School Improvement Episode 63: The Aspect Learning Improvement Collaborative

Hello, Teacher editor Jo Earp here and I'll be your host for today. But before we get into this episode, a reminder to hit the follow button and make sure you stay up to date with the latest content, and please leave a review – it helps people like you to find the podcast and it's a big support for the team.

Hello and thanks for listening to this podcast from Teacher – it's Episode 63 of our series on School Improvement and I'm in Sydney today to find out more about the Aspect Learning Improvement Collaborative, that's ALIC for short. Aspect is a not-for-profit providing one of the largest autism-specific education programs globally. Now, ALIC was launched in 2023, and it brings together leaders and staff from all its schools and satellite classes across New South Wales and South Australia. It's a groundbreaking program because it employs a mainstream learning framework developed by Dr Lyn Sharratt that's been adapted to suit an autism-specific education setting.

Really looking forward to this episode. As I say, I'm actually in Sydney; they're holding a Learning Fair to share what they've learned over the last 3 years. I've got 5 brilliant guests lined up for you. We'll hear more from Dr Lyn Sharratt about this innovative model and Aspect Education's Deputy National Director Karilyn Gumley will be sharing details of the rollout and the impact. Then after the break, we'll really drill down into the leadership side of things by chatting to 3 principals – Kaye Perry, Joanne Tisdell, and Michelle Zikmundovsky – about the difference that it's making in their school. Loads of interesting stuff in this one, so let's jump in. 

Jo Earp: Dr Lyn Sharratt, thanks for joining Teacher today. You've been on this journey with ALIC leaders and staff for the last 3 years now. As I said in the intro to this podcast then, it employs your framework and that's the ‘14 Parameters for System and School Improvement’. So, I'm going to try and sort of sum it up in a nutshell … we know that in schools where leaders are focused on these 14 parameters and they’re present at high levels, we know that there's increased student growth and achievement. What kinds of things, can you give us a bit of a flavour of what kinds of things the framework covers?

Lyn Sharratt: The 14 parameters, they're my framework for system and school improvement that I say are evidence proven that really help teachers, leaders, and parents focus on students. So, 14 areas that Michael Fullan, my co-author, and I have researched across the globe, really point to precision in practice in classrooms, throughout schools, networks, and systems.

To me, the 14 parameters encompass a vision; a vision of shared beliefs and understandings that all students can learn, all teachers can teach. We have high expectations, early and ongoing interventions, and we also can all speak why we're doing what we're doing and how it's making an impact on our students. 

So, Michael Fullan and I first started our research and writing by Putting FACES on the Data – What Great Leaders do! – we wrote that in 2012, and then we wrote again in 2022, and we certainly have never changed our mind about the impact of the 14 areas. They encompass a vision, they encompass structures such as data walls that lead to case management meetings (private, of course). The 14 parameters encompass strategies that work for students, and putting faces on the data is certainly one of those. So, targeted intervention and prevention. 

The 14 parameters also speak to the resources where students in classrooms can see themselves in the resources they use, teachers use, and the resources are just right, just in time, to ensure that all students have the access to resources and experience differentiation in all the teaching strategies. 

And finally, the 14 parameters encompass culture: changing that culture in a school, in a network of schools, or in a system to be focused on learning. Learning is our core business, and so we need to know not only every student's face, but how to teach each one. 

So, for me, the 14 parameters are the how of system, network and school improvement. How are you going to do this? Many jurisdictions have the ‘what’, they have documents about what we should be doing, why we should be doing it, but not the explanation of how we're going to reach and know and be able to teach each student.

JE: Yeah, and Lyn just to point out actually, it's interesting to clarify though, that some people think, ‘Wow, you're telling us to do 14 things all at once’. And that's not the case, is it? We're asking for that clarity, that precision, that zooming in to what they need at that point, you’re not expecting people to do all 14 are you?

LS: No. And we start out with; there are 3 non-negotiables. And one is a shared belief and understanding, as I mentioned, that all students can learn – all, and we really mean all. And number 6 (parameter 6), says that we use data walls in a private place to know the students, who they are, what their assessment pieces are, what their journey stories are about, and then that leads to a case management meeting. Are we going to case manage every student in the school? No. We're going to have instructional case management meetings for students on the wall who we're wondering about, and we want to know more about. And finally, the other non-negotiable is parameter 14 – we are all responsible and accountable for all our learners. That's faces of students, staff, support staff, and our parent community.

