Prof_Mag_Vol27_Nov_2012

Supplement to the Queensland Teachers’ Journal

MagazineProfessional

Volume 27, November 2012

Members are invited to submit articles for the next edition of the Professional Magazine.

Enquiries or articles should be directed to: The General Secretary, PO Box 1750, Milton BC Q 4064

Edited by QTU Research Officer Dr John McCollow.

Note: The Union publishes the Professional Magazine as a service to members. It is intended as a forum for ideas on educational issues, some of which may differ from policy positions adopted by the Union. Not all views expressed in this issue, therefore, reflect Union policy. The editors reserve the right to edit or reject any material submitted to the magazine.

ISSN: 1328-9780

QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 3

contents

ProfessionalMagazine

4 Editorial: Developing alternative, effective and socially-just models of school-based reform

7 Leading literacy reformBy Di Carter

10 “If I were a community leader”: knowing the world by changing it By Kathy A. Mills, Naomi Sunderland, John Davis, Helen Bristed, Gael Wilson, Tracey Hertslet and Joshua Darrah

12 Differentiating the science curriculum By Carly Neville

15 Using the three level guide in the science classroom By Peter Bagley

18 Embedding information and communication technologies in the early childhood classroomBy Bridget McKenzie and Katherine Doyle

20 iPad in the early years By Amber Cottrell and Amanda Levido

22 MediaClub: learning and hanging out with friendsBy Karen Dooley, Michael Dezuanni, Amanda Levido, Annette Woods

25 Goal setting: the overprescribed remedy with dangerous side-effectsBy Catherine Scott

27 Trust the teaching profession with the responsibilities of a professionBy Lawrence Ingvarson

32 The true story of Pascale Mauclair By Leo Casey

Cover: Staff at Waterford West State School. Back, from left: Amber Cottrell, Tamara Scott, Amy Medford and Tracey Hertslet. Front, from left: Michelle Preston, Terry Stokes and Peter Bagley

4 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012

editorial

Developing alternative, effective and socially-just models of school-based reformWe live, unfortunately, in the golden age of daft and simplistic educational reform. While calling for an “evidence-based” approach, governments routinely adopt proposals that are, in the words of distinguished academic Ben Levin, “often … motivated more by belief than by evidence” (Levin, 2010, p. 739). Key beliefs appear to be faith in choice and market mechanisms, decentralisation of management, centralisation and standardisation of the curriculum, and strict accountability measures for teachers (including rewards and sanctions). Levin notes that many of the reforms based on these beliefs have been “unsuccessful in improving student outcomes or in reducing the inequities in those outcomes”; moreover, they have had “negative effects on educators’ morale” (ibid.).

Critiquing these proposals and programs is important work, but it is not sufficient to defend the status quo. As Levin notes, “no matter how well we do, much more is possible” (p. 740). Key areas for improvement include addressing educational inequalities related to race, culture, disability and income. There is a responsibility to develop alternative models of school reform that are both effective and socially just. Levin suggests some preconditions for successful school reform:

• Successful reform cannot be mandated from above; it must “involve thoughtful participation by many people within each school and community ... Too many educational reforms ... treat teachers as the equivalent of assembly line workers whose job is simply to follow instructions, or as an opposition to be controlled through policy”. (p. 742).

• Successful reform requires “significant support infrastructure ... to provide ongoing support” (ibid.).

• Teachers, for their part, must accept their professional responsibility to critically examine and improve their practices (p. 745).

• Better links need to be established between educational research and professional practice so that


“evidence-based” reform is more than a cliché (pp. 744-745).

The QTU believes that its role encompasses both the industrial and professional dimensions of its members’ work as educators. The development of a robust and valid educational reform agenda is union work.

Over the past three years, the QTU has been a “partner organisation” with the Queensland University of Technology and Waterford West State School in an Australian Research Council project, “URLearning”. The purpose of this project was to explore approaches to school-based literacy in a low socio-economic urban school, with a focus on curriculum and pedagogy, including in the areas of media arts, multiliteracies pedagogies, and Indigenous cultural and language programs. To date, over 30 scholarly papers, articles and book chapters have been produced arising from this project. Last year’s QTU Professional Magazine included three articles arising from the project. In this year’s issue, we present a number of additional articles describing some of the initiatives undertaken at the school. It is noteworthy that, in these articles, the voices not just of academics but of classroom teachers and school administrators are well-represented.

The approach adopted in the URLearning project is described by Woods (2012) and is premised on achieving high quality and high equity student outcomes, striking “a balance between recognitive and redistributive justice” (p. 190). The approach rejects competitive models of school reform where “for some schools to

be seen as doing well, there is a necessity for other schools to not do well” (p. 191).

Recognitive justice “relates to recognition – that is, making students’ cultural and social backgrounds visible” (ibid.). Redistributive justice “relates to the equitable distribution of resources” (ibid.). These are often seen as opposing approaches but, in fact, actually “work best together with each promoting the existence of the other; neither is sufficient alone” (p. 198). The URLearning project incorporates both so that “alongside high quality literacy pedagogy ... [students are provided] with a sense of belonging – citizenship – and wellbeing” (p. 190).

Thus, while teachers focus on improving pedagogy, curriculum and student outcomes, this occurs in the context of recognising and valuing the backgrounds and experiences of students. Woods depicts the approach schematically in the figure below.

The development of high quality literacy pedagogy began by examining what literacy teaching was (through an audit of existing practices showing strengths and weaknesses), and then considering what it should be (by, for example, engagement in professional development). The challenge was to “up the ante of the intellectual content of the literacy curriculum” (Woods, 2012, p. 201).

Woods identifies three important considerations relating to the development of high quality literacy pedagogy:

• As literacy teachers, it is important to regularly audit practices and to

continue to access new ways of thinking about literacy teaching.

• It is important to regularly share what you are doing and what you are good at with your community of literacy teachers. Sharing expertise and drawing on the skills of your colleagues provide opportunities to learn from each other.

• As literacy teachers, it is important to embed substantive disciplinary and community content that is useful and relevant to the current and future lives of students in literacy pedagogy and curriculum practices.

In relation to the first of these considerations, as described by McKenzie and Doyle, Cottrell and Levido and Dooley et al. in this issue of the QTU Professional Magazine, for example (see pp. 18–19 and 20–21 and 22–24), some teachers explored how ICTs and media arts might contribute to improving literacy. In relation to the second, as Carter describes (also in this issue), “communication is the essence of success” (p. 9) and opportunities to exchange with fellow staff were built into the reform strategy by the school administration. In relation to the third, articles in this issue by Neville and Bagley (see pp. 12–14 and pp. 15–17) demonstrate how literacy pedagogy can be used to support intellectually demanding science curriculum.

Woods (2012) identifies three considerations relating to citizenship:

• Producing literate citizens is core to our work as teachers.

• As literacy teachers, it is important

Providing high quality literacy pedagogy

Socially-just literacy reformProviding spaces where

student wellbeing is supported

Providing spaces where development of literate citizenship is supported

An approach to socially-just literacy pedagogy for low SES and culturally diverse schools: Woods, 2012, p. 200.


to make shifts in the patterns of talk and interaction in communications with students, their families and communities to ensure productive relationships.

• As literacy teachers, it is important to make explicit and overt links to substantive curriculum content and the substantial political, disciplinary and community issues that are relevant to students’ lives. This is one way of providing spaces for students to learn the values of others and to reconcile these with values learned in other contexts (pp. 202-203).

Woods observes that “for students and families who are somewhat disengaged or disenfranchised from Australian society, school is often an important point of contact with society beyond their own communities” (p. 202). Mills et al. in this issue describe student engagement with their local community (pp. 10–11). Dezuanni and Monroy-Hernandez (2012), in a paper arising from the URLearning project, show how digital media can be used to foster international understanding.

Finally, in relation to providing spaces where student wellbeing is supported, Woods (2012) identifies the following consideration:

• As literacy teachers, it is important to address the recognitive and redistributive elements of social justice when working with students attending low SES and culturally diverse schools.

Part of the task is to create what Fraser (2003, p. 7) describes as a “difference-friendly world” – one that values and celebrates the social and cultural experiences of students. One example is the development at Waterford West State School of an Indigenous after school homework and cultural studies program

as described by Davis-Warra, Dooley and Bexley (2011) in last year’s Professional Magazine.

This issue also contains three articles unrelated to the URLearning project but which complement the URLearning articles. Former AEU Federal Research Officer Catherine Scott identifies the perils attendant on the unthinking adoption of “goal-setting” and accountability measures as a means of improving performance. In Scott’s view the dangers include:

• a narrow focus that neglects non-goal areas

• a rise in dishonest behaviour

• distorted decision-making, which becomes designed to diminish risk

• corrosion of collegiality and organisational culture generally

• reduced intrinsic motivation.

Laurence Ingvarson notes moves by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) to create a professional certification system for teachers and argues that such a system can only be successful if it is developed and owned by the profession itself.

And finally, the tale of how Pascale Mauclair came to be identified (complete with photograph) on the front page of the New York Post as “the worst teacher in New York” is truly scary and sobering – and an incredible indictment of the neo-liberal educational school reform agenda.

ReferencesDavis-Warra, J., Dooley, K. and Bexley, B. (2011)

“Reflecting on the ‘Dream Circle’: Urban

Indigenous education processes for student

and community empowerment”, QTU

Professional Magazine, 26, pp. 19-21.

Dezuanni, M. And Monroy-Hernandez, A. (2012

in press). “Prosuming across cultures: Youth

creating and discussing digital media across

borders”. Revista Communicar, 38.

