity-levels-of-girls-in-single-genderand-mixed-gender-physical-education-wallace-buchansculthorpe-2020/
With many Australians experiencing loneliness at some stage of their life, is it possible that workplaces can play a key part in assisting society to feel more connected?
Despite being more connected than ever through social media, approximately a quarter of Australians are lonely (Casey et al., 2022). In 2022, KPMG partnered with the Groundswell Foundation to produce the report ‘Connections Matter: A Report on the Impacts of Loneliness in Australia’, which identified the extent to which loneliness exists in the community and considered the impact of this issue both on the individual and broader community. From an individual point of view, loneliness has the potential to have a significant impact on health, given lonely people have a 26 per cent increased risk of death (Casey et al., 2022). The flow-on effect to workplaces is substantial both to employees and employers, with the report identifying that loneliness can negatively impact job performance, productivity, accuracy, retention, and absenteeism. Given the time spent at work by individuals,
workplaces can contribute positively to the issue of loneliness through connection, belonging, and cultivating community. While there have been some reported increases in loneliness statistics since the COVID-19 pandemic, loneliness is not a new concern for society. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported in 2021 that, according to data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA), 33 per cent of Australians reported an episode of loneliness from 2001 to 2009 (AIHW, 2021).
When exploring loneliness and, conversely, what makes an individual happy, my research led me to what is thought to be the world’s longest study on happiness, the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Commencing in 1938, scientists started to track the health of two groups of young men – one group were sophomores from Harvard, the other were boys from the most troubled areas of Boston. Over the years, scientists have expanded the research to include the men’s offspring. In one of highest most viewed TED Talks of all time, the current director of the study, Robert Waldiner, in 2015, presented on ‘What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness’. The key finding was ‘Good relationships keep us
happier and healthier. Period’ (Waldiner, 2015). Waldiner refers to these relationships as ‘warm relationships’. Whether these positive relationships are family, friends, a spouse, a work colleague, or another connection, they are very positive to our health, wellbeing, and performance across every aspect of life. The importance of fostering a sense of belonging in the workforce was shared among respondents in Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends Survey in 2020, with 79 per cent of respondents saying that fostering a sense of belonging was important to the organisation’s success in the next 12 – 18 months. In addition, 93 per cent agreed that a sense of belonging drives organisational performance (Deloitte, 2020). The report identifies three key attributes that contribute to creating a sense of belonging:
• employees feeling comfortable at work
• employees feel connected to others at work, including their team
• they contribute to meaningful work outcomes. When further defining connection, they identified there are two levels of connection to consider. The first level is meaningful relationships with others at work; the second
level is feeling connected to the organisation’s purpose and goals (Deloitte, 2020). Positive relationships with others in the organisation help individuals to feel safe and to thrive in their role. Where an organisation has clear values and goals that are supported by the employee, they feel committed to supporting these goals of the business. This is particularly prevalent in school’s where individuals are part of contributing to the next generation and society in general.
We know having a strong sense of connection and belonging has many highly desirable benefits for the employee and employer, including improved team performance, greater productivity, greater innovation, increased employee health, lower turnover, and higher levels of employee engagement. In fact, it is estimated that when an employee feels more connected at work, they are one and a half more times likely to be engaged at work (Lauricella at al., 2022). Cultivating a culture of connectedness relies on all levels of the business. At a leadership level, it is important this is consciously role modelled and encouraged. We know that employees value relationships, importantly the relationship with a manager or team leader accounts for 70 per cent in the variance of team engagement (Gallup, 2023). Simple measures, such as providing
meaningful feedback or praising an employee, can make a big difference to an individual’s sense of belonging. At every level of the organisation, it is important people are respected and valued. One way St Margaret’s encourages staff, students, and the broader school community to be respectful in their interactions with each other is through the St Margaret’s Way. The St Margaret’s Way is underpinned by two key questions: ‘How do I want to feel every day when I come to school?’ and ‘What am I doing to ensure others can feel this way?’ Although these questions may seem somewhat simple, the effect is very powerful and clearly puts the responsibility for respectful relationships on the individual and challenges them to always consider their own behaviour.
In many industries, the COVID-19 pandemic has opened the opportunity for employees to demonstrate their work can be done from home. In some situations, both employees and employers have enjoyed some of the associated benefits of working from home, such as lower travel costs and commute times, lower rent for businesses, and, in some instances, employees have enjoyed the increased level of autonomy, which has increased job satisfaction and increased productivity. However, working from home is not for everyone nor every business. Some challenges of these working from home arrangements may include impacts on workplace culture, feelings of isolation, less opportunity for on-the-job training and mentoring, and difficulty differentiating between work and home life. Some organisations have started to ask staff to return to the office, and in some instances, employees are reluctant to do so. Recently the Commonwealth Bank asked staff to return to the office for a minimum of 50 per cent of the time, after they had enjoyed the flexibility of working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Speaking about this announcement, their Group Executive Human Resources Sian Lewis stated, ‘We’ve learnt that, on average, we actively connect with 11 more colleagues each day when we are together in the office and spend 20–30 minutes more time collaborating.’ Lewis goes on to state, ‘Our people also spend 40 per cent or more time connecting with their leader and peers when in the office. We have seen that innovation is an outcome of our people physically working together’ (Durkin, 2023). This is a very compelling argument to encourage employees back to the office and encourage collaboration. Many organisations have reported that working from home has negatively impacted the ability to cultivate a positive culture of collaboration; however, for other individuals and organisations, working from home is hugely beneficial. Some organisations have been creative in the way they have kept their culture alive while staff worked from home. Some creative examples can include online trivia, book clubs and virtual morning teas. Medibank even started a podcast in collaboration with Myf Warhurst and Dr Frederic Kiernan, titled ’We are lonely Podcast’ to support clients, employees and the community during the pandemic.
Over the years, there has been much research into the positive effects of work on an individual’s wellbeing in general. Two key times where this is highlighted is when returning to work from an injury or illness and when suffering from a mental health condition. Work Safe Queensland (n.d.) estimate for those returning to work after 20 days there is a 70 per cent chance of returning to work, and when someone is off work for 70 days, this drops to a 35 per cent chance of returning to work. Equally as supportive of the claim that work has a positive benefit to health is the Black Dog Institute. In their Workplace Mental Health Toolkit, the Black Dog Institute (n.d.) sites some of the benefits of staying at work, including a sense of belonging and being part of a larger whole, avoiding isolation, productivity, and a sense of achievement, keeping a routine, better able to track progress, limiting the fear of returning to work, support from peers and management and increased commitment to the organisation. As much as possible, it is preferable to keep workers engaged in the workforce for these health benefits.
One part of the employee experience that has potential to foster a greater sense of connection and belonging is during the onboarding phase. At this stage of employment, employees often experience excitement and nervousness in equal measures. Effective onboarding is vital to the longer-term success of a new employee and the culture of the organisation. One process some onboarding programs include is a buddy system. After piloting a buddy system, Microsoft found some of the key benefits to their organisation were the new employee getting insight into the context of the organisation that comes from years of tenure, increased productivity as the new recruit is more supported, and increased employee satisfaction (Klinghoffer et al., 2019). It is also noted that the impact on the tenured employee is positive as they feel valued as they share their knowledge and enthusiasm for the organisation. Having someone you can call on for questions or that can give tips of what is expected provides a level of comfort to the employee from day one.
Effective teamwork and collaboration are valuable tools to support a sense of belonging and connection in the workplace. Teamwork may be within an individual’s immediate team, the broader business or, for example, as part of a committee. Committees provide valuable opportunities for individuals to come together from different departments and share knowledge and experiences to fulfil the goals of the committee. When a team member feels they belong and their ideas are valued, they are more likely to feel empowered to share their ideas, come up with creative solutions, and perform at a high level. This idea is supported by Daniel Coyle, in his 2018 book The Culture Code. Coyle identifies three skills that aid group culture and performance. These are:
• building safety to cultivate connection and belonging
• sharing vulnerability, to build trust, humility, and cooperation
• establishing purpose and goals to work towards.
Operating in a team environment that harnesses each of the above skills will have a positive impact on workplace culture, psychological safety, and employee wellbeing.
Physical spaces can assist in encouraging connection. A communal staffroom where staff can easily collaborate and discuss their work creates an environment of connection. From a social point of view, creating environments where individuals can ‘check-in’ with each other is important. This might be the lunchroom, the watercooler, or waiting in the coffee line at the onsite café. Simply asking how someone’s day is can go a long way to building connection. These informal interactions allow individuals to connect. At St Margaret’s, a shared staffroom across faculties in the secondary school strengthens the ability to build networks outside of individual faculties. Ms Café, our onsite café, entices staff out of their workspaces to come together, as do regular all staff morning teas.
To support a sense of wellbeing and belonging in the workplace, St Margaret’s has an active Staff Wellbeing Committee focused on connection across staff, as affirmed in the Staff Wellbeing Menu which states: ‘Staff wellbeing at St Margaret’s must have a sense of community and a sense of belonging. We aim to intentionally create positivity boosts where our currency of wellness is connectedness.’ The Staff Wellbeing Committee first formed in 2014 and has representation across various areas of the school, with new members called for each year. The committee identifies new ideas; however, the focus will always be on staff wellbeing and connection.
The evidence is clear. Fostering a workplace culture that encourages a high level of connection and belonging is essential to employees, organisations, and the broader community. So, whether you are new to your organisation or have a lengthy tenure, I challenge you to think about how you can ensure your actions help others to feel more connected and valued. Chances are you will also benefit from this action.
References
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). (2021). Social isolation and loneliness. Retrieved June 4, 2023, from https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/socialisolation-and-loneliness-covid-pandemic
Black Dog Institute. (n.d.). Workplace Mental Health Toolkit https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/wp-content/ uploads/2021/04/Black-Dog-Institute-Workplace-MentalHealth-Tool-Kit-1.pdf
Casey, S., Dempster, A., Stevens, L., Hewish, A. (2022, November). Connections Matter: A report on the impacts of loneliness in Australia, https://kpmg.com/au/en/home/media/ press-releases/2022/11/connections-matter-australiansimpacted-by-loneliness-7-november-2022.html
Coyle, D. (2018). The Culture Club. Bantam Books.
Durkin, P. (2023, May 23). CBA orders staff back to the office. Financial Review https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/ cba-orders-staff-back-to-the-office-20230518-p5d9l6
Gallup. (2023). What is employee engagement and how do we improve it? https://www.gallup.com/workplace/285674/improveemployee-engagement-workplace.aspx
Volini, E., Schwartz, J., Denny, B., Mallon, D., Van Durme, Y., Hauptmann, M., Yan, R., & Poynton, S. (2020). The Social enterprise at work: Paradox as a path forward. Deloitte Insights. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/ human-capital-trends/2020/technology-and-tkpmghesocial-enterprise.html
Kinghoffer, D., Young, C., & Haspas, D. (2019, June 6). Every New Employee Needs an Onboarding ‘Buddy’. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2019/06/every-new-employeeneeds-an-onboarding-buddy#:~:text=Onboarding%20 buddies%20improve%20new%20employee%20 satisfaction.&text=Our%20research%20found%20that%20 after,a%2036%25%20increase%20in%20satisfaction
Lauricella, T., Parsons, J., Schaninger, B., Weddle, B. (2022, August 2). Network effects: How to rebuild social capital and improve corporate performance. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-andorganizational-performance/our-insights/network-effectshow-to-rebuild-social-capital-and-improve-corporateperformance
Waldiner, R. (2015). What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness. [Video]. The Harvard Gazette. https:// news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-ahealthy-and-happy-life/
WorkSafe Queensland (n.d.). Benefits of returning to work, Retrieved June 5, 2023, from https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/ rehabilitation-and-return-to-work/getting-back-to-work/ benefits-of-returning-to-work
There are several mysteries at St Margaret’s. Is there a ghost in Mooloomburram? If so, who is it? What happened to the statue in the centre of Circular Drive, which disappeared around 1925? What happened to the tunnels under the school during WW2? Why did St Margaret’s stop rowing in the 1920s for approximately 70 years and how did Sunata in our school motto, Per Volar Sunata, become one word, when in fact it is two words, Su Nata? And for that matter, when all other schools like St Margaret’s, which were founded in the 19th century, chose Latin mottos, why does St Margaret’s have an Italian motto?
The biggest mystery of all though is why Per Volar Sunata or Born to Fly Upwards was chosen as a motto. On the surface, it almost seems too obvious; of course, we should all move forward, and if we are going to fly, upwards appears to be the sensible direction.
St Margaret’s refers to the motto often, and it has been inextricably linked to the school for over 110 years, so it is worth understanding fully.
In 2023, we say Per Volar Su Nata means ‘Born to fly upwards’. However, there are other legitimate and interesting translations. An artificial intelligence translation on google is ‘by flying together’; other translations have it as ‘Born to soar’ or ‘Born for upward flight’ or ‘Born to soar aloft’.
Other than inspiring us to fly, there is so much more to our school motto – all revealed by reading very early editions of The Link, our school magazine. It is clearly a motto for life, not just for school, as it alludes to important lessons for us all no matter what our age.
In The Link in March 1914, Eileen Willes, a past student at the time, wrote an essay about the inspiration provided by Per volar su nata. She wrote: ‘We were all born to rise upwards and must never be satisfied but for ever be striving to become higher and nobler. We are in a world where nothing is fixed and constant, but where everything is evolving, improving, and striving to become higher.’
There is little doubt that these words from over 108 years ago are applicable to our circumstances today. This is good advice –we must ever be rising higher.
In the May 1917 Link, the Headmistress, Juliette Lyon, in reference to the school crest, wrote: ‘Beneath the shield (of the badge) is our motto – Per volar su nata – born to soar upwards, but more about all that lies behind these words must wait for another time.’
Frustratingly, there appears to be no record of what was said in that ‘other time’. Therefore, no further information can be conveyed straight from the person who chose the motto for the school.
In The Link, in 1919, one of the editors wrote a piece on Per Volar Su Nata. Not surprisingly given it was written in the post WW1 era where plane flight featured heavily, aeroplane imagery was used, telling us that when flying, make certain it is ‘not too high, or they will lose their sense of proportion, and getting dizzy, will crash to the earth; not too low, when the outlook will be obscured … but clearly, swiftly, and surely to their goal, even in the filling of their appointed task in life’.
This too is excellent advice; fly to the goal, maintain perspective and be confident in pursuit of passions.
We have no source in our archives to explain why Juliette Lyon chose Per Volar Sunata from The Divine Comedy, written by Dante, the Italian poet and philosopher between 1308 and 1320. The quote can be found in Verse 12 of the section called Purgatorio and is spoken by an angel:
‘o gente umana, per volar sù nata, perché a poco vento così cadi?’
Translated this means:
‘O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?’
The theme of this verse is humility, and it is likely that Miss Lyon was very aware of this when she settled on these words. A key action that reveals humility is showing an openness to learn, and particularly, to learn from others. This is an important attribute for a quality education and success in life. Exercising humility also entails not taking our own failures too seriously but seeing the learning in all situations, whether we have been successful or not.
This makes the failure productive, and the message is clear. Learn and do not give up! It appears that Per Volar Su Nata is representative of the courage and humility necessary for a successful scholar. It inspires us to be resolute and aspirational, unwilling to be overwhelmed by the tasks ahead.
All members of our community can find the meaning and the intent of Per Volar Sunata – humility, courage, aspiration – a powerful instructive tool for life.
Per Volar Sunata is also featured on the school crest and its symbolism reflects the very essence of St Margaret’s. The school badge, which is, essentially, the school crest without the motto, is worn every day by the students. It is more than an identifying decorative piece, and certainly, the purpose of the school badge is much more than keeping the uniform collar and the laces in place. The badge has been around for most of St Margaret’s history.
We are uncertain about when the badge was introduced to the school uniform. However, in 1917, The Link provides us with the earliest and most complete description of the badge, and presumably, this means it was introduced around this time. Both the colours and the images have important meanings.
Blue is the colour of devotion, work, prayer, and love; silver is about purity (in thought and action).
The Guild Cross in the right-hand corner of the badge reminds us of our link to our founders, the Sisters of the Society of the Sacred Advent.
Associated with this, in the lower left-hand corner, is the bishop’s mitre, which reflects our connection to the wider Anglican Church. The sash across the shield is called the ‘bend’, and this references us as an Anglican Girls School (AGS). In 1917, the reference was to CEHS – Church of England High school. The so-called bend symbolises strength and stability.
The brown colour, a school colour, represents hard, energetic work. The symbolism of the badge reflects important lessons for our students. The attributes of devotion, faith, hard work, strength, and love are ones to which we all aspire.
It is interesting to delve into the origins and the meaning behind these important symbols of the community of St Margaret’s What is apparent is the educative role of the school motto and the school badge; their inspiration and meaning remains as relevant today as it was more than 100 years ago.
Ethical AI has huge potential for good in an educational context. Fraser-Krauss (cited in JISC, 2022, p. 1) believes that it will support educators to ‘better understand and meet the needs of their learners’. AI is already used extensively in education via digital tools, such as spelling and grammar checks, speech to text transcription, and search engines (Jisc, 2022, p. 4). A great example of AI supporting teaching and learning is Reading Progress and Reading Coach in Microsoft Teams. Using AI, the program empowers students to be able to build their literacy and language development while supporting teachers in authentically individualising learning support. Students read stimulus uploaded into Teams that is recorded through the camera. The AI evaluates the student recording and immediately provides the teacher and student with feedback data on student strengths and weaknesses (Valenza, 2021). This application of AI is referred to as an adaptive learning system and is most effective, as in the case of Reading Progress, when ‘the domain knowledge can be very clearly defined and can be learnt in a step-by-step way’ (Jisc, 2022, p. 12).
AI will have a positive impact on moving learning from pedagogy to heutagogy as it provides greater opportunities for learning to become more self-determined. Cook and Gregory (2018) contend that AI is already supporting learner agency, and as the technology improves and becomes more prevalent, educational design will be more driven by the needs and knowledge base of the individual learner. Accessibility can also benefit from AI as it supports learning designers implement universal design and heutagogy theory by providing a greater range of opportunities for learning to be communicated, assessed, and engaged with (Cook & Gregory, 2018). Captions and transcripts are a simple example of how AI can make learning more accessible and inclusive, not just for the hearing impaired but for students who are learning in a second language or do not have the socio-economic option to study in a quiet learning space (Cook & Gregory, 2018).
For all the many benefits that AI may provide, it is not without equitable and ethical risk. The cost of developing and implementing AI means that while in theory it could provide personalised learning to a global community, only those countries with the wealth to provide their citizens with the means to access these technologies would benefit (Duraiappah, 2018). Importantly, there is also no current universally accepted and recognised ethical framework for AI. In 2021, UNESCO produced a Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence for its member states in recognition that AI technologies have the potential to ‘deepen existing divides and inequalities in the world, within and between countries, and that justice, trust and fairness must be upheld so that no country and no one should be left behind’. Some
of these divides and inequalities relate to gender and cultural bias, as existing traditional biases form the training sets from which machine learning models will replicate (Jisc, 2022). Additionally, Ketamo (2018) outlines that we cannot consider AI ethics without also considering data ethics, because questions such as ‘who is allowed to collect data, who owns the data, is the data real and valid, what are biases in the data, and what is the role of manipulation’ (p. 26) still need to be addressed. The urgency of addressing data ethics in educational contexts was made glaringly obvious in what the Human Rights Watch (2022) has referred to as children’s rights’ violations by educational technology companies. In an investigation into 145 EdTech products, Human Rights Watch (2022) found that the data of children was being sold to 196 third-party companies. Of the breaches discovered, all occurred in ‘virtual classrooms and educational settings’, and the majority happened secretly without the learner’s knowledge or consent (Human Rights Watch, 2022). These breaches occurred in Australia via Microsoft Teams, Adobe Connect, Education Perfect and Minecraft for Education, all products that utilise elements of AI (Human Rights Watch, 2022). With these considerations in mind, educators will need to embrace the future of emerging technologies with a critical eye on student protection.
