EduResearch Matters

EduResearch Matters is a blog for educational researchers in Australia to get their work and opinions out to the general public. Please join us here. We would love to get your comments and feedback about our work.

Refugee Week: Why universities could – and how they should – offer refuge

equity in higher education, higher education, higher education policy, refugee students, , , , , , ,

Every year, a fraction of the world’s forcibly-displaced people get the opportunity to resettle in one of the main refugee-resettling countries, including Australia.  Refugees escape war and violence and search for a place to rebuild their lives. Access to and success in higher education supports refugee integration. However, while access to higher education is around 40 per cent on average globally, among refugees, it is only six per cent.

There is much universities can do to address this challenge! 

This week (June 18 to June 24) is international Refugee Week and its theme is Finding Freedom. Freedom is more than the absence of suffering and persecution; genuine freedom entails having the opportunities to be and do what one has reason to value. For refugees, having real freedom means being able to make their own decisions, engage meaningfully in society, and achieve their goals and aspirations. 

In this piece we reflect on education as a means of freedom and the role of universities in helping refugees find freedom.

Globally, universities engage in humanitarian work in many ways. Universities, as public goods, can facilitate integration opportunities through their role in society. Firstly, as sites of higher learning, universities can offer hope and pathways to individual, community development and tools for economic participation and future nation-rebuilding. Secondly, as key brokers between students and professions — through liaison with community, employers, and professional associations — universities can push for more postgraduate opportunities and shift employer and societal attitudes towards more positive welcome for forced migrants. Thirdly, universities have a role to play in creating more durable solutions to refugee resettlement through the development of educational migration refugee pathways.

Universities Can and Should Play a Bigger Role in Supporting Refugees

In a recent book, entitled The Good University, sociologist Raewyn Connell highlights five key features of a good university. For Connell, a good university is democratic, engaged, truthful, creative, and sustainable,“fully present for the society” that supports it. An engaged university is a responsive and responsible university. A good university produces socially relevant knowledge for addressing pervasive issues (e.g. environmental catastrophe and humanitarian crises). An engaged university deals with difficult societal issues such as injustice, racism, domination, and exploitation.

A good university is not simply an economic machinery; it does not aspire just to contribute to knowledge economy. A good (and engaged) university is committed to building a knowledge society that is just, caring, democratic, and sustainable. 

In our collective response to humanitarian crises, universities have three critical roles to play. The most common strand of engagement concerns widening access to teaching and learning in higher education. Universities can offer special consideration to admit forcibly displaced people, including offering online access to courses to people in displacement contexts, such as this example from the University of Leicester in the UK. Many universities in Australia and internationally also offer financial assistance in the form of scholarships.  

The second form of humanitarian response is research and training. Universities generate knowledge on causes, consequences, and potential solutions of humanitarian crisis. Humanitarian training focuses on equipping leaders in emergencies with evidence-based knowledge and skills. Examples include the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Deakin University’s Centre for Humanitarian Leadership.

The third example of university responses to humanitarian crisis is advocacy. University staff and students in the Global North engage in awareness raising activities and campaigns. The efforts range from mobilising financial resources and engaging in public consultation to organizing seminars and panel discussions on humanitarian issues. National examples of coordinated advocacy include the Universities of Sanctuary movement in the UK and the Welcoming University initiative in Australia. The Refugee Education Special Interest Group is an example of a grassroots activism network in Australia that works to advocate for better educational opportunities and outcomes for students from forced migration backgrounds. At the institutional level, the Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion at UTS is an excellent example of a university that is leveraging its resources to advocate at the local level, as well as using its networks to amplify its own and other advocates’ messages nationally.

Policy Invisibility of Refugees

Policy invisibility is a major issue in Australia. Despite being a signatory to major global refugee-related initiatives, including the Refugee Convention (1951) and the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants (2016), Australia has failed to ensure that refugees are consistently included in educational policies. Major national inclusion initiatives (for example, the Multicultural Access and Equity Guide and the Alice Spring Educational Declaration) recognise refugees as targets of policy action. However, when it comes to the higher education sector, refugees are invisible. They are subsumed under other equity groups such as Non-English Speaking Background or low Socio-Economic status group. None of these grouping recognise unique educational needs of refugees.  Policy invisibility at sectoral level means, universities have little or no financial incentives to support students with forced migration backgrounds. 

What can be done

In a report to the Commonwealth government, Peter Shergold and colleagues stressed: “Investing in refugees, investing in Australia”.  That is true.  High educational attainment enables refugees to actively participate in the economic, social, and cultural lives of the host society.  It supports integration. Conversely, low educational attainment means a loss of human capital, which in turn may diminish national economic productivity and competitiveness. This is particularly the case, given the majority of refugees are young and eager to rebuild their lives. 

In their journeys to, through, and out of higher education, refugees and asylum seekers in Australia can face many challenges associated with English language proficiency, navigational resources, and ongoing academic support. 

Facing similar challenges, the German government managed to enrol tens of thousands of refugees into higher education by (a) funding an independent agent that could assess educational levels and qualifications of refugees, (b) supporting refugees to study in special academic preparatory colleges, and (c) providing funding to universities  enable them to provide ongoing academic support to refugee students.

We believe we can learn a lesson from the coordinated approach to refugee education in Germany. This requires policy recognition as a formally identified equity cohort; it necessitates sustained ‘Welcoming Refugees Universities’ coordination; and it demands a greater shared responsibility between students, staff, institutions, and governments to make sure that the challenges we have been writing about for nearly 10 years become action points, rather than points of perennial concern. 

What matters is that educational opportunities help refugees find freedom. The importance of freedom and education for refugees cannot be overstated. For refugees, freedom means more than just the absence of physical confinement. It also means the ability to live a life of dignity and autonomy. Education is a key enabler of this kind of freedom. 

A free and fair society should ensure that all qualified members have access to quality and relevant higher education. By providing refugees with the knowledge and skills they need to thrive, education empowers them to build a better future for themselves, and their families. 

From left to right: Dr Tebeje Molla is a Senior Lecturer and ARC Future Fellow in the School of Education at Deakin University, Australia. Dr Sally Baker is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at UNSW. The Hon. Prof. Verity Firth is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Social Justice & Inclusion) and Executive Director, Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion at UTS.


ChatGPT: What do we know now? What must we learn next?

artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, , , , ,

I was honoured to join a TEQSA/CRADLE panel last week, the third in a series on the implications of ChatGPT (or GenAI more broadly) for higher education. In the second panel in March, I flagged the absence (at that early stage) of any evidence about whether students have the capacity to engage critically with ChatGPT. So many people were proposing to do interesting, creative things with students — but we didn’t know how it would turn out.

But three months on, we now have:

* myriad demos of GPT’s capabilities given the right prompts

* a few systematic evaluations of that capability

* myriad proposals for how this can enable engaging student learning and a small but growing stream of educators’ stories from the field with peer reviewed research about to hit the streets.

I also urge us to harness the diverse brilliance of our student community in navigating this system shock, sharing what we’re learning from our Student Partnership in AI. 

The following is an edited transcript of my presentation to the panel.

