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.
NAPLAN

Pausing NAPLAN did not destroy society – but new changes might not fix the future

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NAPLAN is again in the news. Last week, it was the Ministers tinkering with NAPLAN reporting and timing. This week it is media league tables ranking schools and sectors, according to NAPLAN results, coinciding with the upload of latest school-level data to the ‘My School’ website. We are now about one month out from the new March test window so expect to hear a lot more in the coming weeks. Many schools will be already deeply into NAPLAN test preparation. 

NAPLAN and My School website were initially introduced by PM Julia Gillard as levers for parental choice. Last week’s ACARA media release reiterates that their primary purpose is so parents can make ‘informed choices’ about their children’s schooling. Media analysis of NAPLAN results correctly identifies what researchers know only too well: that affluence skews educational outcomes to further advantage the already advantaged. 

The Sydney Morning Herald notes that “Public schools with and without opportunity classes, high-fee private institutions and Catholic schools in affluent areas have dominated the top 100 schools…” The reporters are careful to draw attention to a couple of atypical public schools, achieving better results than might be expected from their demographics. A closer look at the SMH table of Top Performing primary schools shows that most low ICSEA public schools ‘punching above their weight’ are very small regional schools. 

No doubt there is a lot to learn from highly effective and usually overlooked small rural schools, but few families can move to them from the city. Parental choice is constrained by income, residential address, work opportunities and a myriad of other factors. In any case, as Stewart Riddle reminds us, what makes a ‘good school’ is far more subtle and complex than anything that a NAPLAN can tell us. 

NAPLAN has gradually morphed into a diagnostic tool for individual students, though there are other tools more fit for this purpose. Notably, the pandemic-induced NAPLAN pause did not lead to the collapse of Australian education but was seen by many teachers as a relief when they were dealing with so many more important aspects of young people’s learning and well-being. 

Education Ministers’ adjustments to NAPLAN indicate that they are at last responding to some of the more trenchant critiques of NAPLAN. The creation of a teacher panel by ACARA as part of the process of setting standards hints that the professional expertise and voices of teachers are valued. Bringing NAPLAN testing forward will hopefully make it more useful where it really matters – in schools and classrooms.

The move to four levels of reporting will be more accessible to parents. Pleasingly, the new descriptor for the lowest quartile – ‘Needs additional support’ – puts the onus on the school and school systems to respond to student needs.

Yet one of the keenest critiques of NAPLAN has not been addressed. There have been widespread calls from educators and academics for the NAPLAN writing test to be withdrawn. It has been found to have a narrowing effect on both the teaching of writing and students’ capacity to write. There is also a whole “how to do NAPLAN” industry of tutors and books pushing formulaic approaches to writing and playing on families’ anxieties.

The failure of the current round of changes to address the NAPLAN writing test leaves students writing like robots. Meanwhile, the release of ChatGPT means that students doing NAPLAN writing for no real purpose or audience of their own are wasting their time. Robots can do it better! These changes needed to map writing better to the National Curriculum, and endorse more meaningful, creative, multimodal and life-relevant writing practices.

 As a single point in time test, NAPLAN has always been just one source of data that teachers and schools can draw upon to design targeted interventions to support student learning. Nevertheless, earlier results will mean that schools will have robust evidence about their need for additional resources. Professional expertise in literacy, numeracy and inclusive education support must be prioritised. 

Parents might be able to resist the inclination to shuffle their children from school to school as a reaction to media headlines, school rankings, and promotional campaigns from the independent sector. Alliances might form between parents and schools to support greater action by state and federal Ministers to address the deeply entrenched divisions that have become baked into Australian schooling.

Attention to NAPLAN continues to mask serious ongoing questions about why Australian governments have created conditions where educational inequities, segregation and stratification are now defining characteristics of our education system. Numerous reports and inquiries have identified flaws and perverse effects from NAPLAN as high stakes testing, especially in relation to the writing test. There is a lot of work yet to be done if NAPLAN is to really be useful and relevant for Australian schools, teachers, parents and learners.

Professor Susanne Gannon is an expert in educational research across a range of domains and methodologies. Much of her research focuses on equity issues in educational policy and practices. Recent research projects include investigations of the impact of NAPLAN on the teaching of writing in secondary school English, young people’s experiences of school closures due to COVID-19 in 2020, and vocational education for students from refugee backgrounds in NSW schools.

Dr Lucinda McKnight is an Australian Research Council Fellow in Deakin University’s Research for Education Impact (REDI) centre. She is undertaking a three year national project examining how the conceptualisation of writing is changing in digital contexts. Follow her Teaching Digital Writing project blog or her twitter account @lucindamcknight8

Header image courtesy of Rory Boon.

How to fix the teacher shortage

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Teacher shortages are not a new thing. It is difficult to envisage a time when every school in the country had just the right number of teachers and with the right subject skills. The labour markets for other occupations are similarly in a constant state of flux.

At the beginning of each school year there is heightened anxiety about teacher shortages, some of which resolve over time one way or another, but could include less than optimal outcomes for some schools with assignment of some teachers to classes for which they are not qualified, larger classes or a truncated curriculum.

As we come out of the pandemic, this year seems a bit unusual however. Unfilled teacher vacancies are much higher, and there are reports of private schools ‘poaching’ teachers from public schools with offers of higher salaries and better working conditions. Has there been a higher than usual attrition of experienced teachers? With the very low overall unemployment rate and shortages in many other sectors of the economy, it is quite conceivable that some teachers may have taken the opportunity in these economic circumstances to change careers and try out something different, especially given that teacher salaries compared to those in other occupations with similar qualification requirements are, on average, lower.    

What could schools and school systems do in the short-term? They could provide incentives for recently-retired and on-leave teachers to return to the classroom. Incentives have to include flexible work conditions such as part-time work, and perhaps only classroom duties and no other pastoral or administrative duties. Teachers on parenting or maternity leave could be offered free quality childcare for their children near or at the school.

In remote and regional areas, are there teachers among ‘grey nomads’ who could fill some short-term vacancies in schools? Given the right incentives, grey nomad teachers who would have a wealth of experience under their belts, could be another source of supply.

In the long-term, better planning is required. There has to be a concerted effort to raise the status of teachers and teaching in society which includes paying teachers better salaries to reflect their qualifications and the high workload. A serious effort is required to map credible career paths for teachers, one that does not plateau five to ten years after their first job. An old idea which could be revived is to provide access to subsidised housing loans for teachers, possibly with superannuation funds acting as banks. This is important as growth in teacher salaries substantially lags growth in housing costs. 

To encourage new teacher graduates into hard-to-staff schools, they should be provided either free or heavily-subsidised housing near the school. This incentive could be offered to each teacher for up to five years.

Quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) is critically important for the cognitive and social development  of all children. But it is also important for improving national productivity and labour force participation, especially among women. Using many existing school sites to co-locate ECEC centres could quickly boost supply at convenient locations. Teachers working at these schools could be offered priority and subsidised access to these services for their young children. Such arrangements could provide an added incentive to attract people into teaching. Nurses in public hospitals, who are also in short supply, could be included in these arrangements. The funding of such a scheme would necessarily require a commonwealth-state partnership.  

Public schools’  budgets are mainly determined on the basis of student to teacher ratios with adjustments for special needs, based on factors such as the socio-economic profile of the student cohort and school location. However, the budget allocation does not fully consider the curriculum range that the schools are expected to provide.

As a result, there will be circumstances in many schools when teachers will be in surplus in some subject areas and short in others. Consequently, some teachers may be assigned to teach in an area in which they are not qualified. Such out-of-field teaching has been shown to result in poorer student achievement outcomes. Evidence shows such out-of-field teaching assignments are more prevalent in public schools than private schools. This is partly because public schools’ budgets are generally tighter, thus restricting the number of teachers for a given number of students that can be employed at any time. Tighter budgets also mean these schools are at a disadvantage in a tight labour market for teachers as they are unable to compete on salaries that they can offer.

The current distribution of public funding for schools has to take account of the total needs and incomes of schools to make it more equitable to address some of these problems. Both short and long-term solutions require additional public investment in education, the benefits of which will be far-reaching and go beyond just education.

Chandravadan Shah is an affiliated researcher at Monash University. For 21 years, Chandra was Associate Professor (Research) in the Centre for the Economics of Education and Training (CEET) at Monash University. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor at CIRES, Victoria University and Fellow of the Global Labor Organisation.

Paul W. Richardson is Professor of Education at Monash University. He is engaged in a longitudinal study of the career choice motivations of teachers, teacher self-efficacy, the career trajectories of different types of beginning and mid-career teachers (www.fitchoice.org), and teacher health and wellbeing across the career lifespan. 

Helen M. G. Watt is Professor of Educational Psychology and Director of Research Development (Social Sciences) at The University of Sydney, Australia. Her longitudinal research is on gendered educational and occupational pathways in STEM fields (www.stepsstudy.org), and the evolution of motivations, professional engagement and wellbeing through teachers’ careers (www.fitchoice.org).

Dear Premier, this will not work. Not now, not ever

quality teachers, talking about teachers, teacher pay, teacher retention, teacher shortage, Teachers' work, , , ,

A select number of teachers in NSW will soon be eligible for increased salaries of up to $152,000. This comes at a time when schools across Australia are facing devastating teacher shortages, while dwindling numbers of prospective teachers are pursuing teaching as a career. According to NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet, “This is seismic reform that will modernise the teaching profession and ensure we have the best teachers in our classrooms to benefit students for generations to come.”

Will it, though? Fortunately, we have decades of research about the relationship between teacher pay and performance to make some predictions. Unfortunately, the research doesn’t paint a promising picture about what we can expect.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the fact that teaching is a very complex process and something that is very difficult to measure and to reward. Even though additional pay for our ‘best teachers’ seems like a logical way of improving overall teacher quality, this position is full of assumptions that are rarely (if ever) true. Below are some of the most significant assumptions that need to be addressed.  

Assumption 1: Bonus pay will increase teacher effort (and quality)

When policymakers claim that pay increases for ‘high-achieving’ teachers will lead to better outcomes, this assumes teachers are motivated by financial incentives. This is an economic argument that assumes teachers make rational choices based on the incentives in front of them. It also means that teachers either choose to be ‘high-achieving’ or not, and that money will be the deciding factor.

Should teachers earn more money? Absolutely. However, when linked to indicators of quality (like ‘high-achieving), I’m always wary of how such decisions are made. The truth is that a lot of factors affect how teachers are classified as effective, regardless of how holistically or carefully such systems are designed. Unfortunately, these measures are not always (if ever) true reflections of a teacher’s quality, which brings us to our next assumption.

Assumption 2: Teacher quality is measurable

To be fair, the current NSW proposal does not rely on the same kind of measurement tools that other countries (like the USA) use to measure teacher quality. Some, including the NSW government, even argue that the reform cannot even be considered ‘performance pay’. I disagree, and I think the reform’s title, Rewarding Excellence in Teaching, supports my assertion. 

Therefore, the assumption here is that we can actually know what teacher quality is; we can measure it; and we can reward it. This belief alone is based on many false assumptions. First, quality itself is a slippery construct that experts have been debating for decades. Not only that, but we also know that classifying teachers as ‘high-achieving’ (or not) is always susceptible to several forms of error and bias. For example, we know that teachers who teach students from advantaged backgrounds are more likely to be classified as more effective. We also know that teachers in schools with greater concentrations of disadvantage are more likely to be classified as ineffective. While the NSW reform is not based on test-based teacher evaluation, which is arguably the most susceptible to these biases, there are still concerns about which teachers will ultimately achieve this higher status. We must look at the broader conditions and question whether some teachers will be more likely to miss out, simply because they work in more challenging and unsupportive environments. This, of course, creates new concerns about whether such efforts will actually disincentivise teachers from remaining in already hard-to-staff locations, but that’s an argument for another day. 

Assumption 3: Student performance is a direct result of teacher effort and quality

First, I don’t want to suggest that teachers don’t matter when it comes to student learning and achievement. Teachers do matter, and they can make an enormous difference in the lives of students. It is also true, though, that teachers often have much less impact on student achievement (at least as measured by standardised tests) than many would like to assume. To assume that rewarding ‘excellent’ teachers will necessarily lead to better student achievement is simply not true. We do want consistency in classrooms, and we want teachers who are qualified and proficient. But, we cannot lose sight of the fact that students’ performance and achievement are affected by many factors that are entirely outside of the teachers’ or schools’ control. When it comes to standardised tests, for example, most researchers estimate that teacher differences explain anywhere between 1-14% variation in student outcomes. That means that up to 86-99% of variation in student test scores can be explained by other factors, like socio-economic status, parents’ education levels, and other out-of-school conditions. Therefore, if we really care about raising student achievement, then we must broaden our attention to think about how society is supporting student learning and growth. Continuing to narrowly focus on the teacher will not only be inadequate for raising achievement, but it will also continue to over-burden our teachers and force them out of the classroom. 

