Supplement to the Queensland Teachers’ Journal
Professional
Magazine
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
contents
Professional
Magazine
4Editorial: Developing alternative, effective and socially-just models of school-based
reform
7
Leading literacy reform
By 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 classroom
By Bridget McKenzie and Katherine Doyle
20 iPad in the early years
By Amber Cottrell and Amanda Levido
22 MediaClub: learning and hanging out with friends
By Karen Dooley, Michael Dezuanni, Amanda Levido, Annette Woods
25 Goal setting: the overprescribed remedy with dangerous side-effects
By Catherine Scott
27 Trust the teaching profession with the responsibilities of a profession
By 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
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 3
editorial
Developing alternative, effective and
socially-just models of school-based
reform
We 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.).
4 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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).
be seen as doing well, there is a necessity
for other schools to not do well” (p. 191).
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.
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).
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 schoolbased 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
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).
•
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 identifies three important
considerations
relating
to
the
development of high quality literacy
pedagogy:
Woods
(2012)
identifies
three
considerations relating to citizenship:
•
Producing literate citizens is core to
our work as teachers.
•
•
As literacy teachers, it is important
As literacy teachers, it is important
to regularly audit practices and to
Providing high quality
literacy pedagogy
Providing spaces where
student wellbeing is
supported
continue to access new ways of
thinking about literacy teaching.
Socially-just literacy reform
An approach to socially-just literacy
pedagogy for low SES and culturally
diverse schools: Woods, 2012, p. 200.
Providing spaces where
development of literate
citizenship is supported
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 5
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 MonroyHernandez (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 “differencefriendly 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
organisational culture generally
•
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
and
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.
reduced intrinsic motivation.
190-207). Melbourne, Vic: Oxford University
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 neoliberal educational school reform agenda.
References
Davis-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.
6 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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.
Di Carter
Leading literacy reform
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?
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 7
The why – school readiness
The when – when the timing is right
The who – the change agents
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.
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.
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.
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 wholeschool 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 “bitesized chunks” then it is more likely to be
accepted.
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.
8 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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?
References:
Hills, P. and Crevola, C. (1999) “Key features of a
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.
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.
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 9
Kathy A. Mills, Naomi Sunderland, John Davis, Helen Bristed,
Gael Wilson, Tracey Hertslet and Joshua Darrah
“If I were a community
leader”: knowing the
world by changing it
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.
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 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.”
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,
After the movie screening, the children
sat at a long table on the stage forming
10 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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 microdocumentaries 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
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.
Screen shot from the girls’ movie
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.
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.
References
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.
Davis, 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.
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?”
Hegel, G. W. F., & di Geovanni, D. (2010). “The
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
Sunderland, N., Bristed, H., Gudes, O., Boddy, J.,
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.
& 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.
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 11
Carly Neville
Differentiating the science curriculum
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
12 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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
diagrams, illustrations or photographs.
•
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
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.
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 13
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.
14 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
CARLY NEVILLE teaches year three at Waterford
West State School and is also a key science
teacher and coordinator of the arts committee.
Peter Bagley
Using the three level guide in the
science classroom
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
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 15
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.
16 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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.
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 17
Bridget McKenzie and Katherine Doyle
Embedding information and
communication technologies in the
early childhood classroom
New 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
18 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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.
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 19
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
20 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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.
Term
Curriculum links
Skills
Technology
1
2
Technology
Literacy
Sentence starters
Technology
Laptops
Laptops
Word
Photobooth
3
Innovation on a text
Oral language
Fluency
Book review poster
Critical literacy e.g. freeze
frames for photos
Basic computer skills
Word processing
Photo taking
Moving text and images
on a page
Narrative building on the
iPad
Photo taking
Typing
Audio recording
Building on previous
skills to create a poster in
Comic Life
iPad Little Story Maker
app
iPad Comic Life app
Table 1: The yearly overview of media arts included in the prep class curriculum to date.
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
Solution
Problems 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.
Fine motor skills
For some students, the ability to use
their fingers on the iPad screen has
been difficult.
The iPad keyboard only uses upper
case letters, not lower case. This
caused some difficulty as some
students struggled to go back and
forth.
A few students found it difficult to
remember the processes for using
the app.
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).
Scaffolding each step of the way
and working individually with those
students experiencing difficulty.
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.
Several support systems were offered
including peer assistance, extra
teacher demonstrations and, when
necessary, small teacher led support
groups.
Letter
recognition
Difficulty using
app
Table 2: Issues and solutions
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.
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 21
Karen Dooley, Michael Dezuanni, Amanda Levido, Annette Woods
MediaClub: learning and hanging out
with friends
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 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
22 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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.
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,
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)
•
2011
-
stop-motion
Term three, 2012 - podcasting
•
Term four, 2012 - video games using
Scratch
and using different sound effects to make
a good effect.”
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.
“I try to learn as many techniques and
skills as I can to pass on to my family’s
children.”
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
“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 pickup 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
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 23
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
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.
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.
24 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 25
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
organisational culture generally
•
reduced intrinsic motivation.
and
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 performancemanaged individual.
On the last harm, lowering of intrinsic
motivation, psychologists have long
known that increasing the external
26 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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 selfinterest 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
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 27
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 standardsbased 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
28 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
“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-tolate 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 oneoff 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
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 29
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.
30 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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.
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.
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
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).
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 31
Leo Casey
The true story of Pascale Mauclair
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.
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 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
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
32 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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
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
QTU Professional Magazine November 2012 – 33
– 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.
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.
Endnotes
1 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
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.
performance (25 per cent), and school
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
3 According to the NYC DoE, “A” grades begin
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.
at the 75th percentile, so an “A” at the 94th
percentile is a very high “A”.
34 – QTU Professional Magazine November 2012
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 ethics
Preamble
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.
Print Post Approved PP424022/00078