EduResearch Matters

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My immediate reaction was one of stunned disbelief and shock

consent, emotions and gender in education, Instructional design, learning design, respectful relationships, teaching gender respect,

Australia’s leading expert in visual methods and learning design wonders if learning designers actually had any hand in the creation of the Good Society resources.

Like many members of the public my first encounter with The Good Society Resources was through social media posts and the evening television news.  

This was designed to be the learning  resource for respectful relationships and as the menu bars show, are intended for use across the Foundation to Years 11-12 in Australian schools. 

I have developed expertise over 40 years in visual methods and over many years I have developed a keen eye for the relationships that are set up between text and imagery in educational contexts. Landing on the first page of the resource my immediate reaction was one of stunned disbelief and shock. It’s gauche in fact.  Given the resource is intended to support educational understanding for one of the most challenging and complex matters for children, young people and our society today, I was immediately taken aback by the visuality of the landing page. Issues of gender, class, identity, equity and ability are powerfully positioned—not for affirmative action, but to ‘other’ the very two groups of Australians that this resource is intended to be used by, students and teachers. 

First impressions are of a screen that is loaded with a scattered and random visual display of ‘cuteness’ and stereotypical images of young Australians. The assumptions from the creators were possibly that the ‘cute’ would equal and symbolise appeal to the foundation to year 6 years and the ‘realist’ photographic images equal students in secondary schools from 7-9 including years 10-12. 

Developing large scale professional learning resources is indeed a complex and expensive task. In Australia we have our own local history of the development of curriculum resources. As large and expensive initiatives, professional learning projects can be contracted to consulting groups, universities or created by Education Services Australia. [1]  The development of large scale professional learning resources typically would employ a large team that includes learning designers to work alongside content developers.  Learning Design is typically understood as the framework that supports learning experiences. Learning Design is also deeply connected to Design thinking. Specialists in these areas work closely with content area experts to support the decisions that need to be made about content, structure, time, pedagogical strategies, and sequences of learning, assessment tasks and the nature of the technology used to support learning.

A close-up examination of the imagery of the site is both confounding and concerning.

Over the last three decades, the use of imagery in online resources, school advertising, prospectuses and the like have been the subject of fine grained analysis by researchers who have an interest in the history of educational ideas and social change.  A close-up examination of the imagery of the site is both confounding and concerning. Central to sound learning design is an answer to the question ‘is this the best solution for my user’ ? .  

Bringing together a small gallery of images across the resource, a critical visual reading of these image based texts raises any number of tensions for the children and young people who are the intended audience of the resources and Australian’s teachers who are being asked to weave the materials into their curriculum planning and pedagogical repertoires.

The Good Society:  F-6 examples

From the guidebook

Years F-2 | The Good Society

Identity – Who am I? | The Good Society

Managing relationships | The Good Society

The Good Society:  Years 7-9 examples from the workbook

The Good Society: Years 10-12 Consenting to Sex

The Good SocietyConsenting to sex | T

The Good Society: Years 10-12 Relationships

Relationships | The Good Society

The Good Society: Years 10-12 Gender

Gender | The Good Society

Whilst there are resources within the site that may be of interest and of use to professionals, the overall conception and messaging of the resource which is stated to be  ‘part of the Australian Government’s Respect Matters program to support respectful relationships education in all Australian schools. (AND) It is an engaging, flexible, online program that helps students develop safe, healthy and respectful relationships’ (A Respect Matters Education Resource | The Good Society) when examined for its visuality and contribution to social change, the resource is a very poor attempt. When we experience such conundrums it is not however helpful to be disrespectful to those who may have created the resource.  

A more productive way forward is to ask our community to make a judgement on whether the resource has been developed from the best evidence that we have at hand. Given what we know about the power of visuality and imagery through critical literacy and image based research, we would draw the conclusion that central to any professional learning on a major social issue which is relying on a web based resource, the visuality of the resource should be equally scrutinised as is the text across the design, development and trailing phases of the resource.   Taking a small set of images from each section of the resource it is very evident that the intertextual relationship, that is, how the words and pictures speak to each other has been ignored. The complexity of the messaging is lost as the imagery is merely attempting to illustrate the text.  Dominated by the use of crude and tacky line drawings and low quality animation that is often obtuse, rather than favouring an economy of the use of visual texts, where the voices of children and young people lead by, and include the creation of student led resources’ production, (think TickTok), a question has to be made about the usability of the resource. In regard to establishing and sustaining professional learning, there is little doubt that the area of respectful relationships is complex and tough territory and it will not be without controversy. If Australians are truly committed to this issue, we might be better advised to say, on this resource, we are not there yet and commit to a revision that will support all learners to be safe, healthy and enjoy respectful relationships.

[1] Education Services Australia (ESA) is a ministerial not-for-profit company committed to making a positive difference in the lives and learning of Australian students. ESA works with all education systems and sectors to improve student outcomes, enhance teacher impact and strengthen school communities. ESA provides:

  • development, sharing and deployment of nationally owned technical data and assessment systems
  • digital teaching and learning resources, tools and services
  • information and communications technology services. https://www.esa.edu.au/about/about-us
Julianne Moss

Julianne Moss is the Alfred Deakin professor and director, Research for Educational Impact, in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University and a former president of AARE.

Five questions to ask if you think teaching problem-solving works

Curriculum review, Maths curriculum, teaching numeracy

Every few decades there is a campaign to include general problem-solving and thinking skills in school curricula. The motivation is understandable. Everyone would like our schools to enhance students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Because it is so obviously important for students to have such skills, these campaigns are frequently successful in including thinking and problem-solving skill modules in the curriculum. Unfortunately, success in introducing thinking and problem-solving into curricula has not been matched by successful educational outcomes. Across the world, there is a consistent failure to actually improve problem-solving performance. We now know enough about human cognition to know why attempts to teach general cognitive skills such as problem-solving will always fail. Here are a few questions that those advocating for the curriculum to include problem solving in areas such as mathematics might want to consider.