References
Cook, V., & Gregory, R. (2018). Emerging Technologies: It’s Not What YOU Say – It’s What THEY Do. Online Learning, 22(3). http://dx.doi.org/10.24059/olj.v22i3.1463
Duraiappah, A. (2018). Artificial Intelligence for Education, The Blue Dot, 9, UNESCO MGIEP. https://mgiep.unesco.org/article/ artificial-intelligence-for-education
Human Rights Watch (HRW). (2022, May 25). ‘How Dare They Peep into My Private Life?’ Children’s Rights Violations by Governments that Endorsed Online Learning During the Covid-19 Pandemic. https://www.hrw.org/ report/2022/05/25/how-dare-they-peep-my-private-life/ childrens-rights-violations-governments
Jisc. (2022, June). AI in tertiary education: A summary of the current state of play. (2nd ed.). https://repository.jisc.ac.uk/8783/1/ ai-in-tertiary-education-report-june-2022.pdf
Ketamo, H. (2018). Dreams and Reality: How AI will Change
Education, The Blue Dot, 9, UNESCO MGIEP. https:// mgiep.unesco.org/article/dreams-and-reality-how-ai-willchange-education
UNESCO. (2021). Recommendation on the ethics of artificial intelligence https://en.unesco.org/artificial-intelligence/ ethics#recommendation
Valenza, J. (2021, August 8). Launching Real ‘Reading Progress’: A Game Changer from Microsoft Education. School Library Journal. https://blogs.slj.com/ neverendingsearch/2021/08/31/launching-real-readingprogress-a-game-changer-from-microsoft-education/
As the world emerges from a worldwide pandemic, combined with today’s fastpaced, technology-driven society, the importance of connecting with nature has become increasingly evident. As the educational community strives to provide optimal learning environments for our students, the integration of natural elements within school settings has emerged as a powerful avenue for educational growth and holistic wellbeing.
This article explores forest bathing and the value of creating school environments that incorporate nature and discusses the potential benefits that students can derive from learning in nature.
Shinrin-yoku is where ‘a person simply visits a natural area and walks in a relaxed way’ (Mathias et al., 2020, p. 2) Interestingly, the term was developed to encourage people to visit Japanese forests. However, since its inception, scientists from around the world have ‘begun to study the physiological and psychological effects of nature’ on health and wellbeing (Miyazaki, 2018, p. 4). Japan is a leader in research into nature therapies as Japanese culture is intrinsically linked to the natural world. The term
‘forest therapy’ or ‘nature therapy’ is the combination of the practice of shinrin-yoku combined with scientific research. The therapies include walking mindfully and sitting in forests, meditation, yoga, stretching, using the five senses, creating (writing and drawing), and learning (Miyazaki, 2018).
The concept of nature therapy aims ‘to increase physiological relaxation and act as a preventative medicine’ for stress (Miyazaki, 2018, p. 24). Emerging out of a literature review conducted by Mathias et al. (2020), outlined below, more specific effects and benefits of forest bathing or nature therapies are listed.
Benefits related to the environment
• Limited presence of microbes and decreased pollutants
• Exposure to better air quality (oxygen enriched air)
• Liberation of antibiotic molecules by trees
• Emission of essential oils
• Colours and natural forms
• Natural ambient sounds
Physiological effects
• Strengthening the immune system
• Strengthening the respiratory system
• Decreased level of cortisol
• Decreased heart rate and blood pressure
• Increased number and activity of anti-cancer cells (NK)
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
• Strengthening the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system
• Decreased activity of the sympathetic system
Psychological effects
• Decrease of stress
• Improved nervous balance (control of emotions)
• Decreased aggressiveness
• Improved mood
• Improved intellectual performance (memory)
• Relaxation
These probable benefits and effects are relevant for both health professionals and educators (Mathias et al., 2020). Educators, for many years, have extolled the value of learning in the natural environment, with different countries' developing programs reflective of that country’s perceived educational needs. Examples include the Udeskole movement in Scandinavia, and in England, the Forest Schools movement, which both inspired Nature Play and Bush Kinder in Australia. The United States and Italy (Reggio Emilia) both have a philosophy of outdoor learning but extend beyond nature to include moving outside and around the wider outdoor community.
Additionally, almost twenty years ago, the term ‘nature deficit disorder’ was coined by Richard Louv in his book Last Child in the Woods (2010). Louv uses this term to highlight children’s lack of exposure to nature, a trend that has grown over this century. He believes children are staying inside more as an
over-excessive time is spent on screens. Also, children are growing up in a risk-averse society where adults want to protect children from perceived unsafe and risky behaviours.
Alongside this worldwide educational acknowledgement to outdoor learning and the concern shared by Louv (2010), the growing scientific research of effects and benefits (already listed) is additional evidence of its value. Benefits, however, are not limited to physical and emotional wellbeing. Learning in nature can also foster connection and social skills, enhance personal growth, foster cognitive function, and enhance environmental awareness (Miller et al., 2022). These potentials are discussed below.
The presence of nature in school environments can significantly contribute to the physical and emotional wellbeing of students. By incorporating elements such as school gardens, forests and green spaces, students can engage in physical activity, promoting exercise and healthy lifestyles. As suggested by Louv (2010), children are spending more time in their seats and less time playing, running around, and exploring the outdoors, which is necessary for physical development. Early childhood children also need outdoor play to help establish a healthy sensory system. Research suggests that exposure to green spaces reduces stress levels, lowers blood pressure, and improves overall mental health. Regular contact with nature has also been shown to reduce anxiety and improve mood and just makes people feel happier.
The incorporation of nature within school environments and when used as an outdoor classroom promotes social interaction, empathy, and teamwork. Outdoor learning spaces and nature-based activities encourage collaboration and communication among students. Students learn to appreciate the diverse perspectives and roles within an ecosystem, fostering empathy and understanding. Nature-based group projects and team-building activities develop important social skills, leadership qualities, and cooperation, preparing students for the challenges of the future.
Outdoor experiences not only provide opportunities to interact with nature but also can provide physical challenges and risks. Being open to safe risk can contribute to the development of the dispositions of positive risk taking, perseverance to face challenges, growth mindset thinking and resilience, all of which set the foundation for the challenge of learning and life.
The adoption of nature-related programs in educational settings around the world has highlighted the positive impact of nature on cognitive function and academic performance. Nature-rich school environments, such as green spaces, gardens, and forests, can enhance attention spans, improve concentration, and promote better memory retention for students. Exposure to natural light and greenery has also been linked to increased creativity, which is a receptive process, and being in nature encourages receptivity (Miyazaki, 2018).
On the other hand, when students visit natural environments, a multitude of opportunities are offered, which can inspire curiosity, exploration, and problem solving among students. These environments are a source for inquiry-based learning, where students can observe, discover, question, investigate, and analyse their surroundings. This immersive approach fosters a love for learning that extends beyond the classroom. By creating school environments that embrace nature, we can foster an atmosphere that enhances students’ cognitive abilities and optimises their academic potential.
Creating school environments that showcase the beauty and the importance of nature can play a pivotal role in cultivating environmental awareness and responsibility among students. By immersing students in natural surroundings, they develop a deeper understanding of the interconnectivity between humans and the environment and, importantly, nurture a sense of wonder of the natural world. Opportunities for hands-on learning, such as gardening, looking after the school environment, and observing nature, enable students to develop a sense of environmental stewardship. This experiential learning approach promotes sustainability and instils a love
and appreciation of nature with lifelong values ‘so that nature will continue to be a source of relaxation and connection throughout adulthood’ (Miyazaki, 2018, p. 90).
By offering an immersive approach to nature, schools can promote physical and emotional wellbeing, foster social skills, cognitive function, and environmental awareness, and enhance personal growth. The promotion of these elements will also enhance the development of a student’s 21st century skills, particularly creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, and collaboration. Linking these experiences to 21st century learning prepares students for the future world of work and arms them with critical life skills (Dept. of Education, 2022).
Creating natural environments in a school, such as forests, importantly provides benefits to the physical environment such as reduced pollutants, oxygen enriched air, natural ambient sounds, and physically appealing spaces to sit, enjoy and practise elements of nature therapy (Miyazaki, 2018).
As educators, it is our responsibility to harness the power of nature and provide for students’ transformative experiences of connecting with the natural world. Such experiences have the power to have a profound impact on students’ overall wellbeing and educational journey. By doing so, we pave the way for a generation that appreciates the beauty of nature, values sustainability, and strives for a harmonious coexistence with the environment.
References
Australian Government Department of Education (2022, August 22). Links to 21st Century Learning, Retrieved June 6, 2023, from https://www.education.gov.au/australian-curriculum/ national-stem-education-resources-toolkit/i-want-knowabout-stem-education/what-works-best-when-teachingstem/links-21st-century-learning
Louv, R. (2010). Last Child in the Woods: saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Atlantic Books.
Mathias, S., Daigle, P., Dancause, K. N., & Gadais, T. (2020). Forest bathing: A narrative review of the effects on health for outdoor and environmental education use in Canada. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 23, 309-321.
Miller, N., Kumar, S., Pearce, K. L., & Baldock, K. L. (2022). The perceived benefits of and barriers to nature-based play and learning in South Australian public primary schools: A cross-sectional study. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 22(4), 342-354.
Miyazaki, Y. (2018). Shinrin-yoku: The Japanese Way of Forest Bathing for Health and Relaxation. Octopus Publishing.
There is a moment in J.K. Rowling’s novel Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban where Hermione Granger, an intelligent, self-confessed overachiever, takes possession of a time turner – a device that allows her to travel back in time by up to five hours. Rather than using the device for mischief and misdeeds, Hermione opts to travel back in time so that she may study a greater range of subjects in her third year. While most students may not necessarily be imbued with Hermione’s same dedication, many would certainly relate to her dilemma of time poverty when it comes to their studies. Moreover, a good number might also confess that even if time were no object, they would still feel ill-equipped, as they simply ‘don’t know how to study’. These two common predicaments are the basis upon which the St Margaret’s SOAR Program was created.
At its essence, SOAR is a program that assists students with honing their organisational and study skills through exposure to a series of strategies that are supported by evidence-based practice research. Students are explicitly taught these strategies in the SOAR workshops, during which time they can also put it into practice with their current subject matter.
Details of the program:
• Study and organisational strategies are taught across eight afterschool workshops in a semester.
• The program is open to students in Years 7 to 12.
• Each workshop runs for 90 minutes and is led by two teachers.
• Students take away practical tips and information, which they can add to their study repertoire.
Ultimately, the SOAR Program strives to produce learners who are:
• metacognitive – can think about their own thinking
• self-efficacious – believe in their capabilities to achieve academic goals
• self-regulated – can affect their own academic behaviour and learning strategies to overcome day-to-day learning challenges.
Organisation, Perfectionism and Study Scheduling
Active Reading
Retrieval and Spaced Practice
Dual Coding
Concept and Mind Mapping
Frayer Model & Other Devices
Elaborative Interrogation
SOAR is underpinned by the contention that there are right and wrong ways to study. This contention is, indeed, contentious, as it seemingly opposes the presumptions made by the ‘learning styles’ theories of the 1970s and 1980s that students can adopt different ‘learning styles’, and thus, it is the job of the teacher to identify and cater for these learning differences in their classroom. Despite ‘learning styles’ theories being debunked by many sections of the educational academic community over the past few decades (Parslow, 2012; Brown & Kaminske, 2018; Hussman & O’Loughlin, 2019), their
‘But I don’t know how to study’: How the SOAR Program is increasing awareness of the science of learning amongst St Margaret’s students
continued pervasion into the vernacular of students, parents, and, at times, teachers, is cause for concern. Thus, being steadfast with the communication of the program’s contention has been important.
Take, for example, Fleming et al.’s (1992) V.A.R.K. Model of Learning, one of the more famous ‘learning styles’ theories that pigeonholes students as one of four ‘learners’ – visual, auditory, reader, kinaesthetic. I have lost count of the number of times a student has told me, ‘I think I might be more of a kinaesthetic learner.’ As Ashman (2015) argues, a student being labelled as a particular type of learner is, at best, an innocuous mistake, but, at worst, a limiting tag that could influence their behaviour towards learning – ‘I’ve discovered that I’m a low auditory, kinaesthetic learner, so there’s not much point me attempting to read or listen to that information’.
The SOAR Program’s theoretical origins instead lie within the more recent developments in cognitive psychology, which delve into the science behind practices that enhance the acquisition and retention of knowledge, skills, and behaviours for all learners – a field of research commonly known as the science of learning (Weinstein et al., 2018; Brown et al., 2014). Overwhelmingly, over the past few decades, a considerable amount of peer-reviewed literature exploring aspects of the science of learning has embraced the premise that learning techniques and strategies can be scientifically evaluated on a continuum relative to their efficacy (Agarwal & Bain, 2019; Weinstein et al., 2018). Dunlosky et al. (2013), for example, is a literature review that systematically evaluated ten learning strategies and, using an evidence base, rated their overall utility – i.e., their ability to impact student learning and achievement outcomes. Table 1 highlights some key findings from this paper:
Below provides a brief summary of the key learning strategies taught within the SOAR Program and the science behind how they work.
Retrieval Practice is a strategy that helps to improve active recall and retrieval of information in order to transfer knowledge from short-term working memory in the prefrontal cortex to long-term memory in the cerebral cortex of the brain (Brown et al., 2014). The process of ‘testing’ oneself through a variety of different retrieval study exercises helps to build stronger neural networks, and thus, learners can more easily retrieve knowledge and skills from long-term memory (Agarwal & Bain, 2019). Committing knowledge and skills into long-term memory is also beneficial in freeing up the cognitive load on short-term working memory, which has positive implications for improving executive function (Weinstein et al., 2018). The Frayer Model and some Mnemonic Devices are strategies that align excellently with the retrieval practice approach as each can be used by the student to test, evaluate, and consolidate their vocabulary and understanding throughout units of work (Green, 2021; Karpicke & Smith, 2012).
Spaced Practice is a study technique where study (through retrieval practice) occurs over an extended period. Rather than studying over a few long study sessions (cramming), the learner chunks their revision into smaller sessions over an increasingly spaced timeframe (Benjamin & Tullis, 2010). The purpose of this technique is two-fold. It allows for neural recovery time, where the brain can form connections between ideas and concepts (Benjamin & Tullis, 2010), and it activates relevant episodic memories over subsequent study sessions, making it easier for a student to access that knowledge in the future (Brown et al., 2014).
Hermann Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve model (as seen in Figure 1) visually represents how spaced practice, if conducted over a long time-period, helps to form stronger, more consolidated understanding of concepts (Brown et al., 2014). Most importantly, for spaced practice to have its most desired effect on memory retention, the days between review must increase, as the exercise of ‘almost forgetting’ a concept before retrieving it makes our brains work harder to access the memory, and therefore, the knowledge becomes more consolidated into long-term memory as a result (Weinstein et al., 2018; Benjamin & Tullis, 2010).
Dual Coding refers to the process of combining visual and written information to help enhance learning and memory (Paivio, 2014). Using both visual and written representations help the brain to encode and process information more easily, as it creates multiple pathways for its retrieval (Paivio 2014). Importantly, dual coding is more than just incorporating pictures into a set of study notes. The visuals must be meaningful and complementary to the writing (Hattie & Yates, 2013). Graphs, schematics, flowcharts, sketch notes, and Venn diagrams are all excellent examples of the types of visual prompts that could be used effectively. When used in conjunction with retrieval and spaced practice, dual coding deepens neural connections in the brain, aiding the consolidation of long-term memory, which in turn, provides a more accurate and sophisticated recall of information (Paivio, 2014; Brown et al., 2014). The effective use of Mind Maps and Concept Maps can be a very powerful way to dual code information, particularly if simple diagrams and pictures are integrated into the maps and connections between concepts are represented with visual cues (Science of Learning Research Centre, 2013).
Elaborative interrogation is a learning strategy that involves asking oneself explanatory questions about the material being studied, using what, how, when, where, why, and so what?
By actively questioning the content and seeking meaningful explanations, learners deepen and consolidate their conceptual knowledge (Dunlosky et al., 2013). Elaborative interrogation prompts learners to make connections between new information and their prior knowledge, helping them construct more robust mental models. This technique encourages critical thinking, aids in the identification of logical inconsistencies or gaps in understanding and facilitates the transfer of knowledge to new contexts (Karpicke & Smith, 2012).
Active Reading involves purposeful and engaged reading strategies to promote comprehension and critical thinking. Rather than passively consuming text, active readers interact with it by practising strategies (such as Eagle, Wolf, Whale) that help them draw out purpose, context, tone, and perspective (Byers, 2021). Active reading also significantly enhances a learner’s ability to analyse more nuanced connections and perspectives in the text (Pulver, 2020).
Agarwal, P. K., & Bain, P. M. (2019). Powerful teaching: Unleash the science of learning. John Wiley & Sons.
Ashman, G. (2015, November 30). Why I’m happy to say learning styles don’t exist. Filling the Pail Blog. https://gregashman. wordpress.com/2015/11/30/why-im-happy-to-say-thatlearning-styles-dont-exist/
Benjamin, A. S., & Tullis, J. (2010). What makes distributed practice effective? Cognitive Psychology, 61, 228-47.
Brown, A. M., & Kaminske, A. N. (2018). Five teaching and learning myths—Debunked: A guide for teachers, Routledge.
Brown, P. C., Roediger III, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Byers, T. (2021, May 17). Not all study strategies are equal. Churchie Research Centre Blog. https://www.churchie.com.au/ academic/churchie-libraries/churchie-research-centre/ not-all-study-strategies-are-equal
Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14, 4-58.
Fleming, N., & Mills, C. (1992). Not Another Inventory, Rather a Catalyst for Reflection. To Improve the Academy, 11 Green, J. (2021). Powerful Ideas of Science and How to Teach Them. Routledge.
Hattie, J., & Yates, G. C. R. (2013). Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn. Taylor & Francis.
Husmann, P. R., & O’Loughlin, V. D. (2019). Another Nail in the Coffin for Learning Styles? Disparities among Undergraduate Anatomy Students’ Study Strategies, Class Performance, and Reported VARK Learning Styles. Anatomical Science Education, 12, 6-19.
Karpicke, J. D., & Smith, M. A. (2012). Separate mnemonic effects of retrieval practice and elaborative encoding. Journal of Memory and Language, 67, 17-29.
Morais, M. J., & Pereira, J. (2007). Engaging the reluctant reader through active reading strategies.
Paivio, A. (2014). Mind and its Evolution: A Dual Coding Theoretical Approach. Mind and its Evolution: A Dual Coding Theoretical Approach, 1-525.
Parslow, G. R. (2012). Commentary: Learning-style theories debunked, but still guiding educational practice. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 40, 72.
Pulver, C. J. (2020). Active Reading to Understand a Problem. Thinking Rhetorically: Writing for Professional and Public Audiences. Roger Williams University.