JE: So, assessment then, let's, I just want to briefly mention that – assessment, knowing where someone's at, what the gaps are, using that to inform what will happen next. That's obviously a crucial part of student learning growth. One of the things that you're certainly famous for in your work, Lyn, is that notion of ‘putting faces on the data’. I'm interested in the application of that in an autism-specific setting.

LS: Absolutely. So, the belief is that assessment data improves instruction for all students, and this 14-parameter framework must work for all students, not students who are in regular education settings, but I really do mean all. So, I have introduced parameter 3, which is assessment that improves instruction. So, the Assessment Waterfall Chart (Sharratt, 2019) is very specific in that learning intentions relate to the curriculum that the students are exposed to in Aspect schools, and that learning intention is very precise and unpacked in many different ways in Aspect schools – so they're using symbols, they're using multimedia approaches to learning. But students clearly know through multimodal communication, what they're learning and why they're learning it; and that flows into being very specific around how students can be successful in that learning. And that, to me, is a key; those success criteria, that our students at Aspect schools can articulate, can show through using technology that they understand what their steps are in learning. It might be just one or 2 steps, but they can articulate that in many ways. 

And the rest of my assessment that improves instruction is all about giving students descriptive feedback, not just orally, but different ways (depending on how that student learns) against the success criteria. That students are allowed to peer and self-assess against the success criteria. And finally, that students alongside teachers can set their own goals for learning.

So, for me, that waterfall chart is about precision and practice in every classroom, meaning in every Aspect school classroom. And today at this Learning Fair, teachers have been extraordinarily creative in terms of who their students are and how they can communicate how they can be successful. It's just simply amazing to understand that precision and practice of every teacher in an Aspect school.

JE: Lyn, that's great. We're going to come back to you later for some final reflections, but let's find out more about the task of bringing everyone together for this program. Karilyn Gumley is Deputy National Director of Aspect Education. Karilyn [you've] had the important job of coordinating ALIC across 10 schools and 113 satellite classes. It's a diverse system. I'm interested, what was maybe happening before this collaboration with Lyn in terms of professional learning and that sort of cohesion across the system? And how has this program changed that?

Karilyn Gumley: Okay, great. So really when we say 10 schools and 113 satellites, someone can put them all into the one geographical area and then the manageability of that actually isn't a huge issue. But, when you think that our 10 schools are from Port Macquarie all the way down to Riverina on the border of Victoria and into South Australia, we've got quite isolated schools. And then satellites again are spread around a quite large geographical area of a school. So, you've got a principal leading a main site with maybe 16 satellites in quite a large range as in Western Sydney, all the way out to a satellite in the Blue Mountains. 

So, I inherited a role that was about really connecting people. And that relied on the role per se. But in engaging with Lyn – who really collaboration is a through-line on all her work – it was about considering how do we bring 10 schools from far away all together and how do we build a shared language for the way that we work? Because, prior to me coming in, the schools worked independently. They were registered as independent schools and that's how they worked. There was a collegiality, but maybe not a trust of sharing data, or struggles, or challenges, or resources across those schools. So, the project really centred in that space. What are our shared beliefs and understandings and how we're accountable to them, and then where are the resources for all this work? And really these resources are in our schools, within our schools. 

So, it was about how do we set up collaborative structures so that we can work together, talk together, share data together, share practice together. And in all the work that I've done in education, the best learning I've gained is from watching other teachers teach, watching other leaders lead, looking at that data and having those conversations. 

So, this project was structurally about collaboration. Then it also had an underpinning of every face, knowing the faces of our students, which meant data. Do we know all our students as well as we want to? And what is the data that we're going to use to be able to do it? So, that was both a barrier and an opportunity. So, what data are we using? We found that 20% of our children were actually not measured on anything in particular; it was quite challenging to find the right data for those students. But our belief was that all children can grow given the right support and the right conditions, and we need to find out where they're at to start. 

So that really was the centre of the work. When I first came in, people wanted a glossy brochure on ALIC. What is it going to look like? What's the end product? What do you expect of me? But anything in this journey with Lyn Sharratt is about the actual narrative of the experience and establishing it in context. So, in the presentations from schools, every school has come from what is a strong need within their school. What does their School Improvement Plan say they need to be doing? What is the data saying they need to invest in their direction? What has the PL been to enable that to happen? And now there's a culture growth where the schools know each other very well. The schools go and do learning walks in each other's schools, the schools can ask very openly with trust ‘I'm not sure about this area. Has anyone done some work on that?’ And they'll get a pouring in of offers of assistance or support or collegial insights.