Educators are now beginning to be able to articulate what ChatGPT literacy looks like,  they have a sense of what the range of ability is within their cohort, and they’re beginning to gain insights into how to better scaffold their students. So for example, I’ve been talking to some of my most exciting colleagues here at UTS, asking them to tell me, how are you using ChatGPT? And in particular, what’s the capacity of your students to engage critically with its output? That is something we hear a lot about all the time. Three months ago, we really couldn’t articulate what that looked like. Now we can. So let me give you four glimpses of what some of my colleagues were saying to me. 

Antonette Shibani  teaches applied NLP to data science master’s students – they have to write a critical summary and a visual map of ethical issues using NLP. They’re encouraged to use ChatGPT for various purposes and to reflect on their use of it, and how useful it was. So the most able students, she tells me, could engage in deep conversations with AI, and they were using excellent prompts and follow up replies to the agent, whereas the less able students were using simple prompts to access content they didn’t have deeper discussions with the AI.

Here’s Baki Kocaballi, teaching interaction design, and the students are using GPT to develop user personas and scenarios, ideating solutions and reflecting critically. The most able students were doing this, they were generating rich scenarios with ChatGPT. Yet he was not seeing any critical reflection on what made an AI output an appropriate or accurate response. And Baki is reflecting that this may be something to do with the subjective nature of design practice. The less able students could still get some good responses but not much good reflection going on. And he notes that he needs to provide more scaffolding and examples for the students. So we see this this professional learning as well amongst the teachers. 

Here’s Anna Lidfors Lindqvist, training student teams to work together to build robots, and again encouraging their use of ChatGPT and reflecting critically on it. The most able students could use it in quite fluent and effective ways. But the less able students  she notes, they’re  not really validating and checking GPT’s calculations. They’re struggling to apply information in the context of the project. Some actually just dropped GPT altogether. It’s just too much work to actually get it to do anything useful.

And a final example from Behzad Fatahi, teaching Yr 2-3 students, they’re using ChatGPT but they’re also using a simulation tool called Plexus to analyze soil structure interaction problems. The most engaged students were behaving as shown, but the least engaged students were struggling and were behaving like this. So, the point is not so much the details — the point is that our academics are starting to know, what does good look like? What can I expect from my students? There is clearly a diversity of ability to engage critically with a conversational, generative AI.

And when you step back from these particular examples and asked again, what are going to be the foundational concepts and evidence as it grows, around what we could call generative AI literacy, for learning, not for marketing, not for any other purposes that can be useful — for learning.

Conversational agents are not new in the world of education. They’ve been around in the AI and research literature for donkey’s years, but used well, they should move us towards more dialogical learning and feedback. So we’re all used to thinking about student peer feedback, learning designs, they’re now going to be interacting with agents. Those agents will be interacting with them and potentially with other agents as well, playing different roles and we will learn how to orchestrate these agents and define the roles they need to play. 

And every turn in this conversation is a form of feedback. The question is what move does the student make next? How do they engage with that feedback from humans and machines?

Now, we have concepts and evidence from pre-generative AI research around this. We have concepts such as student feedback literacy, and we have been taking inspiration from that and talking about student automated feedback literacy now. There is the notion of teacher feedback literacy as well, and similarly, we’re working on teacher automated feedback literacy. So these are powerful concepts I think, for helping us think about how we can study and equip students to engage in powerful learning conversations.

The final point I want to make is we need to work with our students.

We’ve been working with our Students’ Association here at UTS. We had over 150 applicants for a workshop where we took a stratified sample of 20. They engaged in pre-workshop readings where we presented them with a range of dilemmas involving ChatGPT and Turnitin, took part in online discussions and had a face to face workshop. They got briefings from UTS experts introducing generative AI, explaining how it’s being used creatively at UTS, such as the examples I just showed you,alking about the ethical issues around generative AI and talking about Turnitin what do we know about it? And should we turn it on? That is a decision we’re trying to make at UTS at the moment.reakout groups, a plenary discussion and we have a report currently under review by the students as to whether they have they’re happy with that as a summary of what they talked about.

But let me just share three examples of what they told us and you’ll see some echoes here with what we heard from Rowena Harper earlier. 

  • Firstly, they are asking, please equip us to use ChatGPT for learning. We are aware that it could actually undermine our learning if we don’t use it well, but what does that mean? You’re the educators — you should be able to tell us how to use it effectively for learning and not in a way that torpedoes our learning. 
  • Secondly, can we have more assessments, integrating ChatGPT in sensible ways. They were very excited to see the examples such as the ones I showed you because not all of them have experienced that yet. And finally, Turnitin. Well, yes, it may have a role to play as part of an overall approach to academic integrity. But please handle with care. If there are any questions about our academic integrity, we want to be invited for a respectful conversation, and not be accused of misconduct when, as we are already hearing, Turnitin is backing off from some of its original claims about how good its software is. It’s a very fast-moving arms race. 

So just to wrap up,  here are three questions about what we need to learn next. 

  • What do we mean by generative AI literacy and how do we scaffold it? 
  • How well do generative AI learning designs translate across contexts? They may look very promising, but we have to actually deploy those and study them in context. 
  • And finally, how are we going to engage our students in codesigning this radical shift with us? We talk a lot about diversity of voices and the design of AI. We absolutely need them on board, trusting the way we’re using this technology, seeing that we’re using it responsibly and ethically, and bringing the perspectives that they have. They’re the ones on the receiving end of all this policy we’re talking about.

Simon Buckingham-Shum is the director of the Connected Intelligence Centre at the University of Technology Sydney. He has a career-long fascination with the potential of software to make thinking visible. His work sits at the intersection of the multidisciplinary fields of Human-Computer Interaction, Educational Technology, Hypertext, Computer-Supported Collaboration and Educational Data Science (also known as Learning Analytics).

Hello (nuclear) submarine! What education needs to do now

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On September16  2021, a virtual, but nonetheless lethal, nuclear bombshell launched from Australia and bloomed into the skies of Normandy, killing instantly the diesel-electric Attack-class submarine that Naval Group of France was designing for Australia.

The Prime Ministers of Australia and the UK, with the President of the USA, had announced the birth of the AUKUS trilateral agreement, under which the first and major initiative would be to grant Australia with nuclear-powered submarine technology.

The move, justified by “a rapidly evolving geopolitical context” (a new Cold War era between the USA and China), left a massive gap to fill.

All the countries (USA, UK and France), that had transitioned from diesel-electric to nuclear-powered submarines only, had planned a transition spanning over 30 years, and had an existing nuclear industry (power plants), creating a critical mass of workforce and resources to be shared between the civilian and defence sectors.

Australia, when announcing the intent to become a nuclear nation for defence purposes only, had yet no plan to share with the public, but the pathway would be clarified 18 months later, in March 2023. 

A leap of faith of sorts…

Australia is meant to buy some existing submarines from the US in the early 2030s, before commissioning in the early 2040s AUKUS submarines built in Adelaide.

Going Nuclear for Defence …without pre-existing civilian industry

All the countries that have or are developing nuclear powered submarines have had an existing civilian nuclear industry: the most recent newcomers into that exclusive club, namely India and Brazil, could rely on a regulatory framework and resources to train the workforce that ultimately works for Defence.