Science of Learning Research Centre. (2013). Pen Principles. https:// www.slrc.org.au/resources/pen-principles/
Scott, C. (2010). The Enduring Appeal of ‘Learning Styles’. Australian Journal of Education, 54, 5-17.
Weinstein, Y., Madan, C. R., & Sumeracki, M. A. (2018). Teaching the science of learning. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 3, 2.
– what is their actual purpose?
Understanding the purpose of performance appraisals and performance management can be complex (Elliot, 2015) due to the connected nature of the two systems. While a broad range of systems have long been used in schools to evaluate employee performance, scholars (Murphy, 2020; Pulakos & Battista, 2020) conclude the majority of these systems are usually ineffective. They note that there is little reliable evidence that indicates these systems, when used in isolation, have any influence on the performance of employees. However, there is a large body of evidence that outlines teacher quality as the single most powerful influence on student achievement (Hattie, 2003); therefore, it is arguable that it is the contents of the performance appraisal and performance management that requires review and increased attention rather than the actual processes.
The traditional performance appraisal has been operational since the 1950s (Torrington, 2017), attempting to formalise the process of evaluating employee performance. The performance management approach was later introduced to improve the performance appraisal system by developing a more sustained process that saw the alignment of performance to strategy (Murphy, 2020). While performance management is commonly seen as a more effective system, research continues to explore the contentious and challenging aspects of both systems and calls schools to ensure effective human resource management approaches and a range of strategies are part of any process that focuses on the teacher performance and management.
Controversial scholar Murphy (2020) claims that both the traditional performance appraisal and management systems lack reliable and valuable methods for evaluating employee
performance and calls for an overhaul of both systems. His claims are supported by academics who argue that, regardless of their structure, both systems are perceived as failures by both employees and leaders (Adler et al., 2016; Murphy, 2020; Pulakos & Battista, 2020). Murphy (2020) further claims that systems are traditionally laden with personal bias, rather than objective performance metrics, thus rendering them invalid (DeNisi & Murphy, 2017). While a range of systems have traditionally been used in schools to make judgements on teacher performance, they have varied in their approach since their commencement and continue to manifest in formal performance evaluations and lack the necessary components required for impact (Murphy, 2020). Traditional appraisal is retrospective and largely summative, with the majority of its focus given to the past performance of employees. They are usually annual, are often isolated and interwoven with judgement, review, or ratings, and rarely follow up with useful feedback (Torrington, 2017). While the performance management system can be informal and formative, Murphy (2020) argues that it is the shared elements of both that inevitably conclude with little impact on future performance. He goes on to claim that the systems can create anxiety, discouragement and disillusionment among employees and have an adverse effect on motivation and engagement (Murphy, 2020), thus affecting the wellbeing of individuals and the overall culture of a workplace. Leaders must pay particular attention to actions and skills that can enhance and influence teacher wellbeing (Cann et al., 2020) to ensure and maintain a solid improvement culture.
For performance management to be beneficial, appraisal should be present as part of a fully comprehensive system that clearly communicates expectations to employees. It should be systematic and ongoing with an emphasis on future performance and an agreed understanding of what quality teaching is (Armstrong, 2009; Ashdown, 2018; Runhaar, 2017). Effective systems ask employees to take both internal and external accountability for their own professional learning, (Torrington, 2017) and should include a range of strategies that aim to assist employees to improve the quality of their teaching, including ongoing feedback, coaching, goal setting and recognition (Aguinis, 2014). Alignment to an organisation’s strategic goals and vision must also be present (Aguinis, 2014; Armstrong, 2009; Ashdown, 2018; Pulakos & Battista, 2020) and aim to influence career performance through professional learning (Timperley, 2015). While controversial scholar Murphy (2020) argues that recent attempts to improve these systems through simplifying or adding layers to increase accuracy have continued to record little impact, he acknowledges that a system where leaders and employees build a culture of collaborative ongoing learning could prove successful – a system where leaders work together with employees to develop goals that align to strategy and follow with a plan to see those goals developed (Murphy, 2020).
The substantial body of evidence that acknowledges the importance of teacher quality and its significance on student achievement is undeniable. Therefore, priority must be given to understanding how systems can act as a key driver (Elliot, 2015) in assisting the enhancement of teacher quality. Leadership as a relational construct is a widely accepted theory (DeRue & Ashford, 2010). Leaders must be agile, collaborative, and adaptive and work to inspire, guide, and assist. Leaders must not only be role models but help others to learn and bring change. Studies have proven that relationships built on understanding where leaders support personal growth and value teacher voice in decision-making allow teachers to flourish (Cann et al., 2020). Leaders must work to establish internal accountability with teachers through clear goal setting and a culture that develops collective efficacy in a climate of non-judgement. Murphy (2020) highlights the dichotomy between widely accepted leadership theories and traditional performance systems and suggests that a non-evaluative, coaching-based system could prove the only improvement to the currently failing system (Murphy, 2020).
Successful evaluation processes that are part of a system that promotes teacher development result in rewards, career opportunities, and strategic-level participation (Runhaar, 2017), and when integrated effectively into schools, these processes can enhance motivation and teacher wellbeing. Results such as these usually rely on a successful human resource management plan (Runhaar, 2017) and, when used to ensure accountability, should improve teacher quality and inevitability student results (Elliot, 2015).
Regardless of the type of system, it must clearly articulate expectations for teachers as well as acknowledge teacher entitlement to effective and meaningful feedback and ongoing support. Both systems in education have been shrouded with controversy (Elliot, 2015), a lack of valid processes, and a conflict of interest between different education sectors. Research acknowledges the undeniable impact quality teaching has on student outcomes; therefore, it is vital we get this system right.
Adler, S., Campion, M., Colquitt, A., Grubb, A., Murphy, K., Ollander-Krane, R., & Pulakos, E.D. (2016). Getting rid of performance ratings: Genius or folly? A debate. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 9(2), 219-252.
Aguinis, H. (2014). Performance Management (3rd ed.). Pearson Education Limited.
Ashdown, L. (2018). Performance Management: A practical introduction, 16. Kogan Page Publishers.
Cann, R. F., Riedel-Prabhakar, R., & Powell, D. (2021). A model of positive school leadership to improve teacher wellbeing. International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, 6, 195-218.
DeRue, D. S., & Ashford, S. J. (2010). Who will lead and who will follow? A social process of leadership identity construction in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 35(4), 627-647.
DeNisi, A. S., & Murphy, K. R. (2017). Performance appraisal and performance management: 100 years of progress? Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 421.
De Nobile, J. (2018). Towards a theoretical model of middle leadership in schools. School Leadership & Management, 38(4), 395-416.
Elliott, K. (2015). Teacher performance appraisal: More about performance or development? Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 40(9), 102-116.
Hattie, J. (2003, October). Teachers Make a Difference, What is the research evidence? Paper presented at the Building Teacher Quality: What does the research tell us ACER Research Conference, Melbourne, Australia. http://research.acer.edu. au/research_conference_2003/4/
Murphy, K. R. (2020). Performance evaluation will not die, but it should. Human Resource Management Journal, 30(1), 13-31.
Pulakos, E. D., & Tracy Kantrowitz, T. (2020). How Performance Management Must Change to Drive Organizational Agility and High Performance: An Evidence-Based View. In E. D. Pulakos & M. Battista (Eds.), Performance Management Transformation: Lessons Learned and Next Steps (p. 211). Society Industrial Organizational Psych.
Runhaar, P. (2017). How can schools and teachers benefit from human resources management? Conceptualising HRM from content and process perspectives. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 45(4), 639-656.
Timperley, H. (2015). Leading Teaching and Learning Through Professional Learning. Australian Educational Leader, 37(2), 6-9.
As I sit at my desk and ponder the week ahead, putting together some lessons for my students, including researching articles, websites and videos they can access on their latest topic of learning and linking these onto their page on the school’s learning management system, I reflect on how access to content and information has changed from my experience at the same age when I went to school in the 1980s. I picture my teachers’ weekends filled with reading of textbooks and sources they obtained from the school or local library and then piecing this together on a carefully created Overhead Transparency (OHT) to be projected onto the board using an overhead projector. I think of how my teachers would use different colours of their OHT pens to emphasise certain points, and how I would furiously write down these points in my notebook to be revisited later when studying for the upcoming exam. If we were really lucky, the teacher would roll in the huge TV and video player that sat on a movable shelf reserved via the school library for our lesson and play a small snippet from ‘Behind the News’ (BTN), which was recorded by the school librarian each week from the ABC channel. We’d fill in a worksheet at the same time, one the teacher had constructed and printed in purple ink via the mimeograph machine, which we spent at least the first 10 minutes pressed to our noses, smelling the distinctive and addictive scent that oozed from the freshly printed handouts.
Here I am today, teaching to a new group of students who are now forming the newly named Generation Alpha – those born between 2010 and 2024, the children of Generation Y. According to McCrindle (2023), these children will soon outnumber the Baby Boomers with 2.5 million born each week, and many of them will live to see the 22nd century.
This generation is the most technological savvy ever, with screens being placed in front of them from a young age, often used as entertainment and educational aids at home but also influencing schooling and their experiences in their formative years (McCrindle, 2023).
What I find hard to fathom at times is the rate at which technology has changed rather rapidly over such a short period of time. I remember when my father took me to see the new computer system at his workplace and proudly showed the whole room where the computer storage drives were. That was before the internet. Now, information is just at our fingertips and can be found from sources all over the world and be presented to us at lightning-fast speeds.
Generation Alpha can access all this information from the moment they can swipe at a screen as very young children, through to their schooling years and beyond. What I ask myself at times, as an educator and a mother, is how we can ensure that our children are accessing the right information and remain safe in the digital world.
London (2023) states that the most at-risk group of people who are exposed to online safety issues are 12 to 15-year-olds.
This is due to these age groups exploring an increased sense of independence but still having an underdeveloped sense of self control. In other words, their brains have not developed enough to discern and understand some of the malicious behaviours that occur on online. Therefore, it is necessary for parents (and schools) to continue to provide boundaries at these ages.
The office of the eSafety Commissioner (n.d.) also identifies women and girls, particularly those from diverse backgrounds and communities, as being targets of online abuse more than others. Approximately two-thirds of all reports to the eSafety office about cyberbullying and image-based abuse of children and young people are made by women and girls.
According to London (2023), the key online safety risks for girls tend to be:
• sharing inappropriate content
• screen time and device use
• toxic online behaviours
• grooming and online predators
• digital footprint
• privacy and settings in their online accounts
• gaming and gaming behaviours
• sexting and nudes.
Schools are needing to be proactive about online safety and include education about this through their pastoral care programs. Students require early access to age-appropriate
content through these programs to ensure they are accessing online content safely and engaging in behaviours that are as safe in the online world as they are in the real world.
To this end, the eSafety Commissioner (n.d.) has now released a Best Practice Framework for Online Safety Education to help schools navigate the complex areas that are needed in the education of students at all ages on online safety. The framework addresses the components of students’ rights and responsibilities in a digital age, resilience and risk, effective whole school approaches, integrated and specific curriculum, and continuous improvement through review and evaluation. Moreover, as children are living in a digital reality, it is essential for schools to take a proactive stance on preparing emerging generations to confidently navigate the everchanging technological landscape within an ethical and moral framework (Independent Schools Australia, 2023). Increased use of technology each year provides both a challenge and an opportunity. Online safety is one of the highest challenges that is presented to young people, as it affects children of all ages.
Parents, too, are required to be present and aware of their children’s online presence and safety. As families provide more devices for their children at what seems like an increasingly younger age, being engaged with the child’s use of those devices is important. Parents should be accessing online safety information and guidelines on how to monitor their child’s use of the devices. As privacy and usage settings are different on all
devices, a proactive approach is paramount. Parental controls on these devices and internet settings at home are available and parents should educate themselves on their usage.
Families and schools must work together to guide our students in the correct and safe ways of using technology. Our use of OHTs and video players are long gone. As our students are being immersed in technology faster than any other previous generation, this has become an urgent task for parents and schools alike to tackle.
References
eSafety Commissioner. (n.d.). Best Practice Framework for Online Safety Education. https://www.esafety.gov.au/educators/ best-practice-framework
Independent Schools Australia. (2023). The social contribution of independent schools in Australia. Independent Schools Australia.
London, Y. (2023, June 4). Beneath the Iceberg: Understanding and addressing the cause of toxic online behaviour [Conference session]. Asia Pacific Summit on Girls’ Education, Hobart, Australia
McCrindle, M. (2023). Understanding Generation Alpha. https:// mccrindle.com.au/article/topic/generation-alpha/ generation-alpha-defined/
As a Physics teacher, I can tell you with certainty that nothing in our universe happens instantaneously and learning is no different. Yet an increasing trend is emerging in our classrooms where students feel a sense of failure if they cannot grasp a concept immediately. More and more, they are struggling to hold their attention and focus on a problem for any extended period and tend to give up too soon or ask for help before any learning occurs. Now of course this is nothing new for teachers; there have always been students who are averse to challenging themselves; however, when a trend becomes the norm, as I believe it has, we as educators must address it.
It appears this norm of impatience in the classroom stems from the ‘age of immediacy’ and instant gratification we find ourselves in. In almost all other areas of their lives, students do not have to wait or be patient for a dopamine hit. They can ‘buy now and pay later’; binge a show in one sitting rather than waiting a week for the next episode; expect next day delivery for a purchase from across the globe; forgo years of medical training and simply ‘Google’ their symptoms. Our society is teaching our students that time is short and to be successful in life is to use as little of this commodity as possible to accomplish their goals. Acclaimed author Simon Sinek supports this when he speaks of the younger generations being dealt a bad hand by growing up in a world of instant gratification (Sinek, 2018).
Everything you want you can have instantaneously. Everything you want, instant gratification. Except job satisfaction, and strength of relationships; there ain’t no app for that. They are slow, meandering, uncomfortable, messy processes (Sinek, 2018).
Another slow, meandering, uncomfortable and messy process is learning, and although people have tried to make apps for that, none of them work to build patience (in fact it is really the opposite by turning complex learning into games). Consequently, as educators, it falls to us to teach our students that coping with challenges and building resilience is necessary for life. Patience with the learning process is the only means by which students can develop the attitudes and skills necessary for a meaningful and successful life (Finkel, 2015). To be patient is to be resilient; to endure difficulty without complaint; to keep calm and carry on. However, according to Johann Hari (2022), their inability to focus and be patient with learning may not be their fault.
George Higgins Head of Faculty – Mathematics
In his book Stolen Focus, Hari argues we live in ‘an attentional pathogenic culture’, where sustained focus has become extremely hard for all of us, and should we wish to practise patience, we must fight the multitude of external forces trying to distract us (Hari, 2022).
It’s not your fault you can’t focus. It’s by design. The truth is that you are living in a system that is pouring acid on your attention every day, and then you are being told to blame yourself and to fiddle with your own habits while the world’s attention burns (Hari, 2022).
This is worrying for many reasons but particularly for the future of education and our youth. The fact so many of us have outsourced our self-discipline by downloading ‘focus apps’ to block out distractions speaks to this and shows how addicted we have become to instant gratification. Furthermore, it becomes hard to blame students when they cannot focus in class if they are growing up in a society that doesn’t advocate the value of patience. For teachers, it seems like a bit of a losing battle, yet given our unique position to affect change, it falls to us to educate our students that patience is not the enemy and discipline is necessary for life.
Patience is vital for learning, because students must struggle with ideas and concepts and persevere in the face of difficulty to achieve cognition (Finkel, 2015). Moreover, without patience and resilience, students tend to favour learning habits that promote convergent thinking techniques that only work in situations where problems are logical and linear (Cropley, 2006). Life is not linear, and learning certainly is not, and as educators, we must recognise the significance of this problem moving forward and work to ensure our students develop the patience necessary for success in their learning and in life, because society is not going to teach them that.
References
Cropley, A. (2006). In Praise of Convergent Thinking. Creativity Research Journal, 18(3), 391-404.
Finkel, D. (2015). 5 ways to share math with kids. [Video]. Ted. https:// www.ted.com/talks/dan_finkel_5_ways_to_share_math_ with_kids
Hari, J. (2022). Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again. Bloomsbury.
Sinek, S. (2018, December 14). This Is Why You Don’t Succeed - Simon Sinek on The Millennial Generation. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/xNgQHwsIbg
The title of the article might lead one to believe that I have experienced the misalignment of sales and marketing (or, as it is known in schools, enrolments/admissions and marketing/ advancement). Fortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth. For most of my school marketing experience, I have worked in teams open to collaboration and acutely aware that a close relationship between the two functions is vital to each other’s and the school’s success.
I have worked in school marketing since 2004, where in my first school, not long had passed since the principal’s executive assistant had stepped away from a dual role of EA/enrolments officer. Today, I lead a team of four other marketing team members, as well as having oversight of the school’s admissions team, led by the Head of Admissions, with two other admissions team members responsible for secondary/ boarding and primary.
St Margaret’s admissions/marketing model has been the envy of many other schools, and it was with great foresight that St Margaret’s Principal, Ros Curtis, brought the essence of this model back from the USA where the admissions departments are well staffed and offer a highly proactive and personalised service.
What St Margaret’s now has is an admissions model that reflects the personalised nature of the school’s education experience and starts from the moment a prospective family enquires. The structure of the marketing/admissions teams also promotes a tight alignment across the teams, which, according to Emmet Consulting (2023), is ‘almost guaranteed to deliver more leads, increased student applications, and –ultimately – higher enrolment numbers’.
Wendy Johnston Director of Marketing and CommunicationsHowever, the fact remains that throughout both the school and tertiary sectors, many teams continue to operate in silos. So, what are the points of tension when the sales and marketing are misaligned and the benefits when they do.
When I first commenced marketing at St Margaret’s in 2014, it was still recovering from a period of upheaval in 2010, but the trajectory was already starting to move upwards. At the start of 2015, we were happy to have passed the 800 mark of total school enrolments. Broad marketing strategies to all potential demographics across primary, secondary and boarding enrolments, heightening brand awareness, and calls to action around open day/morning and regional tours were key focuses. We had enrolments/performance targets, obviously, but plenty of space, so it was, with few exceptions, a case of come one, come all.
Today, we sit at 1380 enrolments; there are waiting lists in many year groups, and while all the above still comes into play, more of our marketing budget is directed towards the few existing vacancies and we will digitally target those demographics to a greater degree than we might have previously, while still marketing more broadly for future years. Back in the day, we chuckled to each other when another school had informed us (somewhat smugly, we thought) they were ‘managing disappointment’ – we were then a long way off that; but we are now, very often, in that space. However, this can change in either direction very quickly. One minute you are managing disappointment, the next minute someone has financial difficulties, two families get transferred interstate,
When the admissions and marketing planets don’t align
a family sadly separates, and you are left hoping your waitlist is still, in fact, waiting. Depending on the time of year, these vacancies may or may not be easy to fill.
While a comprehensive weekly update to enrolment/ application numbers is provided, there are very often ongoing stories behind the numbers that don’t fit into any column in the enrolments spreadsheet and only a conversation with the admission team will reveal these nuances. You can be suddenly full or suddenly not, and if we are in the midst of a digital campaign, in particular, a marketer can respond accordingly.