JE: You mentioned one of the challenges there. I should imagine there's been a lot of challenges. There's that constant learning, isn't there? So, it's been 3 years. There's that constant learning. You're adapting, as you say, it’s something we talk a lot about at Teacher, you're adapting to suit context, to suit changing needs of students, to suit changing staffing needs, changing community needs.

KG: Yes. So, there's a couple of challenges, I guess, within the ALIC program. And that is probably in the 14 parameters that Lyn presents. There are things like learning walks and talks where you ask the children 5 questions. When we first presented that to the group 3 years ago, I think probably 80 or 90% of the group said, ‘You can't do that to an autistic child’, right, ‘We can't do that. Who's going to do that?’ And I didn't come in with the answers. My role is to enable a school to develop a collaborative inquiry based on context and data and then support them to actually advance on that inquiry and find the answers and the solutions. And they have. 

So, we have a school, Treetops, that has led the field in that area. They have visual supports for answering those questions. The premise of that, again, is a shared belief and understanding that when children know what they're learning and why, they're engaged in the learning as opposed to it being done to them. And then when we're asking them, ‘how are you going?’ that's about feedback and descriptive feedback. Every learner deserves that. So maybe our anxiety about asking the question was a problem of practice around ‘how are we going to get around that?’ Because we believe that every learner needs to get that timely feedback. So, we've got to find ways of doing this. ‘Which school now is going to go on that adventure and find those ways?’ And that's what we've discovered. Treetops leading that field, found the way around learning walks and talks. 

Jo at South East Sydney, you know, she's worked now towards learner profiles. So, she's categorised the learners into 3 particular learning needs. And now the professional learning is catered to that. So, the teachers that have those cohorts are learning more about what I need to be doing in practice. What are the needs of these children? What are the high impact strategies that are required to move these students to the next level? Because we believe that all children can grow, even the emergent learner with a number of learning needs, they all can grow. So, we've got to find the solution to the problem. And that's what I've loved. It's the enabling of, ‘yes, we know that may initially have been a barrier in your thinking. And it could have been a no, but let's go around this. What's our fundamental belief and how are we now going to get to the next step?’

So professional learning has changed. In some schools, it's based on learner profiles. In other schools, it's, you know, 50% of the staff are under 5 years of teacher education and practice and experience. So, what professional learning do we need to really ramp up in that space? In some schools, it's been about leadership; it's about how do I bring a leadership team on board? I might be, I'm not sure about them yet. 

For me, one of the grapplings, I suppose, has been, it's not either or with autism PL and academic PL, or curriculum PL, or data. It's eventually to be a meshed professional learning. We need to keep our line of sight on both. But sometimes the pendulum swings one way to the next, depending on the need of the school. So that's a challenge for our leaders to always keep the line of sight on having the balance between the 2, and when that works, we see some fabulous results for the students.

JE: So yeah, as we mentioned in the intro, it's been 3 years now. It's already having a great impact. But as Dr Lyn Sharratt herself says, sustaining that improvement is what she calls ‘forever work’. How do you ensure then that this becomes part of the DNA, if you like, of Aspect schools now?

KG: This is a good question. Sometimes you think of sustaining and it's more of the same; you have an engaging year, and you think, ‘Oh, we've got to do this again’. Like a Learning Fair or a professional learning module. And you go, ‘That was great. We need to do more of this’. But your question is really asking me to think about, you know, in 5 years’ time, what would I like to see as a result of all this energy in the first 3 years. And I think what I would like to see is demonstration classrooms. So, I'd like to offer that up to the nation.

I think where the schools are going now, they're still on that journey. They've had a really successful experience in a focused collaborative inquiry. So, in the next couple of years, they'll change inquiries and develop, which is fantastic. But I'd really like to build going into next year 50 classes where we have the ability for others within Aspect and outside of Aspect to be able to come and walk and listen and observe teacher practice, exemplary teacher practice in those settings. Now, that's got some challenges – for the students particularly, we've got to be mindful of that – but I certainly think we can build our teacher workforce to feel comfortable to do that. And we've already started with learning walks and talks in all our schools. And we've started to invite some external people to be able to do that. So, schools are already getting a sense of this. 