Australia has nothing even remotely approaching these standards, despite some niche activities in nuclear physics but, with all due respect, mostly dedicated to fundamental research or medical applications, even though some recent incidents (the radioactive source dropped from a truck in WA) proved that our Australian structures were efficient to deal with them.

However, having nuclear reactors of more than 100 MWt of power output with High Enriched Uranium (which is weapon grade as well), within our home ports, close to our cities, is a totally different league, and social acceptance by the Australian community will take time and education.

Relevant courses content for Australian training organisations 

Three layers of knowledge exist in the overall nuclear submarine topic.

The external one is about the fundamentals in physics and engineering such as thermo-hydraulics, mechanical, but also chemistry, including the nuclear domain.

The intermediate layer is the contextualisation of the fundamental topics in the context of naval nuclear propulsion: radiation management, nuclear engineering, submarine maritime engineering, safety etc.

These first two layers are where Australian training organisations can contribute right now.

The deepest layer is connected to the actual physical assets that are not yet in Australia or bound by Intellectual Property rights due to the proprietary information owned by American or British companies. Australian entities would only be able to contribute in that field much later and via licensing rights commercial agreements, or around specific assets: training simulators and land-based nuclear reactor.

Human capacity building and development in the IAEA milestones

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has created a pathway for countries, like Australia, who would be willing to become operators of nuclear reactors but starting from the blank page.

Several streams need to be set:

–           at the governmental level with a regulatory body, to  will set up framework and governance, so that the nuclear operations can be safely implemented at any stage of the life cycle,

–          At the operator level (navy) to drive the nuclear reactors,

–          At the industry level, both for submarine nuclear propulsion and shipyard/facilities stewardship.

These streams will share common People and Culture (P&C) topics to address:

–          HR strategies, policies and requirements,

–          Workforce planning,

–          Education and training infrastructures,

–          Recruitment, training and authorisations.

Both the streams and the P&C topics will be paved with milestones across four phases.

Phase 1 is pre-project, familiarising with the demands of a nuclear mindset and exploring the options for infrastructures:  a feasibility study.

Phase 2 is about the project development and making choices in terms of technological and organisational solutions.

Phase 3 addresses the construction and commissioning of the facilities (land-based) and assets (submarines).

Phase 4 finally takes place with the operations on shore and active service at sea before a decommissioning.

Three-tier approach for nuclear knowledge

Developing a workforce for nuclear-powered submarines will require different levels of skills and qualification.

Most of the workforce will need to be nuclear aware: staff with no nuclear background but with strong nuclear safety culture, such as manufacturing and maintenance of non-nuclear systems.

In lesser numbers, the nuclearised staff will have sound nuclear knowledge and know-how, such as plant engineers, operation managers and nuclear personnel.

Finally, a few will be nuclear-only staff, experts working on primary circuit and nuclear core design, safety and research. It is unclear if Australian citizens would get to that level or if such experts will be imposed by either the US or the UK.

Any nuclear training comes on top of the primary qualifications gained by the workforce.

An awareness course can take a few weeks with on job training, but a nuclearised engineer would need a minimum of one year of full-time training (if not more) whilst a nuclear expert will come from the nuclearised after 10 or 15 years of practice.

In terms of simple numbers, for the Australian Navy operators, each reactor will need a minimum of 50 sailors and officers, but that number could easily double if not more.

For the industry and governmental bodies, the UK nuclear sector for Defence encompasses more than 20,000 people for 11 nuclear powered submarines.

Which workforce development model for Australia?

After the AUKUS announcement in September 21 and the disclosure of the pathway to nuclear submarine in March 23, the wheels are in motion.

With an overall budget of 368 billion and the flurry of announcements, all interested parties are pledging their support to the undertaking, and registered training organisations are no exceptions.

Fortunately, Australia can boast universities with relevant pre-existing capabilities in nuclear physics and engineering and naval nuclear propulsion, such as Australian National University, the University of New South Wales, or the University of Adelaide. They would address most of the needs for nuclearized personnel and could team-up or partner with other vocational entities (TAFE for instance) for the nuclear awareness part.

These entities would, in the Phase 1 of the IAEA model, work in the Education and Training of the workforce.

However, a HR strategy needs to be established: the custodian remains unknown at this stage, or maybe it will be in the remit of the Nuclear Submarine Task Force.

This point is crucial due to the timeline: Phase 2 states the need for the national and organisational workforce planning, and the subsequent adaptation of the academic and vocational Infrastructures and programs.

However, if Phase 3 gives an opportunity for Operator Training Centre establishment, such as a nuclear reactor training facility (both simulator and actual (small scale?) reactor), it is not before Phase 4 that the trained workforce will be able to put into practice the newly acquired skills.

These Phase 1 to 3 are expected to last at least 10 years, before Australians get to operate and maintain an overseas built submarine and 20 years to commission a locally built submarine whose nuclear reactor will be shipped from overseas.

The risk of sending trainees overseas is also to lose people to a very hungry industry for qualified personnel.

To boldly go where no one has gone before

Australia has burnt all the bridges and there is no plan B.

Training personnel from now on is the logical next step to acquire the “nuclear mindset”, but in a era of hyperactive professionals, the eternal question remains “what do we do next?”

Eric Fusil is an associate professor at the University of Adelaide, director of the Shipbuilding Hub for Integrated Engineering and Local Design, and is Submarine Design postgraduate courses coordinator. He is a naval architect by background and had his experience crafted by a variety of roles covering the full spectrum of a boat lifecycle (design, build, test and activation and sustainment) and worldwide (USA, France, Australia) including submarine shipyard facilities.

The chance to tell the truth about heroes

21st century teaching, teaching history, , , , ,

What should an Australian education researcher say about Ben Roberts-Smith? Should I again write about the ANZAC legend and its role in nationalist electioneering? What about something about the Australian National Values posters, complete with ANZAC iconography, you’ll find in most schools, tucked away near a photocopier somewhere? Relic of a time when school funding became about flagpoles. Maybe something else about the remit of all humanities and social science teachers – Australian citizenship and the characteristics of being Australian: courage, egalitarianism, endurance, mateship according to the Australian ANZAC portal.

You ask me what Roberts-Smith means for how we teach history in Australia? I’ll tell you what this means. This is an opportunity to teach the history of Australia’s supposedly ‘great men’ and teach them truthfully. Ben Roberts-Smith is just another allegedly legendary man whose actions have been exposed.

Last week, Justice Anthony Besanko handed down his judgment in the defamation trial brought by Ben Roberts-Smith where the former soldier claimed to have his life ruined by six articles published by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times. Australia’s most decorated living soldier, Victoria Cross and Medal of Gallantry winner Ben Roberts-Smith, sought to clear his reputation.

As Michael Bachelard wrote for Nine Newspapers this week: “The main judgment – ruling on the question of whether the newspapers defamed the war hero, or if he is, in fact, a war criminal – was handed down on Thursday, June 1, 2023. The judge found overwhelmingly for the newspapers, finding Roberts-Smith was, on the balance of probabilities, a murderer, a war criminal, a bully and a disgrace to his country and the Australian military.”

What of other allegedly legendary men?