  1. What sophisticated, learnable and teachable problem-solving strategies do you personally use when solving a novel problem? If you cannot describe the strategies you use, what hope do you have of teaching them? At least consider the possibility that there are no learnable and teachable general problem-solving strategies.
  2. Ignoring the problem that no novel, general problem-solving strategies have ever been devised, what evidence is there from randomised, controlled trials that teaching general problem-solving strategies improves problem-solving performance? If, after dozens of years attempting to find a body of evidence for the efficacy of teaching general problem-solving strategies, no such bodies of evidence exist, we must at least consider the possibility that they will never exist.
  3. The relevant randomised controlled trials have been run. Within a cognitive load theory context (Lovell, 2020; Garnett, 2020; Sweller, Ayres and Kalyuga, 2011) dozens of experiments from around the globe have compared learners solving classroom problems as opposed to studying a worked example demonstrating the solution. For novice learners in an area, the results overwhelmingly indicate improved performance by the worked-example group over the problem-solving group. Why? Humans are amongst the very few species that have evolved to obtain information from other members of the species. We are very good at it. We can obtain information by problem solving but it is a slow, inefficient technique. If available, novel, complex information always should be obtained from others during instruction rather than attempting to generate it ourselves.
  4. There is evidence that problem solving can be superior to studying solutions but it only occurs when students are already knowledgeable in the area. They need to practice problem solving. There is no evidence that knowledgeable students are better at solving novel problems outside of their areas of knowledge. Why does practice at solving problems only become effective once we become reasonably knowledgeable in the relevant curriculum area? Cognitive load theory provides an answer that is beyond the scope of this statement (see also Martin and Evans, 2018 ).
  5. Ignoring the lack of evidence from randomised, controlled trials, why do correlational studies on data from international tests consistently demonstrate that the less guidance learners are given when learning, the less they learn? (Note, problem solving is associated with minimal guidance.) (Oliver, McConney and Woods-McConney, 2019; Jerrim, Oliver and Sims, 2019)

As indicated above, cognitive load theory provides one answer to this set of questions. The theory uses our knowledge of human cognition and evolutionary psychology to devise novel instructional procedures. It explains why (a) when dealing with novel, complex problems, studying worked examples is superior to solving the equivalent problems, (b) why solving problems is superior to studying worked examples when levels of expertise have increased in a particular domain, and (c) why attempting to teach non-existent problem-solving strategies, by taking time away from teaching subject matter, reduces students’ performance on international tests.

So, how can we increase problem-solving skill? By increasing domain-specific knowledge. Expecting anyone to engage in sophisticated problem solving and critical thinking in areas where they have minimal knowledge is futile. Lots of domain knowledge allows critical thinking and effective problem solving to occur naturally and automatically. Attempting to teach general problem-solving skills rather than knowledge, does not.

John Sweller is the emeritus professor of educational psychology in the School of Education at UNSW.

How to do the sums for an excellent maths curriculum

Curriculum review, Maths curriculum, teaching numeracy, ,

As we await the release of a new Australian curriculum for mathematics, debates about its contents are developing. As is typical with educational debates, the issues are often painted in binary terms: traditional vs progressive, explicit teaching vs problem solving, content vs skills, procedural vs conceptual knowledge. In mathematics education, these debates have existed for some time, pitting supporters of explicit teaching of clearly defined content against those who advocate for more opportunities for mathematical problem solving and reasoning. However, in order to produce mathematically-able citizens at one end of the spectrum, and at the other, the mathematicians of the future, we need both. We need students with extensive mathematics knowledge and skills, who can also think flexibly and creatively with that knowledge to be confident problem solvers. 

So what do teaching approaches have to do with the new Australian curriculum? A curriculum should outline what is to be taught alongside its purpose and intent. In addition to outlining the mathematics content for each year level, the current Australian curriculum for mathematics includes four proficiency strand: understanding, fluency, problem-solving and reasoning. The strands describe “how content is explored or developed; that is, the thinking and doing of mathematics.” These proficiencies are integrated with the content to ensure that students can work adaptively with mathematics content rather than just be competent users of set procedures. The world that students will inhabit in the future will require them to have strategies to solve complex problems and apply their mathematical content knowledge to unfamiliar situations. Taking on these challenges will require them to be confident and experienced problem solvers. Knowing how to apply mathematical procedures and algorithms only to familiar situations is not sufficient. 

The world that students will inhabit in the future will require them to have strategies to solve complex problems and apply their mathematical content knowledge to unfamiliar situations.

Criticisms of learning approaches that enable students to problem solve or to reason mathematically often assume that teachers are trying to teach generic skills in the absence of content. This is not the intent of the Australian mathematics curriculum, where it is expected that the proficiencies are integrated with the mathematics content. Students need sound content knowledge in order to draw on that knowledge to solve problems. They cannot think critically without sound underlying knowledge to think critically about. In mathematics they need both procedural and conceptual knowledge, which develop iteratively alongside one another. Teachers have a role to play in providing quality explicit instruction which takes into account cognitive load theory but students also need time to explore and compare alternative problem solutions and to communicate their mathematical reasoning.  

We know that mathematics is a polarising subject. Most people have strong views about their attitudes towards the subject and their capacity to do mathematics. Such views were generally formed as a result of their schooling. Unlike other school subjects, mathematics induces widespread anxiety and negative feelings, often attributed to traditional teaching and assessment practices. These negative attitudes cause many learners to opt out of mathematics in the senior years of schooling and to disengage with the subject from an even earlier age. The TIMSS data tells us that more positive attitudes, in terms of valuing, liking and confidence with mathematics are related to higher achievement. So teaching approaches that support the development of positive attitudes are vitally important so that students don’t start to consider themselves as a ‘non-maths person’, losing interest in mathematics early in secondary school. Traditional explicit teaching, while appropriate some of the time during a teaching sequence, if overused, can alienate some learners, leading to disengagement and a reduction in student confidence leading to a decrease in enrolments in mathematics in senior years of schooling and beyond. 