Assumption 4: Pay increases for a small number of teachers will lead to higher retention, and it will attract more teachers to the profession

In my view, this is one of the most peculiar assumptions of the reform. The profession has made it very clear that higher pay and manageable workloads are what they need. These requests are also supported by research. Quasi performance pay is not the answer to either of these. While I always want to celebrate pay increases for teachers, I am yet to be convinced that increases for a few hundred teachers will be what keeps the rest in the profession. If anything, I wonder how this will affect school culture. If teachers must compete for promoted status, then we can reasonably predict schools will suffer from decreased morale and collegiality. Even if it’s not a competitive process, we must be careful in how we balance the additional responsibilities with the increased salary. Otherwise, we run the risk of burning out teachers who are promoted to these advanced positions. 

There is still a lot we don’t know about this reform. What I do find hopeful is that teachers and school leaders are involved in developing some of the details. In an ideal world, this collaborative effort will help mitigate some of the concerns I’ve raised. I want to be hopeful. My fear, however, is that we have too many failed cases from around the world that makes it difficult to be optimistic. I hope I’m wrong. 

Jessica Holloway is senior research and ARC DECRA Fellow at the Australian Catholic University. Her research draws on political theory and policy sociology to investigate: (1) how metrics, data and digital tools produce new conditions, practices and subjectivities, especially as this relates to teachers and schools, and (2) how teachers and schools are positioned to respond to the evolving and emerging needs of their communities.

Header photo from the Premier’s Facebook page

Screen panic: how much time is too much?

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Smart devices are powerful tools that can assist teaching and learning. Each device on its own is a personal assistant, a massive library, media creator, communications hub, language translator and entertainment centre on our desk or right in our hands. 

They can also cause harm. Adults worry about addiction, constant distraction and a technological dystopia full of obscure manipulative algorithms controlled by government or ‘bad guys,’ stranger danger, cyber vulgarity and toxic echo chambers. What are our teens really doing with the smart technology?  How do they cope with it? There is very little research into how our kids are using their devices from their perspectives, particularly when these tools were so heavily relied upon during lockdowns. So, last year, we asked them!

What is a smart device?

A smart device is an electronic tool (typically a watch, phone, tablet, laptop of desktop) connected (primarily) wirelessly to the internet. Smart devices allow users to interface with purpose-built applications to conduct business, communicate, create media, do banking, and more generally, text, email or talk to others in real time.

Our study

In Australia, nearly all adolescents ( 94 out of every 100 14-17 years of age) own a smartphone and many school communities have restricted their use or are exploring bans on phones at school. Teens must navigate rapidly changing cloud-based technology to negotiate their academic and social expectations and stay safe while doing this.

Educational challenges created by the pandemic created the most significant disruption to Australian schools since World War II. Schools became nimble and allowed the use of tools in ways that were not permitted before. Flexible assessment tasks gave students freedom to “figure it out.” Students connecting from home, were collaborating, creating, inventing, and studying from the patio or from the lounge. Parents and carers saw first-hand the pros and cons of the tools’ uses for school and non-school purposes.

Over the past year, we studied over 450 secondary public-school students in a mixed methods research project. The study took place in a capital city in Australia and involved students from 12 secondary schools. We have the initial survey results available now and the full results of the study will be shared as we finish the work later this year. 

How are our kids using their smart devices?

75% of students felt smart technologies improved their lives. This positive outcome was complex and diverse. One participant summed up their view on smart technology as:

“The internet is where I spend most of my time. it is what I look at through my art and music, and the way it changed humans fascinates me greatly. it has enabled strange forms of connection from people all over the world and has enabled so much collaboration for me personally.” [sic] –  16 YO Male Year 10

Here’s what we’ve found so far:

  1. 21st century learners are on their screens constantly, learning now involves devices more than ever before. Screen time is up (during and after school) of those responses that were > 4 hours daily, the average time was 6.9 hours and the maximum number given was over 14 hours per day
  2. 89% of participants used their notebook computer device extensively for learning activities at school and more than half also use it for connected learning at home via the schools’ Learning Management System
  3. The phone isn’t a phone and not really viewed as one, only a very small percentage reported using their phones to make calls. It was clear in interpreting the data however, that smartphones are used in multiple ways to support their modern lives. These devices are seen as central to adolescent life. Smartphones are also a major focus of distraction. Our young people know this. They know when they are wasting their time. 
  4. Most young people socialise within friendship groups and have productive coping mechanisms and technical know-how in order to deal issues that may occur. They know how to block suspicious communication, report those interactions the provider and many are discussing these issues with friends, family or trusted school adults at school
  5. Our participants generally believed that there was marginal impact on school performance from their social media interactions (even if there are in the minds of adults); almost 20% reported that social media caused negative distractions and another 20% admitted to constantly checking these platforms and feeling anxious when they didn’t.

Now what?

We have a tricky tightrope to walk. What is the new normal? The 1980s’ guidelines of two hours a day of screen time has not kept pace with technological changes. We could do the following three things:

  1. We have an opportunity for us to tune in to adolescent voices on this issue. We should stay in touch with our own children’s use by talking to them. They want us to know they are trying to be careful, but this smart technology is part of their life.
  2. Parents also want to know how their children are using their devices. We can help and  support them to develop productive coping skills, so they successfully navigate a complex world of ever-evolving smarter technologies. 
  3. We need to model ourselves with our children balancing device time with a healthy lifestyle (particularly bedtime and sleep patterns).

The genie will not go back in the bottle. We can’t “ban” our way to the future as smart tools get smarter; we should trust that our young people, with our informed guidance, will make good choices. The importance of vigilance in using smart tools is crucial, but most of our participants are doing fine in their juggling act in and out of cyberspace. 

From left: John Fischetti is Professor and Pro Vice Chancellor of the College of Human and Social Futures at the University of Newcastle. He teaches and studies in the areas of school transformation and educational leadership. John advocates for school designs that promote student ownership of their own learning journeys.John.Fischetti@newcaslte.edu.au. Simon Vaughan is a PhD candidate at the University of Newcastle. He is a secondary principal and national leader in school innovation. His PhD work is focuses on the potential of smart technology to transform pedagogy. Simon.Vaughan@uon.edu.au. Kylie Shaw is Professor and Dean of Graduate Research at the University of Newcastle. Her research focusses on the doctoral learning journey, future-focused skills and primary school pedagogies. She is a leader in empowering women to undertake and navigate the HDR journey. Kylie.Shaw@newcastle.edu.au

Uni’s back: Five ways to build useful online learning

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The pandemic hastened the transition to online delivery. While several studies have looked into strategies for developing higher-order thinking in students, the widespread and prevalent use of online learning is limited to lower-order strategies.

We wanted to promote what worked for both educators and students while creating sustainable online communities. We undertook a scoping study at the University of South Australia to look at ways of building meaningful online learning communities while helping students to develop higher-order thinking skills. After a process of review and refinement, we considered the findings of 121 studies from 2000 to 2022 to narrow down what matters. The overarching framework for our scoping review is the community of inquiry.