The image I often have in my head these days is those slider puzzles that appeared in EKKA show bags where you have just one vacant spot to shuffle around the small square in order to solve the puzzle. That’s how it now very often feels for the admissions team, and it’s important that the marketing message and the sales reality align, firstly, so we are not sending out messages that could lead to raised expectations when there is little hope of entry (which could lead to the very poor management of disappointment!) and secondly (and conversely), you could be missing out on enrolments with out-of-date messaging. When you consider one sale could be potentially worth around $150,000 for a six-year secondary education and substantially more when the entry commences in primary school, it pays dividends to be across the minutiae of the data and align the marketing message accordingly.
Regular scheduled meetings assist with these communications, but importantly, an open door policy and willingness to share data and stories as they come to hand, built through respectful relationships over time, is also vital.
A customer journey from early interest to school commencement should be relevant and engaging, meeting the need of both the client and the school, but not placing any insurmountable hurdles along the way. This can be tricky given the journey might include sensitive areas to be negotiated such as parental access, court orders, special needs, and the like, and accompanying forms to be completed.
Collectable data from various sources can reveal our market demographics and a well-maintained CRM can reveal the number of touchpoints to enrolment and commencement, but very often the nuances of the customer behaviour can be revealed by their discussions with frontline staff, so a joint exercise to map the various journeys of customers with all relevant feedback considered is a great way to align the goals of the teams, as well as conduct open and respectful dialogue where the experience can be improved.
By mapping the customer journey with the two teams, an understanding about which content is important and what are the points of engagement in the journey (as well as identifying potentially frustrating processes – for example, asking for too much information up front when parents are applying ten years out from commencement) can be determined and improvements made to the website or other communications to better meet the clients’ needs (Smith, 2017).
In addition, marketing campaigns should have the buy-in and endorsement of the admissions team. They should be taken on the journey as they will have valuable feedback as to how a campaign may or may not resonate with the client base.
Either the admissions or marketing teams might come up with what they think is a great idea to improve enrolment numbers or processes, without any thought for the capacity of the other to be able to implement it.
For example, accurate data is key, and in the lifetime of a pre-enrolment journey, an email address can change several times. A marketer might see the bounce backs from an email marketing campaign and demand immediate follow-up. This may not always possible when, for example, the admissions team are inundated with qualified leads, the attending to which is far more valuable than chasing down potentially stale enquiries. Naturally, if an admissions team is sitting waiting for the phone to ring, the story is entirely different. Eventually, however, attention to this scenario is important to enable an accurate depiction of the success of a sales funnel from enquiry to commencement, and just how realistic a bank of enquiries might be, but communication between the departments is key; otherwise, there is potential for resentment to build and cooperation to falter.
The key here for both teams is to talk through options and determine the most beneficial steps that can be taken to boost the performance of both teams (Emmet Consulting, 2023), and ideally, map out some short-, medium- and long-term goals against available resources (human and monetary).
What marketer doesn’t like a good CRM to plot the sales and retention funnel, but the sales team must be brought on the journey. They are the main administrators of the data and processes, which are numerous along the admissions journey for families, and any CRM or automated process must, at the very least, not add to their workload or make their administrative processes tedious or less accurate. For example, the admissions/marketing team should together explore how well the CRM or online enrolment form talks to the school’s database; determine if the CRM is providing real value for the marketing team against any additional time it takes for the admissions team to input / correct / update the system, which is not always as automated as you might think. Bespoke school CRMs are relatively new to the Australian market and there exists a tension between having patience with their development and going along for sometimes cumbersome ride as they iterate their way to a well-functioning and time-saving piece of software or throwing one's hands up in despair at their less than perfect features. Here, the marketer must advocate for their sales team in providing feedback to the provider.
Language
The language on the school website and in communications to prospective families must align and must assist the admissions team to manage the process. This can depend on how this is managed within a school, but invariably the website is managed by the marketing team and it’s important this is regularly reviewed with the admissions team as to the messages conveyed.
And if information is consistently hard to find, no matter how brilliantly the marketing team might think they have devised the website’s information architecture, they must remain open to feedback. Ideally, too, feedback from school receptionists will be a good checkpoint as well, as they are often the first receivers of such complaints.
Depending on the structure of a school, the Director of Marketing or equivalent may sit on the Senior Leadership Team. It’s important that information, where appropriate, flows from those SLT meetings if it will impact the operations of the school and prospective families. For example, if there is going to be a change to the curriculum, or exciting new plans that can be made public and provide a carrot to prospective enrolments, ensure the sales team have the most up-to-date information.
The current structure at St Margaret’s helps to promote alignment due, in part, to its reporting structure, although if this didn’t exist, I feel sure the teams would work just as closely as we do now for optimal outcomes. However, people move on, and in less collegial circumstances, there could, for example, be a tendency to either lay blame or take credit for enrolment numbers, when neither is a true reflection of the situation.
As Griffin (2022) states, if you hear the phrase, ‘When enrollment is up, praise marketing. When enrollment is down, blame admissions’, it invariably means that relationships are strained. It’s a lack of cooperation and alignment across the two teams that is more likely the case for any negative impacts, rather than the actions of either team.
In addition, beyond the admissions and marketing teams, there are myriad reasons that make for a successful school with burgeoning enrolments. It takes every person doing their job well for St Margaret’s to be in the place that it is today; it takes all teams across the school to be aligned to truly put the school in the best possible position.
References
Emmet Consulting. (2021, August 26, updated Jan 3). Bringing the teams together: Why you should align your school’s marketing and admissions teams. Retrieved 12 June, 2023, from https://www.emmetconsulting.com/post/bringingthe-teams-together-why-you-should-align-your-school-smarketing-and-admissions-teams
Griffin, D. (2022, October 10). 4 Ways to Create More Collaboration Between Admissions and Marketing. Enrollment Builders. https://www.enrollmentbuilders.com/blog/fourways-to-create-more-collaboration-between-admissions-andmarketing
Smith, J. (2017). Aligning Marketing and Admissions to Drive College Enrollment. Retrieved 12 June, 2023, from https://blog. hubspot.com/marketing/aligning-marketing-and-admissionsto-drivecollege-enrollment
In today’s digital age, popular culture surrounds us, captivating both children and adults alike. From animated films to prevalent television shows to interactive games, popular culture has become pervasive in society. With its integral part in our lives, it has a significant effect on how we think, act, and communicate. Harnessing and leveraging the power of popular culture in education can assist in facilitating curriculum development, the engagement and motivation of learners, and a language-rich environment, thereby laying a solid foundation for children’s future academic and social success.
The integration of popular culture into the early years’ classroom provides a unique opportunity for teachers to co-construct the curriculum with children. By incorporating children’s interests in contemporary culture, they become a facilitator in the curriculum design process, which fosters engagement and creates a sense of ownership in their learning (Fleer & Ridgway, 2013).
Research by Marsh (2010) suggests that incorporating popular culture materials into the curriculum allows for authentic and relevant learning opportunities. It opens a door for children to explore topics of interest, engage in critical thinking, and make connections between their experiences and the curriculum content. Taking this approach enhances a child’s motivation to learn and deepens their understanding of the world they live in. For educators, this process provides support for the implementation of a contextually relevant and meaningful curriculum.
The use of popular culture in the classroom resonates with children as it reflects their current interests and exemplifies their world. This makes it a powerful tool for the engagement
and motivation of learners within the classroom. When educators employ books, social media, and technology relevant to the child’s age group and development, the child becomes stimulated in the learning environment as the curriculum content and delivery become more relatable to them. According to Jenkins (2006), the use of popular culture in the classroom can bridge the gap between a child’s everyday experiences and the curriculum, motivating them to actively participate and invest in their learning journey.
For children in the early years, engagement in popular culture can also take a dramatic form in the classroom. A dramatic play space provides a dynamic and interactive play area for children to explore, deconstruct and construct meaning and understanding. This space can be elevated by incorporating props, costumes, and play materials that relate to popular interests and favourite characters. With these material additions within the space, children utilise and create an immersive experience in imaginative play, which fosters their engagement in learning through play (Worthem, 2012).
Popular culture within the classroom can provide a multitude of benefits for the developing child. Its integration within and throughout the classroom creates a language-rich environment that stimulates vocabulary development. Characters such as Bluey, Spider-man, Fancy Nancy, Harry Potter, Frozen, Minecraft and many more create settings and storylines for children to immerse themselves in. Within these created imaginative play worlds, children are engaged in their interests but also provided a context that facilitates the acquisition of new words and expands their vocabulary (Wortham, 2012).
The use of popular culture offers children an extensive array of words and expressions, and as a result, their vocabulary greatly expands. Research conducted by Neumann, Hood
and Neumann (2009) suggests that children who encounter popular movies, storybooks, and games within education generate new words in a meaningful context. With this wide range of exposure, children are aided not only in their vocabulary growth but also in the development of their contextual understanding of words, and grasp of nuances and subtleties in language usage (Neumann, Hood & Neumann, 2009).
Language development is further aided in the early years with the use of a dramatic play area or small world setting, based on a child’s popular interests, providing them with a familiar and safe environment in which to practise and refine their language and communication skills. According to Schaefer and Reid (2019), as children immerse themselves in imaginative play scenarios, they engage in conversation, negotiation, and expressive language skills to convey their thoughts, feelings, and ideas within an assumed role. During these play spaces, children partake in interactive play that supports their language development by enhancing their speaking, listening and social communication skills (Schaefer & Reid, 2019).
Additionally, these areas within the classroom also support the development of other language skills such as comprehension and storytelling abilities. As children re-enact their imaginative events through play, they deepen their understanding of narratives, story structures, plot development, and character growth (Geng et al., 2016). Another effective method that enhances these skills and critical thinking is the use of popular cultural materials such as movies and storybooks. Engagement in popular texts encourages children to make connections, infer meaning and analyse narratives, using themes, characters, and storylines that children have already invested interest in (Beavis et al., 2014).
Popular culture is immersive, engaging, and can be beneficial to the education of children. Children and adults alike are naturally drawn to television shows, movies, books, and games that incorporate their interests and reality. By employing this in the classroom, educators can provide an engaging and fun learning experience for children, ultimately leading to strong communication skills and a successful academic future.
References
Beavis, C., O’Mara, J., McNeice, L., & Phillips, M. (2014). Reading in virtual worlds: Investigating the impact of popular children’s literary texts in virtual worlds on children’s responses to text. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(4), 408-436.
Fleer, M., & Ridgway, A. (2013). Play in the early years: Laying firm foundations. Cambridge University Press.
Geng, G., Zhang, Y., & Ma, L. (2016). Children’s pretend play and narrative comprehension: The role of story characters and playmates. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 47, 9-17.
Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. NYU Press.
Neumann, M. M., Hood, M., & Neumann, D. L. (2009). The scaffolding of emergent literacy skills in the home environment: A case study. Early Childhood Education Journal, 36(4), 313–319. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10643-008-0291-y
Schaefer, E. S., & Reid, S. C. (2019). The benefits of play for language development. In Early childhood language arts. Pearson.
Wortham, S. C. (2012). Early childhood curriculum: Developmental bases for learning and teaching. Pearson.
Self-regulation is a fundamental skill that plays a crucial role in a student’s academic success and personal development (Zimmerman, 2000). It refers to the ability to manage one’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviours in order to achieve desired goals effectively. Developing self-regulation skills in students is an essential aspect of education, as it empowers them to become independent learners, adapt to challenges, and make responsible decisions (Bandura, 1991). With our developing world’s focus on ‘soft skills’ in the workplace, we should focus on facilitating student growth in self-regulation.
Self-regulation is key for personal development, academic success, and as a lifelong skill. It fosters emotional wellbeing, resilience, and self-confidence, enabling students to navigate challenges and setbacks effectively (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996). By regulating their emotions effectively, individuals can maintain a positive mindset, cope with stress, and develop healthier relationships (Gross, 1998). Self-regulation also enables individuals to make responsible decisions, as it helps them consider the long-term consequences of their actions and resist impulsive behaviour (Mischel, Shoda & Rodriguez, 1989).
According to Duckworth and Seligman (2005), self-regulated students demonstrate improved academic performance due to enhanced focus, attention, and persistence. By managing time effectively, setting goals, and being cognisant of effective study strategies, self-regulated learners can optimise their study habits and maximise their learning potential (Pintrich, 2000). Beyond academic and personal domains, self-regulation skills are transferable to various areas of life. Individuals with developed self-regulation capabilities are better equipped to succeed in their careers, maintain healthy lifestyles, and achieve their personal goals (Moffitt et al., 2011). The ability to regulate one’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviours becomes invaluable in managing time, setting priorities, and staying motivated in different contexts. Self-regulation empowers individuals to adapt to new challenges, persevere in the face of obstacles, and maintain a growth mindset throughout their lives.
For a set of skills that is so clearly linked to success both during and beyond learning years, the focus on explicitly developing self-regulation strategies is relatively new in education. Much of what educators already do supports the development of self-regulation. However, to adopt a more explicit approaching to teaching these skills, it is necessary to break them down for students. As with all learning, a safe and nurturing learning environment is key in order for students to feel confident to take risks, ask questions, and seek help when needed (Skinner & Belmont, 1993). Within this environment, a gradual release of responsibility can then see the increase in implementation of self-regulation strategies. This gradual release must be well scaffolded and controlled in order for students to take ownership of their learning and develop the required self-
regulation skills (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). Gradual release of control could begin with teachers explicitly modelling skills, behaviours, and strategies and verbalising these processes as they occur before handing a task over to students (Duke, Nell & Pearson, 2002). It may look like collaborative learning with peers, working first with a teacher and then in groups before moving to independent work, to develop student confidence (Vygotsky, 1978). It could be teaching students to give feedback, before reflecting on their own work (Schraw & Moshman, 1995). Over time, teacher support would decrease and student responsibility would increase.
Beyond teaching students what to ‘do’, we also need to consider teaching students how to think. Metacognition is key for both self-reflection and -monitoring of learning. By reflecting on their progress, strengths and areas for improvement, tracking their current strategies and evaluating the effectiveness of these, students are able to develop their metacognition. That is, students become more aware of their thinking processes and strategies, understand what they know and what they need to know, and refine their thinking and study approaches to more effectively reach their goals (Schraw & Moshman, 1995). As teachers, we can assist students to develop these skills by considering what and how we communicate with our students. As we explain our approach to solving a problem, we can verbalise our thought process as we go through possible approaches in order to help students understand the different cognitive processes involved (Davey, 1983). By asking ‘how did you approach this problem’ instead of simply ‘what is your response to the problem’, we can encourage students to think about their own thought processes and learning strategies (Hacker, 2009). When providing formative feedback, we can focus not just on the correctness of the work they have presented but also on the thinking and problem-solving approaches used to reach their answer, thus assisting students to recognise gaps in their understanding (Hattie & Timperley, 2007).
Gradual release of responsibility and developing metacognition are two ways to support development of self-regulation skills. The approaches outlined, while not exhaustive, are some of the strategies that can be used by teachers. Self-regulation is a learned skill. It does not happen overnight and, without explicit instruction, may not develop at all for some students. As educators, it is important to us that when our students leave us at the end of their schooling journey, what they take with them is a toolbox of skills they can then use to help them succeed in their future. The reality is they may never again use their knowledge of Nero and his reign, trigonometry or covalent bonding. What they will need is the ability to draw together different knowledge components to problem-solve. They will need to be able to break down information they read – whether
What is it, why does it matter and what do we do about it?
this be in a scholarly article or on social media – and determine how best to catalogue this information in their knowledge database. They will need to be able to get back up and try again when they fail that university subject, don’t get that job, or experience a setback in their personal lives. So, as we write our unit plans to align to ACARA Australian Curriculum Version 9, ensuring we are teaching our Year 12 students all the content required for QCAA’s External Exams, we must also make space to think about not what we are expecting our students to learn, but how
References
Bandura, A. (1991). Social cognitive theory of self-regulation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 248–287. https://doi.org/10.1016/07495978(91)90022-L
Baumeister, R. F., & Heatherton, T. F. (1996). Self-regulation failure: An overview. Psychological Inquiry, 7(1), 1–15. https://doi. org/10.1207/s15327965pli0701_1
Davey, B. (1983). Think Aloud: Modeling the Cognitive Processes of Reading Comprehension. Journal of Reading, 27(1), 44–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40029295
Duckworth, A. L., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Psychological Science, 16(12), 939–944. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01641.x
Duke, N. K., & Pearson, P. D. (2002). Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension. In A. E. Farstrup & S.J. Samuels (Eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction (3rd edn.) (pp. 205-242), International Reading Association. http://doi.org/10.1598/0872071774.10.
Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271
Hacker, D. J., Dunlosky, J., & Graesser, A. C., (Eds.). (2009). Handbook of metacognition in education. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. https://doi. org/10.3102/003465430298487
Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science 244(4907), 933–938. https://doi. org/10.1126/science.2658056
Moffitt, T. E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., Houts, R., Poulton, R., Roberts, B. W., Ross, S., Sears, M. R., Thomson, W. M., & Caspi, A. (2011). A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(7), 2693-2698. http://doi.org/10.1073/ pnas.1010076108
Pearson, P. D., & Gallagher, M. C. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8(3), 317–344. https://doi.org/10.1016/0361476X(83)90019-X
Pintrich, P. R. (2000). The role of goal orientation in self-regulated learning. In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 451-502). Academic Press.
Schraw, G., & Moshman, D. (1995). Metacognitive theories. Educational Psychology Review, 7(4), 351–371. https://doi. org/10.1007/BF02212307
Skinner, E. A., & Belmont, M. J. (1993). Motivation in the classroom: Reciprocal effects of teacher behavior and student engagement across the school year. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(4), 571–581. https://doi.org/10.1037/00220663.85.4.571
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Interaction between Learning and Development. In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner & E. Souberman (Eds.), Mind and Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes (pp. 79-91). Harvard University Press.
Zimmerman, B. J. (2000). Attaining self-regulation: A social cognitive perspective. In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 13-39). Academic Press.
It was thrilling in early Term 1 of 2020 to learn that I had been awarded the opportunity to undertake a teacher exchange in Perth, and I was looking forward to jetting off to the west coast later that year. For reasons now all too familiar to us all, that obviously did not happen! A second attempt at departure was thwarted in 2021, as the Western Australian and Queensland borders slammed shut once more. Nevertheless, when I finally had the opportunity to spend a week at Methodist Ladies College in Perth in August 2022, it was an enriching experience that made the three-year wait worthwhile.
During my visit, I met with a variety of staff from across the school, each of them extending a warm welcome and sharing their knowledge and experience with me. I enjoyed observing a range of language classes and we established a letter writing exchange for our Year 7 French students, giving them a real-life application for their newly learnt skills of introducing themselves and discussing their families. The excitement in Year 7 was palpable when real letters arrived in the post, heavily adorned with stickers and glitter, as the idea of a posted letter is a novel experience to this technology-savvy generation!
However, it was in my discussions with staff in the pastoral care and outdoor education spheres where I gained new insights and ideas, some which could be applied in our own context. In visiting the school’s clinical psychologists, I was amazed to learn that they had the equivalent of 2.4 full time psychologists in the secondary school. The Heads of Year at MLC concurred that this was a much-needed resource in assisting their students as they were seeing higher numbers of students presenting with anxiety and other mental health needs, combined with increased wait times for appointments with private practitioners. It is wonderful to report that from Term 2, 2023, St Margaret’s is now also benefitting from two full-time school psychologists, and we are now able to provide the same level of support to a broad range of students.