The new Australian Curriculum is an opportunity to create a curriculum that will enable students to develop a deep understanding of and appreciation for mathematics. The curriculum should provide guidance for teachers so that they can teach students in ways that develop understanding and competence but also develop an interest in the subject and a desire to learn more. We want our students to finish school with positive attitudes to mathematics and confidence to use mathematics within their personal and working lives. This will only happen if teachers provide a balanced approach to learning mathematics, with time for students to learn from explicit instruction, but also to apply their creativity and knowledge to unfamiliar situations, building confidence in themselves as learners, preparing them for whatever the future holds.

Professor Kathryn Holmes is the director of the Centre for Educational Research in the School of Education at Western Sydney University. She is also the asssociate dean, research, School of Education

Associate Professor Catherine Attard is the deputy director of the Centre for Educational Research in the School of Education, Western Sydney University. She is also president, Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia

 Tomorrow Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology at UNSW John Sweller adds to the debate.

Why bizarre milkshakes will never replace world-class consent education

consent, emotions and gender in education, respectful relationships, social and emotional competence, ,

The Government would only have had to go as far as Victoria to do better, writes Amanda Keddie.

Education academics, women’s rights campaigners and many in between have criticised some of the material in the government’s new respectful relationships resource for schools.

Particularly controversial in the Good Society resource is a video of a girl asking a boy to try her milkshake. When he says he’s happy with his own, she smears her milkshake all over his face. 

While well-intentioned, the video is simplistic and likely to be viewed by secondary students as condescending. The video is designed to be a lesson in decision-making when someone crosses the line in relationships that may be abusive.

I reviewed the entire Good Society resource from a gender-justice perspective and found problems beyond those in the milkshake video. These include that gender-based violence isn’t addressed in the materials for the primary school years, and harmful gender norms are perpetuated in some of the materials around consent. The resource also overwhelmingly focuses on heterosexual relationships.

What is this resource?

The Good Society resource is part of the Australian government’s Respect Matters program, which aims “to support respectful relationships education in all Australian schools” and to “change the attitudes of young people towards violence, including domestic, family and sexual violence”. The Respect Matters program itself is part of the government’s National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children. 

The resource includes more than 350 videos, podcasts and activities for children in the foundation year of school, up to year 12. 

It’s divided into year levels (foundation–year 6, 7-9 and 10-12) with a series of activities for students to explore topics, including:

– positive relationships, inclusion and exclusion, friendships and identity (foundation-year 6) 

– peer influence, social power and gender (years 7-9) 

– sexual consent and sexting (years 11-12).

There are positive aspects to this resource including teacher guides for each topic with clearly stated learning objectives. All content is linked directly to the Australian Curriculum and there are links in the resource to extensive professional learning support for teachers. 

The resource draws on some powerful video material that foregrounds the voices of young people to stimulate students’ interest in, and discussion about, each of the topics. Some topics, like sexting, are addressed comprehensively.

But there are several serious issues.

Nothing on gender-based violence for young children

The government launched The Good Society after Chanel Contos’ viral petition for sexual consent to be taught earlier in schools. But the resource does not mention issues of sexual consent until years 11 and 12. 

Children live in a very gender inequitable world and absorb its messages. And the unfortunate reality is young children experience unwanted sexual contact. They need the language and strategies to challenge these experiences and protect themselves.

There is strong evidence attesting to the significance of supporting young children in the early childhood and primary years to critically analyse harmful gender identities. 

And we know young children are capable of understanding gender-based violence. In a recent study my colleague and I observed a teacher in a year 1 to 2 class eliciting comments from students who defined different forms of gender-based violence including “when someone says girls can’t play soccer” and as “when boys are teased when they cry”. 

This teacher was drawing on the teaching materials in the Victorian Respectful Relationships Education curriculum. These materials focus on defining gender-based violence and examining its effects through age-appropriate playground and school scenarios.  

https://twitter.com/wheeliebinit/status/1384019335786598401?s=20

But such defining and analysis are absent in The Good Society materials from the first year to year 6. Gender identity features in some of the cartoon stories and there are some gestures to what gender respect might look like. But the materials are quite childish and condescending. 

Of concern, some of the the stories reinforce gendered messages. One features a soccer game, where the male character outperforms the girls who “struggle to get the ball”. The girls are angry about the unfairness of the game and force him to pass the ball to them. Without proper critique, this story leaves gender binaries (boys as physically strong and in control and girls as less powerful) intact. 

Young women presented as sexual gatekeepers

For years 11-12, The Good Society’s materials explore issues of sexual consent under the headings of influences (like social forces and technology) and situations (such as alcohol and drugs, and parties). These are important focus areas and there are some powerful videos in this section that could open up transformative conversations about gender justice. 

But several of the videos about sexual consent reinforce the notion of females as sexual gatekeepers and males as sexual initiators. 

One year 11-12 resource video called “Kiss” involves two teenagers engaged in a passionate kissing session that, for the young woman, is getting out of hand. She halts the process and is relieved when her male partner agrees to “keep it above the clothes”. 

The teacher guidance associated with this video recognises tensions of ambivalence around sexual consent. But the decision-making centres on the sexual objectification of the woman. For instance, there are questions about whether the young woman should allow the young man to “squeeze her butt” or “squeeze her boobs”. 

There is no real critical engagement with the gendered dimensions of sexual consent, such as the hetero-sexist presumptions that position boys with the power to sexualise and dehumanise girls, and girls with the responsibility to police boys’ excessive sexual appetites. 

There’s a good resource available

Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge has said the resource was developed in consultation with experts, such as the eSafety Commissioner, Foundation for Young Australians, and parent, teacher and community groups. 

I am surprised this consultation did not draw on the Victorian Respectful Relationships model currently being taken up in more than 1,850 Victorian government, Catholic and independent schools. 