Online environments are enhancing access to education globally but simultaneously risk depersonalising student learning at a time when connectedness is most needed.  The opportunity created by the pandemic should be seized for prioritizing sustainable content delivery that influences critical thinking, equips graduates for jobs and fosters collaboration. This process can be challenging even for experienced educators.  Providing clear guidance to educators is key to the development of online learning communities that connect teachers and students and deal with the challenges ahead. 

Our research is a one-stop-shop for high-quality online teaching practices, for novices and experienced educators alike, in any discipline, any country, looking for something more (than mere online implementation) to engage, challenge and connect with their students. Educators can see the full paper here, which will direct them to a range of resources that they can utilize in their online teaching practice.  

After distilling the key concepts from the studies, we recommend five evidence-based strategies for building sustainable and meaningful online learning communities in higher education.  

1. Students should be taught how to learn effectively in the online mode

It is vital that students are taught how to study properly in an online environment. It is important to consider that they are not aware of the unique learning presented in an online course, especially while they commence in a new institution, program, or course. Strong foundations in early parts of study are important. Work examples and modeling expectations can set students up with skills for creating new knowledge.  

2. Educators must embed learning tasks that foster self-regulation and higher-order skills in students 

Educators should enable intentional learning and embed problem solving tasks that require self-regulation and higher order thinking. Educators should further be aware of strategies unique to online mode that can foster self-regulation in students. For example, not all the educators should necessarily actively contribute to the text-based discussion. Instead, having provided the initial trigger for a topic, educators can design the activity to be student-led. Collaborative teamwork, such as problem-solving activities are known to foster self-regulation. Student characteristics further influence their own self-regulation capabilities.

3. Course design should include authentic tasks for students to apply new knowledge to real-life scenarios

Along with overall course design, individual tasks such as discussion with peers must be designed to be purposeful and intentional to generate the desired learning outcomes. For example, questioning students on how they would apply what they learned from a task to their own profession could initiate an authentic critical thinking process.  Our research proposes several such strategies that can be useful for educators.

4. Educators must be offered ample professional development activities to build their skills in online pedagogy 

The challenges for educators who have been predominantly involved in face-to-face teaching and unfamiliar with online pedagogies are that it requires them to shift to a facilitator role and develop the skills to design and implement appropriate tasks that enable students to achieve outcomes. One of the key implications for teaching practice clearly includes supporting educators in adapting to online pedagogical approaches. Educators must be offered ample opportunities for professional development in online teaching strategies alongside institutional support for adapting and using emerging technology. There are several frameworks not included in our review, which can also be beneficial to educators.

5. Institutions should encourage translation of educational research to practice 

Institutional support through funding educational research may help to address the gap in translating research to practice to a certain extent. This funding can provide critical impetus to the educators involved. Additional institutional support that focuses on developing and sustaining an innovative pedagogical mindset to enhance teaching and learning practices in online delivery is also essential. 

Following these five evidenced based strategies will provide students and educators with the skills to successfully negotiate the online classroom.  

Sandhya Maranna is a senior lecturer at the University of South Australia and senior specialist sonographer with SA Health. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree investigating cognitive transfer in online learning. Her innovations in online curriculum have led to high-quality impact on student learning. She was the recipient of the 2021 AAUT National teaching citation for outstanding contribution to student learning and the 2021 OLC award for innovation in online learning and teaching excellence

Trauma in all our classrooms: Here’s how to respond

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Children and young people who have been victims to complex trauma are sitting in most school classrooms and early learning settings across our country. 

Complex trauma results when infants or children experience physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, significant neglect, or family and other types of violence, without the buffering support and protection of nurturing and available adults. 

One in 32 children under the age of 18 are identified as accessing child protection services due to this type of harm but this is a considerable underestimate of the numbers of trauma-impacted children across Australia.  There are many others who are not receiving these services for a range of reasons and unfortunately, there are also those children who continue to be harmed and yet remain unidentified.

Neuroscience has provided abundant evidence that, due to what is happening to these young children and around these young children, there can be a worrying impact on the development and functioning of their nervous systems.  This can lead to an equally worrying impact on their learning, emotions, and behaviours. 

These young victims can struggle with feeling safe, with attaching and relating effectively to other people and with regulating their emotions.  Also, overactive threat responses in the parts of their brains that manage distress and other interpersonal challenges, can shut down the pre-frontal cortical activity that is needed for them to engage effectively in learning environments and to connect to the curriculum.

If you are not good at feeling safe, you are not great with relationships, and you struggle with your emotional regulation, you are very likely to behave in a way that will lead to disengagement with learning.  Also, concerning behaviours can result from an overactive “flight, fight or freeze” response and this can unfortunately lead to many young learners experiencing quite significant discipline, and for some, suspension or exclusion from school.

Thankfully, the growing awareness of the impact of complex trauma on the development and functioning of young bodies and brains has led to a global reassessment of how the behaviours of these learners should be “managed”.  So, rather than depending mostly on techniques that are informed by behaviourism and reward/consequence methodologies, education sites are now exploring supports and strategies that are informed by neuroscience.

The theory of behaviourism underpins many quite common behaviour management approaches in schools and early childhood education settings. Behaviourism suggests that all behaviour can be explained as responses to environmental stimuli.  It proposes that by manipulating environmental stimuli, educators can achieve and reinforce the behaviours that they want from learners and reduce or extinguish those that they do not want.

Although these approaches can work well with most young learners, they tend to be quite unsuccessful with trauma-impacted learners.  This is because the concerns experienced by these children are mostly due to internal, bodily factors that are driven by maladaptive and overactive nervous systems.  If these internal factors are not recognised and addressed, it is very unlikely that the manipulation of external, environmental factors will address any behaviour concerns, which tends to frustrate busy educators.

Due to the particular (internal) concerns suffered by learners living with unresolved complex trauma, trauma-aware education focuses on three main areas.  Strategies and processes are put in place to help learners to:

·         perceive their learning environments as safe and non-threatening

·         develop their capacities to engage effectively with relationships with other learners and with the adults within their learning environments

·         develop their capacities for emotional self-regulation.

Another important aspect of trauma-aware education is to support and enhance the knowledge, skills and personal and professional wellbeing of educators. It is undeniable that engaging with learners who live with unresolved complex trauma, day after day, can be very taxing and challenging.  Therefore, this approach emphasises that purposeful activity be embedded into organisational processes to prevent harm and enhance outcomes for educators and any other practitioners who are working in education settings.

Trauma-aware education is not a program or another piece of work for busy educators to manage.  Rather it is a shift in thinking, believing, planning and acting so that the harm that trauma exerts on the functioning of children and young people is minimised or alleviated and engagement, learning and achievement, can happen.