An additional resource available in the mental health space at MLC is their Wellness Room. This is a comfortable, cheerful space, containing a couch, blankets, mindfulness activities and other calming resources. It is available to only one student at a time for a maximum duration of 20 minutes, and access is supervised by reception staff and an electronic sign-in system. After the time-out period has lapsed, students are either directed to return to class, or alternatively, they could see their Head of Year or one of the psychologists should they require further assistance. The Heads of Year monitor student patterns of access to determine if students are using the room too frequently or regularly missing the same class. Staff reported that now that the boundaries for room use were clearly established, the space worked extremely well and allowed students an appropriate space for time out when required. There are no classes after lunch on a Friday afternoon, with this time dedicated to a rotation of house meetings, chapel services and practical wellbeing sessions. The latter include a choice of
activities such as Zumba, yoga, reading and paddle boating on the Swan River, located directly opposite the school. All these activities can be offered in-house, as MLC has its own Outdoor Education Department, together with a large shed containing an impressive array of equipment – everything from canoes, paddle boats and tents to lifejackets, Trangia stoves and eskies. This means that MLC can also run their own school camps, rather than working with external providers.
Head of Outdoor Education Matt Berry, together with two part-time members of staff, form the Outdoor Education team, running camps from Years 3 to 9, for which they employ further casual staff, as well as additional optional camps during the holidays. As one of the team is also a professional photographer, one of the extra camps offered is outback photography, where students stay on a station, photographing the natural landscape, as well as sheep shearing and other station work. The more creative and less physical aspect of this camp, which involves students staying in tents but does not include an expedition, attracts a different type of student, and allows them the chance to engage with, and appreciate, the natural environment. Matt’s philosophy for Outdoor Education
is, that while building teamwork and resilience are important parts of his programs, his principal goal is for students to have a great time in the outdoors with their friends and to look forward to future camp opportunities. Furthermore, every camp from Years 5 to 9 incorporates an aspect of Indigenous Education. Matt has built relationships with the traditional landowners of each campsite and arranged for local Elders to run sessions with each group, including yarning, bush crafts and Indigenous culture sessions. Upon my return to St Margaret’s, I was inspired to incorporate some elements of Indigenous Education into our secondary camps, and we have since engaged TribalLink to run sessions on both our Years 7 and 8 camps this year, as well as arranging for Our Yarn to run a yarning and Indigenous painting workshop for Year 8 in Term 4. Another point of difference at MLC is the Walton Leadership Institute, named after former principal Gertrude Walton. The Institute, which is a concept rather than a physical place, embodies a series of online student leadership modules. Girls can complete the junior program from Years 7 to 9 and the senior program from Years 10 to 12. The modules aim to develop skills in the key leadership areas of communication, influencing others, exercising judgement, negotiating, enterprise, service, and global citizenship. Completion to a sufficiently high level of achievement results in an accreditation recognised both on assembly and in school reports, as well as House Half Colours in Years 7 to 9 and House Full Colours in Years 10 to 12. The programs are designed to ensure accessibility for all students, with evidence of a student’s learning in each unit able to be uploaded to the Stile platform in their preferred format, whether written or via an audio or video file. Additionally, if students complete the highest level of the program, they can undertake a Change Maker Project, which is a student-run initiative aimed to encourage peer mentoring within the school. The student needs to propose an idea for a new ongoing activity within the school and explain why it will be beneficial to the student population.
My visit culminated with the unforgettable opportunity to accompany 24 Year 10 students and MLC staff on the City
After Dark Tour. The tour, which has been running for over 20 years, is led by two off-duty police officers, and this was the final tour for Senior Constable Paul Padrini, after leading the tour for the past 11 years. Their goal is to educate young women about how to be more aware of their surroundings and reduce the chance of them becoming a victim of crime when out at night in the city. With the aim of preparing girls for when they might go out at night with friends after they graduate, the tour began in the mid-1990s after the Claremont serial killer murders occurred in the suburb in which MLC is located. Before our departure, Heads of Year explained to me that while they could ask police officers to come into the school to give a similar talk to students, being immersed in the city after dark experience and hearing police stories and advice while on location was that much more powerful, and this certainly proved to be true.
Senior Constable Padrini and his colleague gave the girls practical advice for personal safety such as where they should sit on the train, choosing the best station to disembark, (i.e., one with good lighting and CCTV), avoiding areas with syringe boxes, and not parking their cars in remote or poorly lit car parks. Furthermore, they instructed the students on which ATMs were best to use at night, the safest way to catch taxis or Ubers by themselves, and the value of personal alarms. They delivered a strong message of always putting your personal safety first, rather than worrying about potentially offending other people. The students who attended the tour with me were thoroughly engaged from the first moment and enthused amongst themselves afterwards as to how much they valued the excursion. Staff informed me that Year 12s and returning old girls always remember the City After Dark Tour as a highlight of their time at MLC, and I can greatly relate to that sentiment.
Schools are very busy places, and the opportunity to step out of my routine for a week to meet with inter-state colleagues and share in their ideas and experiences allowed me valuable learning and reflection time. I am thankful to both St Margaret’s and MLC for affording me this experience.
Educational literature has shown that teaching students who are prepared for class encourages student engagement and active learning (Karanicolas et al., 2016). Increasing students’ participation in their own learning has long been a goal of educators (Pienta, 2016). Trodgen (2015) acknowledges that students’ active engagement is one of the most critical challenges to a successful learning environment.
One effective learning strategy that has risen to the forefront of effective learning strategies is the flipped classroom. The flipped classroom model of instruction attempts to impart a positive attitude towards learning by switching the typical lecture and homework elements with pre-class activities and class time devoted to interactive activities and discussions (Karanicolas et al., 2016; Pienta, 2016; Olakanmi, 2016). Teachers become the guide to understanding instead of the dispensers of facts, and students become active learners rather than receptacles of information (Trodgen, 2015).
Students are required in a flipped classroom to engage in or complete some form of preliminary learning online (usually a short instructional video) in preparation for a learning activity at school with their teacher and peers (Reidsema et al., 2017)
This active learning approach requires engaged students (Pienta, 2016). Why would a student view the videos or complete the learning activity before class, especially if there is no reward? Effective and successful flipping relies on students being prepared to assume a much more active role in their learning and to actually complete the activities (Karanicolas et al., 2016). Therefore, the key to the success of this strategy lies in the ability to motivate students to complete the necessary pre-class activities (Karanicolas et al., 2016).
Critics of the flipped classroom model are fearful that the increase in the use of online instructional videos will diminish the roles of teachers in the classroom (Noschese, 2011); however, Hamden et al. (2013) report that the act of determining appropriate in-class activities allows teachers to consider how to maximise the face-to-face sessions, and Fink (2011) emphasises that a flipped classroom model does not change the amount of face-to-face time that a student spends in a classroom. Simply pre-recording lectures and placing them online does not guarantee student pre-class engagement; however, the good news is that with careful curriculum design, the evidence suggests that students learn in a flipped classroom just as well, and usually better, than they do in a more traditional model (Reidsema et al., 2017).
Therefore, teachers wishing to employ a flipped learning model need an underpinning instructional design framework, along with an understanding of how to use technologies effectively to support achievement of learning outcomes (Karanicolas et al., 2016).
As discussed previously, the success of the flipped learning model is dependent on students completing activities, so how can we make sure that students are completing their pre-class activities and are motivated to do so? Karanicolas et al. (2016) demonstrated how mindfully designed pre-class learning activities could successfully motivate students to complete preclass activities. They emphasised the following:
1. The pre-class activities need to be linked to all phases of learning
2. Pre-class learning activities should introduce foundational key concepts of a specific topic
3. The activities need to be presented in an engaging and interactive manner
4. There shouldn’t be any additional increase in students’ workload
Furthermore, they developed a design template to encourage best practices in flipped classroom learning design and implemented it in various undergraduate courses. Student accountability was increased by providing a due date to complete pre-class activities, coupled with regular interactive checkpoints that motivated students to complete the assigned tasks. Additionally, linked in-class activities required students to work in groups and refer back to their pre-class responses, making them accountable not only to themselves but to their group members (Karanicolas et al., 2016). Equally as important to the success of the model is teacher accountability. If students know that their teachers are tracking completion of pre-class activities and responding to the students’ submitted answers, which embeds both student and teacher accountability, then they are more likely to be motivated to complete them (Karanicolas et al., 2016).
The quality of student learning depends largely on how well we consider the curriculum and the pedagogies we use within this classroom (Kavanagh et al., 2017). Effective flipped classrooms require careful consideration of the underlying pedagogical framework/s and begin with well-structured and engaging pre-class activities (Karanicolas et al., 2016). Educators can use simple instructional design frameworks to successfully flip their classrooms. Table 1 presents some design elements that can be used by teachers who wish to flip their classroom and maximise student learning outcomes. Again, the emphasis is not on just getting students to only watch a video but to carefully design pre-class activities that then allow students and teachers to engage in interactive activities and discussions that enrich understanding.
Purpose
All learning segments are aligned to learning intentions and assessment
• Define key concepts
• Identify relevance of topic
• Collect student feedback
• Analyse student responses to checkpoints prior to class time
Examples
• Short reading
• Narrated PowerPoint
• Short lecture recording
• Discussion board
• Concept Map drawing
• Interactive learning module
• Report back on preclass responses
• Address any conceptual issues that arose from pre-class activity
• Work through teacher guided examples
• Receive peer to peer and student teacher feedback
• Case study/real life worked examples
• Team-based learning
• In-class voting
• Simulation activities
• Student presentations
Effective flipped classrooms require careful consideration of the underlying pedagogical frameworks and begin with well-structured and engaging pre-class activities. Educators can use simple technologies and instructional design frameworks to successfully flip their classes. As discussed above, the flipped classroom is not simply uploading an instructional video; the activities need to be linked to all phases of learning. Research has shown that strategies such as tracking student completion of pre-class activities and responding to the students’ submitted answers embeds both student and teacher accountability, which seems to motivate students to complete pre-class activities (Karanicolas et al., 2016; Reidsema et al., 2017; Olakanmi, 2016). Success depends on a shift in both teacher and student approaches to learning, but if the strategies discussed are employed using an instructional design framework, the educator becomes the coach on the side in-class and the students become the drivers of their learning while they engage in higher-order learning activities under the guide of their teachers.
Fink, Z. (2011). Big thinkers: Salman Khan on liberating the classroom for creativity, Edutopia: K-12 education & learning innovations with proven strategies that work, viewed 1 June 2023, http://www.edutopia.org/salman-khan-academyflipped-classroom-video
Hamden, N., McKnight, P. E., McKnight, K., & Arfstrom, K. (2013). A review of flipped learning. Flipped learning network, Pearson Education.
• Apply key concepts to new situations within broader contexts
• Challenge questions for those ready
• Receive feedback on performance
• Provide opportunity for students to reflect on further learning needs
• Assignment
• Report writing
• Project work and research
• Written and/or oral exams
Karanicolas, S., Loveys, B., Riggs, K., McGrice, H., Snelling, C., Winning, T., & Kemp, A. (2016, November 27 - 30). The Rise of the Flip. Successfully engaging students in pre-class activities through the use of technology and a flipped classroom design template [Paper Presentation]. Show me the Learning, Adelaide, Australia.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310974070_ The_Rise_of_the_Flip_Successfully_engaging_students_ in_pre-class_activities_through_the_use_of_technology_ and_a_flipped_classroom_design_template
Kavanagh, L., Reidsema, C., McCredden & Smith, N. (2017). Design considerations. In C. Reidsema, L. Kavanagh, R. Hadgraft & N. Smith (Eds.), The flipped classroom: practice and practices in higher education. Springer Nature.
Noschese, F. (2011). Khan Academy: my final remarks. Actionreaction: Reflections on the dynamics of teaching, Retrieved 1 June, 2023, from http://fnoschese.wordpress. com/2011/05/10/khan-academy-my-final-remarks
Olakanmi, E. E. (2016). The effects of a flipped classroom model of instruction on students’ performance and attitudes towards chemistry. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 26, 127-37.
Pienta, N. J. (2016). A ‘flipped classroom’ reality check. Journal of Chemical Education, 93, 1-2.
Reidsema, C., Hadgraft, R., & Kavanagh, L., (2017). Introduction to the flipped classroom. In C. Reidsema, L. Kavanagh, R. Hadgraft & N. Smith (Eds.), The flipped classroom: practice and practices in higher education. Springer Nature.
Trodgen, B. G. (2015). ConfChem conference on flipped classroom: reclaiming face time – how an organic chemistry flipped classroom provided access to increased guided engagement. Journal of Chemical Education, 92(9), 1570-1571.
In Term 2, 2023, St Margaret’s was honoured to receive a Queensland Reconciliation Award for its Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), which included the publication of Gidhal and Mulu Maguydan. Winning the award was an outstanding achievement and a wonderful acknowledgement for the students and their families who have shared their time and stories over the past four years. Along with expanded celebrations of larger events – such as National Reconciliation Week, NAIDOC Week, Sorry Day, and Mabo Day – the school has shaped its own form of reconciliation through such initiatives as First Nations themed Prayer Spaces and specific boarding house activities.
Through these initiatives, awareness and understanding of First Nations history and culture has been heightened throughout the school community. Students participate in lunchtime activities such as Jersey Thursday, where the First Nations students teach dance and adorn students with cultural face painting, and students actively participate in Sorry Day, writing messages on hands that are ‘planted’ in the ground – with a Sorry message or messages of commitment to reconciliation. As part of the senior Religion Values and Ethics curriculum, four Year 11 First Nations students recently led a year level Master Class, teaching their peers about their culture and the importance of having a voice. The cohort reflected on the importance of their own voices as young women in society and reflected on how communities are strengthened through agency and recognition.
The two magazine projects are unique elements of the RAP. The heart of these magazines is about listening to the stories of our First Nations students and hearing the words of their families with the view to building understanding between cultures.
The magazine project began with a 2019 Innovation Grant from the school enabling me and English department colleague Noel Peinke to conduct incursions and excursions in the leadup to the magazine production. During the creation stage, we called the project, Indigenous Writes, with the name Gidhal, a Kala Lagaw ya word from the Torres Strait Islands, being shared with us later.
The project launch was a formal dinner in May 2019, with the 22 First Nations students, which underscored the significance of the project to the students and staff. Students were invited to talk with family and community about someone they would like to profile to share a part of their culture with the broader St Margaret’s community. Local Aboriginal Elder Dr Ruth Hegarty helped launch the project, speaking about how she had been a member of the Stolen Generation, and it wasn’t until she was a grandmother in her 70s that she decided it was time to tell her story with the publication of her memoir, Is That You, Ruthie?, about her time in the Cherbourg mission. To the girls, she said, ‘I hope you don’t wait this long to tell your story; we need to hear it.’
During Terms 2 and 3, we explored opportunities for our students to connect with other First Nations storytellers and artists, showing them the possibilities of using different ways to share stories. The Institute of Modern Art and the Brisbane Institute of Art kindly invited our students to conduct screenprinting workshops and attend an exhibition created entirely with seaweed. We also welcomed Torres Strait Island woman and then ABC radio journalist Rhianna Patrick to a writing incursion at the school.
Next, we needed to write.
Each student was given paper, pens, markers, and art supplies and found a place in the sun to sketch out their initial ideas. Indira Laifoo wanted to profile her father, Joey Laifoo, an internationally recognised artist from the Torres Strait. Ella Nona would share a traditional story from Badu Island. Shemy Ahmat would go on to research and write about her relative Joe McGuiness, a leading activist in the 1967 referendum, and Nadia Seriat decided to write about her greatgrandfather, Wigness Seriat, writing:
‘I am proud of my Athe; he is a great role model and a pinnacle of our family. Because of the strength and the struggle my Athe and our forefathers have endured, we now have access to education, voting, voice, and recognition of our cultural identity.’
Later in Term 3, we spent time in Kuril Dhagun, the Aboriginal Education Centre within the Queensland State Library. Every time we had an excursion, the girls would make new connections and witness ways First Nations people were being celebrated in and around Brisbane.
By Term 4, 2019, the stories started to come in. Charli Jones shared her ancestral connection to one of Australia’s iconic poets Oodgeroo Noonuccal. Charlea Smith brought in a picture book, written in language by two of her aunts and generously allowed us to use artwork from one of her aunts for the front cover of Gidhal.
Around this time, the connection between the school and the families of our First Nations students grew richer. As I chased up photos or clarified questions, I began email and phone conversations with home and was always heartened by the willingness to help from parents and grandparents.
When COVID-19 hit in Term 1, 2020, the launch of Gidhal was pushed back to October that year, allowing more time to fine-tune the editing process, all completed in-house by the St Margaret’s marketing department. Now, we needed to share.
Come October, the school created an event to launch the magazine, again recognising the significance of what the girls had achieved. A Brisbane group of First Nations dancers and singers called Tribal Experiences performed at our wholeschool launch assembly. Each student received an award in the assembly for their contributions to the magazine and a celebratory morning tea was held for their families and students to recognise the first time their name and stories have appeared in print and the significance this meant to our school.
As the 2021 new year rolled around, Chantay Turner asked when we were starting the next magazine. Inevitably, the process began again, this time under a new name, Elder Stories.
Our formula was similar. The school supported us with another Innovation Grant, and we held a special dinner to launch the project. The advantage for the second magazine was that we now had contacts, and through this, new opportunities emerged. This time, Rhianna Patrick needed our students, and together with the Queensland Museum, she helped curate an exhibition on the Torres Strait Islands, Island Futures, What Lies Ahead? As part of the exhibition, Rhianna spent an afternoon with a group of our Torres Strait students asking them what they were doing to live up to the dreams of their Akas and Athes, grandparents. Their responses to this question became part of a wall at the exhibition.
Parents of our students also started to help with contacts, and through this we found Nikita Newley, the artist whose work is featured on the cover of Mulu Maguydan, and she kindly agreed to spend a week as an artist-in-residence during Reconciliation Week where she taught art workshops to students across the entire school and held one just for First Nations students.
Our teachers also started to lean into the magazine and our Head of Faculty - Sociocultural Studies, Louise Brown, was so moved by the stories of Lesley Williams profiled in Gidhal that she invited her to talk with Year 10 History students about her book, ‘Not just Black and White’ as part of the Rights and Freedoms unit in history.
By now, the students who had participated in Gidhal were starting to understand the potential of the magazine as a place to share the stories of their families and were taking great care in securing the interviews and writing each article.
Wini Nona created a double-page spread about her Athe, Walter Nona, who fought in World War II, worked as a pearl-diver, and donated his land on Badu Island to become the island school.
What we were starting to see with our First Nations students was a new level of pride emerging from the way the school community valued their culture. Many of these students from
the first magazine are now part of our senior cohort and have become erudite and thoughtful young women who are looked up to by their peers. To see these young people confidently expressing their culture on the public stage is everything we have ever wanted.
The second magazine, Mulu Maguydan, was launched during the 2022 NAIDOC week. This Aboriginal name means ‘Story Stone’ from the Jandai, Guwar, Yagara languages spoken by the Nunagal, Goenbal and Ngugi people from Quandamooka Country or North Stradbroke Island. The magazine was launched at a full-school assembly with First Nations performers and friends and family of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island students invited to attend.
The third project – Our Stories – has just begun, with a focus on the girls’ stories. As Charli Jones said to me, ‘We’ve always asked for everyone else’s stories; I think it’s time we shared our own.’ This idea has sparked a new chapter. The new magazine will also centre around recipes from home.