This program’s curriculum resources draw on an extensive evidence base. And it situates teaching and learning within a whole school approach, where gender respect and equality are examined and monitored in relation to staffing, school culture, professional learning, support for staff and students and community connections. 

Amanda Keddie is a Professor of Education at Deakin University. Her research examines the processes, practices and conditions that can impact on the pursuit of social justice in education settings. Amanda’s qualitative research has been based within the Australian, English and American schooling contexts. Follow her on @amandamkeddie

This work is being co-published with The Conversation.

Main image from the The Good Society

Teachers do not want or need another review. Trust is proven to work.

initial teacher education, quality teachers, Teacher education, ,


Christine Cunningham, Maggie McAlinden, Michelle Striepe, Christa Norris, Madlen Griffiths, Zina Cordery, Wei Zhang.

We are a group of exhausted expert teacher educators from Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia with a long and proud history following in the footsteps of Edith Cowan who did so much to improve the lives of women, the poor and the under-educated. As teacher educators, we understand the influence that those in power have over others and we were dismayed to see yet another Education Minister call for yet another review of teacher education in these times of turmoil. Despite being highly educated professionals, our agency is being eroded by the current precarity of all work in higher education, yet we feel compelled to speak up on behalf of those who can’t. We write this blog to ask the Education Minister to trust teachers and teacher educators and to stop the decay of  public trust in our education system through a stopgap review.

Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge has decided to again review Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Australia. 

We do not believe another review is necessary. 

While we acknowledge the capabilities of the four commissioned reviewers, chaired by former Department of Education secretary Lisa Paul AO PSM,  there have been many, many government reviews into teaching in recent decades but there is little implementation of recommendations.

This latest review is being justified by the Minister because Australian student achievement trends in two international standardised tests, the PISA and TIMMS, are slipping down on what we consider to be a problematic global league table. 

The results which concern the minister are shown in the graphs below. The first is taken from the Australian Council for Educational Research’s report on 2018 PISA data about Australian year 10 students and the second and third graphs from the 2019 TIMMS data about year 4 then year 8 Australian students.

Figure 1
Figures 2 and 3

Citing results from the 2018 PISA testing round ( Figure 1), the Minister is concerned that achievement standards have been slipping:

This review claims it will focus on ways to attract ‘high-quality’ candidates into teaching and investigate how ITE courses prepare teachers. We note that while it is a noble and worthwhile aim, as we always welcome high-quality candidates into the teaching profession, to conduct yet another review of ITE will not resolve the problem of declining standards alone. 

A range of corresponding factors are intrinsically interlinked to impact on students’ academic performance. Improved student outcomes may be a result of joint efforts from parents, school communities, neighbourhood safety, the list goes on. It is unrealistic to rely on a single factor, i.e. Review to lift students’ learning engagement or academic outcome. Efforts by teachers and educators to cater for distinctive contexts and individual needs have to be valued and rewarded, not scrutinised.  

Yet again, the blame for declining standards appears to be shifted onto individual teachers. After reading media reports on the new review, it is clear that the underlying message of this review seems to be that individual teachers are yet again being unfairly blamed for the decline in standardised test scores. Teachers are sick of being portrayed in the media as being to blame for circumstances that arise from a complex mix of historical, cultural, sociological and ideological factors.

So if we do not support a new review then what will stop the decline in standardised test scores which concern the Minister? 

We think the solutions are already available and they revolve around trust. Pasi Sahlberg and Timothy Walker in their recent book In Teachers We Trust  advocate a trust-based school system; where we trust in teachers, pay them highly and recognise them as essential workers. 

At the individual level, trust is a relational and moral emotion that reduces anxiety and makes people feel secure. When we feel safe, we learn better, we feel better. At the societal level, the trust between citizens/teachers and institutions is more complex, but has more or less the same effect. The erosion of trust increases anxiety at both levels and for everyone concerned. When trust is absent or diminished in a society or institution, anxiety rises and our capacity to teach and learn declines which is what we may be seeing reflected in the PISA results. 

The development of trust is the best path forward. Supporting teachers in this way is important because, after all, it is the work of teachers and principals that has the greatest impact on school effectiveness and student learning (Grissom et al., 2021; Leithwood et al., 2004). 

Teachers who have taught for a long time and then study to the PhD level are the professionals who teach people to become teachers. They are essential, highly qualified workers who can be trusted.

Trust in teachers themselves, trust in those who educate them.

We are concerned this new review may potentially negate the ‘Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers’ report from the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group, or TEMAG. This report, issued late in 2014 was prepared by a panel of experts based on wide-ranging evidence, research and international best practice.

Instead of focusing attention on ITE, we’d like the current government to show some trust in teachers and have the moral courage to implement recommendations from previous reviews  alongside  leaders of State/Territory governments, leaders of the various State/Territory educational systems and leaders at the school level. We’d like to see the government start listening to the experts rather than wasting taxpayers money on yet another review. 

Improving an entire system can only come from the will, collective work, shared knowledge and moral leadership of all those who work within the system (Fullan, 2002).

Top left and then clockwise:

Dr Christine Cunningham is a secondary trained HASS, dance and ESL teacher with a PhD in Educational Leadership and is currently the School of Education’s Higher Degrees by Research Coordinator at Edith Cowan University.

Dr Maggie McAlinden is the TESOL program leader at Edith Cowan university, and has a PhD in Intercultural Education). 

Dr Michelle Striepe is a senior lecturer within the School of Education at ECU with a Masters and EdD in Educational Leadership. 

Dr Donna Barwood is a Lecturer in the School of Education with a PhD investigating the teacher workforce.

Wei Zhang is a humanities and Chinese language trained teacher and current PhD candidate with the School of Education at ECU.

Zina Cordery  is a digital education specialist with a Masters of Research Practice  and is a current PhD candidate with the School of Education at ECU.

Madlen Griffiths is an ITE professional experience specialist with a Masters of Research Practice and is a current PhD candidate with the School of Education at ECU. 