But wouldn't it be marvellous to be able to say, ‘I want to learn so much more about this – Aspect is leading this field, I can have the opportunity to walk through a classroom and see that exemplary practice’. So, I'd love to be able to set that up, so we have that as an offering.

JE: Fantastic. It sounds great. Well, watch this space. We will watch this space. Brilliant. Thanks, Karilyn, and thanks to Lyn as well. So that’s set us up really nicely to find out more about what's been happening in some of those schools over the last 3 years. We'll be chatting to 3 of the principals after this break.

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JE: Welcome back to Episode 63 of School Improvement. Now, I'm delighted that we've got 3 Aspect principals here. As we were discussing with Karilyn earlier, it is a diverse system. So, I'm looking forward to finding out a bit about what's happening in different schools in different contexts. Now, Kaye Perry, you’re principal of Aspect Treetops School, and interesting with that, that's in Adelaide, so it's the Aspect school that's outside of New South Wales. You've got 80 students, you’re reception to year 10. Now, I thought one of the interesting things was you've got a fairly young workforce there, half of your staff actually are in their first 5 years. So, I guess for your school, ALIC was very much about providing structure to build culture, build a shared practice and confidence among those newer teachers, shall we say. Let's start with building culture, then – tell me a little bit about that.

Kaye Perry: Yeah, thanks, Jo. Yes, I do have quite a cohort of early career teachers at the school, which is really nice, but I guess we also have to be mindful that we do need those experienced colleagues to work alongside them. But those early career teachers bring, I guess, a real energy and enthusiasm to the work that they do, which is nice because it kind of naturally creates a positive school culture in itself. And then also they've got a willingness to learn. And I guess that's particularly our ALIC focus is really about having a culture of learning that's based and focused on learning.

So, the ALIC work, since we've introduced it 3 years ago, approximately, has really, those 14 parameters has really provided a nice framework to, you know, create a positive school culture and have that focus on learning, I guess, and it provides a good structure for our early career teachers. So, I guess Lyn's, parameter 1, I guess everyone having those shared beliefs and understandings that all of our students can learn when they're given the right supports and the right amount of time, we can see improvement in all of our students. And I think that also relates really nicely to our early career teachers because they need a really nice, supported environment and given the right time to develop their capabilities as well. So those that parameter 1 of Lyn's work, really frames the work that we do, I guess, with those early career teachers.

Also, building a collaborative team around those early career teachers has really been a focus and a priority for the work that we do. Obviously, having that team that they can share ideas with and learn from more experienced colleagues, you know, because that's where they will build their capability. And also, I guess finally around that, creating that culture of learning is when they first begin with us to support them around how you use data to inform instruction in their classroom. So, they require support in those early years around professional learning, what assessments we're going to utilise with our students, how our students can actually access some of those assessments, because, you know, they need additional supports in that area. And then, most importantly, taking that assessment to inform the teaching practice so that we do get quality teaching from those early career teachers.

JE: Now, listeners who are familiar with Dr Lyn Sharratt's work obviously will know about the learning walks and actually Teacher’s got a whole podcast on that where my fantastic colleague Rebecca Vukovic interviewed Lyn, actually in front of a live studio audience. So I'll pop a link to that in the transcript, or just search for Teacher Talks: Episode 1 (Vukovic, 2019). Kaye, how have your staff then embraced that practice of learning walks? Or, moderated assessments is another one, isn't it?

KP: Yes, so learning walks and talks, I guess it has to become business as usual. So, you know, I guess it's normalising that open classroom practice. So, in our very specialised setting, the teachers and school support officers are quite used to having leadership coming in and out of classrooms, to support behaviour and things like that. But also, we've really changed that focus over the last couple of years. And when we're doing those learning walks and talks, it is about, you know, we're focused on the learning. 

But it is business as usual, I think they're quite used to that. And also, we made from the start that the learning walks and talks was actually to support leadership in getting a better understanding of what supports and professional learning the staff actually required. So, taking that away from, you know, we're not actually observing their practice as such, we're actually seeing the professional learning, the support that we're providing, is it having an impact and is it working for the early career teachers? 

So yep, learning walks and talks. And it is a really beneficial thing for leadership to do. You get to see such great work that's happening across the classes, and also providing the teachers with that little affirmation, I guess, after you've been in the classroom is nice for their confidence and that, and feeling good about their self and the work that they're doing. 