For example, Governor Lachlan Macquarie is way more decorated than Roberts-Smith. What’s a Victoria Cross in comparison to numerous geographic features and universities? Dr Amy Thunig in her TEDx talk explains how cold-blooded it is that someone who was instrumental in the Frontier War Appin massacre of the Gandangara and Tharawal men, women and children should be rewarded with such accolades. And Australia wasn’t the first place he glorified genocide. Macquarie began his brutal career in India, torching villages of Manantheri. Later, in 1799, he celebrated the aftermath of the defeat of Tipu Sultan where the bodies of Tipu and his people ‘lay in such immense Heaps on the Ramparts…as well as in different Parts of the Town that no regular account of them could be taken’. Lucky for the British Empire forces, there were no mobile phones at those parties recording anyone doing ‘shoeys’ or perhaps ‘leggies’.

Australian history teachers could compare Roberts-Smith to another allegedly legendary man of Australian history, John Eyre (decorated with peninsulas and giant lakes). He also went on trial for war crimes. Priya Satia recounts Eyre’s trial in her book on British colonialism, Time’s Monster (a book all history teachers should read). In Jamaica, where he was Governor after his time in Australia and New Zealand, Eyre ‘launched reprisals that killed more than four hundred black peasants. Hundreds more were flogged and arrested and thousands of houses burned’ (p113).  Eyre did ‘things that should make every Englishman blush with shame and indignation’ (Birmingham Daily Post, 21/11/1865). 

Eyre’s trial, a royal commission, was, like Roberts-Smith’s, spotted with Empire celebrities of the day presenting opinion pieces about the consequences of Eyre’s actions. Liberal philosopher and MP John Stuart Mill argued that Eyre was the opposite of what the civilising forces of the Empire were supposed to be. He argued for Eyre’s prosecution, as did Charles Darwin. But British public opinion was sympathetic to Eyre who had popular supporters like Charles Dickens and poet laureate Lord Alfred Tennyson.

Eyre’s trial interviewed hundreds of witnesses and produced a 1,200 page report that criticised him for excessive violence, dismissed him as Governor but exonerated him of murder and genocide because he approved the brutal actions after declaring martial law. We should keep watchful for such a technicality as Roberts-Smith’s consequences unfold. Hopefully we won’t have to teach our children that so-called great men still don’t get real consequences.


The study of history in schools has, and still is, one of the key architectures of nation building. Despite efforts by historians and history teachers to shift the methodology to include the stories of people long marginalised, it has always been broadly accepted by policymakers and politicians that the study of history is about ‘great people’ for young children to learn about to aspire to be great adults. Australian history is resplendent with allegedly great men including highly decorated soldiers who committed horrific crimes. Let’s teach about them, their decorations, their crimes and consequences (or lack thereof). And then let’s ask ourselves what it means to rely so heavily on asking our history teachers to engage in, as Banjo Patterson would say, nation building through stories of ‘shot and steel’.

Header images are, from left to right, John Eyre (by Henry Hering in the Caribbean Photo Archive ), Ben Roberts-Smith (photograph by Nick-D) and Lachlan Macquarie (image by unknown photographer, published by Blue Mountains City Library)

Dr Naomi Barnes is a network analyst and theorist interested in how ideas influence education policy. She is a senior lecturer in literacy teaching and has worked for Education Queensland as a senior writer and has worked as a secondary English, history and geography teacher in government, Catholic and independent schools.

How this oppressive test is killing the magic of childhood

Early Childhood, NAPLAN, , ,

NAPLAN is taking the fun out of early childhood learning. Early childhood learning encompasses education for children from birth to eight years of age and it is widely known that play-based programs planned with intentionality are the best way for teachers to engage young children in learning. Unfortunately, a focus on NAPLAN scores has resulted in many schools paying more attention to literacy and numeracy programs for children in primary school to perform better in tests in Years 3 and 5. This is impacting on the learning engagement of children in the earlier years. 

Research over decades has shown that play is how young children learn. Through interacting with their environment and their peers, children are making sense of the world and their place in it. These ideals are reflected in the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia that sets out what children aged up to five should be engaging with: “Play-based learning with intentionality can expand children’s thinking and enhance their desire to know and to learn, promoting positive dispositions towards learning” (p.21). The Early Years Learning Framework document applies for all children in the early years of school across Australia, yet the focus on Literacy and Numeracy is narrowing the curriculum and taking away the opportunities for children and teachers to engage in play-based learning.

Although NAPLAN does not happen until Year 3, when children are about 8 years old, it has been identified that teachers in the lower grades are being asked to teach Literacy and Numeracy in more formal ways. The concentrated focus on these two subject areas has led to an increase in the use of whole school commercial programs, some of which are specifically scripted. This practice reduces the autonomy of teachers to make decisions about their teaching based not only on their training but their knowledge of the children in their class. This raises concerns for the teacher and their practice, as well as the engagement of the children through more formalised learning practices earlier in their school experience.

With the publishing of results on the MySchool website and other unintended consequences of the standardised tests, including principal’s performance in some states being measured by these results, NAPLAN has become high stakes. For school leaders, there is pressure to do well, and this is being transferred to teachers and sometimes children and their families which may negatively impact on wellbeing. Even in schools where children traditionally perform well and there are programs focusing on wellbeing, some children are still feeling stressed about doing the tests and what the results will mean for them. This pressure is leading to children doing more formalised learning in literacy and numeracy from an earlier age and ‘play’ is often relegated to Friday afternoons if all other tasks are completed.

Play, or more specifically play-based learning, is often misunderstood within education, despite the evidence of its value. Play is often situated at one end of a continuum with learning at the other when in fact, intentional teachers can implement programs across this continuum to engage children in learning across multiple and integrated subject areas. When children are enjoying their learning through the play, they are often unaware that they are learning science, mathematics, and engineering in the block corner; or geography, history, and science when they are exploring gardening, including investigating how it was done by their grandparents.

Teachers who do not understand play and play-based learning approaches may be uncomfortable with the reduced control that comes through children learning in this way. Research conducted in both the science and technology domains, however, have shown that children often are more engaged and learn more than expected when they are interested in the learning and it is happening in a way that is authentic to their experience. Not only are the children in these research projects learning specific content, but they are also learning Literacy and Numeracy when they plan explorations, calculate results, represent findings, and use technology to create, research, record and share information. The multi-modal options that play facilitates, ensures that all children can feel a sense of accomplishment and can learn from their peers as well as their teacher.

Children do need to be literate and numerate, but NAPLAN scores are not showing improvement despite the increased focus on these two specific learning areas over recent years. At the same time, children are becoming increasingly anxious and disengaged from school from an earlier age. Research in early childhood continues to identify that children engage with and learn through play-based approaches, and through the intentionality of the planning, teachers have autonomy over their programs to suit the needs of the children in their classroom. Perhaps it is time that the fun is brought back to classrooms, not only for children under five but for all children in schools, so that they can engage and enjoy their learning. Engaged children may be less likely to resort to negative behaviour to gain attention, and a reduction in the use of prescribed programs and a little more fun may also help teachers feel valued for their knowledge and expertise. The potential is there for broader approaches and happier children and teachers through increased fun, perhaps helping to bring some teachers back to the workforce – a win all around!

Pauline is a senior lecturer in the Early Childhood program at ECU. Her teaching and research are focused on a range of issues in early childhood education including assessment, curriculum, workforce and reflective practice.