Fraser, N. (2003) “Social justice in the age

of identity politics: Redistribution,

recognition and participation”, in N. Fraser

and A. Honneth (Eds.) Redistribution or

recognition? A political-philosophical

exchange, London: Verso, pp. 7-88.

Levin, B. (2010) “Governments and Education

Reform: Some Lessons from the Last 50

Years”, Journal of Education Policy, 25(6), pp.

739-747.

Woods, A., Dooley, K., Luke, A. & Exley, B. (2012)

“School leadership, literacy and social

justice: The place of local school curriculum

planning and reform”, in Ira Bogotch

and Carolyn Shields (Eds.), International

Handbook on Educational Leadership and

(In)Social Justice, New York, NY: Springer

Publishing.

Woods, A. (2012). “What could socially

just literacy instruction look like?” in R.

Henderson (Ed.) Teaching literacies in the

middle years : Pedagogies and diversity. (pp.

190-207). Melbourne, Vic: Oxford University

Press.

URLearning is an Australian Research Council funded research project. The authors thank the teachers, administrators, students, parents, Elders and community members, who are the research partners on this project and acknowledge the partnership of the school, the Queensland Teachers’ Union, and the Indigenous community of and around the school, along with the support of the Australian Research Council. Colleagues on the project include: Allan Luke, Amanda Levido, Vinesh Chandra, John Davis, Beryl Exley, Kathy Mills, Katherine Doyle, Michael Dezuanni, Annette Woods, Karen Dooley, and Wendy Mott of Queensland University of Technology, and John McCollow and Lesley McFarlane of the Queensland Teachers’ Union.


Leading literacy reform

Di Carter

This article outlines some of the thought processes of the principal undertaking a reform process in a low socio-economic urban school. It seeks to reflect a way of thinking of a leader in terms of implementing literacy reform through high impact, best-fit teaching strategies and leading a school through a culture change. This was very much about engaging staff in “making the change that we wanted to see” (Mahatma Gandhi) – not a top-down process, but a groundswell of positivity built on strength and sustainability.

In simple terms, the change was about providing classrooms that were positive and productive learning environments in which teachers could teach and learners could learn, where instructional conversation far outweighed correctional conversation, and where the emphasis was on “best-fit” teaching practice. Many models of change were considered, but

the simplicity of John Kotter’s change cycle was useful and the Hill and Crevola model of quality schools was adapted by the principal and then personalised to this school and this situation.

Five very simple questions form the basis of the thinking that informed the processes, procedures, action plans,

timelines and relational actions that built a culture of reflective practice.

Why? Why do things need to change? What are the factors that will provide the impetus for change?

When? How will we know what to do and when to do it?

What? What needs to happen to address the issue of school improvement?

Who? Who should be involved in the change process and who will drive the changes?

How? How do we make it happen?


The why – school readiness

Preparing the school to accept change is about creating the need or desire. Just “we have to do it” is not enough. Leading literacy reform is about enabling the staff to challenge the way they do things. If what we are doing is working, why are we not getting better results? Blaming the kids is damning them to a life without hope and is an admission that I, as a teacher, do not make a difference. The research indicates that the role of the teacher in improving academic achievement is highly significant – this cannot be ignored.

Data and data analysis is part of the process of engendering support for change. If the process of interrogating data is going to work as a vehicle for change, the credibility of the leadership team is vital. A strength-based model enables the leader to develop a culture in which everyone has something to offer – using the strengths of every individual staff member promotes trust and collegial respect among staff and builds a professional learning culture.

People fear change unless they know what the change will look like. Building a whole-school vision and establishing a set of whole-school values is part of describing what the end product needs to be. Taking into account that human behaviour is often self-centred, considering “what is in it for me” (WIIFM) in talking to teachers enables the leadership team to relate to staff. Helping them to understand how this will make things better and how much is required of each of them reduces the fear that they will lose things that they value. If teachers understand that what is required is do-able and delivered in “bite-sized chunks” then it is more likely to be accepted.

The when – when the timing is right

How do we ensure that the change is considered urgent? Confront the brutal facts – ask the challenging questions around staff perceptions of how we can change this. The starting point was easy to identify in this case, so school-wide positive behaviour support was used as whole-school mechanism to set high standards of behaviour for all members of the school community. This process, which took approximately one year to establish, then enabled a positive learning environment to be developed from which other things could be built. Confidence that we could do what we needed to do was promoted through driving the attitude “I know I can”, not “I think I can” in all conversations.

Staff were challenged with the concept of “what are we waiting for?”. What is our preferred world? Are we dreamers or drivers? What do we value about ourselves, our school and our students? If we wait for others to make things better, we have no control. Notions of human behaviour were raised at every opportunity – we can only control our own behaviour, not those of the system, the community, the government. So the time is now!

The what – preparation for change

Using a framework for analysis enabled the leadership team and the staff to consider what aspects of the school needed to be considered to make change worthwhile and purposeful. We reached consensus about what our goals were and started to develop a plan on how to get there. We decided what needed to happen first, and developed action plans. We developed ways of assessing whether changes were working and what we would do if things didn’t go according to plan.

The who – the change agents

Identifying the members of staff who were vital to the success of the change and who had the capacity to be drivers of changes to pedagogy and instrumental in developing a culture of reflective practice was important to the “who” of this process. Then, how do we spread the joy – how do we ensure a culture of growth so that the change is sustainable? In a school that had experienced so many changes in leadership (eight principals in six years), trust and self-belief were crucial to success. The research was to inform our actions, and tailored to suit our context. We had partnerships with two universities and this allowed us easy access to appropriate research. We needed a plan about how to deal with the people who did not want to be involved as success depended on full commitment.

Because such drastic changes had been made by working on behaviour first, the willingness to engage in other opportunities was widespread. Resistance was based more on lack of self-confidence of the staff in themselves, as they had been accustomed to operating in a particular way and were not sure that it could be any different in this context. Over a period of about two years, the confidence was built through individual teacher support, showcasing teacher pedagogy from within the school through a mentoring program and staff meetings, implementing structures to support teacher performance development, and being highly visible as a leadership team.

The how – the change process

We drew on models of change, developed plans with timelines and then implemented them, decided on points of evaluation along the way and the ways we would monitor success – what data we would use and how we would use it. Tipping point was monitored to ensure


that staff were not overwhelmed but that a manageable level of tension existed between the need to change things and when these things would change. Successes along the way were recognised and celebrated in various ways. Support was appropriate, definite and timely – surety is vital. What understandings of human behaviour do we need to have and what knowledge do we need to cater for that?

Communication is the essence of success – every conversation is an opportunity to assess the state of play in terms of teacher take-up, teacher wellbeing, teacher commitment to the common cause and the well-being of the teams. The focus was finally on the business of learning – the quality of learning for all players in the game of education at this school.

Are we there yet?

Some last thoughts.

• Change is a journey, not a destination. As teachers, we will have to continue to adapt to a changing world in order to serve the best interests of our students.

• We have been teaching according to what we know of the past, but now we have to teach for what we don’t know of the future.

• Our calling is dynamic, volatile, responsive to external forces and enormously fulfilling.

• The five Rs – we need to be resilient, resourceful, responsive, resolute and receptive.

• If you don’t have the passion, this is not the job for you.

References:Hills, P. and Crevola, C. (1999) “Key features of a

whole-school design approach to literacy

teaching in schools”, paper presented to

ACER Research Conference, Improving

Literacy Learning, University of Melbourne,

October.

Kotter, J. (1995) “Leading Change: Why

Transformation Efforts Fail”, Harvard

Business Review, March-April.

Di Carter, a research partner of the URL project since 2009, is the principal of Waterford West State School.


“If I were a community leader”: knowing the world by changing it

Kathy A. Mills, Naomi Sunderland, John Davis, Helen Bristed, Gael Wilson, Tracey Hertslet and Joshua Darrah

Education Queensland teachers Gael Wilson and Tracey Herslet, and the principal of Waterford West State School, Di Carter, were proud as they watched the screening of their year five students’ movies at the national Building Child Friendly Communities Conference, held in Logan, Queensland in November 2011.

The conference drew a national audience of community activists, health workers, city council workers and CEOs as part of Australia’s response to the UNICEF international Child-Friendly Cities Initiative. Waterford West year five students were invited to present documentaries they had made on what makes places happy and healthy and answer questions from the audience during a student panel discussion.

The voiceover of a documentary created by two of the year five boys filled the room: “If I were a community leader, I would put more trees in, and put more bins.” A second movie by two girls continued: “If we were community leaders, we would make more parking spaces around the school for children’s safety.”

After the movie screening, the children sat at a long table on the stage forming

a panel to respond to questions from the audience – as active agents for change in their local community. Knowing, for these children, was not about grasping objective facts that were separated from their lives. In order to know the world, children have to make the world their own (Hegel & di Geovanni, 2010).

The movies were the culmination of a series of learning events over several weeks that aimed to teach students that places where we live, work, play and learn directly influence our sense of happiness and wellbeing (Sunderland, Bristed, Gudes, Boddy and Da Silva, 2012). The students applied multimodal literacy skills to shape and share their new knowledge – combining written and spoken words with moving images,

music, spatial layouts, and gestures (Mills, 2011). They observed local places with researchers from Griffith University and Queensland University of Technology and filmed interviews with community members in the local shopping centre and recreational spaces. They created micro-documentaries for both national and international audiences. The project also engaged the students in understanding Indigenous ways of experiencing the natural world. Symbols like the “message


stick” were used as examples of the richness of Indigenous culture on Country (Davis, 2012).