Increasingly, education sites and education systems are considering what they should do to address the overwhelming and debilitating impact that unresolved complex trauma can have on education experiences and wellbeing and life outcomes for young learners. To support the thinking and action of sites and systems across Australia, National Guidelines were developed in 2021 through a collaboration between the Queensland University of Technology and the Australian Childhood Foundation.

To further support the growing movement in trauma-aware education in Australia and beyond, my new book, “Trauma-aware education: Essential information and guidance for educators, education sites and education systems” is designed to provide solid guidance for individual educators, for schools and early childhood education settings, and for the education systems that provide resourcing and governance to education sites. The book explains the research that informs a trauma-aware approach in an easy-to-understand manner and describes a range of practical strategies sites and individual educators can use. 

One chapter examines in-depth a trauma-aware approach to behaviour support, behaviour policy, crisis management, case management and individual support planning for learners. The book also explores the application of this approach for learners living with disability and includes vital messages for people who are keen to lead work in trauma-aware education.

I wrote the book to meet the needs of a varied readership and I believe it provides vital and timely professional learning needed for anyone working directly with young learners. It also provides information for leaders of education sites and managers and decision makers in education systems that can inform systemic discussions and policy development. Finally, and importantly, the book can be used as a text to support pre-service teacher education in universities providing our future educators with great preparation for their future careers.

Judith Howard is an associate professor in the Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice at the Queensland University of Technology, focussing on the concerns of young learners who have experienced complex trauma. She promotes a neuroscience-informed approach and believes every educator and worker in every school and early childhood service needs access. She oversees pre-service and post-graduate teacher education in trauma-aware education and has developed online courses reaching thousands internationally.

It’s a watershed report but it’s hidden behind headlines

National Measurement Framework for Schooling, National School Reform Agreement, National Teacher Workforce Data, , , ,

What the Productivity Commission’s National School Reform Agreement report really says. 

Monday’s ROGS report from the Productivity Commission is the fourth in a row making important insights on where Australian education has gone wrong. 

The data for the Report on Government Services (ROGS) made it clear that Australian school funding is iniquitous. While this fact could have been called out on any day in the nearly 11 years since the Gonski report was released, the data establishes it authoritatively. Previous low key reports by the National School Resourcing Board and National Audit Office  have highlighted the lack of transparency and accountability evident in funding arrangements. 

Earlier, the PCs interim report for the quinquennial productivity review in October last year put education issues front and centre of economic concerns, and provided a warning bell for their interim report on the National School Reform Agreement (NSRA).  Both clearly assert ‘Canberra, we have a[n education] problem’

These three identify the threat that arises from our current educational woes, and make it clear that there are system structural and transparency faults contributing to our difficulties.  But it is the PCs report on the National School Reform Agreement that provides a fuller analysis of our education system. Importantly identifying deeply entrenched system level faults.  

Headlines on the NSRA report squealed “Call for focus on teaching as academic results slide despite $300b school funding deal“ and  “Still lessons to be learned to improve student outcomes“ suggesting the problems resided with teachers, in classrooms . Social media comments were along the lines of  “please save us from another report telling us how bad Australian education is”, and from teachers… “the start of school year whinge about teachers” 

However, the 350 page NSRA report is not just another highlighting the long litany of stagnation and declines in Australian education. I would encourage all education researchers to read it, but for fans of Blinklist, I provide a synopsis and explain why.

Teachers are not to blame. Calling out Government and bureaucratic failures

Let’s start at the beginning. The report was designed to examine and evaluate “the effectiveness and appropriateness” in the national school reforms; and “the appropriateness of the National Measurement Framework for Schooling in Australia”. 

On the reforms a report card is provided in the main report, see below, but not the summary report (perhaps this is why the headlines went awry?).

This report card rather optimistically claims that four out of seven initiatives have been achieved. Reflecting on this, I can’t help but wonder what a 3/7 scorecard for a school principal would lead to? 

In this case, despite investing $319 billion, key initiatives remain virtually untouched. 

The tick against the national teacher workforce strategy seems overly positive, particularly as the National Teacher Workforce Data set is currently incomplete, with only approximately 10% of Australia’s teachers included. 

So too the report of “partial” outcome assessment in improving national data quality. As the report goes on to show, the NMFSA data is far from ideal, not aligned to national education goals, and poorly reported on.

If you’re not a fan of educational data please don’t turn away now. You may have been put off by the data we currently have, and the focus on how schools will work with it, but data is fundamental to system monitoring – and here is where the core of the problem lies. 

The report goes on to conclude: 

  • “The Agreement’s outcomes and targets were incomplete
  • Reform activity has at times lacked focus and flexibility
  • Reporting and transparency arrangements have not had bite “

There may be some bureaucratic euphemism here. On my reading of the situation there were no specific targets, many reforms were not achieved, and reporting and transparency was virtually non-existent. 

Still, there are some lessons to be learnt for future reform agreements, namely

  1. “Parties should focus the next school reform agreement on directly lifting student outcomes … 
  2. … and adapt accountability mechanisms to reflect a greater role for state-specific actions “

In other words, if there is to be any hope of improving the situation, we need to focus on clear goals for students – and make the system/s accountable. 

I have to agree. After all, teachers have been facing accountability pressures for some time and often face the brunt of blame for poor educational outcomes. From my own research perspective, listening to teachers, I can see much current frustration in Australian education  boiling down to the old expression “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” . 

Frequent calls for teachers to lift teaching quality, be more evidence based in their practice, must be matched by evidence based policy.  We need more data, transparent reporting and critical system analysis to identify the structural problem at the heart of our current woes. We need an education system designed for purpose that can pursue the educational goals we have agreed to. And we need upward as well as downward accountability in order to serve students, citizens and society. 

Nicole Mockler’s analysis of media suggests the dominant refrain is “we have a teacher problem” but much relies on system architecture, like the NMFSA, where we evidently have some challenges.Furthermore there is little evidence to support the assertion that teacher/teaching quality is a problem. Our system data is simply inadequate to support that assertion. We don’t have adequate data on who and where our teachers are in order to address teacher shortages, nevermind data telling us what they do and how effective they are. 

The report goes on to examine some of the dynamics between poor monitoring of educational equity, rising issues with student wellbeing and problems,work demands on teachers and teacher shortages. It makes for sobering reading. 

The National Measurement Framework – unfit for purpose? 

In its evaluation of the NMFSA the report concludes: 

“The Measurement Framework for Schooling in Australia (MFSA)’s Key Performance Measure (KPM) dataset has reporting gaps against the National School Reform Agreement (NSRA) performance reporting framework, particularly on outcomes for students from priority equity cohorts. “ 

In fact, as the submission from the Centre for Educational Measurement and Assessment makes clear, very little of the data is aligned to national educational goals. Furthermore, there is inadequate monitoring and reporting on the data available – resulting in poor transparency on how our system is performing, and where trends are heading. This is particularly the case with educational equity, which is declining, but is not effectively monitored by government reporting. The outcomes for some equity cohorts, like students with disability for example, are completely ignored in the National Report on Australian Schooling. 