Another practice that we've started is collaborative assessment of student work. And that's been really useful for our early career teachers. So, all classes bring a piece of work to the table. We have the curriculum there, we're aligning the work sample to where it fits on the curriculum with their outcomes, et cetera. And then having really rich discussions about where the student is in relation to the curriculum, what supports were utilised to get the student to that particular point, and then what supports actually might be needed to help the student move to the next step. So that's a really great thing. 

Individual case management meetings – that Lyn is very passionate about, parameter 6 – has also been utilised widely and it's almost embedded, I would say, across the school. We have a really great focus on that. That's where every teacher comes to the meeting with a student that they want to get support with, I guess, and then they have an experienced colleague with them and also someone from the leadership team. And we have a really supportive, non-judgmental conversation about the strategies and supports that that teacher could potentially use in order to have a more positive impact on that student. And then we reconvene in about 3 or 4 weeks after the initial meeting to basically discuss the strategies that were used, to see if there was an impact on the supports that were suggested in that meeting. So that's like a real cyclic, I guess, model, but the teachers have really embraced that.

And providing co-planning opportunities has been really impactful, I think, across the school. And especially for early career teachers, if they've got the opportunity to meet with someone from the leadership team and some experienced teachers, and they get to look at assessments, utilise the assessments to inform their planning, and then go back and implement that practice and that teaching within their class. Yeah, it's just been really powerful for them. And I think when we do our learning walks as a leadership team, that is probably one of the things that has, we've seen the most impact, is that co-planning. You know, we've seen differentiation more so across the classes, those really nice structures and supports in place. Yes, so co-planning is, I think, a real key to support our early career teachers.

JE: So, as a leadership then it's I know that you were focused on that mentoring as well, that modelling. As you were saying there, it's about sort of, becoming everyday practice, about being normal practice, embedding that into your daily routines, having that culture of continual improvement, which you've worked hard at there at Treetops. Tell me about the impact then on students. What difference has it made for them? It's a big question. Good luck with trying to sort of squash it into something manageable, but I know there's tons of impacts, but what's really stood out for you?

KP: I think when you walk through the school, you see students engaged, which obviously is what you want to see ultimately. But, in our specialised setting, we see students having their sensory breaks and movement breaks and that but on the whole you see students really engaged in their learning. And particularly in that morning block, because our focus has really been around providing a quality literacy session for our students. But the learning is still very individualised, there's still all those autism-specific supports in place depending on the needs of that particular child. And the learning's targeted at their level because we've been supporting our teachers around, you know, assessment and using assessment to inform their practice. So, the learning is very much targeted at where the student's at. 

And a nice, I guess, correlation is we have seen, with more engaged students, we actually have seen a decrease in our behaviour data, which I guess is really affirming that we are on the right track; so that's nice to see behaviours minimised. And the ALIC work has also provided a real consistency across all our classes. So, while the classes and the students have individualised supports, things like the learning intentions, the success criteria, the environmental supports and the third teacher is really quite uniform across the classroom. So that, I guess, familiarity in supports makes transitions much easier for our students when they move to another class the following year and they get a new teacher, et cetera, or a new SSO. Those, yeah, supports are still, and those structures are still very much familiar to them – just individualised depending on their needs. 

And I guess the final thing is the data, especially for our literacy. We have seen growth in a vast majority of our students, particularly over the last 12 months, which is really nice that we are seeing those positive outcomes for all of those students, you know, which is ultimately what we want. So yeah, it's a nice thing when you sit around a data wall and the teachers can actually share the growth that their students have had, and we can celebrate those successes. So yeah, it's been a really nice journey so far.

JE: Thanks, Kaye. Thanks very much for sharing that, it's been fantastic.

KP: Thank you. Thanks, Jo.

JE: Okay then, Joanne Tisdell. Jo, you're Principal of Aspect South East Sydney School. And if the name's familiar to listeners, Jo, you did a great leadership Q&A with Teacher (Earp, 2024) last year. So, I'll pop a link into that as well in the transcript of this. Now your school spans 3 main sites and 10 satellites. And I should explain the Aspects satellite program –that places autism-specific classes within mainstream schools. Jo, you've got 210 students. The focus for your school has been around designing learning and refining practice based on learning profiles. So that's really been about helping the staff become more intentional in their teaching. So, things like using data walls, case management, the learning intentions and success criteria to build on those existing strengths of the students. I'm interested in how ALIC has supported your leadership vision then for designing learning for that range of learner profiles that you have.