The year five teachers at Waterford West State School had invited specialists into their classroom from diverse interdisciplinary fields: Josh Darrah, the graphic designer and skateboarding filmmaker; Dr Naomi Sunderland and Helen Bristed, researchers of happiness and wellbeing (Griffith); John Davis, an Indigenous leader of Community Durithunga; and educators Professor Allan Luke and Dr Kathy Mills (QUT). We were open with the students about our roles in society and our connections with education. After spending time with us, some students shared their aspirations to attend university, and become future teachers and filmmakers.

A capstone moment occurred during the student panel at the national conference, when a female community member in the audience asked: “I’m from Logan City Council. I just wanted to know how you feel about telling us this story. How does it make you feel to tell us your story?”

One of the students replied: “I feel very good because I see happy faces in the crowd”. Another responded: “I feel good because everyone liked our movies”. Finally, a student of Sudanese background

announced loudly and clearly: “I feel proud that I did this!”

The children had appropriated the world for themselves. They had transformed the world, and in doing so, were transformed themselves. It reminds us that true learning and change is possible only by continuous action in the community, and not by sheer contemplation, or passive and objective receptivity.

ReferencesDavis, J. (2012). “Community connections

in education: Community Durithunga -

yarning in circle on Country - our way”. In

P. Phillips & J. Lampert (Eds.), Introductory

Indigenous Studies in Education: Reflection

and the importance of knowing (2nd ed.,

pp. 149-177). Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson.

Hegel, G. W. F., & di Geovanni, D. (2010). “The

Science of Logic”. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Mills, K. A. (2011). “I’m making it different to the

book” : Transmediation in young children’s

print and digital practices. Australasian

Journal of Early Childhood Education.

Sunderland, N., Bristed, H., Gudes, O., Boddy, J.,

& Da Silva, M. (2012). “What does it feel like

to live here? Exploring sensory ethnography

as a collaborative methodology for

investigating social determinants of health

in place”. Health and Place, 18(5), 1056-1067.

DR KATHY A. MILLS is currently Senior Lecturer of Language and Literacy Learning at the Queensland University of Technology, and researcher on the URL project. A former primary school teacher and School Head of Curriculum, Dr Mills’ research of new literacy practices in education has been published widely.

DR NAOMI SUNDERLAND is currently Senior Research Fellow in the Population and Social Health Research Program of Griffith Health Institute at Griffith University.

JOHN DAVIS is the principal of Hymba Yumba Independent School and Indigenous leader of Community Durithunga, and researcher on the URL project. A former teacher, Mr Davis has studied at a doctoral level and also published research on Indigenous education.

JOSHUA DARRAH is the multimedia coordinator of Griffith University Logan campus. Mr Darrah has professional experience with filmmaking, graphic design, and other new technologies for representation.

DR HELEN BRISTED is a PhD candidate of the population and social health research program at Griffith University. Her thesis topic explores participants’ experiences of public transport and its role as a social determinant of health.

GAEL WILSON and TRACEY HERTSLET are experienced year five teachers at Waterford West State School, active participants of the URL research project since 2009.

Screen shot from the girls’ movie


Endeavoring to provide high quality learning outcomes for our students, Waterford West State School has worked closely with the South-Coast Region Science Sparks Facilitator, Brett Crawford, to develop a differentiated science program through a scaffolded investigation planner. The planner, called PPEE (plan, predict, explore and explain) has been designed to support the processes of working scientifically through investigation. Crawford believes that providing students with a scaffold in science will lead to autonomy.

As a key science teacher at Waterford West State School, my partner and I worked with Crawford, to develop a differentiated planner. The planner enables students from prep–year seven to use the phases of investigation as outlined in the PPEE investigation planner. Ralph Pirozzo discusses in his Differentiating and Personalising the Curriculum workshop how embedding differentiation in the curriculum can engage students while challenging and motivating students in their studies (Pirozzo, Promoting Learning International 2012). According to the key content descriptors outlined in the ACARA science curriculum documents, we have developed three differentiated science investigation planners: prep–year two, years two–three and years four–seven.

Each planner aims to build and scaffold student understanding. With support from teachers in all year levels, it is expected that students are able to independently work through an investigation and have a concrete understanding of the

Differentiating the science curriculum

Carly Neville


processes involved. By the end of year 10, Queensland students are expected to “… develop questions and hypotheses and independently design and improve appropriate methods of investigation, including field work and laboratory experimentation”. (ACARA www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Science/Curriculum/F-10).

The P–2 planner PEE (predict, explore, explain) is highly visual and simplistic in style. It uses both graphics and text to encourage students to begin using scientific vocabulary that will be built upon and extended on in later year levels. It is expected that this planner would be used from prep through to half way through year two. The planner provides a starting point for students to understand and make use of the terms: predict, explore and explain.

Predict: To begin, the teacher would identify a subject for investigation and provide a question suitable to the curriculum. Then, with support and guidance, model or scaffold the students towards making a prediction to answer the question.

Explore: After a prediction had been made, the teacher would allow opportunity for students to begin the experiment or activity. As soon as possible, the teacher would guide the students to identify what they observed during the experiment or activity.

Explain: The teacher assists students into verbalising their thoughts and ideas as to what was discovered during the lesson. The original question should be referred to in this phase of learning and reflected upon.

Ideas for use:

• photos added to a poster-sized PEE illustrating the stages of learning

• use and emphasise the language from

PEE during each stage of learning

• make posters/labels for each stage of learning and set them up in learning centres

• students draw illustrations of each stage of learning as the lesson progresses

• students are supported to write in each stage of learning as the lesson progresses.

The year 2–3 planner PPEE closely resembles the full planner used from years four-seven. It has some areas that have been simplified to allow students to focus on the process of working scientifically. Many of the areas here encourage the teacher to guide or scaffold the lesson as deemed necessary. Scaffolding can be provided to ensure that maximum time is spent on using key scientific vocabulary and thinking scientifically during an investigation. It is expected that this planner would be used with students from half way through year two to the end of year three. This planner provides a scaffolded approach to working towards independence in the areas of planning, predicting, exploring and explaining.

Plan: This area begins with the identification of a question that will be answered during the investigation. Then a mnemonic is used to enable students to remember the scientific variables that need to be identified. Cows moo softly, or change, measure or observe and stay the same. The teacher can provide the procedure. In the years two-three planner it is expected that the teacher would heavily guide the students to ensure accuracy and to minimise error.

Predict: In this area students are guided to make a prediction as a group or individually.

Explore: Here the students are guided to discuss their results using labeled

diagrams, illustrations or photographs.

Explain: Students are guided to make connections by making claims towards the question previously stated, using evidence gathered or acquired during the investigation.

Ideas for use:

• fill in investigation planner and allow choices to be selected in various areas

• add simple diagrams that can have additional information added

• use a simple cloze style to enable students to make choices quickly and focus on scientific thinking and processes.

The 4–7 planner PPEE is the last in the series of scaffolded planners. The end goal is for students to complete this planner independently. Beginning in year four, teachers would expect to scaffold and support students in identified areas as student abilities are assessed. Teacher discretion and the level of exposure in lower year levels will determine the level of support needed. This planner provides a springboard into independent investigative science tasks involving the processes of planning, predicting, exploring and explaining.

This planner has allowed for more independence and high-level thinking towards the investigation being studied.

Plan: Much like the previous planner, this area begins with the identification of a question that will be answered during the investigation. Then the mnemonic is used to enable students to remember the scientific variables of change, measure or observe and stay the same. In this planner, the variables grid is used to provide students with a range of opportunities to identify the variables affecting the experiment. Materials need to be listed, accompanied by a detailed procedure of the experiment or activity.


Predict: Here the students are prompted to make calculated predictions based on their knowledge of the task.

Explore: In this area, students discuss the results of the experiment. Labeled diagrams, graphs, lists or tables can be used to illustrate results.

Explain: Students make claims using evidence and then use reasoning to explain the results.

Ideas for use:

• guided investigations

• scaffolded investigations

• independent investigations

• focus on detail, accuracy and process.

The differentiated planners have been successfully implemented in the science program at Waterford West State School. Deputy Principal Allan Tharenou says that through the implementation of the planner in the school, he has been able to mark significant improvements in the area of science across the school. With further implementation and development, we hope to continue to raise the bar in the area of science achievement.

CARLY NEVILLE teaches year three at Waterford West State School and is also a key science teacher and coordinator of the arts committee.


Using the three level guide in the science classroom

Peter Bagley

Many of us are now familiar with the three level guide developed by Keiju Suominen and Amanda Wilson. For many teachers, it serves as an invaluable tool in literacy lessons. Although it is often used as an assessment tool, it can also function as an invaluable diagnostic task.

Its usefulness in the literacy lesson has perhaps disguised its value in other subjects, such as science. Furthermore, while it is tempting to see it as most relevant as a mechanism for checking comprehension, and while it can undoubtedly serve in this function, it is capable of much more. In the science

classroom it offers the opportunity to assess (and deliver) content knowledge, while at the same time allowing students to demonstrate their comprehension of a text.

The three level guide assesses comprehension by requiring students to comment on statements about a text.

These are presented in three different levels of understanding. Given that these levels are also increasingly difficult, it offers wonderful scope for differentiation when used as an assessment, diagnostic or instructive task.

The flexibility of the three level guide is no doubt a legacy of its origin. It is based on The Four Roles/Resources of the Reader developed by Freebody and Luke (1990). As you will no doubt recall, Freebody and Luke saw reading a text as involving


students in a repertoire of purposeful social practices. The reader could “adopt” one of four roles: code breaker, text user, text participant or text analyst. Students can adopt these roles as part of a group, utilise all of them themselves while working with a text or any combination of the former.

To briefly summarise these roles: code breaker decodes the text, defining terms and looking up difficult words; text user comes to grips with the whole text and has a basic understanding of the purpose of text and its cultural and social context, reinterpreting it, if necessary, in other forms; text participant links the text to real life issues and focuses on its literal and inferential meaning; and text analyst works out how text positions the reader and examines the writer’s point of view to develop their own position on the text.