It is crucial for the academic and cultural integrity of a project such as this that you enlist the help of First Nations people at every stage. We invited Ellen van Neerven and Rhianna Patrick into the school during the editing stage of Mulu Maguydan to ensure the girls understood the importance of having First Nations writers involved in helping them shape their ideas. Throughout the editing process, painstaking efforts were made to ensure language was used correctly and, as much as possible, idiom and expressions were left untouched. Obviously, factchecking and seeking permissions were crucial steps during this time, and this is where my relationship with the parents and particularly grandparents really flourished.
Lastly, I wish to acknowledge all the work that went on behind the scenes. I am so grateful to the leadership team for backing the project. The boarding house, too, has been a continual source of support, as was my English colleague Noel Peinke, as well as the work the marketing team, and I thank them all for their contributions.
Fear is not an unknown concept to humans. Our evolutionary history shows that infants are psychologically predisposed to have an innate fear of snakes and spiders, despite in most cases having never interacted with these organisms. Fear is a universal experience that is commonly associated with a perceived threat that can impact our physical, social or emotional wellbeing. The function of fear is to protect us from harm, and as such, it has traditionally been considered a negative emotion (Martin & Marsh, 2006). In educational institutions, students experience fear constantly: fear of the future, fear of not being accepted, fear of leaving home, fear of not being able to keep up, fear of social situations, and most commonly, the fear of failure (Caraway et al., 2003).
Institutional failure is a concept first experienced in primary school, where it is quickly linked to failing assessments, subjects, grades and therefore by extension any educational progress (Adolphs, 2013). The early exposure to the concept of failing colours our perception of the term and quickly defines it as the opposite to success. Through this interpretation, students begin to measure their capacity for learning by how successful they are, and consequently, develop a fear of failing (Choi, 2020). As educational leaders and role models, we are complicit in the underrepresentation of failing, thereby diminishing our students’ prospects for academic and emotional growth. We have become overtly influenced by the potential realisation of institutional or personal inadequacy if our students fail, resulting in unconscious bias when providing feedback and marking. While it is important to encourage and maintain self-esteem, failing is necessary for children, not merely to build resilience but to create a mindset that is able to characterise their flaws and understand them as an opportunity for improvement.
The first step is to help students realise that failing does not mean they are a failure. Students act quickly and defensively to apply labels to their failings to protect their self-esteem and social image. Rather than accepting their flaws, they will lay blame or develop an apathetic demeanour that dismisses their failings rather than learning from them. To break this pattern, we need our students to accept that institutional failure is inevitable and that their intelligence is not fixed. The psychology behind a growth mindset proves that students who are encouraged to see flaws, and thereby overcome them, produce greater brain responses than fixed mindsets (Ursache, Blair & Raver, 2011). Schools should be designed to empower students; therefore, we must be willing to give our
Thomas Smithers Head of Year 9students challenging experiences, and if they fail, teach them to fail effectively by developing coping and problem-solving skills. We should not dissuade the students from hardship but rather build their resilience and provide the necessary tools to overcome adversity.
The second step is to break this trend of success-driven learning that has crept into classrooms over the past decade, especially in the junior years. Over the past five years, a self-affirming culture has begun to develop among teachers, correlating the success of their students with overinflated teaching ability and pedagogical practice. It is easy to view institutional failure as debilitating when you are using classroom success for your own self-promotion. Instead, we must be willing to diverge from the safety of easy success, and in turn realise that, by challenging the students and teaching them how to fail effectively, we are promoting a malleable growth mindset.
Conclusion
Failing will never be a fun experience, but this should not translate into a fear of failure. As educational institutions, schools should create and reinforce a culture of learning that allows students to feel both responsible and comfortable with their failings. As teachers, we must highlight the importance of learning from failure and provide adequate opportunities for students to develop the necessary tools to cope, problem solve and build resilience.
To F.A.I.L. is to realise it is our ‘First Attempt In Learning’, and by accepting our failings, we can adapt, evolve, innovate, and flourish.
References
Adolphs, R. (2013). The biology of Fear. Current Biology, 23(2), 79–93. Caraway, K., Tucker, C., Reinke, W., & Hall, C. (2003). Self-efficacy, goal orientation, and fear of failure as predictors of school engagement in high school students. Psychology in the Schools, 40(4), 417–427.
Choi, B. (2020). I’m afraid of not succeeding in learning: introducing an instrument to measure higher education students’ fear of failure in learning. Studies in Higher Education, 46(11), 2107–2121.
Martin, A., & March, H. (2006). Fear of failure: Friend of foe? Australian Psychologist, 38(1), 31–38.
Ursache, A., Blair, C., & Raver, C. (2011). The promotion of SelfRegulation as a Means of Enhancing School Readiness and Early Achievement in Children at Risk for School Failure. Child Development Perspectives, 6(2), 122–128.
The teenage years have always been a period of growth, selfdiscovery, and exploration. However, the challenges faced by today’s teenagers have become increasingly complex and demanding. Teenagers are now navigating themselves through a rapidly evolving society and facing numerous challenges that shape their experiences and development. In the digital age, where information is easily accessible and social media dominates the landscape, teenagers encounter a unique set of issues that were unheard of in previous generations. ‘The consequences of failing to address adolescent mental health conditions extend to adulthood, impairing both physical and mental health and limiting opportunities to lead fulfilling lives as adults’ (The World Health Organisation, 2021).
Teenagers today can be met with an array of mental health challenges, including anxiety, depression, and stress-related disorders. The stress to excel academically, compete socially, and project a perfect image on social media can intensify these issues. The steady exposure to unrealistic standards and comparisons can lead to feelings of failure and low selfesteem. Likewise, the increase of cyberbullying, the fear of missing out (FOMO) and online bullying has significantly impacted teenagers’ mental wellbeing, making them susceptible to emotional distress and seclusion. Accessible mental health support within the school and externally and destigmatising conversations around mental health are crucial to address these growing concerns. This article explores some of the current issues that teenagers face and discusses the implications on their wellbeing and development. By understanding these challenges, schools and families can foster a supportive wellbeing environment and provide the necessary tools for teenagers to thrive.
Teenagers face immense pressure to excel academically, often driven by parental expectations and the desire to be successful. The demands to achieve high grades, gain admission to prestigious national and international universities, and secure a promising future can be overwhelming. ‘When young adults feel they must prioritise
academic achievement over everything else – including physical health, positive relationships with peers and family, creative self-expression, and downtime to recharge – they pay a high mental health toll. Academic pressure can lead to depression, anxiety disorders, or high-functioning anxiety’ (Newport Institute, 2022). This extreme pressure can also lead to a breakdown, decreased self-confidence, and a disregard of other aspects of life, such as extracurricular activities and personal interests, which in turn can lead to a decrease in overall wellbeing. It is essential to promote a sensible approach to education, highlighting the importance of self-care, mental health, interests and personal growth beyond academic accomplishments.
Social media platforms have become a fundamental part of teenagers’ lives, providing both opportunities and challenges. While social media allows for connection and self-creativity, it also creates a platform for judgement, cyberbullying, and online harassment. The development of social media and online platforms has created a new form of bullying –cyberbullying. Teenagers often face ongoing harassment, abuse and degradation and suffer embarrassment from their peers, both in public and private digital spaces. The aftermaths of cyberbullying can be devastating, leading to emotional distress, low self-esteem, and even suicide. The constant need for validation through likes and followers can have a damaging effect on mental health and self-esteem. Informing teenagers about mature and accountable online behaviour and creating secure online environments are essential actions to help tackle this issue. While the overuse of electronics and social media can certainly be a problem, it would be remiss not to mention there are also numerous potential benefits of social media for youth, including the following: strengthening friendships, motivating kids to do good, reducing feelings of isolation, becoming a source of support, building a platform, encouraging personal expression (Gordon, 2022). Educating around the correct use of technology is also vitally important.
The incidence of substance abuse and addiction among teenagers remains a significant concern in today’s society. Teenagers are particularly vulnerable to experimenting with drugs, alcohol, and other substances due to peer pressure, curiosity, or in an attempt to cope with stress. Teenagers may face challenges in resisting negative influences and making responsible choices. Substance abuse can have severe consequences on physical health, mental wellbeing, academic performance, and overall life trajectory. BMC Public Health (2021) states: ‘Drug abuse is detrimental, and excessive drug usage is a worldwide problem. Drug usage typically begins during adolescence. Factors for drug abuse include a variety of protective and risk factors.’ Hence, it is imperative that this global problem is addressed in schools. Moreover, the rise of technology addiction, particularly excessive use of smartphones and video games, poses additional challenges for teenagers, affecting their social interactions, sleep patterns, and productivity. School prevention programs, early intervention, and access to rehabilitation facilities are essential in curbing the growing problem of substance abuse and addiction among teenagers.
Studies have suggested that the incidence of eating disorders among adolescent girls has increased over the past 50 years. ‘Many researchers have hypothesised that the media may play a central role in creating and intensifying the phenomenon of body dissatisfaction, and consequently, may be partly responsible for the increase in the prevalence of eating disorders’ (Morris & Katzman, 2003). In an era of photoshopped images and societal pressure to conform to unrealistic beauty standards, body image issues and eating disorders have become prevalent among teenagers. Advertising companies have impacted this concern in a significant way. The constant comparison to carefully curated online personas can lead to low self-esteem, body dysmorphia, and unhealthy relationships with food. Encouraging body positivity, promoting diverse representations in media, and fostering healthy conversations about body image are crucial steps in addressing this issue in schools and as a family unit.
Teenagers are working to figure out who they are, making adolescent identity development a central feature of their life. Young people’s identities are shaped by lots of factors – family, cultural and societal expectations, experiences at school, social media, and friends. They select the environments and people they want to be around. They adjust their beliefs and behaviours based on feedback, and they reflect on all of this while working to figure out who they are (Williams, 2018). Exploring one’s values, beliefs, and personal identity while simultaneously trying to fit in with peers can be a challenging process. Teenagers may encounter obstacles in
resolving their own wishes and objectives with family and societal expectations and cultural norms. Navigating problems associated to gender identity, sexual orientation, and cultural background can further confuse the journey of self-discovery, often leading to feelings of uncertainty, isolation, and prejudice. Having proactive programs and trusted adults to talk to is imperative to help them navigate their feelings.
Undoubtedly, the magnitude of teenager issues being faced by teenagers today affects their wellbeing. Adolescence is a crucial stage in an individual’s life, marked by rapid physical, emotional, and social transformations. It is during this phase that young adults form their identity, develop associations, and lay the groundwork for their future. Thus, prioritising their wellbeing is necessary for their whole development and long-term accomplishment. Establishing working relationships between families and school will promote effective positive relationships.
First and foremost, concentrating on teenager wellbeing promotes their mental health. Youth can be a challenging time, as adolescents pilot the complexities of school, relationships, and societal expectations. By addressing their wellbeing, we can present teenagers with the necessary support and tools to cope with these challenges effectively. It allows them to develop resilience, emotional intelligence, and self-care strategies, supporting them to maintain positive mental health.
Likewise, encouraging good nutrition, regular exercise, and sufficient sleep helps teenagers develop a strong footing for a healthy lifestyle. By prioritising their physical wellbeing, we equip teenagers with the understanding and capability to look after their bodies, lowering the risk of chronic diseases and encouraging overall wellbeing.
Clearly, there is a strong correlation between a young adult’s wellbeing and their academic performance. When teenagers are emotionally and mentally strong, they are better able to concentrate and focus on their studies. If an individual enjoys positive mental health, this establishes an environment beneficial to learning, allowing teenagers to investigate their interests, set goals, and achieve their academic potential. By assisting their wellbeing, we foster academic success and provide teenagers with the necessary skills for their future undertakings.
Additionally, adolescence is a time when individuals form friendships, start to have meaningful relationships, and develop their social skills. By nurturing their wellbeing, we foster positive social interactions, compassion, and communication skills. It also enhances a sense of belonging and connectedness, reducing feelings of isolation and loneliness. Healthy social connections contribute to a teenager’s overall happiness and provides them with a supportive environment during confronting times.
Lastly, prioritising teenager wellbeing helps prevent risky behaviours. Adolescence is a period of experimentation and exploration, and teenagers may be exposed to various temptations such as substance abuse, unsafe sexual practices, or risky behaviours. By promoting their wellbeing, we equip teenagers with the knowledge, confidence, and decisionmaking skills to make informed choices. It empowers them to resist negative peer pressure, make responsible decisions, and engage in behaviours that prioritise their safety and longterm wellbeing.
Therefore, with this in mind, wellbeing in schools is of utmost importance as it directly impacts the physical, mental, and emotional health of students, ultimately influencing their overall development and academic success. A focus on wellbeing creates a nurturing and supportive environment where students feel safe, valued, and empowered.
Prioritising wellbeing enhances students’ mental health. By providing a supportive pastoral care team and resources, schools can assist students cope with worry, anxiety, and other psychological challenges, which foster resilience and improved learning results. Furthermore, encouraging emotional wellbeing permits students to develop healthy relationships, empathy, and self-awareness, which are all crucial life skills for personal growth and positive interactions with others.
Students’ physical health is essential to thriving academically, and students must understand the importance of this. Schools that encourage healthy habits, such as regular exercise, nutritious meals, and sufficient sleep, contribute to students’ physical fitness, raising energy levels and cognitive functioning. Physical education programs and access to recreational facilities can embed lifelong habits of staying active and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Additionally, wellbeing programs in schools foster a sense of belonging. Students who feel supported and connected are more prone to engage in their educational environment, involve themselves in extracurricular activities, and develop a positive attitude towards learning. Establishing an encouraging school experience also helps address issues like bullying and discrimination, creating a space where all students feel included, respected and valued.
The challenges faced by today’s teenagers are unique to their generation. Teenagers today confront an array of challenges in a rapidly evolving society. The rapid advancement of technology, social media, academic pressure, and societal expectations have a very pervasive influence, which can amplify the issues they face. It is imperative that parents and educators acknowledge the challenges adolescence face and work together to provide support, resources, and a safe environment for young adults to navigate these turbulent waters. By prioritising student wellbeing, promoting digital literacy, and fostering open conversations, we can empower teenagers to overcome these obstacles and flourish.
In conclusion, prioritising wellbeing in schools is essential for nurturing healthy, well-rounded individuals. By investing in students’ mental, emotional, and physical health, schools, alongside students’ parents, can foster a positive learning environment and set the stage for lifelong success and happiness.
References:
BMC Public Health. (2021). Risk and protective factors of drug abuse among adolescents: a systematic review. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/ articles/10.1186/s12889-021-11906-2;
Gordon, S. (2022, November 22). Surprising Ways Your Teen Benefits from Social Media. https://www.verywellfamily.com/ benefits-of-social-media-4067431
Newport Institute. (2022, August 14). Academic Pressure https://www.newportinstitute.com/resources/mentalhealth/academic-pressure/
Morris, A., & Katzman, B. (2003). The impact of the media on eating disorders in children and adolescents. Paediatric Child Health, 8(5). pp. 287–289. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pmc/articles/PMC2792687/
Pfeifer, J., & Berkman, E. (2018, September). The Development of Self and Identity in Adolescence: Neural Evidence and Implications for a Value-Based Choice Perspective on Motivated Behavior. Child Development Perspective, 12(3), pp. 158 - 164. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC6667174/
Williams, J. (2018). Adolescent Identity Development: The Factors of Change. Centre for Parent and Teen Communication. https://parentandteen.com/developing-adolescentidentity/
World Health Organisation (2021, November 17). Mental health of adolescents. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/ detail/adolescent-mental-health
Play is a highly complex process that manifests in many forms across children’s development (Xu, 2010). At its most evolved stages, play demands mastery of intricate social processing skills such as social attention, perspective taking, social self-awareness and self-regulation that foster socially based executive functioning skills critical to academic and lifelong success (Garcia Winner et al., 2016; Woolfolk & Margetts, 2016).
Sociologist Mildred Parten’s research is considered among the most influential and comprehensive descriptions of children’s social play behaviour. In 1932, Parten’s Social Play Scale was disseminated, categorising children’s play into six distinct developmental stages:
1. Unoccupied and no activity is attended to.
2. Solitary play where the child engages with varying toys and objects independently, making no attempts to interact or attend to others’ activities.
3. Onlooker play involving the child actively observing the play of others but making no attempt to engage.
4. Parallel play meaning that the child plays near other children with similar materials but has limited social participation.
5. Associative play that involves children interacting about their play but engaging in separate activities with no shared goals.
6. Cooperative play where children play with others, working collectively to achieve a common goal. (Garcia Winner et al., 2016)
The pinnacle of play is the cooperative stage, referred to as ‘Shared Collaborative Imaginative Play’ and ‘Advanced Interactive Play’ at its most evolved point. Advanced Interactive Play is characterised by a child’s ability to rapidly and fluidly adapt during play as they monitor the participation of all members involved and incorporate all members’ ideas into a joint play scheme (Garcia Winner et al., 2016; Nicolopoulou, 2018). This advanced interactive stage is further distinguished by the goal of play transitioning from enacting one’s own play vision with others to seeking a play experience with others and adapting within play to extend the experience (Garcia Winner et al., 2016).
Our objective as educators is to foster the development of children’s play to reach the Advanced Interactive Play stage. It is here that children will cultivate and strengthen core social processing, critical thinking, and socially based executive functioning skills. Finessing these abilities enables children to self-regulate, cooperate, compromise, negotiate, problem solve and communicate effectively in play settings, social situations and into the academic classroom environment (Pramling et al., 2018). The significant positive correlation between advanced interactive pretend play and children’s reading comprehension
and metalinguistic awareness is testament to this (Garcia Winner et al., 2016). Furthermore, the flexible cooperative thinking abilities seeded by Advanced Interactive Play forms the basis for effective collaborative work crucial to learning in the modern classroom.
Beyond the academic benefits of children engaging in the Advanced Interactive Play stage are the positive impacts on children’s socially based executive functioning skills. These skills include social attention, problem-solving and self-awareness, as well as perspective taking and self-regulation. Naturally, when well-developed, these abilities equip children with the skills to play and interact with others positively regardless of their own feelings or differences of opinion. Observation of Advanced Interactive Play confirms that behavioural challenges during this play are rare as participants possess the social executive functioning abilities necessary to regulate themselves within the expectations of the group (Garcia Winner et al., 2016).
A recent global trend observes a decline in children’s exposure to creative and peer-driven play as a result of increased screen time exposure and the social isolation experienced through the COVID-19 pandemic (Cameron and Tenenbaum, 2021; Garcia Winner et al., 2016). The impact of this on children’s social executive functioning skills is apparent. Within the early primary context, children are exploring the associative and cooperative play stages, increasing demand on their social executive functioning skills as well as their emerging empathetic awareness (Cowie, 2019). Children aged six to seven are developmentally beginning to recognise friendship’s emotional value and are consequently experiencing the range of feelings involved in close relationships (Cowie, 2019).
Navigating friendship and the inherent emotions involved is a new space for children of this age, and their expression of the complex emotions associated with these relationships may not yet be appropriate considering their emerging empathetic awareness and social executive functioning skills. Here lies a disconnect. Children aged six to seven are seeking friendships and play at the cooperative stage but are challenged by the emotional awareness and social executive functioning skills required for this engagement. Their abilities with such skills are underdeveloped because of the global decline in peer-driven play. Compounding this is the developmental consideration of girls under the age of eight’s emotions remaining unaffected within a disagreement when explained the context of the perpetrator’s behaviour (Cowie, 2019). This can result in feelings of injustice, frustration and confusion in friendship, and negatively impacts the ability to foster social executive functioning skills so necessary to engaging in positive play. These factors considered, adult understanding of these developmental elements and support to positively express complex feelings is crucial in developing children’s empathetic awareness and fostering positive play relationships.