Joanne Tisdell: Thanks, Jo. And it really was the springboard of our very first collaborative inquiry. And that was held at our main sites – so, for students who may have an intellectual disability, who do have complex needs, are often non-speaking. We articulated our literacy strategy around communication, and it was using a very specific assessment tool known as the ROCC assessment tool. That was the springboard for us to actually think about our whole span across our school and how we were meeting all of our learners' needs in exactly the intentional way we did at main site. 

What was critical is that we came back to our suite of assessments. We reviewed that, which meant we then clustered our students into specific cohorts. And that was in ‘emergent’, ‘transition’ and ‘conventional’. And from there, we were very specific about how we organised teacher professional learning, how our assessments informed pedagogical decisions, and what that looked like for assessment and reporting back to families. And so, the intentionality and the springboard from that one assessment at main site really did have us thinking about the whole school and the whole school cohort, how we manage that and how we refer to our learners. Our learners will move from emergent to transitional, or transitional to conventional, but across the school we need to be very clear in our teaching and learning strategy. And ALIC has really supported that thinking, that investigating and that decision making.

JE: Yeah, that's interesting. And what you're saying about how you refer to learners. So there was a lot of work that went on around the language of that, then I guess.

JT: Absolutely. So we want to be really neuro-affirming in how we approach our learners, but also really realistic in what those learners are demonstrating to us so that we can then match programs and match appropriate intervention. And so, identifying in the emergent space that we may have a student who is non-speaking is really powerful to that cohort because they are on the map. They are being thought about as specific students who need specific intervention. As are our students who are in conventional and may be sitting in the superior range of IQ. We need to equally design learning that's appropriate for those students.

JE: Yeah, and that consistency around language, and as you said, that intentionality really shines through there in what you've just told us there. I mentioned data walls and of course it's got to be this team approach, not just for your school but across the system. But what practical changes have you seen in how teachers use data and collaborate in your context?

JT: I love the conversations that come from the data wall, that's informally; but, formally when we run case management meetings, to have a teacher bring a student from that data wall to case manage their toolbox of strategies to actually inform next steps of teaching and learning is absolutely critical and it's so powerful. It means all of the teachers are owning all of the faces. And that's just ALIC, that's Lyn Sharratt. That's what we need to do. But a data wall will absolutely ensure we all own that student's teaching and learning.

JE: Yeah, and Kaye was just talking about that, you know, once you have that data, then it's a question of, okay, what does this mean? And where do we go to next? And how can we further support this student? You know, what else do they need? What do teachers need to know? So that's fantastic, isn't it, to be on the same page on that. Again then, I was saying to Kaye, this is a big question because I'm sure there's loads and loads of things that have happened at your school over the last 3 years. But in terms of the impact for students, then what stands out for you?

JT: What really stands out for me is that individualisation of teaching and learning. We have always been very person-centred in an Aspect school. What we didn't do was articulate the teaching and learning in really granular moments in time, so that we can be very specific about next steps. Next steps to the student via learning intentions and success criteria. Next steps to the parent so that we are sharing success. And, most importantly, for the teacher to have a very clear map within their programming of what they are doing. Where are we heading to? What next assessment are we using to inform instruction? That's been really critical to unpack across the school. 

I would also say closely related to the impact of students is the impact on teachers. It's a really tough job in an Aspect school. You may have a multi-stage class. You have students with varying learner profiles. You may have various special interests or accommodations that need to be put in place. And so, the more that we can refine and articulate what the teaching and learning looks like for each individual, again, the more intentional we are around the outcomes we can expect.

JE: I'm going to just add one further question on then because you've mentioned teachers there, we've talked about students, what about the impact for the principal then?

JT: The principal as lead learner has been absolutely profound. I have been ready for this journey. I've been ready to have ALIC and Lyn Sharratt join my school. I feel like she's right there with us. I think there's been a perfect balance between principals selecting what works for their school and what parameters to focus on. Whilst there are non-negotiables at SCS, we chose parameter 7 as targeted professional learning. That for me was an absolute game changer. I knew I was losing my staff in the professional learning space. That's actually not okay as a principal. We need to have teachers engaged, a thirst for learning. If we are creating learning environments, we need to keep learning. 