A three level guide is basically a set of statements about a text that students are invited to comment on in an increasingly complex manner. The hidden power of the guide is that all three levels of statements—literal, interpretive and applied—guide the reader to focus on the information the teacher deems relevant and to develop an informed opinion about the issues explored in the text. Moreover, the reader can be encouraged to draw on their background knowledge of the topic and combine that with the information from the text to respond to the statements. Additionally, its very structure helps provide differentiation through its use of three different levels of difficulty.

In the literal level, students agree or disagree with a statement based on what they read in the text and support their position by highlighting the section in the text that supports their view. In the inferential level, students again agree or disagree with a statement, but one that this time is not written explicitly in the

text but is implied. Then finally in the third level, students apply the knowledge gained from the text to decide if the author would agree with a statement. They respond in the affirmative or negative and again support their position with a paragraph supporting their own view.

A text for a three level guide should ideally contain rich language, deal with issues which challenge students beyond the level of purely literal understanding and, of course, reflect the main ideas and concepts covered in the unit of work.

Three level guides themselves are not at all difficult to write, if a few basic approaches are followed. In creating a three level guide, a teacher should first determine content objectives. This will give the guide a clear focus and inform development of your statements. The statements will lead the reader to focus on relevant parts of text. These objectives will help the teacher determine the applied level statements.

In much the same vein as writing the “A Level” for a rubric and thus articulating the aspirational intent of an assessment piece, the third level statements should be written first, as they influence development of other level statements. Third level statements encourage the reader to think beyond the text to its global implications and reflect the main ideas and concepts students will explore through the text.

For example:

Level three: the author would agree with it (evaluative meaning)

Tick the statements you think the author would agree with and put an X against those you don’t think the author would agree with. Be able to give reasons for your answer. Your thinking might be derived from the text or other sources.

1. A koala from Brisbane could easily survive in Melbourne. _______

Middle school students (upper primary, lower secondary) would, for example, make a tick or cross after the statement, then write a detailed supporting argument.

Once the issues connected with writing the third level statements are resolved, the next step is creating the first level statements. These will guide the reader to the information in the text related to the issues explored later in the applied level statements. The statements taken from the literal meaning in the text encourage the students to focus their attention on the relevant information in the text. This teaches the students to be selective in their reading by encouraging them to disregard irrelevant information.

For example:

Level one: the author said it (stated meaning)

Write YES against the statements that describe what was actually written. Write NO if you do not think the statement is in the text. Explain your choice by highlighting evidence from the text.

1. Platypuses are monotremes _______

Finally, the second level (interpretive) statements are developed, which guide the reader to draw inferential conclusions from information in the text. By focusing on the author’s intent behind the words and information selected, the second level statements encourage students to explore what is ostensibly omitted in text.

For example:

Level two: the author meant it (inferred meaning)


Write YES against the statements you think the author intended and NO against those you don’t think are intended. Prepare reasons for all YES answers (using the text to help you).

1. A fish could survive in a desert. _______

If the three level guide is being used for instruction and not assessment, then many opportunities arise. Initially the teacher should emphasise the importance of being able to justify the responses made to the statements. Then at the outset students could work alone, reading the text and then responding to the

first level statements, supporting their position by using highlighters to show the relevant section in the text. They could continue like this with the next two levels, or at this point the students could be formed into mixed ability groups of four students. The students then discuss their responses to level one or all three levels. Students come to an agreement based on references to text using their highlighters. At this stage, the teacher’s role is that of an observer only. During this discussion, the teacher can circulate around the class and listen to the discussions, dealing with difficulties which can be further clarified at the end of the session when the class comes together.

So if you consider its usefulness as an instrument for assessment (summative or formative) or as a tool for instruction, in science or English (or both simultaneously), you get some idea of the power of this most useful of methodologies.

PETER BAGLEY is a year seven teacher at Waterford West State School, where he is also a key science teacher. He is a senior teacher who has taught high school and upper and lower primary school.


Bridget McKenzie and Katherine Doyle

Embedding information and communication technologies in the early childhood classroomNew technologies and the pace of change in modern society mean changes for classroom teaching and learning. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) feature in everyday life and provide ample opportunities for enhancing classroom programs. This article outlines how ICTs complement curriculum implementation in one year two classroom. It suggests practical strategies demonstrating how teachers can make ICTs work for them and progressively teach children how to make ICTs work for them.

In this year two classroom, the ICTs process begins with explicit instruction on basic computer skills, beginning with turning on the computer and continuing through a series of specified lessons to demonstrate tasks, such as opening programs, inserting text and media, saving and opening files, taking photos and taking video footage. Each explicit learning experience is followed by play and explore experiences where students independently practise, investigate and share skills. The teacher and peers provide guidance when required during these sessions.

Once students have grasped the basic skills – which in our experience, occurs quite rapidly – students are equipped to incorporate ICTs into their learning process across the curriculum. Teachers are also equipped with a resource that can be utilised as a teaching and assessment tool. The basic skills lay the foundations for introducing new skills and ICT resources enabling children to access, create and communicate information and ideas. Children use ICTs independently and collaboratively to solve problems, investigate phenomena and/or produce multimodal projects.

Digital writing activities are an ideal way to embed ICTs into the early childhood classroom. One strategy is to use a program such as Photobooth, or digital


cameras and/or flip cams so that students photograph a series on a topic that interests them. They first plan their photos and story outline on a storyboard using drawings and captions and then proceed to taking the photos. Storyboards provide a type of timeline for the ICTs process, as well as an outline for their story. The photos are placed within the writing program on the computer, such as iBook Creator or MS word. The photos provide a guide for the students to produce their piece of writing.

A practical example of the ICTs process is laid out below. It describes an assessment activity which required students to produce a set of instructions as procedural text and ultimately produce a PowerPoint presentation.

• Students first drafted their individual instructions.

• Students used digital cameras and flip cams to photograph their subjects and film each other reading their individual instructions. In each case, the children were taught explicitly about equipment usage and were then provided with time so that they could practise skills and work collaboratively on designing and creating their project. This practice time is play-based, which allows students the freedom to make choices and be creative.

• The photographs and films were then uploaded onto computers by the students.

• The students then edited their work and made decisions about their final product. Again, the editing process is explicitly taught and students are scaffolded through the process by the teacher, before they move to edit their work independently. The editing process allows students to revisit their work, revise content and decide which photos and movie clips to include.

• Students proceeded to create their PowerPoint presentation. The process was firstly scaffolded by the teacher before the children worked independently, embedding photos and videos to create their final product.

The ICTs process can be transferred across the curriculum. So, for example, students might film science investigations (consider using the Gawker free time-lapse camera app, which is great for science) or conduct interviews, or even create poster presentations (check out Comic Life). Other activities include: creating music and sound (use Garageband); developing critical literacy skills through the exploration of websites; creating websites and blogs (try iWeb); using the interactive white board as a catalyst to produce comments or reflections from students (check out the internet resource Wallwisher); engaging with web tools which include charts and graphs (try Inspiration and Kidspiration); or engaging in digital storytelling, web quests and so on.

Understandably, the activities described here may appear time consuming. However, when integrated into the curriculum, they enhance learning processes and products as well as provide a space for consolidation for learning across other lessons and units. In this year two classroom, rotational activities, computer lab time plus a weekly half hour media focused lesson have provided substantial time for us to incorporate ICTs.

Students in this classroom access tools which suit their needs for an activity: visual, audio, read/write, kinaesthetic. Web-based resources provide a multitude of choices. As well, ICTs act as a medium for home/school connections. Students enjoy sharing their knowledge and projects with family members at home and at class functions. They love to teach

their parents!

We have found that using ICTs as a teaching/learning tool is highly motivating for students. ICTs equip students with multimodal ways of learning and producing. They are a confidence booster for all students, but particularly for those who might be reluctant to participate in solely traditional ways of working. This confidence provides impetus for students to produce outcomes involving both traditional and digital print literacies. Students, for the most part, remain on task. They participate in peer tutoring and collaborative work and we have found that the children actively encourage one another.

ICTs provide a valuable resource to incorporate into classroom programs. We encourage teachers to network with others to share and exchange ideas. We hope that ICTs find a significant place within all classrooms and help to engage teachers and learners on new and exciting levels.

BRIDGET MCKENZIE is a teacher at Waterford West State School. This year she teaches year two, and has been particularly interested in reflecting upon her pedagogy, and working to include more ICT and media arts into the curriculum in her room.

KATHERINE DOYLE is a research associate with the URLearning project. She has extensive experience as an educator in early childhood, primary, special education and tertiary settings. Her educational interests focus on literacy across curriculum content areas. She has completed a masters degree in mathematical literacy and a doctoral degree in science literacy.


Amber Cottrell and Amanda Levido

iPad in the early years

Thinking about using technology in prep

Young children have a lot to learn in their first year of formal schooling. Alongside the actual curriculum they are taught in prep classrooms, they have to contend with many other factors and learn to work within a classroom environment. So why add another element to what is already a busy and full classroom? While the use of technology may be seen by some as an “add-on” or “extra”, it can be important to start some basic learning of these tools in early years classrooms. We are teaching today’s child for a very different tomorrow, one which will demand a computer literate generation. While basic technological skills are important to learn, given that as young children progress

through schooling greater emphasis is placed on these, technology can also be incorporated to enhance the learning that already takes place in the classroom, allowing students to be creative and develop digital and traditional literacy skills.