What we want to say right now to Sahlberg and Goldfeld

evidence-based practices, Reading, teaching reading, teaching writing, wellbeing, , , , , ,

Schools are places for all kinds of success, including academic achievement.

In their recent article, “If not now, then when is the right time to re-envisage what schools could be?” Professors Sahlberg and Goldfeld rightly shine a light on falling academic achievements among Australian students according to both national and international measures. 

Importantly, they note that these trends, seen across literacy, numeracy, and science, have stubbornly persisted in the face of increased per capita education spending. What is surprising to us though, is that Professors Sahlberg and Goldfeld seek solutions to academic struggles not in improved classroom instruction, but in extra funding and focus on wellbeing, without considering the contribution to wellbeing made via academic success. 

We agree with Sahlberg and Goldfeld’s assertion that many policy initiatives have overlooked the “interconnection between health, wellbeing, and learning”. There seems to be an assumption, however, that an uplift in educational outcomes and equity can be achieved without the discomfort and upheaval of focusing on low-impact instructional practices (reading being a key case in point). One cannot ignore that the relationship between wellbeing, engagement and academic success is complex. We hold that strategic investment and accountability for health in schools—without investment and accountability for improving instruction—will fail to shift the dial upwards on Australian students’ falling educational outcomes and growing inequities (see here). 

Perhaps what is missing from Sahlberg and Goldfeld’s position is the notion that responsive, effective and evidence-informed teaching plays a pivotal role in fostering students’ academic achievement, self-efficacy and thus wellbeing. Longstanding research into the health outcomes for individuals without key educational capacities reveals the protection that success in reading confers on wellbeing across the lifespan, not merely during the school years. There are also examples in our own backyard of schools in disadvantaged communities turning around wellbeing and behavioural challenges via the vehicle of improved instructional practices. Without policy support and investment in teacher professional learning however, such transformations are difficult to take to scale. These initiatives into professional practice also entail three to five years of solid investment of time and instructional coaching, which is far less attention-grabbing in brief news cycles and political campaigns, than bids for a wholesale priority shift from instruction to wellbeing.  

The vision presented in Sahlberg and Goldberg’s article highlights the importance of responsive and effective teaching to enhance children’s sense of success and confidence while meeting their wellbeing needs. We argue that, somewhat ironically, one of the best ways to meet children’s wellbeing needs is for schools to remain focussed on their primary purposes: ensuring all children learn to read, write, do maths, and gain the other capacities they need to succeed in life. Our nation’s performance in these key learning areas create a stark picture of haves and have nots with regards to this primary goals of education.

Promoting the health and wellbeing of students is undeniably important, but it is crucial that the core purposes of education are not diluted or compromised in these endeavours. We already have ambitious goals to deliver a world-class education to all students, with significant work still to do to realise these aspirations.  

Blurring the boundaries between the roles of educators and health professionals could potentially lead to attenuation of efforts to strengthen instructional capacity of our teaching workforce. Teachers are already under immense pressure with a wide range of pedagogical and administrative responsibilities. If the expectations placed on teachers expand to encompass mental health supports beyond their training and expertise, this creates a further risk of diverting their attention and resources away from effective teaching and learning.

We cannot see a case for a focus on health and wellbeing without considering the impact of the ways in which precious instructional time is used. Students have long been subjects of social and pedagogical experiments in education systems, typically without ethical or empirical oversight. Neither children nor their parents are given opportunities to give or withhold consent to many policy change experiments and taxpayers are asked to believe that as the problem grows, so too the financial investment for its downstream “fix” must grow.  

We do not agree that “bold new ways of thinking about children, their schooling and what it takes to secure healthier and happier futures for all of them” are needed. This is an invitation to a populist “re-imagining” rather than a commitment to translating into practice solid scientific evidence about human learning and self-regulation, and ways in which such knowledge can be utilised in all classrooms. Insights from such research have been missing from teacher pre-service education in Australia and may well be contributing to high rates of teacher burn-out and attrition from the profession.

It is a given that schools need to be places of physical, social, and mental health promotion. Against this backdrop, they then need to be meeting children’s human and legislative rights to an education. This means students emerging at least proficient in core areas of the curriculum, as a gateway to a lifetime of learning and social, cultural, economic, and civic engagement. 

Our biggest concern is the potential for well-meaning schools and systems to be wrapped up in ambitious health goals for their students, while tragically under-responding to the learning needs of the children in their care—given that success in learning can make its own independent contribution to wellbeing. 

From left to right: Nathaniel Swain is a senior lecturer in La Trobe University’s School of Education. He founded the national community of teachers and registered charity calledThink Forward Educators, and produces a regular blog for teachers known as the Cognitorium.  Follow him on LinkedIn or on Twitter@NathanielRSwain. Pamela Snow is professor of cognitive psychology in the School of Education at the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University, Australia and co-director of the SOLAR Lab (Science of Language and Reading). Her research has been funded by nationally competitive schemes and concerns the role of language and literacy skills as academic and mental health protective factors in childhood and adolescence. Tanya Serry is associate professor (Literacy and Reading) in the School of Education and co-director of the SOLAR Lab. She has taught in the Discipline of Speech Pathology. Her research interests centre on the policy and practices of evidence-based reading instruction and intervention practices for students across the educational lifespan. Tessa Weadman is a Lecturer in English, Literacy and Pedagogy in the School of Education at La Trobe University. She is a member of La Trobe University’s SOLAR Lab. Tessa’s research interests span across preschool and school-age language and literacy development. Eamon Charles is the academic intern in the La Trobe SOLAR Lab. He is an experienced school-based speech-language pathologist with special interest in the role of literacy as a protective factor in the context of childhood adversity.

 

Proactive and preventative: Why this new fix could save reading (and more)

Australian Education Research Organisation, mathematics, Reading, teaching writing, Underachievers, , , , , , , , , ,

When our research on supporting reading, writing, and mathematics for older – struggling  – students was published last week, most of the responses missed the heart of the matter.

In Australia, we have always used “categories of disadvantage” to identify students who may need additional support at school and provide funding for that support. Yet those students who do not fit neatly into those categories slipped through the gaps, and for many, the assistance came far too late, or achieved far too little. Despite an investment of $319 billion, little has changed with inequity still baked into our schooling system. 

Our systematic review, commissioned by the Australian Education Research Organisation, set out to identify the best contemporary model to identify underachievement and provide additional support – a multi-tiered approach containing three levels, or “tiers” that increase in intensity.

(de Bruin & Stocker, 2021)

We found that if schools get Tier 1 classroom teaching right – using the highest possible quality instruction that is accessible and explicit – the largest number of students make satisfactory academic progress. When that happens, resource-intensive support at Tier 2 or Tier 3 is reserved for those who really need it. We also found that if additional layers of targeted support are provided rapidly, schools can get approximately 95% of students meeting academic standards before gaps become entrenched.

The media discussion of our research focused on addressing disadvantages such as intergenerational poverty, unstable housing, and “levelling the playing field from day one” for students starting primary school through early childhood education. 

These are worthy and important initiatives to improve equality in our society, but they are not the most direct actions that need to be taken to address student underachievement. Yes, we need to address both, BUT the most direct and high-leverage approach for reducing underachievement in schools is by improving the quality of instruction and the timeliness of intervention in reading, writing, and mathematics.