And I have learned so much and I think my passion has just been absolutely filtered through the school to the teachers and they can see the intentionality around everything that we are doing. It's clear, it's concise, and my teachers are now knowledgeable others in specific areas. How empowering as a teacher to be noticed by your principal, to be saying, ‘actually, you're the expert in this assessment’, or ‘you're the expert in this program’, or ‘I'd like you to take a lead’. Better still, the teachers are coming and asking to take a lead. We have more collaborative inquiries happening as a result of this work. That's exciting.

JE: Sounds fantastic, and yeah, you make a great point there about, you know, there are 14 parameters. It would be crazy to think that everybody's going to just do it all 14, so it doesn't work like that. You do have to focus in on what you want to do for your school. Thanks, Jo that was brilliant. Okay, my final guest then is Michelle Zikmundovsky. Now, Michelle, you're Principal of Aspect West Sydney, and that's a large Aspect school. There are 14 sites in total, so there are 13 satellite classes, and also that's across a large geographic area too. So, it's a different context, and I should imagine some unique challenges there. For you then, the focus has been on unifying staff; so bringing everyone together, collaborative assessment, shared curriculum planning, data walls. I'm interested, how has ALIC helped create a more cohesive, shared approach for your context? I mean, I guess having that structure there of the program itself was a massive win to start with?

Michelle Zikmundovsky: It definitely was because it gave us that structure that we needed. And the first part of the journey was really taking our leadership team on that journey, making sure that we had that shared understanding of where we were taking our school and really formulating what that looked like. Because I think part of the issue that we often have with teachers is they work in a deficit model, they'll look at the end of the day, and they'll look back at what's happened during the day and they focus on the negatives. They're, ‘oh, I didn't get around to doing this particular lesson’ or ‘Johnny's behaviour … if only I had tried X, Y, Z’. And we really had to spend a lot of time working with our staff to look at data from a celebratory perspective rather than a deficit. And so, then we could actually start to collaborate and use the data and the faces on the wall to look at how we work together in moving students on to what their next steps are.

JE: Yeah. And so having that consistent approach must be great as well, because I was mentioning about the geographic area. How wide is that actually?

MZ: So, let's just say you were to start at one of our sites and you were just to travel to each of those sites, it's over 150 kilometres and will take you about 3 hours, and that's not even stepping into each of the classrooms. This is where I guess the magic of the internet comes to play, because we have to have a lot of our interactions with our staff via Zoom. 

And we actually looked at case management, which is part of the work that we're doing. And we had to kind of formulate, well, how does this work when we can't all be in the same room, where we can't get that knowledgeable other and the principal and the staff in one room. And we created a system where during our staff PL twice a term, we have case management. So, what we do is in the weeks prior to case management, there's a student that's on our data wall that we're reflecting on, and it may be that that student is excelling in an area. It doesn't have to be that student is struggling. And we would go to the teacher, we would say, we'd like you to provide some work samples, we'd like to take this child to case management. Then all of the teaching staff that are involved in that process of case management would receive that information in advance and then would go through case management via Zoom. So, we'd have 3 different breakout spaces. 

And what we found is that the staff loved that because there was an element of connection. And we connect in a variety of different ways. Because we have high school teachers who are high school trained, but they may be working with students who for numeracy might be working at a Stage 2 level, or literacy they might even be working at a Stage 1 level. But in our case management meetings, we have primary school teachers there. So, the primary school teachers are, in essence, giving some of those foundational skills and information to our high school teachers. So, it's about everyone being there to celebrate where that child's at and to celebrate what those next steps may be.

JE: That's a great point about, I just want to go back to that point you made about, it's not just about picking out the things that are going wrong, it's about celebrating them. And that's a really great point that maybe that's something that we think … when we think of case management, you know … but actually, ‘wow, what great progress, let's see what we can learn from it’.

MZ: That's exactly right. And when we started this process, we had to spend a lot of time working with teachers and saying, ‘This is where your student is at now, but I want you to actually take some time to reflect where they were at the start of the term, where they were at the beginning of the year’. And it was when we started that process that teachers actually went, ‘Oh, I am making a difference’. And part of that case management structure is there may have been a teacher that had taught that child 3, 4 years ago in one of our different satellites. And then part of the conversation is the celebration of the current teacher, where those teachers are saying, ‘I taught Johnny 4 years ago and at that point, he was unable to write a whole page of written text and he's able to do this now. How amazing’. 