As part of the URLearning project, one prep class spent time using both laptops and computers as part of their curriculum. Once a week, a media teacher came into the classroom to work with the students and the teacher. Each student was able to work on a laptop individually in the first two terms, before moving on to using iPads in pairs in term three. To begin with, there was a focus on skill development. Basic skills such as learning to turn the laptops on and locating

programs were going to be skills needed every single lesson, so it was important that students knew how to do this early. Once these basic skills were mastered, the students worked on creating their own Word document, which included text and images. The most recent work, where students utilised the iPads, will be discussed in further detail below.

Using iPads in prep

In term three, the prep teacher wanted the students to develop their skills related to narrative structure using the iPads. To do this, it was decided that the students would create an iBook using the “Little Story Maker” iPad app. Students would use the app to publish a story they were preparing and writing in class. Students took photographs of pictures they had


drawn, added text to their iBook, and also recorded themselves reading their story out loud. Students were then able to let other students and adults read their book, or listen to the read along recording.

Issues

Although we were really happy with the outcome of the iBooks and students’ engagement with this app for publishing, we did encounter some difficulties that we have outlined in Table 2.

Conclusion

The prep students really enjoyed working on the iPads, and despite there being some issues, we felt it was a very successful experience. They were able to think about the elements of their story in different ways, and also got to publish their stories very easily for an audience. The students showed their peers, other teachers and even their own families the stories they created and were really proud of the work. As learners, they had extended their traditional literacy skills and worked to develop their literacy skills for digital text. We have continued the use of iPads in the prep classroom, trialing other apps and ways of working. Young children really can learn how to use digital technologies in meaningful ways, helping to prepare them for future schooling and their future lives.

Issue Problem SolutionProblems with the app

Little Story Maker had a few bugs that we needed to work out. For example, once we had edited and saved a page, it did not let us go back and re-edit or add to that particular page.

One complete page had to be done in the correct order. This was a time consuming solution, however it worked for us this time. In the future we would choose a different app to work with that had similar features (try Book Creator).

Fine motor skills For some students, the ability to use their fingers on the iPad screen has been difficult.

Scaffolding each step of the way and working individually with those students experiencing difficulty.

Letter recognition

The iPad keyboard only uses upper case letters, not lower case. This caused some difficulty as some students struggled to go back and forth.

We did have to write some words in capitals so the students could visually match the letters. Other students were able to use letter charts to do this independently.

Difficulty using app

A few students found it difficult to remember the processes for using the app.

Several support systems were offered including peer assistance, extra teacher demonstrations and, when necessary, small teacher led support groups.

Term Curriculum links Skills Technology1 Technology Basic computer skills Laptops2 Literacy

Sentence startersTechnology

Word processingPhoto takingMoving text and images on a page

LaptopsWordPhotobooth

3 Innovation on a textOral languageFluency Book review posterCritical literacy e.g. freeze frames for photos

Narrative building on the iPadPhoto takingTypingAudio recordingBuilding on previous skills to create a poster in Comic Life

iPad Little Story Maker appiPad Comic Life app

AMBER COTTRELL is a senior teacher with the Department of Education, Training and Employment, and is currently a preparatory teacher and year level coordinator at Waterford West State School. Amber is passionate about language, metalinguistics and the teaching of critical literacy and is always keen to share resources and skills with others. Amber thoroughly enjoys working in the early years and making learning fun for students and teachers alike.

AMANDA LEVIDO is a media arts researcher at QUT. Her role over the past two years has been working with primary school teachers to plan for and implement media arts into primary school curriculum. She works with both teachers and students to develop their media arts. She is also undertaking a masters of education - her study looks at the role of a media club in a primary school in Brisbane.

Table 1: The yearly overview of media arts included in the prep class curriculum to date.

Table 2: Issues and solutions


Karen Dooley, Michael Dezuanni, Amanda Levido, Annette Woods

MediaClub is an after-school digital literacy activity for year four to seven students at Waterford West State School. Since it began in 2010 as part of the URL project, the club has provided approximately 18 students from the school each term with a structured program of media production opportunities. Here we describe the aims and organisation of the club and student experiences and outcomes.

The URL project is an ARC funded research project that aims to investigate the place of media arts, literacy, and engagement with digital texts in improving school outcomes for students in low SES and culturally diverse schools. Our approach

has been to work in collaborative research relationships with teachers, students, researchers and school leadership, as well as community members, coming together to engage in thinking about teaching and learning. One of the projects that QUT researchers have organised at the school has been an afterschool media arts program, MediaClub. Originally our aim with this component of the project was to produce young people who had expert skills and understandings about media and to think about how this might shift their engagement in classroom based learning. In the end, MediaClub has become a main focus for many of us in

the project. It provides a space to engage young people and adults together as learners of media and literacy and has really become a place to hang out with friends.

MediaClub is a semiformal environment in which participants are introduced to new ways of communicating with digital media technologies. A key strength of MediaClub is that those attending have opportunities to be creative and to experiment with technologies in a low risk environment where evaluation and assessment are not formal or structured. Club members receive positive and constructive feedback from their peers and the adult facilitators, which creates an atmosphere in which process is as valuable as product and in which taking risks and learning lessons from things

that don’t work is expected.

Each term, the MediaClub kids learn how to use some new tools (for instance, podcast production using iPads) and some new ways of communicating (such as the live interview genre) and then they play, experiment and problem solve to communicate to an audience. The participants are provided with guidance and feedback and timelines for completion of phases of the production. On the whole, however, they work at their own pace and are free to learn through trial and error and through exploration of the technology.

MediaClub: learning and hanging out with friends


A key goal of MediaClub is to enable the development of new skills and knowledge about media communication across a range of new media forms. The concept of digital participation is important in an era in which digital technologies are becoming central to participation in society in general. From this perspective, digital literacy means being able use digital technologies in a range of ways to communicate and engage with concepts. MediaClub aims to develop a positive disposition to digital technologies and flexibility in their use, but also to help participants to understand the limits of technology and the importance of learning how to structure various types of stories and to make meaning for different types of audiences.

The club focuses on a different type of media production every term and culminates in a showcase activity where parents, teachers and others attend MediaClub, enjoy some hospitality from the young people involved and marvel at the work produced.

Content to date has included:

• Term two, 2010 - film-making for the “Dream a Better World” competition

• Term three, 2010 - Lego robotics

• Term four, 2010 - music production on Garageband

• Term one, 2011 - stop-motion animation

• Term two, 2011 - music production on Garageband

• Term three, 2011 - media remix (a range of photography, filmmaking and webpage building)

• Term four, 2011 - comic creating

• Term one, 2012 - film-making

• Term two, 2012 - digital publishing (eBooks, posters, photography, filmmaking)

• Term three, 2012 - podcasting

• Term four, 2012 - video games using Scratch

MediaClub meets in the school computer room or library for two hours most Thursday afternoons of the school year. All students in years four to seven are eligible for the club, provided they are willing to commit to participation for a term at a time. After the focus of each term’s program is announced, students are given application forms to take home for parental or guardian endorsement. Depending on the hardware requirements of the term program, between 15 and 18 students are accepted. While there is a turnover of participants, about 50 per cent of each term’s enrolment returns for the next term, and some students have returned again and again.

Kids are interviewed each term about their reasons for taking part in the club. Responses typically invoke both social and learning goals. The pleasure of spending time with friends at MediaClub is mentioned repeatedly. Some of the kids socialise and work with established friends at MediaClub, deepening existing relationships. In contrast, others have developed new friendships at the club, making connections across classes and grades.

“[I come] to learn new things about what I haven’t done before and meet new friends that I haven’t met before… from other years that I haven’t talked to…”

Learning features prominently in reasons for attending MediaClub. Kids speak of access to new technology and of the skills they learn for use in their everyday digital lives. Skills from MediaClub are shared with family members and taken into the classroom.

“I like learning new stuff and I like experiencing a lot of things that Miss Amanda teaches us… like making music

and using different sound effects to make a good effect.”

“I try to learn as many techniques and skills as I can to pass on to my family’s children.”

“It helps me with my technology, like, for in class, say if we have to do Garageband, I can teach people how to do it.”

MediaClub also figures in the kids’ aspirations. Asked about whether they plan to produce media in the future, kids describe digital social lives and work lives. While these aspirations sometimes pre-date participation in MediaClub, club activities have also prompted kids to imagine digital futures.

“I want to work with technology and I want to work in buildings with technology, with computers… any that has to offer technology that I could maybe show [people] or use or learn… I just came up with [this idea] when I started MediaClub because I like using iPads and playing games and stuff.”

Parents also provide feedback on MediaClub. They are aware of the importance of some of the skills for their children in future school and work endeavours. Many of our families go to significant effort to ensure that their children can attend. Younger siblings are often brought into the sessions at pick-up time and are quick to get access to the technology available when they can.

Despite the fact that MediaClub is run by researchers in this instance, it would be possible for a teacher or school staff member to run something similar at many schools. Running the program requires one adult who has some media or ICT skills who can plan and implement the program. In our case, this role is filled by the media arts teacher, who works with us on the URL project. Another option to fill this role would be to access


the input of different digital artists to provide the specialist teaching, and for the organisation of the program to be carried out by a school-based person who may or may not have specialist teaching skills in media arts. We also have a club assistant who organises afternoon tea for the students and supports students in their media work. This role could be filled by a school staff member, which would limit the need to employ someone. We have often utilised volunteers to help and support the young people as they work on projects as well. These are sometimes teachers, teacher-aides, and teacher education students. The more adults available, the easier things run, but it would be possible to run MediaClub with many less adults than we usually have available.

Each MediaClub session follows a simple routine.

2.45pm After the bell rings for the end of the day, our MediaClub members arrive for afternoon tea in the enclosed area between the library and the computer room. This is a time for socialising among the students and between them and the adults who are attending.