The PC NSRA report agrees and concludes: 

“The NSRA has an accountability deficit. In addition to the MFSA not being wholly relevant and complete as a tool to measure progress against the Agreement sub outcomes, visibility of governments’ progress is diminished by the absence of standalone reporting.”

Recommendations: Focus on equity, increase system transparency, support teachers and student wellbeing

These seem like sensible recommendations. Equity, in tandem with excellence is, after all, our number one education goal. It seems logical we should focus on it, monitor and report on it. Only then can we hope to target money and resources accurately and efficiently to minimise inequity.

The key to building equity naturally requires a focus on students, not only what they learn but how they feel. Broadening educational goals, and data, to value and monitor student wellbeing is a no-brainer. 

And no progress can be made without supporting teachers. Addressing structural and system accountability problems, including poor data, inadequate monitoring for reasonable targeting of funding and resources, poor professional workforce management, will make teachers’ working lives in schools much easier and productive. 

This is a watershed realisation in a government report, an acknowledgement that it is the system, not teachers, that is failing. That is a good start. 

Rachel Wilson is associate professor at The Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. She has expertise in educational assessment, research methods and programme evaluation, with broad interests across educational evidence, policy and practice. She is interested in system-level reform and has been involved in designing, implementing and researching many university and school education reforms. Rachel is on Twitter @RachelWilson100

What happens now to students who are first-in-family to go to university?

equity in higher education, First in family to attend university, higher education, Mental health in higher education, Participation in higher education, , , , ,


Students who are the first in their family to attend university remain severely under-represented, despite policy efforts to widen participation in Australian higher education.  Many first-in-family students come from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and, as a result, there has been extensive focus on how social class influences their experiences at university. However, there has been significantly less attention to the role that gender plays.

We conducted a study with 48 first-in-family students over three years – the First-in-Family Project – documenting their transition from secondary school into university.  They came from ethnically diverse backgrounds and were recruited from across state, independent and faith-based secondary schools. All participants presented as cis-gender. The research focused on their experiences in higher education and how their aspirations changed in relation to such experiences. 

In our research, published in Gendering the First-in-Family Experience: Transitions, Liminality and Performativity (Routledge, 2022), we found that during the transition to university, many of the participants questioned the gender norms of their school and family environments.  It is at university where many first-in-family students are first exposed to a diversity of gender identities which often contrast the gender identities present in their secondary schools. Some students spoke of the pressure they felt during secondary school to be a particular type of girl or boy, while they felt there were fewer constraints at university.  

Of the 48 participants, 9 withdrew from university, 7 chose not to attend, and 2 deferred. We found that very few of our participants enrolled in elite sandstone institutions. Instead, most participants chose to attend universities close to home. We were interested in the role gender played in the first-in-family experience, and focused on three areas: gender and the family; gender and influential teachers; gender and mental health.

Gender and the family

Our research found that families of first-in-family students are supportive of their children’s education. Still, they do not necessarily have sufficient knowledge of higher education to be able to give advice about navigating the system.  Instead, families focused on emotionally supporting students; extended family members were often influential and an important resource when first-in-family students struggled.

We also found that family life and expectations were significantly gendered.  Mothers were more often the primary resource in terms of emotional support for the participants. In contrast, fathers were less involved. This was especially true for the girls in the study, where part of what formed their aspirations for university was their desire to experience the opportunities and futures their mothers were denied. The boys in the study wanted to be seen as independent in their decision-making, while this was less apparent for the girls. Ultimately, all students in the study saw their lives as filled with more opportunities than their parents. 

Gender and influential teachers

Close relationships with secondary school teachers informed the aspirations of first-in-family students – but these relationships were gendered as well.  While all participants could point to specific teachers from their secondary school who had been pivotal in supporting them to reach their goals of attending university, there were notable differences based on gender.  For example, the boys tended to inhabit an identity centred around effortless achievement – of having a chilled or relaxed disposition – and sought out teachers who could push them.  In contrast, most girls portrayed themselves as ‘work-focused’ and diligent in their studies and forged relationships with teachers they perceived to be nurturing. 

Gender and mental health

Within research on first-in-family students, there has recently been increased attention to how struggles with mental health may impact their experiences. Research in Australian higher education has found these students rated financial concerns, time management, lack of sleep, and the demands around assessment as having a significant impact on their mental health. Within our study, over 40 per cent of young women presented a mental health issue while just under four percent of young men did. While the girls were open about their mental health concerns from the onset, over the course of the research, the young men began to either experience poor mental health for the first time or became more open with us about their mental health. 

Policy Implications: Improving the first-in-family experience

Drawing on our research, we seek to make recommendations at the policy level and for educators working in both secondary and higher education. 

Highlighting the role of gender, the boys seemed to suffer more from a lack of time management skills, which did not seem as much of a concern for the girls. Instead, the girls were more apprehensive about their ability to succeed when there was less access to personalised one-on-one support at university than they had experienced in high school.  

Furthermore, in terms of mental health, the girls in the First-in-Family Project were more open about their struggles with mental health. This highlights the gendering of mental health and how support services may need to be more attuned to gender differences for students from non-traditional backgrounds.

For those working in higher education, it is also important to note that many participants struggled to integrate socially with other university students who were mainly from middle-class backgrounds.  They found the experience isolating, and they doubted themselves.  There were few examples of students taking pride in their first-in-family status.  This was compounded by how many participants experienced confusion over pragmatics (e.g. timetables, scheduling, commuting) and how to navigate and conduct themselves at university. To conclude, while investments in widening participation are to be commended, the struggles of first-in-family students highlight how more can be done to familiarise students from disadvantaged backgrounds with what university entails.

Garth Stahl is an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of Queensland. His research interests lie on the nexus of neoliberalism and socio-cultural studies of education, identity, equity/inequality, and social change. Currently, his research projects encompass theoretical and empirical studies of learner identities, sociology of schooling in a neoliberal age, educational reform and gendered subjectivities.

Sarah McDonald is a Lecturer based at the Centre for Research in Education & Social Inclusion in UniSA Education Futures, University of South Australia. Her research interests are in gendered subjectivities, girlhood, social mobility, social barriers, and inequalities in education.

The surprising history of sexual obsession in our schools

Christian schools, Independent schools, religious education, , , , , ,

Why are some independent Christian schools so obsessed with sex and should taxpayers be paying for it?