Dr Christa Norris is a lecturer and leader of the Internship program at ECU with a PhD in STEM education. 

There’s an urgent need to teach empathy but not everyone will connect or care

emotions and gender in education, empathy teaching, ,

Sometimes our frames of reference are too narrow and limited for us to comprehend alternative ways of knowing and being. Our frames of reference limit our capacity to empathise.

So, is it possible to teach empathy? Empathy training has featured in the news media recently as a way to begin remedying the abhorrent sexual misconduct of politicians. The presumption is that empathy can be taught through an intervention or course. There is extensive education research that highlights the complexities of teaching for empathy in relation to gender justice that is worth revisiting at this time.

The recent series of attempts by Prime Minister Scott Morrison (images here by Eesan1969 from Wikimedia Commons) to convince the women of Australia that he understands their plight (for example, only understanding the severity of rape when he considers it from a father’s perspective, getting defensive and weaponising women’s oppression when criticised about his poor leadership in a parliament where sexual misconduct is rife) are testimony to his and many other men’s seeming lack of capacity to empathise with women. 

This makes sense to some extent. They have likely not experienced any form of sexual trivialisation, sexual activity without their consent or other forms of sexual harassment and abuse.

The question of whether or not we can empathise, forces us to accept the limitations in how we understand others and to re-examine who we are ourselves. 

As feminists have been arguing for decades, we can never fully know ‘the other’, our knowledge of others will always be interested, partial and potentially oppressive (Ellsworth, 1992).

Teaching for empathy is about opening the window for connecting with and caring for others. In relation to gender justice, teaching for empathy is important because it invites boys and men to imagine standing in the shoes of girls and women; to be moved to better understand their feelings, thoughts and experiences. Ways of teaching for empathy are many and varied. In education programs, they tend to be embedded in a broader focus on promoting positive and respectful relations. In programs explicitly designed for gender justice or transformation, they will support students to develop a critical understanding of the gender stereotypes that shape and limit their identities and behaviours. 

Such programs might present stories and scenarios that bring to life gender inequalities especially for girls and women. They might also involve boys and men sharing their own experiences of gender, including their feelings of disempowerment. There are mixed reports as to the success of such teaching to develop boys’ and men’s greater empathy for girls and women (see Flood, 2019). 

Teaching for empathy is a complex process requiring ongoing critical reflection on how we understand ourselves and others. And it is  particularly difficult given the ways our society and institutions work – most of our institutions including our schools are managed by systems of hierarchy, competition and individualism – they depend on inequality to function. 

Our political institutions are particularly brutal in this respect – they are deliberately adversarial in their focus on attack, blame and point-scoring. How can we genuinely teach for and expect empathy within these institutions? Cultivating empathy requires inclusive, respectful and collaborative relations and conditions.

The power of the empathiser

Teaching for empathy depends on how the ‘other’ and their suffering are represented. While some suffering is presented as worthy and legitimate, other suffering is not (Butler, 2010). In general, it is those with privilege who are positioned with the power to be the empathisers – to determine what suffering is worthy and legitimate. In one study I conducted in a state high school, I reported ongoing sexual harassment relayed to me by a group of Year 8 girls (perpetrated by a group of boys in their class). The harassment was in the form of skirt lifting, inappropriate touching and wrestling and highly disparaging sexist comments. My report was trivialised by one male staff member with the comment ‘Some of those girls can be real drama queens’ (Keddie 2009). Such trivialising of sexual harassment is far from new. In this case, this teacher was positioned with the power to trivialise and dismiss these girls’ suffering. 

There is also a danger that teaching for empathy can lead to a passive empathy or even pity (when, for example, girls and women are infantilised by boys and men and positioned as in need of protection or sentimentalised as naturally more emotionally intelligent than boys and men). In another study I conducted with a community organisation (Keddie, 2020), the facilitator of a men’s program spoke of women as more emotionally mature and advanced than men with a better grip on expressing themselves – he told me that ‘most men struggle with … ‘alexithymia’ (which is a personality dysfunction in emotional awareness, social attachment and interpersonal relating). While well intended, such views about women and men – as essentially different in relation to their emotional capacity – are neither accurate nor helpful. They reproduce a gender binary that places the responsibility for emotional labour and care on women and girls. 

These approaches to teaching for empathy do little to unsettle the status hierarchies that lead to inequities. 

Discomforts and emotions

Teaching for empathy in gender transformative ways is discomforting because it is focused on unsettling taken-for-granted and deeply embedded views, emotions and actions (Zembylas, 2014). It involves inviting boys and men to critically reflect on their gender privilege and their complicity in reproducing gender inequality. It involves difficult and confronting conversations. In one of my research projects (Keddie, 2020), a facilitator noted one such conversation he had with a group of young men relating to the topic of sexual consent. One of the young men expressed the view that a woman removing her clothes meant that she has automatically consented to having sex. This facilitator explained his response:

“Okay, interesting. So why do you think that?  Just because you took off your clothes, and she took off her clothes, that … [that] automatically means that she wants to have sex. Did she say she wants to have it?” He said, “No, but I just assumed that because she took off her clothes and I took off my clothes.” I was like, “Well, you know  and did you perform the intercourse?” He’s like, “Yeah.” [I asked] “How did she feel after?” [he replied] “Well, she was very quiet and felt sad about the whole thing, but I was like,

I didn’t really think too much about it.”  And then we looked at that, “Mmm, interesting.”  So we asked some questions, “Why did you think your partner wasn’t really communicating with you?  Why do you feel your partner was shy about expressing how she felt about that interaction?” And he was like, “Well, I don’t really know. I never really thought about it in that way.” … [and I said] maybe she wasn’t willing to having sex with you, you know.” 

Inviting boys and men to consider their own sexually coercive behaviours is necessarily discomforting. We can begin to sense this discomfort in this example. This discomfort may lead to boys and men feeling strong emotions such as indignation, embarrassment, anger or shame. These emotions do things – they tend to create barriers to boys’ and men’s engagement with the experience of girls and women. 