So, we're really shifting our focus on data not being a dirty word. It's a celebration of the work that we do. And what it's actually doing is creating such vibrant discussion and it's creating a space where staff feel that the data empowers them in the classroom, rather than dragging them down.

JE: And as you say, because you're across a wide area, you can't be in the same room physically a lot of the time. So having that kind of connection there via Zoom is great. And another point there, another really great point about sharing that expertise that you've got in terms of the primary with the high school teachers at the satellite classes. We've talked about there the impact on teachers and it's having a really big impact there. I'm going to ask you the same question as the other principals though, and preface it with the same thing I said to them, which is, I'm sure there's loads that's happened as a result of this. But what's been sort of the standout in terms of the impact for students for you?

MZ: I think the standout is we all know the students much more deeply. That is the complete standout. Let's just say a family rings up and they're concerned about where their child is educationally. Previous to our ALIC work, we would be going to the classroom teacher. We'd be asking them those questions because we're not all on the same space. Now, all I have to be able to do is I can go straight to the data wall. I can use our QR code system. I can look at all of their work samples. I can speak to anyone on the leadership team or the teaching staff, and within seconds have a very clear understanding of where that child's at, which means that we're much more responsive to our families in understanding where their child is at educationally. But further than that, what we're doing to move them to their next step. Because each of our students is going to be learning differently, and they're going to be at a different place. And it's not about looking at where that child is as a negative. It's really about ‘look at the strides that your child is making as they move forward through this journey’. 

And additionally, one of the big impacts is the data wall means that when we're looking at placement for our students, we look at it really differently. We actually go to the data wall. For example, we've got some of our kids transitioning from our main site to some of our satellites. We know academically where those students are sitting. We can see where the students are sitting at that satellite program, and originally, we were going to send the students to one of our satellite programs, but when we had a look, we went, ‘well, if we actually sent them to that satellite, then the teacher would be teaching Early Stage 1, Stage 1, Stage 2, all in the same class’. And is that fair on that teacher to be having so many different learning stages? Is there a more appropriate placement where we're grouping kids that are at similar stages academically and holistically those particular students are working well together? So that's also been the other major impact that we've seen.

JE: Thanks, Michelle. That's been brilliant to hear a bit about the impact of ALIC for leaders, for teachers, and of course, those all-important student outcomes. A reminder, this is just a little snapshot that we've brought you today. Dr Lyn Sharratt, I do want to come back to you for a final thought before we finish. What lessons from Aspect's journey could inspire other education systems?

LS: Well, I think the lessons that I've learned over time in working with Aspect’s leaders, teachers, and of course students is that leadership matters. I can't say that enough. The Aspect leaders are humble. They're lead learners. They're very caring. And they learn alongside their teachers. They walk the talk, they talk to teachers, they teach. And, for me, they're strategically recruiting similar people who have that knowledge of the students, who have the expertise and are evidence proven in their work, they have made impact with students with special needs. 

So, leadership to me is everything in being able to sustain the excellent work that's value added in Aspect schools. They're always thinking about going more deeply. They're always saying that the work is never over, this is our forever work. So, bottom line, I believe that leaders control the conditions for success for all students, for all learners, that’s staff, parents, and students. 

So finally, I think it's really important that leaders articulate the vision of Aspect schools at every opportunity. And leaders are able to articulate the value add by sending students to an Aspect school. So, to me, leadership is everything and underpins every one of those 14 parameters that make a difference to improving student success.

That's all for this episode. A massive thank you to all of my guests and a big thanks to you for listening wherever you are. We'll be back again with a new episode very soon.

References and related reading

Earp, J. (2024, November 27). Leadership Q&A: Supporting students in an autism-specific setting. Teacher magazine. https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/leadership-q-a-supporting-students-in-an-autism-specific-setting

Sharratt, L. & Fullan, M. (2012). Putting FACES on the Data – What Great Leaders do! Corwin Press.

Sharratt, L. (2019). CLARITY: What matters most in Learning, Teaching and Leading. Corwin Press.

Vukovic, R. (2019, September 5). Teacher Talks Episode 1: Dr Lyn Sharratt on Learning Walks and Talks. [Audio podcast episode]. Teacher magazine. https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/teacher-talks-episode-1-dr-lyn-sharratt-on-learning-walks-and-talks