These two questions were raised on Monday night by Australian flagship current affairs program, Four Corners, which broadcast an expose on schools associated with Catholic sect Opus Dei. The report made shocking allegations about pastoral processes and the sexual health curriculum in the Sydney schools. It was stomach-turningly medieval with references to self-mutilation, female purity, and excuse-making for uncontrollable male libido.

We’ve seen this type of thing before. In 2021 Citipointe Christian College handed down a controversial contract to the parents of enrolling and enrolled students. The contract indicated that enrolment would be cancelled if a student claimed, or even discussed whether, their biological sex was different to their identifying gender. The contracts likened homosexual acts to paedophilia, incest and bestiality.

But the Opus Dei schools and Citipointe are still not the first private schools to be obsessed with sex, sexuality and gender. We recently published a paper on another that was active in the 1970s and 1980s. This far-right organisation, which ran its own schools, was also obsessive about what happens in the bedroom.

So why sex?

Both Citipointe and the Opus Dei schools’ establishment histories can be traced back to the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s, many conservative and religiopolitical groups were challenged by the civil rights gains of the 1960s and sexual freedom in general. We often forget in the teaching and research of the women’s movement that the opposition to that movement did not simply go away because legislation began to be passed permitting new sexual freedoms. Indeed, a counter-revolution thrived.

Children and the focus on sexuality education after the Sexual Revolution and eventually, the AIDS pandemic, created the perfect combination for a conservative moral panic that still exists in various forms today. Teachers’ characters were core to this conservative campaign. Universities, because they were locations of student protests in the 1960s and hubs of sex, drugs and rock and roll, were considered places where preservice teachers were being corrupted. Religiopolitical organisations argued that if teachers were corrupted by their university lecturers into believing in sexual freedoms, then those teachers would ultimately corrupt the children. For example, Queensland Minister Collin Millar on the 1980 Education Committee related:

This morning I spoke on the telephone to a lady who visited one of our colleges of advanced education after having been invited to listen to a course being put forward for teacher trainees. She was sickened by the disgusting material that was being put before these young trainees. (Qld Legislative Assembly Hansard, 18 March, 1980, 2744)

This sentiment continued into 1985 when Greg Sheridan, current foreign editor for The Australian, wrote in Restore magazine – a publication by religiopolitical organisation Logos Foundation – that ‘the state education system seems to have been captured by mediocre talents who adhere to it a variety of fruit-cake ideologies with little regard to serious scholarship’. In June 1987, former Premier of Queensland Joh Bjeke-Peterson told Logos Journal that:

All of us must try to work together as a Christian nation, to maintain … a sound national heritage based on a Christian background and the proper training of teachers. We have a great responsibility and I feel we are very close to losing that which we have.

Religious groups saw the breakdown of traditional family values through the corruption of the teaching profession at universities and morally panicked. In response, numerous religiopolitical organisations developed their own schools that hired Christian teachers and taught Christian doctrine.

So, these schools exist and are, due to the deregulation of Australian education funding policy, allowed to exist.

But should taxpayers’ money be allowed to let them thrive?

These schools are ultimately products of the education policy environment in which they exist. In the 1970s to 1990s, they took advantage of the school funding changes brought in by the Fraser government, and were supported by the rising neoliberalism of the Hawke and Keating governments and, ultimately, the deregulation of private schooling under the Howard government.

Why do these schools thrive?

AWell as with everything academic – it’s complicated. But essentially, Australian education policy is systematically Christian. This makes it very difficult to make education policy that does not favour Christian-style education. Even pedagogy and curriculum in public schooling faces this dilemma as it endeavours to keep up with social change.

Australia nominally runs a public education system that in the late-19th century had to deal with the established power of Catholic schooling within the colonies, rampant sectarianism, and the desire to ensure state-based schooling was available for all children (excepting, of course, First Nation’s children who were fundamentally excluded from mainstream schooling). The newly federated colonies insisted that government money should only fund a secular school system that reflected a desire to avert sectarianism and avoid privileging one Christian religion above another. In other words, secular education was supposed to mean neither Catholic nor Protestant, not freedom of or from religion, as it is often defined today.

Further, under Section 116 of the Australian Constitution, the Australian government cannot interfere with religion, but can interact with it. In other words, the assumed separation of church and state under the Westminster system does not really exist because the Australian government can very much be influenced by religion if the desire for religion is democratically popular.

And in the 1990s Christian education became enormously popular.

The Howard government (1996–2007) gave ‘primacy to the private purposes of schooling’, with Howard positioning himself as a moral political figure who understood the possibility of religion. While in Opposition in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Coalition realised the political potential of the Christian right’s opposition to civil rights legislative change. Whether Coalition ministers believed in the opposition or not or not, these religiopolitical groups presented a real opposition to the ALP government. Shoring up that support once in power, the Howard government made opportunistic political moves that undertook the ‘deployment of conservative family values in the service of neoliberalism’ and made it easier for private schools with private agendas to thrive.

As enrolments in these new private schools rapidly grow, so too does the school funding that follows those children. And it is a difficult sector for the government to intervene in and regulate because the mass proliferation of Christian schooling has privatised and individualised religious belief. This means that, constitutionally, the government cannot interfere. The state must leave the regulation of religious practice up to the community it exists within until that community is seen to break the law.

The potential breach of law and human rights in some of these schools is why Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace felt it appropriate to intervene in the Citipointe contract, and why Premier Dominic Perrottet must launch an investigation into the Opus Dei schools.

But should we have to wait until an organisation breaks the law before governments move on regulating taxpayer contributions to schools that may be spreading misinformation and discrimination? What about the private schools that aren’t doing these things? How does an education minister even begin to think through the complicated nature of government intervention into religious doctrine in schools they allowed to thrive? They can’t. It’s too fraught and would be democratically VERY unpopular. While we don’t have the words to get deeply into the autonomy of schooling, we can say that if parents are to make an informed choice about the school they send their children to, there must be transparency in the enrolment materials about where government funds are being spent and what doctrine underpins  a school’s ethos. This information should not require a theological deep dive, nor investigative journalism.

From left to right: Naomi Barnes is a Senior Lecturer and network analyst interested in how ideas influence education policy. Spanning across disciplines, her research contributes to scholarship concerned with evidence-informed policy in education. The growth of communication via social media has kept her motivated to develop models which show the impact of the platforms on the politics and policy of education. Elizabeth (Lizzie) Knight’s key area of interest is equity of access to and in tertiary education, the provision of institutional information and support for transition into post-school education. In 2017, Lizzie completed a PhD at Monash University, investigating change in marketing messages over the period of higher education massification. Lizzie is also a professional careers counsellor. Melanie Myers is a writer, multi-discipline researcher and sessional academic at the University of Queensland. Her doctoral novel Meet Me at Lennon’s (UQP) was published in 2019 and her articles and nonfiction have been published in various literary journals. Her academic articles have been published in Hecate and TEXT Journal of Writing and Writing Courses.

