Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Teacher Staffroom, where we catch you up on the latest evidence, insight, and action in education. I'm Dominique Russell.
If you listened to last month’s episode of Teacher Staffroom, you’ll recall that our annual reader survey has wrapped up for 2024, and we’re already working on responding to the feedback that you gave us. This year, when we asked you what topics you’d like to see us cover in the future, many of you said curriculum implementation. So, that’s something we’ve been focusing on this month at Teacher, and in this episode, I’m going to catch you up on what we’ve shared.
Don’t forget, like all episodes of Teacher Staffroom, I’ll be posing some questions throughout this podcast, so feel free to pause the audio as you go, gather some colleagues, and discuss together how these stories might be relevant to your school context. Let's get started.
So, to kick us off, think about who teaches the Health and PE curriculum in your school. Are they a specialised teacher in this area, are they a generalist teacher perhaps, or are they even an out-of-field teacher? Are they employed by your school, or are they actually employed by a third-party provider?
Well, new research in New South Wales has shown that only 36% of schools employ Health and PE (or HPE) specialist teacher to be in charge of this curriculum area. Dr Jessica Amy Sears from Charles Sturt University, and Professor Rachel Wilson from the University of Technology Sydney, have explored the current status, staffing and teaching of HPE in New South Wales government schools and have recently published findings in the Australian Journal of Education.
Dr Sears said one aspect the project sought to better understand is the marginalisation of HPE, as schools focus on other curriculum areas. Here’s what she had to say:
High-stakes testing, such as NAPLAN results, have changed how curriculum is valued and placed greater importance on literacy and numeracy. Many teachers sensed, and some research documented, a marginalisation of other key learning areas, including HPE. And in terms of research, it was clear that little was known about the place of other curriculum areas, such as HPE.
So, their study involved primary, secondary and K-12 schools. And so, it was also found that primary schools were far less likely to employ specialist HPE teachers, because this curriculum area is expected to be taught by generalist teachers. It was also found that 67% of schools are outsourcing at least some HPE lessons, which Dr Sears says is significant, due to these providers being largely unqualified or unregistered.
Now, one point that really stuck out from me in this piece was who’s paying for these external providers. Their research found that parents were the most commonly reported source of payment for these outsourced lessons which, of course, highlights potential equity issues. Here’s another quote from Dr Sears:
Almost half of outsourcing schools reported that they do not allow students to participate in outsourced lessons if parents did not pay or provide permission … Both charging parents for core curriculum, like HPE, and excluding students if payment or permission is not provided, are concerning developments.
So, that brings me to our first question for this episode. Does your school outsource HPE to external providers? How do you ensure these lessons maintain quality and consistency? If you are outsourcing lessons, who pays for them? How do you ensure this doesn’t get in the way of equitable access to HPE lessons?
In other research news, we recently had a closer look at a new Australian report from ACER analysing the latest PISA data. In PISA 2022, one of the topics explored in the questionnaire was disciplinary climate. Students were asked to respond to a range of statements on disciplinary issues with how they occurred in their class. Here’s what the ACER report said about findings for Australia:
Australian students’ reporting of disciplinary climate was one of the least favourable among the comparison countries that performed higher or the same as Australia in mathematics in PISA 2022 … All but 2 [of these comparison] countries (Sweden and New Zealand) had a more favourable disciplinary climate than Australia.
So, while a range of disciplinary issues contribute to Australia’s unfavourable disciplinary climate, one driving factor is digital distractions, and the findings in this area are really interesting – a higher proportion of students in Australia reported getting distracted by digital resources, and by other students using digital resources, than the OECD average.
So, I suppose the most obvious question is, what is a digital resource in this context? That would be smartphones, for one, but also websites and apps. There is a much more in-depth breakdown in our full article at our website, teachermagazine.com, so I’ll leave a link to that article in the transcript of this podcast, which you can find under the audio tab on our website.
But for now, here’s a question for you to reflect on. How do you provide opportunities for students to learn digitally, while ensuring they stay focused and on task?
And, on this topic, a quick note that we also published an article earlier this week on brand new PISA analysis for students in Australia on the topic of creative thinking, so head to our website to find out more about that.