As such, early primary educators implement evidence-based strategies and routines into their classrooms to support the development of empathetic awareness and social executive functioning skills that enable participation in Advanced Interactive Play.
1. Modelling interpersonal skills required for positive interactive play is key in supporting children’s development towards and within these stages. As education is a highly collaborative profession, respectful talk, listening skills and turn taking are consistently modelled inherently. More intentional role play is also used to model these behaviours during pastoral care lessons.
2. Circle time discussions involve sitting in a circle shape to maximise eye contact, foster feelings of safety and promote everyone’s perspective as equal and valuable. A specific focus is selected (e.g., What was a positive connection you had today?) and each member in the circle is given time to share their thoughts. Research on this strategy has documented the positive impact on students’ self-esteem, behaviour, connection with their peers, and empathy. This is also a powerful time to collaboratively share and solve friendship issues and to discuss more positive behaviours for next time.
3. Gratitude. It is inevitable negative emotions will appear at points in the day. What is key for children is the framing of these emotions in relation to their more positive counterparts. Optimism and gratitude are key features of happy and successful individuals as they have the skill to view their day and wider life in terms of what was positive, rather than the small part that may have been negative (Seligman, 1995). Daily journal writing and independent reflection time can be utilised to express what we are
grateful for, what makes us happy, and how we might find a silver lining to a negative situation.
4. Story books. Stories are powerful tools for teaching and learning as children build bonds with characters and recognise parts of themselves within the story. Each day stories based on friendship, positive behaviours or kindness are read. After reading discussions strengthen understanding of how the characters displayed these qualities, and brainstorm how children might show this in their own lives.
5. Group work and free play develop communication and listening skills as it requires the adoption of others’ perspectives. Facilitating group work and free play in the classroom enables children to practise and develop these skills within a safe space under teacher guidance.
Play embodies a crucial role in children’s development in cultivating social, academic, and lifelong success. As educators, it is our obligation to foster nurturing play-rich environments that facilitate the growth of emotional awareness and social executive functioning skills. Equipping our students with the skills to engage in advanced interactive play will enable them to flourish as they navigate the social and emotional demands of their classroom lives and beyond.
References
Cameron, L., & Tenenbaum, H. R. (2021). Lessons from developmental science to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 restrictions on social development. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 24(2), 231-236. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220984236.
Cowie, H. (2019). From birth to sixteen: Children’s health, social, emotional and linguistic development. (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351214940.
Garcia Winner, M., Tarshis, N., Zweber Palmer, K., & Hendrix, R. (2016). We Thinkers! GPS: Group collaboration, play and problem solving. Think Social Publishing Inc. n.p.: Think Social Publishing Incorporated.
Nicolopoulou, A. (2018). Pretend and social pretend play: Complexities, continuities and controversies of a research field. In P. K. Smith & J. L. Roopnarine (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Play Developmental and Disciplinary Perspectives (pp. 183-199). Cambridge University Press.
Pramling, N., Kultti, A., & Pramling Samuelsson, I. (2018). Play, learning and teaching in early childhood education. In P. K. Smith & J. L. Roopnarine (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Play Developmental and Disciplinary Perspectives (pp. 475-490). Cambridge University Press.
Seligman, M. (1995). The optimistic child. Penguin Books Australia. Woolfolk, A., & Margetts, K. (2016). Child and Adolescent Development and Learning. Pearson.
Xu, Y. (2010). Children’s social play sequence: Parten’s classic theory revisited. Early Child Development and Care, 180(4), 489-498. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430802090430.
Nicole Walker Head of Year 12
Educators have the privilege of empowering students to learn how to think critically and creatively. Journeying with them as they accept challenges and work through complex scenarios provides opportunities for 21st century skills to be developed and honed. Indeed, the importance of communication, collaboration, teamwork, social and ICT skills underpin the QCAA General syllabuses (2019) and are present in classrooms each day. This highlights Hattie’s belief that ‘a positive, caring, respectful climate in the classroom is a prior condition of learning’ (2012, p. 70).
As a reflective teacher, a shift in student confidence and demonstration of these skills has been observed since recent periods of online schooling. The desire to foster connection, build confidence and strengthen the voice of students has led to an investigation into strategies educators can use to increase student agency and enhance communication and teamwork skills – skills that enrich life.
This quest has led to a rediscovery of strategies that resemble a ‘back to basics’ approach; a method that invites connection and authenticity and requires intentionality and time. Imagery of a campfire vividly depicts tangible feelings and opportunities that exist within this warm, supportive context. Indeed, throughout history, people have experienced deep connections with each other and the world around them as they shared stories, listened, laughed, celebrated, and even cried together. Emotions are palpable and strong memories are made as people exist side by side. Through the lens of deepening the bonds of community, the ‘campfire’ context has been used to shed light on confidence-building and connection strategies.
Coaching
Student agency is developed through working with mentors and using exemplar responses (ALN, 2023). Tasks come to life and confidence is built as students visualise their future work. Clear learning intentions and success criteria ensure that learners and their teachers are travelling in the same direction; students are encouraged to be active participants rather than respectful observers.
Campbell’s Eight-Step Coaching Model has GROWTH at the heart of the framework: Goals – Reality – Options – Will – Tactics – Habits (2018, p. 39). However, it is interesting that the inclusion of Relationships and Results creates a starting and concluding point that is strengthened by ISMART Goals – ‘I’ relating to Inspiring. Such details seek to build confidence in both the educator (coach or academic advisor) and the student and reminds us that this is an iterative, conversational process that inspires progress and supports development. They affirm Maxwell’s statement that ‘goals help us “do” better, but growth helps us “become” better’ (2019, p. 42).
Student agency enables learners to ‘fully participate in their learning communities’ and supports them to become confident and productive learners (ALN, 2023). This engagement invites a focus on the strategies needed to succeed and empowers students to collaborate with others. Michelle Obama believes that ‘we become bolder in brightness’ (2022, p. 17) and this image fuses strength and action in an inspiring way.
Student agency is enhanced by their active involvement in the learning through ‘having a say in their experience’, contributing to decision-making processes and being committed to their learning – having a voice, a choice and taking responsibility (Ketko, 2023). As students identify their own strengths and areas to improve, they can determine the next steps required in the process. Teachers guide by providing feedback and feedforward to target future possibilities. Additionally, sharing ideas through peer feedback activities encourages ongoing self-reflection and increases motivation as students take ownership of their learning and progress. Motivation is increased as interpersonal skills are built, as students discuss, listen and interpret information and situations together.
Student agency is enhanced by confidence, and Cuddy’s insights into the concept of ‘presence’ offers students practical ways to cope effectively in challenging, unfamiliar situations. She believes that ‘listening is crucial to presence [and] real listening can’t happen unless we have a sincere desire to understand what we’re hearing’ (2016, p. 79). Opportunities to develop these skills can be provided in the classroom as students brainstorm in small groups and report back to the class. Appreciation of ideas and different perspectives takes place and collaboration occurs as these ideas literally travel around the room. Gradually students trust themselves more, are empowered to act decisively and with conviction, and as The University of Queensland affirms, build their confidence (2023).
Student agency is enhanced by safe and supportive social relationships in which conversations occur, active listening is encouraged, and collaborative routines exist (ALN, 2023). As students use their voices by speaking in front of the class, contributing to discussions, collaborating in groups, and working in group situations, engagement in learning is promoted and connections are enhanced; belonging is felt (Pandolpho, 2020). The cabaret-style seating at recent Year 12 Beyond the Panama pastoral care days saw active engagement and vibrant discussion occur at circular tables aided by conference booklets. It is interesting that the ecological model of child development positions the
child at the centre with family, experience and culture in the surrounding concentric circle (AITSL, 2021). This highlights the importance of establishing an environment of trust and care – one that supports the close proximity of the participants as they learn, laugh and grow together. Within a supportive context, students demonstrate their decision-making skills and participate authentically.
Student agency is promoted as educators are intentional about interacting with all students (Pandolpho, 2020). The Australian Student Wellbeing Framework (2020) highlights the importance of teaching social and emotional skills, using evidence in the learning process, and collaborating with students to develop strategies to enhance their wellbeing. Their participation in this process is vital and confirms that ‘the wellbeing and learning outcomes of young people are enhanced when they feel connected to others and experience safe, trusting relationships’ (2020, p.6). Being in close proximity to the students invites their engagement in school life. For example, moving around the room and sitting beside students to answer questions enhances trust. Listening as they share their opinions encourages independence and promotes confidence in a landscape in which familiar communication mediums are often digital.
Student agency develops as reflection occurs and connections are clearly made to learning habits and routines (ALN, 2023). They are encouraged to make judgements about their work, identify areas of success and areas of improvement (gaps), and are positioned to imagine how their current learning connects to their future. The spotlight is broadened to encourage a longitudinal view, one which inspires effort in addition to achievement.
Student agency is enhanced as educators value the ideas and thoughts of their students. This encourages all participants to allow ‘thinking’ time for responses to be formulated and to become increasingly comfortable with silence (Pandolpho, 2020). Information is retained as it is discussed in different ways, positive moods are experienced as students are working together, and confidence is increased (Tran, 2020). This open-minded approach invites study groups to be formed and new routines and retrieval practices, such as interleaving, to enhance learning. As retaining information builds confidence and self-efficacy, interleaving enhances students’ academic rigour as previous skills and new skills are focused on simultaneously
within smaller time allotments (R.I.S.E Guide). Students successfully implement this strategy and share many success stories, which encourages their peers to do the same.
The invitation to create ‘campfire moments’ in our classrooms to increase student agency and confidence extends to us all. As our perspectives broaden, growth occurs. This flourishing environment enhances lives today and future seeds of connection and success are sown.
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (aitsl) (2022, March). Spotlight: Wellbeing in Australian schools. aitsl. Retrieved June 1, 2023, from https://www.aitsl.edu.au/ research/spotlights/wellbeing-in-australian-schools
Campbell, J., & van Nieuwerburgh, C. (2018). The Leaders’ Guide to Coaching in Schools: Creating Conditions for Effective Learning. Corwin
Commonwealth of Australia. (2020). Australian Student Wellbeing Framework. Student Wellbeing Hub. https:// studentwellbeinghub.edu.au/educators/framework/ Hattie, J. (2012). Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximising Impact on Learning. Routledge. https://inventorium.com.au/wpcontent/uploads/2020/09/Hattie-Visible-Learning.pdf
Ketko, P. (2020). Learner Agency. Inspiring Inquiry. https://www. inspiringinquiry.com/the-learner/learner-agency Lindenwood University. (n.d.). The R.I.S.E Guide to Interleaved Practice. Retrieve from May 31, 2023, from https://www. lindenwood.edu/files/resources/rise-guide-interleavedpractice.pdf
Maxwell, J. C. (2019). Leadershift: The 11 Essential Changes Every Leader Must Make. Thomas Nielsen.
Michigan Assessment Consortium’s Assessment Learning Network (ALN). (2029). Learning Point: What is Learner Agency, Retrieved May 30, 2023, from https://www.inspiringinquiry. com/the-learner/learner-agency
Obama, M. (2022). The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times, Penguin Random House.
Pandolpho, B. (2020, March 10). Simple Ways to Promote Student Voice in the Classroom. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia. org/article/simple-ways-promote-student-voiceclassroom/
Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (2019). 21st century skills: Preparing students for a changing world. Retrieved April 25, 2023, from https://www.qcaa.qld.edu. au/downloads/senior/snr_syll_redev_21st_century_skills_ preparing_students.pdf
The University of Queensland. (2023, January 11). How to build selfconfidence in a teenager’, The University of Queensland, Retrieved May 30, 2023, from https://study.uq.edu.au/ stories/how-boost-self-confidence-teenager
Tran, L. (2020, November 3). 8 Benefits of Studying with Friends, Australian National Institute of Management and Commerce. https://www.imc.edu.au/news-archive/8benefits-of-studying-with-friends
Alison Ward Head of Faculty – Global Studies
The essence of a school is the social component of the human beings who populate it (Evers & Lakomski, 1991). The effectiveness of an educational leader can be measured by their ability to use emotional intelligence to develop their credibility, and influence the ‘behaviour, attitudes, beliefs, and emotions’ of others (Lauzon & Begin, 2007, p. 163). The purpose of this influence is to achieve a shared vision for the quality education of a child embodied in the school community (Ingvarson et al., 2006; Starratt, 2003).
Effective leaders improve workplace culture and performance by developing their own emotional intelligence and using it to positively influence others. Consideration of a high IQ and technical expertise alone are insufficient predictors of how well a leader will perform at work (Goleman, 2006). These are threshold requirements for effective leadership. An outstanding leader can be distinguished by their ability to relate to and work with people (Law et al., 2004; Goleman, 2006). The most effective educational leaders have an aptitude in both emotional intelligence skills and cognitive abilities (Rosenbach et al., 2018). Research has
identified a clear correlation between a school’s success and the emotional intelligence of its leaders (Rosenbach et al., 2018).
Educational leaders can be effective in improving workplace culture and performance by developing their own emotional competencies and those of others (Boyatzis, 2009). Emotional intelligence is the ‘ability to perceive, monitor and process emotions in oneself and others’ and to synthesise this information to shape thoughts and appropriate responses (Salovey & Mayer, 1990, p. 189). This entails the perceptive identification of their own feelings and the feelings of others (Lopes et al., 2006). It also involves the ability to integrate emotional information and understand how emotions blend together to influence thinking and behaviour (Lopes et al., 2006). Significantly, emotional intelligence contributes to an educational leader’s ability to manage and regulate emotional experiences in themselves and others to attain goals and positive outcomes for themselves, their school and society (Panwar, 2021).
The behavioural theory of emotional intelligence has come to be recognised as having four domains – ‘self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and the ability to manage
relationships’ (Goleman, 2022, paras. 7, 13; Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2018, para. 10). These domains are an elaboration upon the Gardiner model of multiple intelligences that defines the first two as intrapersonal intelligence and the next two as interpersonal intelligence (Gardner, 2011; Chernis & Goleman, 2001). An educational leader understands themselves and their emotions and then recognises the feelings and emotions of others. They know how to positively influence others for the benefit of the organisation they lead (Mitra Kalita, 2022).
Self-awareness involves honestly knowing one’s ‘strengths, weaknesses, drives, values, and impact on others’ (Goleman, 2006, p. 26). When a leader has self-awareness, they can recognise how their feelings affect themselves, other people, and their ability to successfully perform their job (Rosenbach et al., 2018). They also understand their values and those of their workplaces and can make decisions in alignment with these when pursuing their personal and professional goals (Rosenbach et al., 2018).
Self-management is the control or redirection of disruptive impulses and moods in useful ways (Mitra Kalita, 2022). Educational leaders who can master their emotions in their workplace develop ‘trust and fairness’ that can lead to improved relationships among colleagues (Rosenbach et al. 2018, p. 27; Mitra Kalita 2022, para. 18). This leads to increased productivity, staff retention, a calmer work environment and improved ability to adapt to the constant change encountered in schools (Chernis & Goleman, 2001).
Educational leaders use their self-awareness and selfmanagement skills to develop and manage a wide array of high-quality relationships in their workplace (Lopes et al., 2004). They use their social skills to manage teams with empathy, motivating people to collaboratively move in a desired direction with optimism and a solution-oriented attitude (Rosenbach et al., 2018).
Human beings have evolved for survival and adaption with an emotional part of the brain that learns differently from the cognitive part of the brain (Goleman, 2006). Unlike IQ, which is genetically determined and changes little, emotional intelligence is largely learned, and our competencies in it will continue to develop over time and with new experiences (Goleman, 2006). Fortunately, educational leaders can learn and continually develop their emotional intelligence through practise and feedback (Rosenbach et al., 2018). With persistence, new skills can be developed with a lasting impact on the leader, the teams they work within, and the organisations they lead (Morrow et al., 1997).
Emotional intelligence can lead to the creation of cohesive teams that achieve school goals and initiatives commensurate with a shared vision. (Panwar, 2021). High performing educational leaders develop and demonstrate refined personal and interpersonal qualities in the four domains of emotional intelligence (Australian Institute for Teaching and School
Leadership, 2018). They use their abilities to understand the culture of their school and develop strong relationships that can improve performance by influencing and inspiring others. Nurturing a shared vision and values is a foundational responsibility for educational leaders.
Educational leadership requires the bringing together of multiple and often conflicting needs, goals and values of all those who are represented in a school community (Haydon, 2007). This can be done through the communication of a common vision (Kouzes & Posner, 2011). Effective educational leaders envision a preferred future and use their emotional intelligence and credibility to motivate their community to adopt a shared vision and work toward achieving it together (Buell, 1992).
Great educational leaders are forward looking and seek positive change for the people and educational organisations that they lead (Block, 1987). To do this, they demonstrate the capacity to see beyond what is currently present, to what their school may become (Haydon, 2007). Educational leaders have a passion to improve their school and clearly communicate to others an optimistic vision for their schools’ futures.
An educational leader’s vision is founded on their personal values that align with the shared values of their school community (Haydon, 2007). Values are the foundation of any organisation including those created for educational purposes (Rizvi, 1994). Leaders who have clarity around their personal values and express them to others in both their words and behaviours develop credibility (Gardiner et al., 2011; Kouzes & Posner, 2011). This credibility can then be used by leaders to engage with their school community, uncovering the deeply held values that they share with others (Leavy, 2003). Having ascertained and clarified values that are shared, leaders use their relationships, built through the exercise of emotional intelligence, to cultivate a commitment within their community to the shared vision.
Educational leaders cannot achieve a vision for a school’s future alone. They nurture the talents of others, while planning and implementing the means of getting there (Haydon, 2007). Through clear communication of the vision, the leader guides the school to become a community of responsibility, who act together putting in place what needs to be done to realise their shared vision (Sergiovanni, 2004). Ultimately, students and the wider school community benefit, as productivity and staff satisfaction increase, and individuals work collaboratively, motivated to pursue their common goals (Kouzes & Posner, 2011).
Educational leaders have the responsibility of nurturing the continued growth and development of the whole school community; however, they cannot achieve this on their own (Kouzes & Posner, 2016). By communicating an authentic vision and inspiring, motivating and engaging others in the
common pursuit of it, leaders will engender positive change for the benefit of all individuals within their school communities.
Leadership requires the development of a diverse range of personal traits, skills and behaviours (Leithwood et al., 2019). Foundational to an educational leader’s positive influence upon a team of educators is emotional intelligence (Goleman, 2006; Louzon & Begin, 2007). Emotionally intelligent educational leaders build relationships, uniting a community with a common vision fostering positive outcomes for their school community (Cuban, 1988).
References
Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (2018, March). Leading for Impact: Australian guidelines for school leadership development, Retrieved April 25, 2023, from https://www.aitsl.edu.au/lead-develop/build-leadership-inAustralian-schools/leading-for-impact-online
Block, P. (1987). The Empowered Manager, Jossey-Bass.