Ensuring that Tier 1 instruction is explicit and accessible for all students is both proactive and preventative. It means that the largest number of students acquire foundational skills in reading, writing, and mathematics in the early years of primary school. This greatly reduces the proportion of students with achievement gaps from the outset. 

This is an area that needs urgent attention. The current rate of underachievement in these foundational skills is unacceptable, with approximately 90,000 students failing to meet national minimum standards. These students do not “catch up” on their own. Rather, achievement gaps widen as students progress through their education. Current data show that, on average, one in every five students starting secondary school are significantly behind their peers and have the skills expected of a student in Year 4:

Source

For students in secondary school, aside from the immediate issues of weak skills in reading, writing and mathematics, underachievement can lead to early leaving as well as school failure. Low achievement in reading, writing, and mathematics also means that individuals are more likely to experience negative long-term impacts post-school including aspects of employment and health, resulting in lifelong disadvantage. As achievement gaps disproportionately affect disadvantaged students, this perpetuates and reinforces disadvantage across generations. Our research found that it’s never too late to intervene and support these students. We also highlighted particular practices that are the most effective, such as explicit instruction and strategy instruction.

For too long, persistent underachievement has been disproportionately experienced by disadvantaged students, and efforts to achieve reform have failed. If we are to address this entrenched inequity, we need large-scale systemic improvement as well as improvement within individual schools. Tiered approaches, such as the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), build on decades of research and policy reform in the US for just this purpose. These have documented success in helping schools and systems identify and provide targeted intervention to students requiring academic support. 

In general, MTSS is characterised by:

  • the use of evidence-based practices for teaching and assessment
  • a continuum of increasingly intensive instruction and intervention across multiple tiers
  • the collection of universal screening and progress monitoring data from students
  • the use of this data for making educational decisions
  • a clear whole-school and whole-of-system vision for equity

What is important and different about this approach is that support is available to any student who needs it. This contrasts with the traditional approach, where support is too often reserved for students identified as being in particular categories of disadvantage, for example, students with disabilities who receive targeted funding. When MTSS is correctly implemented, students who are identified as requiring support receive it as quickly as possible. 

What is also different is that the MTSS framework is based on the assumption that all students can succeed with the right amount of support. Students who need targeted Tier 2 support receive that in addition to Tier 1. This means that Tier 2 students work in smaller groups and receive more frequent instruction to acquire skills and become fluent until they meet benchmarks. The studies we reviewed showed that when Tiers 1 and 2 were implemented within the MTSS framework, only 5% of students required further individualised and sustained support at Tier 3. Not only did our review show that this was an effective use of resources, but it also resulted in a 70% reduction in special education referrals. This makes MTSS ideal for achieving system-wide improvement in both equity, achievement, and inclusion.

Our research could not be better timed. The National School Reform Agreement (NSRA) is currently being reviewed to make the system “better and fairer”. Clearly, what is needed is a coherent approach for improving equity and school improvement that can be implemented across systems and schools and across states and territories. To this end, MTSS offers a roadmap to achieve these targets, along with some lessons learned from two decades of “getting it right” in the US. One lesson is the importance of using implementation science to ensure MTSS is adopted and sustained at scale and with consistency across states. Another is the creation of national centres for excellence (e.g., for literacy: https://improvingliteracy.org), and technical assistance centres (e.g., for working with data: https://intensiveintervention.org) that can support school and system improvement.

While past national agreements in Australia have emphasised local variation across the states and territories, our research findings highlight that systemic equity-based reform through MTSS requires a consistent approach across states, districts, and schools. Implemented consistently and at scale, MTSS is not just another thing. It has the potential to be the thing that may just change the game for Australia’s most disadvantaged students at last.

From left to right: Dr Kate de Bruin is a senior lecturer in inclusion and disability at Monash University. She has taught in secondary school and higher education for over two decades. Her research examines evidence-based practices for systems, schools and classrooms with a particular focus on students with disability. Her current projects focus on Multi-Tiered Systems of Support with particular focus on academic instruction and intervention. Dr Eugénie Kestel has taught in both school and higher education. She taught secondary school mathematics, science and English and currently teaches mathematics units in the MTeach program at Edith Cowan University. She conducts professional development sessions and offers MTSS mathematics coaching to specialist support staff in primary and secondary schools in WA. Dr Mariko Francis is a researcher and teaching associate at Monash University. She researches and instructs across tertiary, corporate, and community settings, specializing in systems approaches to collaborative family-school partnerships, best practices in program evaluation, and diversity and inclusive education. Professor Helen Forgasz is a Professor Emerita (Education) in the Faculty of Education, Monash University (Australia). Her research includes mathematics education, gender and other equity issues in mathematics and STEM education, attitudes and beliefs, learning settings, as well numeracy, technology for mathematics learning, and the monitoring of achievement and participation rates in STEM subjects. Ms Rachelle Fries is a PhD candidate at Monash University. She is a registered psychologist and an Educational & Developmental registrar with an interest in working to support diverse adolescents and young people. Her PhD focuses on applied ethics in psychology.  

Confusion on PIRLS reporting – some outlets make major mistakes

PIRLS, Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), standardised testing, , , , ,

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) results were released last Tuesday, generating the usual flurry of media reports. PIRLS selects a random sample of schools and students around Australia, and assesses the reading comprehension of Year 4 students. The sampling strategy ensures that the results are as representative of the Australian population of Year 4 students as they can be. 

These latest results were those from the round of testing that took place in 2021 amid the considerable disruptions to schooling that came with the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, the official report released by the team at ACER acknowledged the impacts on schools, teachers and students, especially given that PIRLS was undertaken in the second half of the 2021 school year – a period with the longest interruptions to face-to-face schooling in the two largest states (NSW and Victoria). 

Notwithstanding these disruptions, the PIRLS results showed no decline in the average score for Australian students since the previous testing round (2016), maintaining the average increase from the first PIRLS round Australia participated in (2011). The chart below shows the figure from the ACER report (Hillman et al., 2023, p.22).

The y-axis on this chart is centred at the historical mean (a score of 500) and spans one standard deviation above and below the mean on the PIRLS scale (1SD = 100). The dashed line between 2016 and 2021 is explained in the report: 

“Due to differences in the timing of the PIRLS 2021 assessment and the potential impact of COVID-19 and school closures on the results for PIRLS 2021, the lines between the 2016 and 2021 cycles are dashed.” (Hillman et al., 2023, p.22).

Despite these results, and the balanced reporting of the ACER official report, reiterated in their media release and piece in The Conversation, the major newspapers around Australia still found something negative to write about. Indeed, initial reporting collectively reiterated a common theme of large-scale educational decline. 