It would be so much better if we taught two ways. Here’s why

cognitive load theory, Direct Instruction, explicit instruction, load reduction instruction, teaching, , , , , , , , , ,

From one school year to the next, students experience an escalation in the amount and difficulty of schoolwork. 

Researchers have tried to identify instructional approaches which would  reduce the cognitive burden on students, especially when they are in the early stages of learning—such as when they start a new academic year, a new subject, a new topic, etc. (Martin & Evans, 2018). 

Cognitive load theory (CLT) has outlined major tenets of instruction that can help manage the cognitive burden on students as they learn (Sweller, 2012). Drawing on key ideas under CLT, a recent practice-oriented instructional framework was developed—referred to as “load reduction instruction” (LRI; Martin, 2016). 

LRI is a pedagogical approach seeking to balance explicit instruction with independent learning as appropriate to the learner’s level of knowledge and skill. Through this balance, the cognitive load on students is eased as they learn. 

LRI has been examined in STEM classrooms, with results showing it is associated with positive academic outcomes in mathematics (Martin & Evans, 2018) and in science (Martin et al., 2020). In a new study published in Contemporary Educational Psychology (Martin et al., 2023), we expanded this research to the non-STEM domain by investigating LRI in English classrooms. 

What is load reduction instruction (LRI)?

LRI’s principles have been developed to accommodate students’ working memory and long-term memory (Martin & Evans, 2018). Working memory is a space for information that students are consciously and currently aware of, and where they focus their present attention (Baddeley, 2012). Working memory is very limited in duration and capacity—e.g., a retention of around three to five  items (Cowan, 2010). In contrast, long-term memory has substantial duration and capacity. Long-term memory is where information is encoded so it can be retrieved later (Baddeley, 2012). 

Learning is said to occur when information is moved from working memory and encoded in long-term memory (Sweller, 2012), for later retrieval and use. 

If students’ working memory is over-burdened, they are at risk of misunderstanding the content, falling behind in the lesson, or learning only part of the necessary knowledge or skill. Given this, researchers have suggested that explicit instruction should be applied in the early stages of learning to reduce the cognitive burden on students when they are novices (Mayer, 2004). Then, as students develop the necessary knowledge and skill, they move to more independent learning (Kalyuga, 2007). LRI adopts these guidelines to comprise the following five principles (see Figure 1):

  • Principle #1: Difficulty reduction in the initial stages of learning, as appropriate to the learner’s level of prior knowledge and skill
  • Principle #2: Support and scaffolding
  • Principle #3: Structured practice
  • Principle #4: Feedback-feedforward, combining corrective information with specific improvement-oriented guidance 
  • Principle #5: Guided independent application

Figure 1. Load Reduction Instruction (LRI) Framework – adapted with permission from Martin (2016).

Extending LRI to English

There is a  reason for the early focus on maths for LRI research. Maths is taught in a highly sequenced way, where each task escalates in difficulty. That particular set of attributes was considered a good initial test for the sequenced and scaffolded instructional approaches for which LRI argues.

Following “proof of concept” in mathematics (Martin & Evans, 2018), the focus moved to science because it was considered a highly challenging (cognitively burdensome) subject for many students and also amenable to sequenced linear, structured, and scaffolded instruction—such as LRI (Martin et al., 2020). Both sets of studies confirmed the five principles of LRI in mathematics and science and significant links between LRI and students’ motivation, engagement, and achievement. 

These were promising findings so researchers sought to explore LRI in non-STEM subjects — especially in subjects where challenging tasks can be less well-defined and relatively more unstructured, such as in English, where it can be harder to sequence an escalation in difficulty, than in mathematics, for example. In our new study we explored LRI in English (and mathematics). 

Our Study Methods

Participants were 1,773 high school students and their teachers in 94 English and 93 mathematics classrooms. Students were in years seven to 10, with an average age of 14 years. Nearly 60 per cent of the cohort were boys. Just over 60 per cent of the schools were single sex, all in independent schools in NSW. In both English and mathematics, women comprised just over 60 per cent of the teachers. Average years of experience for English teachers was 13 years and for mathematics teachers was 15 years. In English and mathematics classrooms, we administered: the Load Reduction Instruction Scale – Short (LRIS-S; Martin et al., 2020) to students and teachers (a survey tool capturing the five LRI principles in a classroom); a measure of students’ prior learning; students’ effort by way of the Effort Scale – Short (Nagy et al., 2022); and students’ achievement in each subject via an achievement test.

What Did We Find?

We found that student- and teacher-reports of LRI practices were associated with greater student effort and achievement in English and in mathematics. The findings extend prior research in STEM subjects by showing there are also academic benefits in English when load reduction instruction occurs. As described earlier, students with low prior learning need more help to ease cognitive load (Sweller, 2012) and our study confirmed this in both English and mathematics, with teachers mainly doing so via Principle #1 (difficulty reduction).

Concluding Thoughts

For decades there has been some tension between predominantly explicit instructional approaches and predominantly constructivist approaches (Tobias & Duffy, 2009). 

Our findings suggest that framing the two as mutually exclusive may impede student learning. Under LRI, both are compatible, including in English and mathematics: after reducing the burden on working memory via explicit approaches, teachers can encourage students to apply that knowledge and skill in more independent ways as appropriate to their students’ levels of competence (see also Kalyuga, 2007). Taken together, our study provides a more comprehensive perspective on LRI as relevant to the subjects and classrooms within which instruction and learning take place.

Andrew Martin, PhD, is Scientia Professor, Professor of Educational Psychology, and Co-Chair of the Educational Psychology Research Group in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He specialises in student motivation, engagement, achievement, and quantitative research methods.

Paul Ginns is Associate Professor of Educational Psychology in the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Paul uses numerous research methodologies (for example, experimental and survey-based research) and analytic methods, including general linear models, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, structural modelling and meta-analysis, to investigate student learning.

Robin Nagy is a PhD candidate in Educational Psychology at the University of NSW. His PhD focuses on high-school students’ academic effort. Robin has over 25 years’ experience as a teacher and in school leadership, having taught in the UK, Thailand and Australia, and as a Professional Learning Consultant for the Mathematical Association of NSW.

Rebecca Collie, Ph.D., is Scientia Associate Professor in Educational and Developmental Psychology at the University of NSW. Her research interests focus on motivation and well-being among students and teachers, psychosocial experiences at school, and quantitative research methods.

Keiko Bostwick, PhD, is a Research Officer in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She specialises in student motivation, teacher and classroom effects, and quantitative research methods.