Boyatzis, R. E. (2009). Competencies as a behavioural approach to emotional intelligence. Journal of Management Development, 28(9), 749-770, https://doi. org/10.1108/02621710910987647
Buell, N.A. (1992). Building a Shared Vision – The Principal’s Leadership Challenge, NASSP Bulletin, 76(542), 88–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/019263659207654214
Chernis, C., & Goleman, D. (2001). The emotionally intelligent workplace: How to select for, measure, and improve emotional intelligence in individuals, groups, and organizations. Jossey-Bass. Retrieved April 25, 2023, from https://web.s.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/ detail?vid=0&sid=6987ed45-b04f-4e09-a7d2-7ac6a81d2363 %40redis&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPXNoaWImc2l0ZT1laG9 zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#AN=62639&db=nlebk
Cuban, L. (1988). The managerial imperative and the practice of leadership in schools. State University of New York Press. Retrieved April 25, 2023, from https://ebookcentral. proquest.com/lib/acu/detail.action?docID=3406925
Evers, C. W., & Lakomski, G. (1991). The Greenfield revolution. In C.W. Evers & G. Lakomski (Eds.), Knowing educational administration: contemporary methodological controversies in educational administration research. Pergamon Press.
Gardner, W. L., Cogliser, C. C., Davis, K. M., & Dickens, M. P. (2011). Authentic leadership: A review of the literature and research agenda. The Leadership Quarterly, 22(6), 1120-1145, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2011.09.007
Goleman, D. (2006). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. Bloomsbury.
Goleman, D. (2022). Four domains of emotional intelligence, LinkedIn, Retrieved April 25, 2023, from https:// www.linkedin. com/pulse/four-domains-emotional-intelligence-danielgoleman/
Haydon, G. (2007). Values for educational leadership. Sage Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446214640.n5
Ingvason, L., Anderson, M., Gronn, P., & Jackson, A. (2006). Standards for school leadership: A critical review of literature. Teaching Australia, Retrieved April 25, 2023, from https://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.
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Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z., (2011). Credibility: How leaders gain and lose it, why people demand it. Jossey-Bass. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/acu/detail. action?docID=697584
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When Forbes Magazine published its ‘100 most Powerful Women of 2022’, it started by outlining the moral test that Russian president Vladimir Putin issued to the world’s elite leadership when he invaded Ukraine. His challenge was resoundingly answered, the article claimed, by the resolute sanctions imposed by European Commissioner President Ursula von der Leyen. Her principled leadership stood in sharp juxtaposition to the destructive and self-centred approaches of other powerful figures: it was transformative and it focused on the common good.
In an age where talented individuals are encouraged to serve their own personal aspirations, there is a critical need for morally and altruistically gifted leaders to deploy their capabilities in service of humanity. And further, as argued by Flinders University’s Dr Rebecca Napier and Professor John Halsey in the December 2022 edition of The Australian Journal of Gifted Education, the imperative falls on schools to steer their students – and particularly young women – to use their intellectual, social and other gifts and talents to ethically problem-solve some of the world’s most pervasive or ‘wicked problems’.
The term ‘wicked problems’ was coined in 1973 by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber of the University of California to describe the persistent, complex and confronting social problems that have confounded science and has resisted attempts at over-simplification. They contrasted ‘wicked’ problems with relatively ‘tame’, soluble problems in maths or puzzles. Thus, the term ‘wicked’ denotes resistance to resolution, rather than evil in the traditional sense.
The term was more recently developed into an ‘ecosystem’ by social entrepreneurs Sarkar & Kottler (2020) called The Wicked 7, a list of ‘deadly sins’ that plague humanity. They comprise: sustained environmental disrepair; persistent inequalities of peoples; entrenched global and regional conflicts and political extremism; issues of dishonesty and corrupt governance; the fraught relationships of work to people in a technocratic age; challenges to public wellbeing – economic, physical, and social health; and the confrontation of the largest global movement and displacement of peoples ever seen. Either separately or when compounded, they lead to profound human misery.
Sarkar and Kottler (2021) suggested that the moral overtones of ‘wicked problems’ are valid because world leaders’ continued resistance to attempting real solutions to these deep problems
– in the face of deep suffering – is by its very nature ‘evil’ (Sarkar & Kottler, 2021). Their argument that wicked problems have virtuous solutions is grounded in the belief that problemsolving, leadership, ingenuity and innovation emphasising the ‘common good’ above factional or self-interest is the only way forward. It calls upon the future’s brightest minds and social change agents to be deployed in the pursuit of public wellbeing rather than the seeking of private prestige. It calls upon the next generation of gifted children.
A growing focus of gifted education is the social domain of giftedness where aptitudes in leadership, such as persuasion and influence, and social perceptiveness and adroitness, can be manifested into real talent. Pioneering giftedness theorist Françoys Gagne, whose Differentiating Model of Giftedness and Talent (2020) informs most gifted policy in Australia, claims socially gifted individuals demonstrate aptitudes that significantly distinguish them from 90 per cent of others their age or context. As adults, they may be eminent individuals displaying charisma, drive, influence, social ease, perceptiveness and eloquence. Their social giftedness may overlap intellectual or creative properties of giftedness and span the business, political, philanthropic, social planning and policy domains and further afield.
Obviously, one does not have to be gifted to be moral, and equally, gifted individuals are capable of incredibly destructive, immoral behaviour (Roepper & Silverman, 2009), especially when powered by narcissism and acquisitiveness. World history continues to produce a long and depressing catalogue
If we guide gifted girls to use their powers to transform – rather than transact with – their societies, then maybe girls really can rule the world. Kate Wiedemann
of charismatic leaders and gifted minds who have abused those gifts. Even so, most moral leaders are usually gifted (Brennan, 1987; Grant & Piechowski, 1990). High intellectual intelligence combined with high moral intelligence are frequent hallmarks of leaders past and present: Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Katherine Johnson, Rosa Parkes, Eleanor Franklin Roosevelt, Jane Goodall, Madeleine Albright, and Jacinda Arden.
Thus, it is critical that gifted children should be encouraged to fulfill their promise of high moral potential from an early age. Researchers have found that socially gifted children often express moral concerns at a younger age and in a more intensified manner than their age peers (Roepper & Silverman, 2009; Sternberg, 2020). Their ethical sensitivity stems at least in part from their heightened cognitive awareness, pronounced
sense of justice, emotional sensitivity, empathy, insightfulness, knowledge of consequences, questioning of the morality of the status quo, and their ability to imagine alternatives. However, moral promise may only come to fruition within a nurturing environment (Roepper & Silver, 2009). Self-regulation, altruism, empathy, and critical reasoning that emphasises fairness must be taught and modelled through schools, home, one’s social institutions, and one’s culture.
The ultimate purpose – the big ‘WHY’ – of any type of giftedness must be a moral and ethical one, and it must be directed not only at self-actualisation of one’s own moral life (Maslow’s 1964 theory of a person’s conclusion that one has attained purpose to enrich their own life). It must be directed at improving one’s environment and the world beyond, the world in abstract. This form of transformational giftedness is the ideal model, according to influential theorist Professor Robert Sternberg, who emphasises the psychological, sociological and ethical interconnections of giftedness (2020, 2021, 2022). Sternberg highlights the common mindset of transactional giftedness as a sort of ‘tit-for-tat arrangement’, a type of giveand-take exchange of services. For example, were a student to be identified as ‘gifted’, there might be a spoken or unspoken expectation that student will return a string of successes on standardised tests, get good grades, be admitted to prestigious
universities, or attain prestigious employment in which they excel. They may indeed find self-actualisation and purpose for their own life. These things do have meaning in themselves.
Yet, in contrast, transformative individuals also seek to create positive, meaningful, and, hopefully, enduring change to the wider world. For example, a gifted science and STEM student may study industrial design while she investigates countries whose building programs have a dismal record in public safety. Later, at university, she may collaborate with other motivated minds to design and produce cost-effective but efficacious innovative building products that reduce building disasters, mortality, and economic disaster in some of the world’s developing nations. Her gifts have been deployed to make a meaningful and positive change for the common good.
Naturally, there is an element of ‘transaction’ in the experience and use of giftedness. The engineering student’s passion for her field of expertise is incredibly self-enriching, while her sense of contribution to the positive outcome for others is equally affirming. But true transformational giftedness (as per Sternberg et al. model) goes beyond the self-actualising efforts of the individual or beyond transformations that only focus on others to the detriment of the individual. It has a positive outcome on others. This other-personed WHY is driven by a sense of our shared humanity, a realisation that each of us are –to coin 17th century theologian and poet John Donne’s oft-used phrase – ‘not an island’ to ourselves, but are interconnected.
Notably, talented women have an essential role in the deployment of gifts that benefit others. Fisk (2020) argued that the COVID- 9 virus data worldwide (endcoronavirus. org) highlighted a clear difference of gendered leadership approaches between those countries that addressed the pandemic most successfully and those that did not. He claims countries that did best – for example, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Germany – shared common features, including a properly
funded health system, technological edge, decisive leadership, and a strong commitment to building public trust. But he also highlighted that many also had women leaders who acted swiftly and decisively, with testing and contact tracing protocols across their country. In contrast, worst performing countries were plagued by delay, absence of public trust, misinformation, and confused prevention protocols. Perhaps not coincidentally, they were presided by male authoritarian political figures like Bolsonaro, Trump, Putin, and the UK’s Boris Johnson, all who were roundly criticised internationally for their approaches that often shifted blame to ‘externalities to distract from their ineptitude’ (Fisk, 2020).
But why are gifted girls the likely inheritors of the role of future problem-solvers? Recent research (Napier, 2020) suggests that gifted adolescent girls possess the capacity, character orientations and commitment to significantly impact modern global issues. The collision of the socio-affective traits often associated with giftedness, and some particular attitudes of social concern that is often culturally encouraged in girls, has been found to predispose them towards problem-solving for social aims and ends. For example, in 2017, an OECD PISA global assessment of collaborative problem solving, the first of its kind across 52 countries and 125,000 students, found that girls were much better at working together to solve problems. Girls do better than boys in every country and economy that took the test, by the equivalent of half a year’s schooling on average (29 points). On average across OECD countries, girls were 1.6 times more likely than boys to be top performers in collaborative problem solving (PISA, 2017).
Australian and international researchers in this field agree on some common strategies that schools can adopt or encourage in order to grow gifted students – and specifically girls – to become globally minded for the common good. Following is a short-list of seven ideas:
1. Talent Development and Mentoring. Girls’ gifts can be obscured by shyness, perfectionism and masking to behave in socially sanctioned ways, such as hiding one’s potentiality for fear of peer disapproval (Guthrie, 2020). Gifted girls need wise mentors and advisors to ‘see them’, to affirm their uniqueness and to also help them navigate their multipotentiality (having abilities and intense interests in several areas or disciplines) to best direct their aptitudes.
2. Early Career Counselling. Because their interests can develop intensity at a comparatively young age, gifted girls benefit from early vocational counselling and mentoring. Maxwell (2007) further argues that for girls, career counselling is personal counselling, as girls’ aspirations and self-concept of their ‘vocational identity’ is so enmeshed with internal and external pressures.
3. Promote ethical leadership models. A plethora of research supports that gifted students make excellent candidates as leaders. Their desire to be challenged, their creative problem-solving ability, critical reasoning skills, persistence, initiative, sensitivity, self-sufficiency, enthusiasm, and the ability to see new relationships should be encouraged and directed to school leadership roles from an early age, both through classroom projects and extracurricular opportunities (Karnes & Bean, 1983; Desmet, 2002). Community-based leadership experiences for girls, based on their emerging and declared careers interests, can encourage students to experience tasks that take them ‘beyond the school gate’ (Napier & Halsey, 2022). Moreover, researchers advocate for schools to develop student leadership programs that explore the interaction of leadership talent with issues in society and thinking skills. Leadership experiences should be morally educative and focus less on the traits of the leader and be more interested on the task and the desired outcomes (Myers, Slavin & Southern, 1990).
4. Cultivate ‘soft hearts and sharp minds’: strong-sense critical thinking. ‘Education should certainly advance individual rights, talents, and capacities. At the same time, it is obligated to cultivate fair-minded thinking toward mankind as well as other sentient creatures, and to contribute to a better world’ – Linda Elder. An influential educational psychologist and the executive director of the Centre for Critical Thinking at Sonoma University, Elder argues that the cultivation of intellectual virtues required for advancing the common good has historically been largely ignored in both human societies and schools (2022, p. 144). Her emphasis of strong-sense critical thinking education provides a vehicle for cultivating the intellect at the deepest levels, as well as, importantly, fostering skilled ethical reasoning based on sound ethical principles. Elder’s work with colleague Richard Paul on critical thinking has been embedded in a broad number of Australian secondary and tertiary institutions, including The University of Queensland. Schools can likewise cultivate intellectual
frameworks that value critical thinking as both a general capability and in the particular applications of critical thinking in subject disciplines.
5. Humanitarian Service Learning. Sternberg & RodriguezFernandez (2023) argue that humanitarian giftedness must go beyond mere concern for others to action. It should also serve the interests of others beyond oneself and the groups with which one identifies, and even beyond the group to which one belongs (Sternberg & Rodriguez-Fernandez, 2023). Teachers and parents can develop humanitarian giftedness by being role models and highlighting eminent women who focus on humanitarian giftedness.
A further practical strategy is the use of service learning. Desmet (2022) proposed service learning as an ideal pedagogy to encourage other-transformational giftedness. Service-learning involves giving students opportunities to learn through active participation in service experiences that address actual needs in students’ communities to develop real-world understanding and a sense of care for others. Whilst many schools often focus on community service through volunteerism – for example, providing services for the disadvantaged – some schools are now developing ‘community action’ forays: students are empowered and encouraged to identify community problems and create opportunities to address them. Examples of community action involve activism, legislative initiatives, grant writing, and other services or actions that positively impact the community. For example, what may start as a school and community action for recycling may turn into a three-year project that leads to students receiving an environmental youth award. Service-learning encourages real-world connections and enriches the academic curriculum. It also engages gifted students’ vast aptitudes and attitudes or dispositions to altruism and other-mindedness. Indeed, researchers have found that students are more committed and attuned to social justice after engaging in service-learning and, even more exciting, are more positively influenced for future civic participation (Terry, 2008).
6. Tackle the ‘wicked’ problems with creativity. In investigating the types of thinking most used by gifted students, Munro (2015) found these students gravitated towards open-ended tasks, especially those that involve ‘diffuse social’ or ‘scenario’ problems. The ‘best’ problems were the hardest; they were real-world, ill-defined, lacked single solutions, had competing demands, and generated solutions that may not fit within the broader goal. In short, they were mini ‘wicked problems’. Gifted students can and should be challenged to think in novel (creative) ways, to tolerate ambiguity and to develop task-focused motivation.
One of the ways schools can encourage creativity across all disciplines is to embed problem-based learning models or to reflect the real-world in the products students produce for assessment. For example, students studying the authorial values underpinning a literary novel about refugee children in Australia may also evaluate and reflect upon the ongoing complexities of this issue in real-life national and global policies. Students can be enriched through problem-solving competitions such as Future Problem-Solving Australia, Ethics Olympiad, and the Da Vinci Decathlon. Such approaches are well supported by Sternberg’s WICS (2013) model, which emphasises the synthesis of wisdom, intelligence, and creativity as sine qua non for the gifted leaders of the future.
7. Nurture a culture that values authenticity and altruism. Napier and Halsey (2022) argue that schools growing gifted girls need to resist or reduce the external messages the world sends to young women that unwittingly promote anxieties and a forced choice between vocations that offer ‘prestige’ and social validation and those that are genuine, intrinsic interests. We need to counter undesirable scenarios, such as the one where an intellectually talented female student was disparaged for her desire to become a high school teacher, when she ‘could do so much better’ in a science career (Willard-Holt, 2008).
When we think of women who leave leadership legacies worth remembering, we think of those who gifted their extraordinary expertise, authority, diplomacy, compassion, ingenuity, and good humour to the service of others. It was not surprising then that Forbes Magazine last year heralded recently deceased US diplomat and political scientist Madeline Albright as one of the most influential female leaders of modern history. An interviewee in the article remarked that Albright, the first woman to hold the position of Secretary of State and who pressed for US action against the war crimes of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, showed the world that excellent leaders must have a value system … a ‘why’ as their moral North Star (Segal, 2022). Educators of gifted and talented young women can best help inspire a new generation of Albrights by encouraging them to see that using their gifts to benefit a world in need is both an obligation and a privilege.
References
Rittel, Horst W. J., (1973, June). Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, Policy Sciences, 4(2), p.155
Sarkar, C. & Kottler, P. (2020). The Wicked Seven. https://www.wicked7. org/what-is-a-wicked-problem/
Desmet, O. (2022). Promoting Transformational Giftedness Through Service Learning in Sternberg et al. The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education (1st ed.). Springer International.
Guthrie, K. (2020). Exploring Kerr and McKay’s Beehive of Smart Girls: Understanding the challenges facing gifted adolescent females. Gifted Child Today, 43(2). http://doi.org/10.1177/1076217519898232
Grant, B., & Piechowski, M. (1999). Theories and the good: Toward child-centered gifted Education. Gifted Child Quarterly, 43(1), 4-12. https://doi. org/10.1177/001698629904300102
Karnes, F., & Bean, M. (1996). Leadership and the gifted. Focus on Exceptional Children. 29(1).
Napier, R., & Halsey, J. (2022). Wicked problems abound: It’s time to harness the power of transformational gifted girls’ education. Australasian Journal of Gifted Education, 31(2). OECD (2017). PISA 2015 Results (Volume V): Collaborative Problem Solving, PISA, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi. org/10.1787/9789264285521-en
Maslow, A. H. (1962). Some basic propositions of a growth and selfactualization psychology. In A. W. Combs (Ed.), Perceiving, behaving, belonging: A new focus on education (pp. 34–49). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Maxwell, M. (2007). Career counselling is personal counselling: A constructivist approach to nurturing the development of gifted female adolescents. The Career Development Quarterly, 55(3), pp. 206-224.
Munro, J. (2015). Scenario problem solving: A measure of the quality of gifted students’ thinking. Australian Journal of Gifted Education, 24(1), pp. 23-29.
Elder, L. (2022). Fair-minded critical thinking and depth of knowledge as essential to gifted education programs that advance the common good. In R. Sternberg, D. Ambrove & S Karami (Eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education (1st ed.) Springer.
Roeper, A., & Silverman, L. (2009). Giftedness and Moral Promise. (Ch 19). In D. Ambrose, T. Cross (Eds.), Morality, Ethics, and Gifted Minds, (pp. 251-264). http://doi. org/10.1007/978-0-387-89368-6 19
Sternberg, R., Ambrose, D., & Karami, S. (2022). The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education (1st ed.). Springer International.
Sternberg, R., Chowkase, A., Desmet, O., Karami, S., Landy, J., & Lu, J. (2021). Beyond Transformational Giftedness. Educational Science, 11, pp. 192. http://doi.org/10.3390/ educsci11050192
Segal, E. (2022). Leadership Lessons from Madeleine Albright, The First Female Secretary Of State, Forbes Magazine https://www. forbes.com/sites/edwardsegal/2022/03/24/leadershiplessons-from-madeleine-albright-the-first-femalesecretary-of-state/?sh=1ef1f4347b5e
Sternberg, R. J., & Rodríguez-Fernández, M. I. (2023). Humanitarian giftedness. Gifted Education International, 26142942311677. https://doi. org/10.1177/02614294231167749
Tweedale, C., & Kronborg, L. (2015) What contributes to gifted adolescent females’ talent development at a high-achieving, secondary girls’ school?, Gifted and Talented International, 30(1-2), pp. 6-18, http://doi.org/10.1080/15332276.2015.1
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Willard-Holt, C. (2008). ‘You could be doing brain surgery’: Gifted girls becoming teachers. Gifted Child Quarterly, 52(4), pp. 313-325. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.20448279.2011.02063.x
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