3.00 pm We enter the library or computer room.

3.05 pm Group time – the day’s activities are outlined and expectations are established. There is usually some demonstration of media production skills, for example, the facilitator might show the students how to use some of the functions of an app.

3.30 pm Independent work time – individual and collaborative work on projects. Pairs and groups range from siblings to

best friends to those who only come together at MediaClub. Adults assist the young people as required, but club members often help each other rather than asking for adult help.

4.30 pm Group sharing time – participants are encouraged to share their learning from the day and to provide constructive feedback on peers’ work. Plans for next week are announced.

4.45 pm Home time – many parents come into the room and spend some time getting a quick update on what their children have been doing throughout the afternoon.

Our aim at MediaClub has been to provide a space for learning that is not like “school”. We manage this at times, but there are also times when the teacher in all of us emerges. Overall though, the relationships set up in this space provide different ways to be than the traditional teacher and student roles. The positive relationships built in the MediaClub space spill out and into our relationships within school activities, and we have also built up some great relationships with families – parents and younger siblings. The program requires a small resource input and the benefits for those who participate – adults and young people – are many.

KAREN DOOLEY is an Associate Professor and lectures in primary English in the Faculty of Education, QUT. She is interested in literacy education for young people in linguistically and culturally diverse schools and in after school clubs and programs.

AMANDA LEVIDO is a media arts researcher at QUT. Her role over the past two years has been working with primary school teachers to plan for and implement media arts into primary school curriculum. She works with both teachers and students to develop their Media Arts. She is also undertaking a masters of education where her study looks at the role of a media club in a primary school in Brisbane.

MICHAEL DEZUANNI is a Senior Lecturer and researcher in the field of digital cultures and education, which includes film and media education, digital literacies and Arts education. He is a member of the School of Cultural and Language Studies in Education in QUT’s Faculty of Education. The aim of both his teaching and research is to explore the most effective, productive and meaningful ways for individuals to gain knowledge and understanding of the media and technologies in their lives.

ANNETTE WOODS is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, QUT. She researches and teaches literacy, school reform, social justice and curriculum and pedagogy. Her current research is investigating teachers’ enactment of curriculum, school reform of low SES and culturally diverse schools, and school reform networks.


Catherine Scott

Goal setting: the overprescribed remedy with dangerous side-effects

From New Year’s resolutions to targets set during annual performance reviews, goals are everywhere. That planning for and aiming to achieve specific targets is the way forward in the search for organisational and individual improvement is widely accepted. It has become part of commonsense understanding of how the world and people work.

Increasingly it seems that this commonsense panacea for improvement may have been the subject of deceptive marketing.

Many of us participate in annual performance review processes in which we sit down with our supervisor and set goals for the coming year, along with designing plans for how we will achieve these. Mostly we don’t feel there’s much value in this exercise, but we may also feel that somewhere things are done better and the process works. For those of us in the public sector, we are usually led to believe that that legendary place is the private sector. Model our performance management procedures on those of the corporate world and the new day will dawn full of promise and increased productivity. Certainly the unexamined belief that “they do it better in business” has influenced the public sector’s choice of advisors when designing new processes of performance management.

Regrettably, the best minds in business faculties, including the

revered Harvard Business School, do not agree that goal setting is the key to better performance. Rather, goal setting has been described as a powerful prescription medication with damaging side effects requiring careful supervision, which is nonetheless marketed as a benign over-the-counter remedy that anyone can take safely.

The downside of goal setting is well documented in the business literature, but the results of the research rarely make it into public discussions of the topic. Nor, it seems, into the recommendations of the private consultancy firms hired by the public sector to advise it. Instead, same old - same old models are proposed of cycles of goal setting and performance appraisal based on these.

It is not surprising that goal setting can be counter-productive. Most of us know that we are not in a position to be able to specify what we can achieve in a given year. Too much depends on factors over which we have little control, including, if we are teachers, who we will find sitting in


front of us in the classroom for the next 12 months. Having, with the collusion of our supervisor, made something up, we are obliged to stick to it if the professional stakes are high, and that’s where things start to unravel.

Among the real world harmful side-effects of the widely prescribed practice of goal setting discovered by researchers are:

• a narrow focus that neglects non-goal areas

• a rise in dishonest behaviour

• distorted decision-making, which becomes designed to diminish risk

• corrosion of collegiality and organisational culture generally

• reduced intrinsic motivation.

It is easy to see how these harms manifest in education settings. Narrowing the focus of what occurs in schools to the areas that will be measured and rewarded/punished lies behind the disquiet over NAPLAN. Rewarding or punishing schools and individual teachers on the basis of what students achieve on these tests pushes everything non-NAPLAN related to the margins, even student welfare.

An increase in dishonest behaviour in business settings usually results in fiddling budgets and profit and loss statements in various ways. In schools, it is manifested in gaming the system to increase apparent student outcomes: a little bit of teaching to the test, discouraging the attendance or continued enrolment of problematic students, discouraging the enrolment of categories of children who will bring down the school average – maybe even cheating, where this can be attempted. In any case, the emphasis becomes on “winning”, not on doing a good job.

Distorted decision-making driven by risk minimisation is also easy to characterise in school settings. Narrowing the curriculum, choosing the easy options, avoiding more

challenging and interesting topics and ways of teaching in favour of tried and true but less valuable ones are all examples. You probably know many more.

Corrosion of corporate culture is predictable. Where individuals are rewarded for achieving their goals the level of cooperation goes down. Why share resources or help out if it might mean your “competitor” gets the goodies and you fail to achieve your goals? Manoeuvring to get the best or easiest classes also becomes a “necessity” and the type of politicking and jostling for position that this leads to is fatal for collegial relations. Becoming “boss’s pet” can become a preoccupation.

The damage to institutional integrity that comes with learning to fib to get by in a goal-setting performance-managed world can soon spread beyond the confines of the annual performance review charade. Having learned that to tell the truth is to risk punishment and to lie is to be rewarded, it easy for this dishonesty to spread to all sorts of relationships within the organisation.

Indeed, in his investigation of the effects of Britain’s notorious OFSTED inspections on students, Cedric Cullingford noted that the frantic preparations for the school’s inspection taught students three things: that bullying works; that pretending is better than telling the truth, and that they – the students – only mattered to their teachers to the extent that they could make them “look good” to the inspectors. By these means, everything that is good and valuable in education is harmed by target-setting performance-managing of schools. This damaging process occurs also at the level of the performance-managed individual.

On the last harm, lowering of intrinsic motivation, psychologists have long known that increasing the external

motivations for doing any activity, either by offering rewards for success or punishment for failure, reduces intrinsic motivation. Rather than the natural human impulses to learn, grow and improve governing teachers’ professional practice, the narrow pursuit of self-interest can substitute, with ultimately unfortunate and paradoxical effects on the quality of teaching.

Teachers instinctively understand all of this, but regrettably, private consultancy firms, whose world view is formed by the rigid orthodoxies of economic modelling, do not. The public sector’s infatuation with the corporate world has seen discredited models of performance management exported to professions where they fit even less well than they do in the business world.

Perhaps fore-warned is fore-armed. Fighting the destructive outcomes of goals setting is an uphill battle, nonetheless.

DR CATHERINE SCOTT was formerly AEU Federal Research Officer. She has worked as a primary and secondary school teacher and school counsellor in NSW schools. She has also taught psychology at a number of universities, in initial teacher education programs and other programs, including nursing, physiotherapy and general psychology. She has worked as researcher, consultant and freelance author.


Lawrence Ingvarson

Trust the teaching profession with the responsibilities of a profession

In 1973, a major national report on education (the Interim Committee for the Australian Schools Commission, 1973) called for a more active role for the teaching profession in developing standards for practice and in exercising responsibility for professional development. Noting that teacher organisations had been more concerned with industrial than professional matters, it argued:

“A mark of a highly skilled occupation is that those entering it should have reached a level of preparation in accordance with standards set by the practitioners themselves, and that the continuing development of members should largely be the responsibility of the profession.

In such circumstances, the occupational group itself becomes the point of reference for standards and thus the source of prestige or of condemnation“ (p123).

Movement toward this vision, of a

profession that speaks on equal terms with governments and other employing authorities on professional matters, has been slow over the past 40 years, although it has quickened over the past decade. Nearly 20 professional associations have developed their own standards for accomplished teaching in their specialist fields and they want to use them to provide a certification system for those who meet them.

The present question is whether the Ministerial Council for Education, Early


Childhood Development and Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA)1 will enable the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) to build on this resource and allow teachers and their associations to take the major responsibility for developing and implementing a voluntary standards-based professional certification system, which will be essential to the latter’s success.

Looking back at professional leadership

When I was a raw young maths and science teacher, teaching in a small Western Australian wheat belt town in the early 1960s, the superintendents used to visit the school each year for several days. I can’t say I looked forward to their visits. They looked closely over just about everything from course plans and lessons to examination papers. And they would be making judgments that affected my career.

However, I had to admit that they knew their professional business. They had been successful teachers. They were very active leaders in their subject associations. They had travelled internationally and were familiar with innovations in teaching and curriculum. They had higher degrees in education and were familiar with the latest research in their field.

Their evaluations depended on their professional judgement, but they were in a position to make informed, comparative assessments. And it was part of their job to ensure that every high school was well staffed and providing adequate maths and science programs.

Occupying senior positions in the

1 MCEECDYA has now become the Standing

Council on School Education and Early

Childhood (SCSEEC)

Education Department, they were expected to provide professional leadership in a broader sense than school leadership. This included efforts to recruit sufficient numbers of good graduates, and to ensure they were trained well. They also played a major role in updating and revising the curricula. They were strong advocates for quality teaching and resources.