The Sydney Morning Herald ran with the headline: ‘Falling through the cracks’: NSW boys fail to keep up with girls in reading. While it’s true to say the average difference between girls and boys has increased since 2011 (from 14 scale scores to 25 in 2021), boys in NSW are by no means the worst performing group. Girls’ and boys’ average reading scores mirror a general trend in PIRLS: that is, improvement from 2011 and pretty consistent thereafter (see Figure 2.11 from the PIRLS report below). Observed gender gaps in standardised tests are a persistent, and as yet unresolved, problem – one that researchers and teachers the world over have been considering for decades. The words ‘falling through the cracks’ implies that no one is looking out for boys’ reading achievement, an idea that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

Similarly, and under the dramatic headline, Nine-year-olds’ literacy at standstill, The Australian Financial Review also ran with the gender-difference story, but at least indicated that there was no marked change since 2016. The Age took a slightly different tack, proclaiming, Victorian results slip as other states hold steady, notwithstanding that a) the Victorian average was the second highest nationally after the ACT, and b) Victorian students had by far the longest time in lockdown and remote learning during 2021. 

Perhaps the most egregious reporting came from The Australian. The story claimed that the PIRLS results showed “twice as many children floundered at the lowest level of reading, compared with the previous test in 2016 … with 14 per cent ranked as ‘below low’ and 6 per cent as ‘low’”. These alarming results were accompanied by a graph showing the ‘below low’ proportion in a dangerous red. The problem here is that whoever has created the graph has got the numbers wrong. The article has reversed the proportions of students in the two lowest categories. 

A quick check of the official ACER report shows how they’ve got it wrong. The figure below shows percentages of Australian students at each of the five benchmarks in the 2021 round of tests (top panel) and the 2016 round (bottom panel), taken directly from the respective year’s reports. The proportions in the bottom two categories – and indeed all the categories – have remained stable over the five-year span. This is pretty remarkable considering the disruption to face-to-face schooling that many Year 4 children would have experienced during 2021.

But, apart from the unforgivable lack of attention to detail, why is this poor reporting a problem? Surely everyone knows that news articles must have an angle, and that disaster stories sell? 

The key problem, I think, is the reach of these stories relative to that of the official reporting released by ACER, and by implication, the impact they have on public perceptions of schools and teachers. If politicians and policymakers are amongst the audiences of the media reports, but never access the full story presented in the ACER reports, what conclusions are they drawing about the efficacy of Australian schools and teachers? How does this information feed into the current round of reviews being undertaken by the federal government – including the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review and the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System? If the information is blatantly incorrect, as in The Australian’s story, is this record ever corrected?

The thematic treatment of the PIRLS results in the media echoes Nicole Mockler’s work on media portrayals of teachers. Mockler found portrayals of teachers in news media over the last 25 years were predominantly negative,continually calling into question the quality of the teaching profession as a whole. A similar theme is evident even for a casual observer of media reporting of standardised assessment results. 

Another problem is the proliferation of poor causal inferences about standardised assessment results on social media platforms – often from people who should know better. Newspapers use words like ‘failed’, ‘floundered’, ‘slipped’, and suddenly everyone wants to attribute causes to these phenomena without apparently questioning the accuracy of the reporting in the first place. The causes of increases or declines in population average scores on standardised assessments are complex and multifaceted. It’s unlikely that one specific intervention or alteration (even if it’s your favourite one) will cause substantial change at a population level, and gathering evidence to show that any educational intervention works is enormously difficult.

Notwithstanding the many good stories – the successes and the improvements that are evident in the data – my prediction is that next time there’s a standardised assessment to report on, news media will find the negative angle and run with it. Stay tuned for NAPLAN results 2023.

Sally Larsen is a Lecturer in Learning, Teaching and Inclusive Education at the University of New England. Her research is in the area of reading and maths development across the primary and early secondary school years in Australia, including investigating patterns of growth in NAPLAN assessment data. She is interested in educational measurement and quantitative methods in social and educational research. You can find her on Twitter @SallyLars_27

A new sheriff is coming to the wild ChatGPT west

artificial intelligence, , , , ,

You know something big is happening when the CEO of Open AI, the creators of ChatGPT, starts advocating for “regulatory guardrails”. Sam Altman testified to the US Senate Judiciary Committee this week that the potential risks for misuse are significant, echoing other recent calls by former Google pioneer, the so-called “godfather of AI”, Geoffrey Hinton.

In contrast, teachers continue to be bombarded with a dazzling array of possibilities, seemingly without limit – the great plains and prairies of the AI “wild west”! One estimate recently made the claim “that around 2000 new AI tools were launched in March” alone!

Given teachers across the globe are heading into end of semester, or end of academic year, assessment and reporting, the sheer scale of new AI tools is a stark reminder that learning, teaching, assessment, and reporting are up for serious discussion in the AI hyper-charged world of 2023. Not even a pensive CEO’s reflection or an engineer’s growing concern has tempered expansion.

Until there is some regulation, proliferation of AI tools –  and voices spruiking their merits – will continue unabated. Selecting and integrating AI tools will remain contextual and evaluative work, regardless of regulation. Where does this leave schoolteachers and tertiary academics, and how do we do this with 2000 new tools in one month (is it even possible)?!?!

Some have jumped for joy and packed their bags for new horizons; some have recoiled in terror and impotence, bunkering down in their settled pedagogical “back east”. 

As if this was not enough to deal with, Columbia University undergraduate, Owen Terry, last week staked the claim that students are not using ChatGPT for “writing our essays for us”. Rather, they are breaking down the task into components, asking ChatGPT to analyse and predict suggestions for each component. They then use ideas suggested by ChatGPT to “modify the structure a bit where I deemed the computer’s reasoning flawed or lackluster”. He argues this makes detection of using ChatGPT “simply impossible”. 

It seems students are far savvier about how they use AI in education than we might give them credit, suggests Terry. They are not necessarily looking for the easy route but are engaging with the technology to enhance their understanding and express their ideas. They’re not looking to cheat, just collate ideas and information more efficiently.

Terry challenges us as educators and researchers to think that we might be underestimating the ethical desire for students to be more broadly educated, rather than automatons serving up predictive banality. His searing critique with how we are dealing with our “tools” is blunt – “very few people in power even understand that something is wrong…we’re not being forced to think anymore”. Perhaps contrary to how some might view the challenge, Terry suggests we might even:

need to move away from the take-home essay…and move on to AI-proof assignments like oral exams, in-class writing, or some new style of schoolwork better suited to the world of artificial intelligence.

The urgency of “what do I do with the 2000 new AI apps” seems even greater. These are only the ones released during March. Who knows how many will spring up this month, or next, or by the end of 2023? Who knows how long it will take partisan legislators to act, or what they will come up with in response? Until then, we have to make our own map.

Some have offered a range of educational maps based on alliterative Cs – 4Cs, 6Cs – so here’s a new 4Cs about how we might use AI effectively while we await legislators’ deliberations:

Curation – pick and choose apps which seem to serve the purpose of student learning. Avoid popularity or novelty for its own sake. In considering what this looks like in practice, it is useful to consider the etymology of the word curation which comes from the Latin word, cura, ‘to take care of.’ Indeed, if our primary charge is to educate from a holistic perspective, then consideration must be extended to our choice of AI or apps that will serve their learning needs and engagement.

The fostering of innate curiosity means being unafraid to trial things for ourselves and with and for our students. But this should not be to the detriment of the intended learning outcomes, rather to ensure they align more closely. When curating AI, be discerning in whether it adds to the richness of student learning.

Clarity – identify for students (and teachers) why any chosen app has educative value. It’s the elevator pitch of 2023 – if you can’t explain to students its relevance in 30 seconds, it’s a big stretch to ask them to be interested. With 2000 new offerings in March alone, the spectres of cognitive load theory and job demands-resources theory loom large.