A renewed focus on ethical self-reflection

Such questions and limitations call for a renewed focus on ethical self-reflection – on the very terms by which we give an account of ourselves and others. Such self-reflection does not mean doing away with attempts to empathise but is about acknowledging that such attempts are shaped by partial and potentially oppressive knowledge and the reality that some aspects of ourselves and others may be unknowable (Kukar, 2016). 

For men and boys engaging in the work of gender transformation, it requires acknowledging that they can never fully know the suffering of girls and women in circumstances of sexual harassment and violence, and they can never presume to know what this suffering might feel like. It requires an ongoing critical examination of their investments in the gender norms that contribute to this suffering and sitting with the discomfort they encounter when they are confronted with their complicity in gender inequality. 

Amanda Keddie is a Professor of Education at Deakin University. Her research examines the processes, practices and conditions that can impact on the pursuit of social justice in education settings. Amanda’s qualitative research has been based within the Australian, English and American schooling contexts. Follow her on @amandamkeddie

References:

Butler, J. (2010). Frames of war: When is life grievable? London, UK: Verso.

Flood, M. (2019). Engaging men and boys in violence prevention. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Keddie, A. (2009) ‘Some of those girls can be real drama queens’: issues of gender, sexual

harassment and schooling, Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning 9(1), 1-16.

Keddie, A. (2020) Engaging boys and young men in gender transformation: The possibilities and limits of a pedagogy of empathy, NORMA: Nordic Journal for Masculinity Studies 15(2), 97-110.

Kukar, P. (2016). “’The Very Unrecognizability of the Other’. Edith Stein, Judith Butler, and the Pedagogical Challenge of Empathy.” Philosophical Inquiry in Education 24(1):1-14.Zembylas, M. (2014). “Theorizing ‘Difficult Knowledge’ in the Aftermath of the ‘Affective Turn’: Implications for Curriculum and Pedagogy in Handling Traumatic Representations.” Curriculum Inquiry 44(3): 390-412.

Illustration of a Zoom tutorial

Online learning will never be a substitute for face-to-face

21st century teaching, Changes to higher education, higher education, Online higher education, online learning, ,

In 2020 higher education student satisfaction with their ‘entire educational experience’ hit its lowest point since Australia’s national survey of current students began in 2011.

But the detailed survey results, which cover many aspects of student life, paint a mixed picture. Despite an unexpected shift to online learning due to COVID-19 restrictions, satisfaction with many aspects of teaching changed little between 2019 and 2020. The lost opportunity for personal contact with other students drove the biggest falls in satisfaction.

The Student Experience Survey (SES) is sent each year to commencing and later year students, who based on subjects taken to date are estimated to be in their final year. All higher education providers, public or private, university or non-university, are now within scope, with 184,000 undergraduates completing a survey in 2020. The SES includes postgraduates, but this post focuses on undergraduates. 

Students who enrolled for on-campus education led the decline in satisfaction. 

Most SES questions refer to specific aspects of student experience, but there is a general ‘overall how would you rate the quality of your entire educational experience this year?’ question. This fell from 78 per cent of respondents rating their educational experience as good or excellent in 2019 to 69 per cent in 2020. It had never previously been below 2019 levels. The SES report produced by the Social Research Centre notes that, as we would expect, students who enrolled for on-campus education led the decline in satisfaction. 

Despite lower overall satisfaction, no specific question probing responses to the work of academic staff declined by more than 5 percentage points – that was the drop in those agreeing that their course was delivered in a way that was ‘well-structured and focused’, to 62 per cent (suggesting that this was already an issue for a third of students). 

Ratings of teacher concern for student learning and feedback on work showed no year-to-year change at all, and other questions on intellectual stimulation, clear explanations of coursework and assessment, and teacher helpfulness and approachability registered only small dips in satisfaction. The quality of online learning materials was rated as good or excellent by 81 per cent of students, four percentage points lower than in 2019 – but a good result as it includes judgment on materials were not going to be online until COVID struck. 

In the eyes of their students teaching staff managed the move from campus-based teaching better than expected given earlier reports of dissatisfaction.  But online study diminished other aspects of the higher education experience. This was especially so for commencing students. The proportion of them reporting working often or very often with other students as part of their study dropped 16 percentage points, to 48 per cent. Frequent interaction with other students outside study was down 15 percentage points to 27 per cent. A sense of belonging to the university declined 12 percentage points to 42 per cent. Self-perceived development of skills to work effectively with others fell 11 percentage points to 52 per cent. 

The published SES reports don’t provide demographic detail for individual question results, but undergraduates aged under 25 years reported larger overall declines in satisfaction than older students. Young people had the most to lose from online education. For many of them university offers a significant social experience as well as a formal education. No matter how good the online educational technology, there is no perfect digital substitute for face-to-face contact. Later year students were less satisfied in the same areas as commencing students, but with lower year-on-year declines. Possibly maintaining friends and connections established before 2020 online was easier than forming new relationships. 

A return to on-campus teaching is the obvious way to lift face-to-face contact between students. That is partially happening, but going back to where we were in early March 2020 will not be easy. Universities won’t remove online versions of courses while the threat of lockdown remains, or while there are still students, especially international students, who cannot get to an Australian campus. And as with workers who are reluctant to return to the office despite most restrictions on doing so being lifted, students may have formed new habits while being forced to study at home. They might miss their friends, but they don’t miss the commute. 

 A university survey conducted earlier this year suggests that COVID accelerated moves to permanently reduce, or even eliminate, teaching via lectures. While there are long-standing pedagogical critiques of lectures, this could take away another reason for students to visit their campus regularly.  

So many big things are happening in higher education at the moment – COVID-driven changes to domestic student behaviour, the loss of international students on campus or entirely, the reduced per student funding of Job-ready Graduates – that it is hard to predict what campus life will look like in two or three years time. 