If you asked maths and science teachers where they got new or useful ideas from, they would almost certainly have rated these people as significant; certainly more significant than principals. They were in a better position to evaluate the quality of my teaching than my principal, a former history teacher.

Of course, this model of professional leadership had all but died by the late 1980s. As a method of teacher evaluation it relied on subjective ratings. Its reliability and validity were never tested.

However, a new model of professional leadership has yet to emerge to replace the old. By the early 1990s, managerial models of accountability were increasingly replacing leadership based on professional expertise. At the school level, generic teacher appraisal and performance management schemes replaced evaluation by experts in the relevant field, and, partly as a consequence, were generally rated as innocuous.

During the 1990s it became ever clearer that the status and attractiveness of teaching as a career was declining; paradoxically, evidence was at the same time steadily accumulating that students’ achievement depended significantly on the knowledge and skill of their teachers. Yet this was not reflected in salary structures and career pathways. Credible systems for identifying accomplished teachers were poorly developed.

Teachers had few defences against this trend. By the mid-1990s several teacher associations started to examine a broader role that they might play in offering professional leadership; by developing their own standards for high-quality teaching, promoting development toward them and providing their own systems for assessing and certifying those who reached them.

At a time when there was heavy emphasis on reorganising school management as a means to improve teaching, the status of teaching and the academic quality of applicants for teacher training nosedived to such an extent that the Senate had to establish an inquiry into the status of teaching.

The resulting report (A Class Act, Senate Employment, Education and Training Committee, 1998) had one main theme — to strengthen the profession, especially its role in the development of standards. It called for a national system for professional standards and certification:

“A system of professional recognition for teachers must be established which is based on the achievement of enhanced knowledge and skills and which retains teachers at the front line of student learning. Such knowledge and skills should be identified, classified and assessed according to criteria developed by expert panels drawn from the profession. Education authorities should structure remuneration accordingly“ (p7).

Some form of advanced certification is common among most professions, but teaching had no organisational structure for providing such a service. The Senate report recognised that developing and operating a certification system is properly the responsibility of an independent national professional body. At the same time, creating a strong demand for nationally certified teachers


was the responsibility of governments and employing authorities. If a certification system was to be rigorous and effective, both these responsibilities needed to be fulfilled.

While the report did not gain support from the government of the day, several other reports followed making much the same recommendation. By the mid-to-late 2000s, it was becoming clear that traditional modes of industrial bargaining were failing to produce competitive salaries for teachers in the market for able graduates.

Which role for the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership?

Any serious government policy designed to promote good teaching in all schools must lift salaries to levels whereby teaching can compete successfully with other professions for the best graduates. This is what astute countries like Finland and Singapore are doing very well. However, there is no way that the level of investment required will gain the support of the Australian public without some guarantee of increased quality.

There is general agreement that this requires more reliable and valid systems for recognising and rewarding successful teachers than we have at present. These systems aim to benefit students in two main ways: by attracting and retaining effective teachers; and by promoting successful teaching practices.

How best to do this? With the advent of AITSL in 2009, we have been presented with a stark choice.

On the one hand, Julia Gillard, the then Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, charged AITSL with developing and implementing a voluntary, nationally consistent system for the certification of highly accomplished

teachers. The present Minister, Peter Garrett, reinforced this in February when he launched the new National Professional Standards for Teachers. This work would draw on the standards developed by teacher associations.

On the other hand, the Labor government has asked AITSL to support the introduction of an annual bonus pay scheme, Reward Payments for Great Teachers, by 2013, by developing a performance management system to identify 10 per cent of the “top performing teachers” each year for a bonus of around $8,000. All 250,000-odd teachers would be required to participate each year. The assessments would be conducted at the school level by panels including the principal, a senior regional staff representative and an independent third party. Assessment would be based on a range of methods, including:

• lesson observations

• analysis of student performance data (including NAPLAN and school-based information that can show the value added by particular teachers)

• parental feedback

• teacher qualifications and professional development undertaken.

This has to be one of the silliest performance pay schemes I’ve ever heard of. It ignores the lessons from over 30 years of research. The methods listed are completely undeveloped. The latter two cannot provide reliable and valid assessments of teaching quality. Nor can NAPLAN be used to evaluate individual teachers. The scheme would be very expensive and a huge burden for schools, and would have a negative effect on staff relationships.

Quite apart from the fact that this scheme would fail, it would appear to place AITSL in an awkward, if not contradictory, position. Is its main role to engage the

profession in establishing a voluntary profession-wide system of portable certification, or is it to provide school managers with procedures for their performance management and annual bonus pay schemes? The latter seems a very odd thing for a government to do.

The two schemes are incompatible. It is important to be clear about the distinction between a professional certification system and performance management. National professional bodies run certification systems, independent of particular employing authorities. When teachers support each other to gain certification, the research indicates that it promotes the most effective kinds of professional learning

In contrast, performance management systems are rightly and properly the responsibility of employing authorities and have a different function. Both are important, and can be complementary. In fact performance management systems frequently incorporate arrangements that encourage relevant staff members to seek professional certification. However, when performance management systems are combined with competitive one-off bonus pay arrangements, negative consequences for staff morale and relationships usually follow.

Recent correspondence with the quality teaching branch of the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations indicates that the government intends to proceed with Reward Payments for Great Teachers, with the performance management scheme based on the new national professional standards.

A way forward: give genuine responsibility to the profession

Australia has had a succession of national bodies for the teaching profession; each was perceived as failing to embrace one or


more of the main stakeholders. Although representatives from the jurisdictions and the Catholic and independent education sectors dominate AITSL membership, the new body may avoid this fate. AITSL is the first to have been established with clear support from all governments and employing authorities to play their part in rewarding nationally certified, highly accomplished teachers. The challenge ahead is to gain the trust and commitment of teachers and their associations to make it work.

We are in a very good position to achieve this. During the 1990s and early 2000s, consistent with the Senate report mentioned above, successive Commonwealth Ministers for Education on both sides advocated that teachers should play a stronger role in articulating their own standards and promoting excellence in teaching and learning. Professional associations gained funding for the complex work of developing and validating teaching standards; subject associations in English, literacy, mathematics and science were the first to gain grants from the Australian Research Council.

The depth and quality of their standards is generally greater than standards developed by employing authorities and state registration bodies. At the launch of the Australian Science Teacher Association (ASTA) standards in Adelaide in 2002, for example, a senior state government educational administrator said: “We would not dare to develop standards as high as these for our school system.”

The Commonwealth Government has put millions of dollars into supporting this work, by more than 20 professional associations, including subject associations, level-specific associations such as the Early Childhood Association, support associations such as the Australian School Librarians Association

and associations for school principals. Why it has funded this work, yet not pressed for its outcomes to be used, is puzzling.

Two associations, the Australian Association for Mathematics Teachers and ASTA, have developed their standards and assessment methods to the point where they provide a potentially valid basis for a national certification system – one that employing authorities could draw on with confidence. All associations, except one, want their standards to be used in a national system to recognise accomplished teachers.

In no other country, other than the USA, have professional associations mobilised themselves in developing professional standards to the extent they have in Australia. Indications are that the profession is ready to take up the challenge of playing a major role in developing and implementing a national certification system.

Members of professional associations in Australia believe passionately that the profession should take the primary responsibility for setting and administering professional standards. They recognise that this responsibility must be shared with employer and teacher unions, if teachers who gain its certification system are to be rewarded financially and in career progression.

It is obviously in the interests of governments and employing authorities to foster this commitment among teachers. A majority of teachers are members of at least one professional association and many are members of more than one. A strong sense of ownership for teaching standards among practising teachers is an indispensable condition for their acceptance and effectiveness.

While it is not appropriate for governments to tell teachers how to teach or to decide what counts as accomplished teaching, it is appropriate for governments to ask the profession to show that it can be trusted to provide a rigorous teacher evaluation system if the profession expects expertise to be rewarded. It is worth noting here that the most rigorous and respected system for assessing teachers for professional certification, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in the USA, is governed and operated primarily by highly accomplished teachers.

Final comments

Few things could be more central to developing your credentials as a profession than showing that you can define what you mean by good practice and demonstrating that you can make valid and reliable judgments about whether your members have attained those standards. Most professions would find the extent to which governments and employing authorities have played the major role in developing standards for the teaching profession very odd, even inappropriate.

It is time for the profession to be entrusted with this central responsibility. Professions certify excellent practice – wise employers reward it.

My prediction is that AITSL’s success will depend, in large part, on the extent to which MCEECDYA ensures that teachers have a strong sense of ownership of its certification system and a major responsibility for ensuring its rigour and professional credibility. AITSL’s ability to do this will, in turn, depend on whether Ministers give priority to their primary role of ensuring high quality education in all schools over their secondary role as employers of teachers.


At present it is unclear whether AITSL’s role will primarily be to provide each employing authority with a performance management and bonus pay system, or whether it is to provide a profession-wide certification system for recognising highly accomplished teachers. The research is clear that competitive bonus pay schemes do not work for teaching; schemes that recognise professional development and reward for professional certification do.

While there is a lot of talk about infrastructure reforms in this period of recovery from the global financial crisis, the infrastructure that matters most

in education is the infrastructure that makes teaching an attractive profession to the ablest graduates, promotes their professional development and rewards those who attain high standards of professional performance. The research evidence indicates that a national, profession-wide system of voluntary certification entrusted to the profession offers the best way to build that infrastructure.