So, on the topic of creativity, we published a new reader submission article by Michelle Lucas and Dr Geraldine Townend from the University of New South Wales, where share how creativity can be nurtured across the curriculum in English, Creative Arts and Science and Technology.
So, they share some really practical strategies throughout these 3 subject areas in the piece. For example, they explained the use of elaboration and adaptation as strategies for nurturing creativity in English and they specifically shared a lesson idea that related to reimagining existing literary works. Here’s what they wrote:
To use elaboration in the classroom, you might ask students to select a single word or sentence from a text and use it as a springboard to create a story, poem, picture, or song. Another approach is to have students write about what happened before the events of a story begin. This prequel exercise fosters critical thinking about character motivation and plot development while providing students with the freedom to invent backstories and settings.
So that quote there brings me to a question for you to think about. The article shared some practical examples of how to nurture creativity in different subject areas. How are you fostering creativity in your own classroom?
And, if you’re listening to this as a teacher, leader or academic and you’re wondering how you can have the opportunity to have an article published yourself, we welcome article submissions at any time. If you go to our website and scroll right down to the bottom, you’ll see a submissions and feedback hyperlink which contains all the information you’ll need.
So, coming back to our overall theme of curriculum implementation, you may have seen that we recently published our profile on the 2024 winners of the Excellence in Curriculum Design and Implementation category in the Teacher Awards. The winners of this award are from Parklands Christian College, a K-12 school in Queensland, and they are Kristie Shulz and Elizabeth Willman who are both in Head of Curriculum roles. They have been recognised by our Judging Panel for their work on the school’s STEM curriculum, which involved using evidence-based practices to build, test, and evaluate the STEM curriculum, which also draws on students’ interests and local issues.
Essentially, the school first designed and enacted the STEM program in 2017, and it has continually evolved since then. It began as an elective subject in year 9 and 10, was then expanded to year 8, and in 2023 they successfully translated the STEM program for prep and year 1 classes, which is the work they were specifically recognised for with this award. In the article, they share how they collaborated on this curriculum project and how they drew on the Australian Curriculum General Capabilities and Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s 21st Century Skills. Here’s a quote from Kristie:
But all of the STEM projects are bespoke. We come up with the ideas and concepts based on those General Capabilities and then they're scaled to the age group that we're pitching to. [That’s] where the interplay of our expertise is really helpful.
So, one aspect of the STEM program at Parklands Christian College that impressed the Teacher Awards 2024 Judging Panel was the collaboration across year groups. So, thinking about your own context and curriculum area, are there opportunities bring together different year groups on collaborative learning projects?
And finally, I wanted to end this episode by highlighting the most recent podcast episode in our Global Education series. Our Editor Jo Earp spoke with Lon, Foundation Principal at Lab Langban school in Laos. It was a fascinating discussion – if you’ve listened to our School Assembly podcast series where we follow Foundation Principals here in Australia, you might find it particularly interesting in terms of the unique perspectives that Lon has as Foundation Principal in her context, which is really different to what we’ve got here in Australia.
In the episode, Jo asked Lon if the instructional approach at the school is focused on play-based learning. Here’s what Lon said:
Easy to understand, it’s play-based learning [and it's] rooted in, you know, a student-centred, project-based learning approach, inquiry-based, creating that engaging and dynamic classroom environment. And even the play-based learning, that idea, we need to convince the community and the families that, you know, students learn through play – that simple sentence we have been spinning since we started until now; we're still trying to convince them even more that when your child plays, your child is learning at the same time. So, that's part of our main job to convince and to communicate with the community that play and learn connect – they are not 2 separate things. But that's hard. Yeah, we will keep trying basically.
And so, one part of the episode that really stuck out to me was when Lon spoke about how one priority at her school is to create a safe space where children and staff feel able to express themselves and have a voice, and that those voices are really listened to. So, as a teacher, how often do you seek out student feedback? How do you create a safe space there they feel comfortable enough to contribute?
So, that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. You’re now all caught up on the latest evidence, insight and action. I’ll leave the links to the full articles and podcast episodes I mentioned today in the transcript of this podcast episode, which you can find under the podcast tab at our website.