But the latest Student Experience Survey results show that while hasty transitions to online tuition had surprisingly small negative effects on student ratings of teaching, for some students the lack of face-to-face interaction makes their overall student experience much less satisfying. 

Andrew Norton is Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy at the Centre for Social Research and Methods at the Australian National University.  He blogs at andrewnorton.net .au Follow him on Twitter @andrewjnorton 

Many ideas for blog posts

I found my PhD journey extremely stressful and mentally exhausting

aspirations, belonging, higher education, PhD education, PhD work, ,

The secret lives of doctoral students and how academics can help

Every year, thousands of students enrol into doctoral programs across Australia and around the world. New PhD students enter an environment characterised by the persistent pursuit for knowledge – there is always something more to learn.

They also hear advice about academia from all and sundry. When we spoke to students in 2021, one final year PhD student noted, 

“There are so many different aspects to learn about and it’s difficult to know what you don’t know. This leaves you always wondering whether you are missing something. There are also many different perspectives offered by others – everyone’s experience is so different that it’s hard to work out what advice applies to you and what does not.”1

Given that each person’s experience in a PhD program is unique, how does a PhD student come to know what their identity as a researcher is?

When someone asks you to describe yourself, on which area of your life do you focus? Perhaps you highlight your job or education, listing your interests and achievements. Maybe you highlight your religion and/or ethnicity, highlighting how these shape your approach to life. You may explore your family and personal life, showcasing the impact these areas have on your life satisfaction. The stories we tell ourselves and others about who we are, who we are not, and who we ‘should’ be in our context, can be defined as our identity. 

Identity is multifaceted and continuously shaped through our experiences. It is also significantly influenced by the context in which we find ourselves – the implicit practices within our context tell us what is expected of us.  As researchers, we are particularly interested in the concept of academic identity – the stories people tell themselves and others about who they are or are not within the context of academia. A PhD student’s academic identity is, therefore, largely shaped through the narratives and practices they experience within academia as they conduct their research.

An area of special interest for us is the doctoral education environment in higher education institutions. As higher education researchers, we experience the daily influence of academia on our own sense of who we are. We have seen PhD students try to navigate the often implicit knowledges and practices of academia during their studies. These implicit knowledges and practices are rarely taught and can cause an environment of exclusiveness – a space where some are privileged while others are marginalised. We were interested in exploring how PhD students’ experiences influence their perception of their place within the context of academia.

We believe that, to understand the experiences of PhD students as they navigate this complex environment, you have to highlight their voices. By listening to their stories, we believe we can better understand their journeys and, consequently, design improved educational experiences. We have used this approach in the past, which allowed us to explore the personal journeys of several doctoral students as they reflected on their own studies.2 The autobiographical narratives that the PhD students wrote highlighted that the PhD significantly influenced their wellbeing, sense of identity, and intercultural competence. For example, one student noted:

“I understand the PhD as an office-like job; however, your job has a lack of clarity regarding how you are supposed to achieve your goals. You get to decide what you need to do each day, but your plans change all the time as your research results take your study in a new direction. This of course means that you have a great deal of flexibility, but it also means there is a lot of uncertainty during your PhD journey. Personally, this meant that I found my PhD journey extremely stressful and mentally exhausting.”3

To explore PhD students’ academic identity development, we conducted a large-scale research project exploring the experiences and lived realities of 29 PhD students at an Australian university. We used a creative approach that was designed to highlight the voices of the students through narratives and poems, allowing us to explore academic identity development from their points of view. The first findings from this project was recently published in The Journal of Higher Education and has since received significant attention from the academic community. An open access post-print version of this article is available here.

To start our research, we wanted to know why students committed the time and energy to pursue a PhD degree. We found our participants pursued a PhD as a stepping stone for future career success, to learn more about themselves or a particular academic topic, and to solve a problem in their local context. The students believed that the PhD was an all-consuming endeavour, something that should only be attempted by someone if they could fully dedicate themselves to the pursuit.

Further exploration of our participants’ experiences helped us to discover that PhD students experience significant pressure to build their personal brand. They felt that there was considerable tension between developing disciplinary knowledge and building professional skills (also sometimes termed “soft skills” or “transferable skills”). Yet they also felt that both these forms of personal knowledge were essential for later career success. Importantly, our study showed that several of our participants felt marginalised in their ability to develop these different forms of personal knowledge. They felt that their agency to take control of their own learning was hindered by various institutions that influenced the context of academia including the universities themselves, government agencies, and scholarship funding agencies. As a result, several students felt disempowered during their educational journey which adversely affected their academic identity.

As noted by one participant,

“This has been taxing intellectually but VERY taxing on my sense of self and my sense of self worth as a scholar.”1

The tension students experience highlights that the links between disciplinary knowledge and professional skills are not made clear to students. We believe that professional skills actually increase the applicability of disciplinary knowledge. For example, if PhD students do not have the ability to communicate their research to a wider audience, it is likely that their disciplinary knowledge will linger in relative obscurity. We also believe that the act of doing disciplinary research teaches a range of professional skills as a consequence. For example, conducting literature research to identify a research project for study necessitates the use of a variety of analytical skills. It is, therefore, our responsibility as educators to help PhD students reflect on the knowledge and skills they already possess. This reflective approach can help students develop an understanding of the variety of skills they have already developed during their studies, giving them the agency to seek targeted professional development approaches for future career success.

Importantly, our research should act as a clarion call for those in academia. We implore educators to value different forms of knowledge and skills. This approach will help the scholars and problem-solvers of the future develop a strong sense of who they are and where they fit within their respective fields.

Dr Lynette Pretorius works with undergraduate, postgraduate, and graduate research students to improve their academic language and literacy skills in the Academic Language, Literacy and Numeracy Development Team at Monash University.

Dr Luke Macaulay is a research fellow at Deakin University’s Centre for Refugee Employment, Advocacy, Training, and Education (CREATE), researching the education and employment experiences of people from refugee and asylum seeking backgrounds.