Competence – don’t ask students to use it if you haven’t explored it sufficiently. Maslow’s wisdom on “having a hammer and seeing every problem as a nail”  resonates here. Having a hammer might mean I only see problems as nails, but at least it helps if I know how to use the hammer properly! After all, how many educators really optimise the power, breadth, and depth of Word or Excel…and they’ve been around for a few years now. The rapid proliferation makes developing competence in anything more than just a few key tools quite unrealistic. Further, it is already clear that skills in prompt engineering need to develop more fully in order to maximise AI usefulness. 

Character – Discussions around AI ethical concerns—including bias in datasets, discriminatory output, environmental costs, and academic integrity—can shape a student’s character and their approach to using AI technologies. Understanding the biases inherent in AI datasets helps students develop traits of fairness and justice, promoting actions that minimise harm. Comprehending the environmental impact of AI models fosters responsibility and stewardship, and may lead to both conscientious use and improvements in future models. Importantly for education, tackling academic integrity heightens students’ sense of honesty, accountability, and respect for others’ work. Students have already risen to the occasion, with local and international research capturing student concerns and their beliefs about the importance of learning to use these technologies ethically and responsibly. Holding challenging conversations about AI ethics prepares students for ethically complex situations, fostering the character necessary in the face of these technologies.

Launching these 4Cs is offered in the spirit of the agile manifesto undergirding development of software over the last twenty years – early and continuous delivery and deliver working software frequently. The rapid advance from ChatGPT3, to 3.5, and to 4 shows the manifesto remains a potent rallying call. New iterations of these 4Cs for AI should similarly invite critique, refinement, and improvement.

L to R: Dr Paul Kidson is Senior Lecturer in Educational Leadership at the Australian Catholic University, Dr Sarah Jefferson is Senior Lecturer in Education at Edith Cowan University, Leon Furze is a PhD student at Deakin University researching the intersection of AI and education.

If not now, then when is the right time to re-envisage what schools could be?

mental health, NAPLAN, wellbeing, whole-child and whole-school, , , , ,

The cold fact is that despite continuous reforms and growing investments over the past two decades, educational performance – and especially equitable performance – of Australia’s schools isn’t improving. Indeed, in many ways it is getting worse.

Consider these statistics. Since 2000 Australia’s PISA scores have dropped 33 – 24 points in maths, reading, and science. Students’ performance in literacy and numeracy since 2008 when National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) was inaugurated has been stagnant or declining (ACARA database). During the same time total education spending per student has gone up by 46 per cent adjusted to 22 per cent increase in the number of students (Rice, Edwards, & McMillan, 2019).

Additionally, there are large achievement gaps between different equity groups, such as rural and urban students, Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, and socio-educationally disadvantaged and other students (Australian Government, 2023).

Together with these inconvenient trends, we are seeing alarming signs in declining student health and wellbeing. Anxiety, depression, and conduct disorders are leading mental health concerns among our youth. For example, one in seven 4-17-year-olds was found to have a mental disorder. One in six adolescents reports problematic levels of loneliness (Lim, Eres, & Peck, 2019).

Leaders and professionals in the Australian health and education sectors have been striving to provide best possible care and learning for every child. While there has been progress made for some, these efforts are not matching realities as well as they could despite increased spendings on both health and education. Doing more of what we have done before is clearly not the best way to make school a better place to improve student learning and wellbeing.  

In our Discussion Paper titled “Reinventing Australian schools for the better wellbeing, health, and learning of every child” (Sahlberg et al., 2023) we outline a new vision for uplifting student learning, wellbeing, and health in our schools. We argue that the core purpose of schooling needs to shift from primarily focusing on narrow academic intelligence to equal value learning, wellbeing and health outcomes for balanced whole-child development and growth. 

What might this look like in practice? Rather than trying to simply jump to the solution, we instead suggest adopting a whole-child and whole-school approach as a leading principle for change. A whole-child approach requires schools to fully emphasise the complete scope of a child’s needs and being, including cognitive, social, emotional, physical, ethical, and psychological, rather than concentrating dominantly on only part of a child. A whole-school approach means the responsibility for developing and meeting the needs of the whole child are shared in a coherent way, equally by all at the school and potentially beyond. 

We believe a whole-child and whole-school approach optimises the opportunities for all children to grow up as the individuals they want to become.

Generally speaking, in Australia, public policies to improve education outcomes for all have overlooked the interconnection between health, wellbeing, and learning. Although well intended, health and wellbeing initiatives in Australian schools are often separate projects, courses, or reaction opportunities to those who are at risk or already have health and wellbeing issues. We suggest that health should be viewed as an essential future skill that all children should learn also in school. 

If not now, then when is the right time to re-envisage what schools could be? Together with the whole-child and whole-school approach our Discussion Paper offers four other principles to support uplifting learning, wellbeing, and health of all children in Australian schools.

1. Co-designed, evidence-based, and flexible learning and wellbeing approaches

All children should be supported to achieve health, wellbeing and learning goals in school that matter to them in ways that work for them; keeping them engaged and motivated to live, learn and be well.

2. Health and wellbeing as essential 21st century skills

Health and wellbeing should be seen as outcomes of school education of equal importance to literacy, numeracy and other academic domains. This includes learning skills in digital, mental, socio-emotional, nutritional, and physical wellbeing for all children as early as possible, in developmentally appropriate ways. 

 3. Building an engaging culture of health, wellbeing and learning in school

A safe, inclusive, positive, engaging and healthy school culture throughout the whole school matters to support the development of the whole child. 

4. Partnerships between services, families, and schools 

Schools should not be isolated silos. They are important community assets. In our vision, they are community centres or hubs, effectively and collaboratively meeting local children’s needs through relationships and partnerships between community members, one of which is the school.

The key to transforming Australian education to be fairer and better for all is more inclusive and informed grassroot conversations. The vision of more holistic and equitable Australian school is not just a dream, it is mission possible. A whole-child and whole-school approach to improve children’s health, wellbeing, and learning has a solid foundation in research and practice around the world. 

The principles and call to action we have outlined would not require discarding everything we currently do, nor simply ask more of educators in the current context. But it would encourage us to stop doing anything that does not support a whole-child and whole-school approach in schools to address particular child, school and community needs. Most of all, it requires bold new ways of thinking about children, their schooling and what it takes to secure healthier and happier futures for all of them.

Generally, we argue, educators and policymakers should see themselves as having a wider responsibility for all children and young people, not just narrow academic learning of those at their own schools. This is the time to restore meaning to school as a place of shaping well-educated, healthy, and conscious generations, and – most of all – happy children. 

Dr. Pasi Sahlberg is a professor of educational leadership at the University of Melbourne where he leads research on learning through play, growing up digital, and equity in education. His other fields of expertise are whole-system change, teacher education and development, cooperative learning, and teaching mathematics.

Professor Sharon Goldfeld is a paediatrician and director, Centre for Community Child Health (CCCH) the Royal Children’s Hospital and Theme Director, Population Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. Her research program focuses on investigating, testing and translating sustainable policy relevant solutions that eliminate inequities for Australia’s children.