This article first appeared in Volume 8 issue 3 of Professional Voice, published by the AEU Victorian Branch

LAWRENCE INGVARSON began his career as a science and mathematics teacher, teaching in WA, Scotland and England before undertaking further studies at the University of London. He has held academic positions at the University of Stirling in Scotland, Monash University and the Australian Council for Educational Research. He is a fellow of the Australian College of Educators and a recipient of a Distinguished Service Award from the Australian Science Teachers Association (2001).


Leo Casey

Within hours of the publication of the Teacher Data Reports (TDRs)1, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) began to hear stories of teachers and their families being hounded by news reporters from the New York Post.

On Friday evening, New York Post reporters appeared at the door of the father of Pascale Mauclair, a sixth grade teacher at Public School 11 (P.S. 11), the Kathryn Phelan School, which is located in the Woodside section of Queens. They told Mauclair’s father that his daughter was one of the worst teachers in New York City, based solely on the TDR reports, and that they were looking to interview her. They then made their way to Mauclair’s home, where she told them that she did not want to comment on the matter. The Post reporters rang Mauclair’s bell and knocked on her window all Saturday morning. She finally called the police, who told the reporters that since they were

inside her private housing development, they were on private property and had to leave. The reporters rang the bell again, leading to a second visit from the police and a final warning to leave. Later, Mauclair’s neighbours told her that that the Post reporters had been asking them questions about her.

Other reporters were outside P.S. 11, closed for the mid-winter break, looking for parents of students to interview.

On Saturday, the New York Post published an article with the headline “They’re doing zero, zilch, zippo for students.” It singled out Mauclair by name, claiming that her TDR reports put her “at the bottom of the heap” of New York City public school teachers. The article revealed her annual salary and asserted that “DOE brass were confident she was ranked where she was supposed to be”, although no officials were quoted – this was the Post’s inference, and nothing more.

On Sunday, the Post published another story, now proclaiming Mauclair to be the “city’s worst teacher”. Next to this description, it printed a photograph of her taken from a yearbook. The Post quoted a single parent to whom it had provided

this description as saying that he wanted to have his child removed from her class. Another parent whose child was no longer in the school was quoted saying Mauclair should be fired and her salary given to the school.

And then there is the true story of Pascale Mauclair and her school.

By every conceivable measure, Mauclair’s P.S. 11 is an excellent school. It is in strong demand in the community, and as a consequence, is overcrowded, well above 100 per cent capacity. It has an experienced and accomplished staff, with a minimal turnover rate, and a strong educator and leader as its principal. The school has a strong culture of collaboration: staff and administration work together well, with a focus on the education of their students.

Last year, the school earned an “A” on school progress report2, placing it in the 94 percentile of all NYC public elementary schools3. Over the last three years, the school has earned consistently high grades of “A”, “B” and “A” on the reports. P.S. 11’s last quality review has the school as “proficient,” and its last school survey has school staff, parents and students all giving the school very high marks.

And in P.S. 11, Pascale Mauclair is known by her colleagues and her supervisors as

The true story of Pascale Mauclair


an excellent teacher. Talk to the respected principal of P.S. 11, Anna Efkarpides, and she is completely unequivocal in her support for Mauclair, whom she sees as a very strong teacher. “I would put my own children in her class,” she says.

What the publication of the TDRs and what the Post have done to Mauclair is “absolutely unacceptable,” an emphatic Efkarpides told me. She has taken the full measure of her teacher’s work, from classroom observations to examinations of portfolios of student work, and the misrepresentation of her teaching performance found in the TDRs and the tabloids is “just not who she is”. “The truth is the truth,” Efkarpides insists.

When Mauclair returned to school, her colleagues met her with a standing ovation.

As in many other cases, the story of Pascale Mauclair and P.S. 11 begins with a tale of the flawed methodology and invalid measurements of the teacher data reports.

P.S. 11 is located at the epicenter of a number of different immigrant communities in northern Queens, and over a quarter of its students are English language learners. Mauclair is an ESL teacher, and over the last five years she has had small, self-contained classes of recently arrived immigrants who do not speak English. Her students

arrive at different times of the school year, depending upon the date of their family’s migration; consequently, it is not unusual for her students to take the 6th grade exams when they have only been in her class for a matter of a few months. Two factors which produce particularly contorted TDR results – teaching the highest academic need students and having a small sample of students that take the standardised state exams – define her teaching situation.

If a journalist with integrity had examined the TDR data, a number of red flags which suggested something was seriously amiss with the scores for Mauclair and P.S. 11 would have presented themselves.

First, there was an extraordinary anomaly on the TDR for P.S. 11. Of the seven 6th grade P.S. 11 teachers with TDR reports, three ended up with scores at the zero percentile. It is simply beyond all credulity that a school which is doing so well academically could have three of the poorest performing teachers in all of New York City’s 1,400 schools teaching such a substantial portion of its graduating class.

P.S. 11 is one of a number of exceptional elementary schools with a 6th grade. The great preponderance of elementary schools conclude at grade 5, with students matriculating to a middle school for grade 6. In the elementary school configuration,

a single classroom teacher teaches the core academic subjects, especially English language arts (ELA) and mathematics. In the middle school configuration, instruction is divided into subject classes, taught by specialists licensed to teach the different subjects. Most ELA and math 6th grade teachers are thus responsible for only their subject, which they teach to five different classes each day. An elementary school teacher with a TDR report would max out with a sample of 32 students taking an exam, while a middle school teacher with a TDR report would max out with a sample of 160 students. A 6th grade teacher teaching in an elementary school setting would thus find themselves in a stilted comparison with 6th grade middle school teachers that had a far larger sampling of students and were responsible for only one subject. This was the situation for the three 6th grade teachers from P.S. 11 who were placed at the zero percentile.

Second, there was the glaring anomaly that while Mauclair teaches both ELA and mathematics to her class, there is only one TDR – math – for her last school year. The numbers of students from her class who took the ELA test were so few that they fell below the minimum number – 20 – the Department of Education (DoE) has set for 6th grade ELA TDRs. A much smaller threshold for 6th grade math – 10 students


– left her just above the DoE’s cut-off point with 11 students, a very small sample which is easily distorted. Moreover, if you examine the total universe of students for Mauclair in math over five years, it is 63 – an average of 12 students a year.

In explaining its school progress reports, the NYC DoE says: “The minimum number of values used for all reported calculations at the school level is 15. Elements for which there are fewer than 15 valid observations at a school are not included because of confidentiality considerations and the unreliability of measurements based on small numbers.”

If the minimum number of values (in plain English, every value is a student score on a standardised exam) for an entire school is 15, how can one possibly justify a minimum number for a teacher at 10?

Who is responsible for this cruel damage done to the reputation of an excellent educator who has taken on the challenging work of teaching the highest need students?

Certainly, the Post gets its share of the blame. It engaged in the calculated effort to destroy the good name of a teacher whose sole crime was her vocation to make a difference in the lives of children. It set out to brutally strip her of her personal dignity, and paraded in public an egregiously false “naked” portrait of her life’s work.

But the Post and the rest of the New York newspaper corps which participated in this sordid episode of publishing the TDRs had willing partners in the highest offices of this city, and they need to be called out by name.

There is Joel Klein, who as Chancellor gave his personal word and the institutional word of the NYC DoE to Pascale Mauclair and every other NYC public school teacher that the TDRs would not be used

for evaluative purposes and would not be published, but would only be available to their supervisors and themselves, as a tool to inform instruction. It was the same Chancellor Klein who, once he saw political advantage to be gained from publishing the TDRs, broke his word and actively solicited the news media to file Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests. And he did so with the full knowledge of just how profoundly inaccurate and invalid the TDR data was, with average margins of error in the 35 per cent range for math and 53 per cent range for ELA.

And there is Michael Bloomberg, who as Mayor betrayed the explicit pledge to NYC public school teachers that the NYC DoE and the City would oppose any FOIL request to obtain and publish the TDRs, but ordered DoE and City lawyers to not oppose the FOIL requests in court.

New York City public school teachers bear witness to what they have done to Pascale Mauclair and to us.

Endnotes1 Teacher data reports rank teachers based on

their students’ gains on the state’s math and

English tests over the course of five years.

2 Progress reports are designed to help

parents, teachers, principals, and school

communities understand schools’ strengths

and weaknesses. They grade each school

with an A, B, C, D, or F and are based on

student progress (60 per cent), student

performance (25 per cent), and school

environment (15 per cent). Scores are based

on comparing results from one school to

a peer group of up to 40 schools with the

most similar student population, and to all

schools citywide.

3 According to the NYC DoE, “A” grades begin

at the 75th percentile, so an “A” at the 94th

percentile is a very high “A”.

LEO CASEY is the Executive Director of the Albert Shanker Institute in Washington, a think tank affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers which focuses of issues of public education, unionism and democracy promotion. He was previously vice-president of academic high schools at the United Federation of Teachers in the USA. In 1984 he began teaching classes in civics, American history, African-American studies, ethical issues in medicine and political

science, which he did for 15 years.

Code of ethicsPreamble

Teachers have an important responsibility in guiding their students’ educational and social development. Therefore, teachers should possess the following attributes:

• social and emotional maturity

• integrity

• breadth and depth of learning

• an understanding of human experience.

The Queensland Teachers’ Union trusts that all members in the exercise of their professional duties will exemplify this code.

The code

• The primary professional responsibility of teachers is the welfare of all students within their care.

• Teachers shall endeavour to promote such relationships between school and home as will contribute to the welfare and comprehensive development of each student.

• Teachers shall strive to achieve standards of professional conduct and to display attributes towards their colleagues which will create mutual respect.

• Teachers shall assert their professional, industrial and civil rights and support their colleagues in the defence of these rights.

• Teachers shall strive to fulfil their responsibilities in a manner which will enhance the prestige of their profession.

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