References

1.     Pretorius, L., & Macaulay, L. (2021). Notions of human capital and academic identity in the PhD: Narratives of the disempowered. Journal of Higher Education, 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2020.1854605

2.     Pretorius, L., Macaulay, L., & Cahusac de Caux, B. (2019). Wellbeing in doctoral education: Insights and guidance from the student experience. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9302-0

3.     Lau, R. W. K., & Pretorius, L. (2019). Intrapersonal wellbeing and the academic mental health crisis. In L. Pretorius, L. Macaulay, & B. Cahusac de Caux (Eds.), Wellbeing in doctoral education: Insights and guidance from the student experience (pp. 37-45). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9302-0_5

People call me “bogan”: how to mend the country-city divide in higher education

belonging, rural and regional education, rural and regional students,

Rural and regional students want to go to university – but they don’t, at least not in the same proportion as their urban counterparts. Education needs to be accessible to everyone regardless of where they live to ensure that diverse perspectives are valued in society.

We aren’t suggesting that university is for everyone or that university is the only positive post-school pathway but underrepresentation of regional and rural students in university populations persists. The government’s focus on initiatives to get non-metropolitan students to university, such as increases in scholarship programs, and increased ATAR loadings for completing schooling outside a metropolitan location, are noteworthy but they are not having the desired outcomes.

With this in mind we bring a new ‘take’ to understanding this dilemma. We undertook research that explored the experiences of rural students at university in 2019 and 2020 (prior to COVID-19) with the aim of understanding sociocultural factors that were influencing their success. 

We spoke to a total of 25 current university students in group and individual interviews at four universities in NSW and the ACT. Students were asked to describe their experiences of moving to the new location their university is situated in, making friends, socialising, participating in the coursework, and experiences going back home. In these discussions regional students expressed feeling distinct social and cultural differences compared with their metropolitan peers, and that these differences impacted their sense of belonging at university. Two main overarching themes were evident in the students’ experiences: using different knowledges, and impacts on belonging in ‘home’ and ‘university’ spaces.

Using different knowledges

Students identified a distinct difference in the nature of knowledges that were valued in their home town compared to the nature of knowledges  valued in their university town, a factor that also impacted on their relationships.  This was evident in the conversations that occurred across each space, the knowledges that were valued in their coursework, and their career expectations when they graduate. 

In their course work, no student felt non-metropolitan communities were represented in a positive light, instead they were all represented for their problems, such as lower achievement in school, worse health outcomes, and lack of career opportunities. When asked about whether knowledges from non-metropolitan communities were considered and represented in their course work one student described feeling that:

“There’s no representative for that rural lifestyle; the whole conversation is directed from the perspective of people that live in the city the whole time, so they’re using city examples, city schools, that type of thing”.

Further, students felt that examples discussed were usually very negative:

“…there’s only 3,000 people, we have very limited services in our area and it’s been discussed, like we have to travel three hours to the nearest cancer treatment centre, we have to travel to get a cast put on your arm and because I’m in the health faculty, we discuss it a bit because our services are limited and so we look at why they’re limited and how and whatever”.

This was problematic for some students who wanted to return to rural areas for their career:

“I  don’t think anybody talks positively about rural towns. Nobody is promoted to go out there. I can’t imagine anybody in my class being like you want to go practice in a rural town like xx or xx. Even the jobs out in xx, like the requirements you need for social work, are a lot lower because no one goes out there”. 

The students also described how in the university town, conversations were different and metropolitan students were unaware of many of the issues impacting on rural communities. Students cited the example of the recent bushfires and drought, where many of the metropolitan students were unaware of how it was still impacting them and their home community:

“I know a lot of people who were affected by it on res [university accommodation] and they wanted to talk about it but no-one really gave a damn about it, and people seemed to think with the drought thing – people seemed to think, “Oh well, they’ve had rain now, the river’s flowing again, so it’s over”.  It’s not over, it’s nowhere near it”.

Many students also felt that these issues impacted on their identity and made them feel more self-conscious:

“ I know that sometimes people call me “bogan” and stuff before because of the way I talk and I have noticed it and I have actually had to curate my language sometimes for who I’m with…”

These issues all linked to the students’ sense of belonging, both in their university town and their home town. 

Impacts on ‘belonging’ at university and at home 

Although the physical spaces of their home town and university were different, students described the impact of this to be cultural, social and emotional. 

For example, although students were surrounded by more people in the university city, students often missed the sense of community and belonging from their small non-metropolitan home town: 

“I guess that’s kind of what means the most to me in a rural location is that sense of community, the sense that you know people, that you grow up with the same group of people; you have neighbourly relationships which is not really something that I see here as much”. 

Many of the students described feeling like an outsider, and felt their experiences and lives were treated as foreign and fascinating:

 “… I’m like the rural outlier sort of thing; they come to me if they want to know about a lamb or something like that you know”.

These issues all impacted on the students sense of belonging, in particular, their connection to their home town and community. For example, when asked about going back home, many described a disconnect:

“It’s ok. Sometimes it’s a bit distant, like I go back and won’t feel the same”. 

And

“… when I go back home, I’m only seeing family now; my friendship groups have changed and that’s awkward going home to because some people, they say, “Let’s catch up” and we don’t have anything to talk about anymore but I still enjoy going home”. 

As the student described, this is more than not being up-to-date with local happenings, it’s more fundamental and related to their changing understanding of the world due to higher education. These are all factors that influence a students’ self-worth and identity while navigating post school transitions. 

Implications for Universities

This research provides insight into issues of different social and cultural capitals of rural and metropolitan peoples, especially how students navigate what it means to be rural in an institution that doesn’t appear to value their knowledges and experiences. To succeed at their studies, students have to ‘learn to leave’ either mentally or physically from their place to be able to participate. Students were as a result torn between the knowledges and friendships of their home town and those of their university town, and the needs and expectations of both. For some, this made it difficult to stay connected to their home town. When thinking about accessing, and staying in, higher education, these factors are also likely to influence student retention. Some students who we interviewed considered these issues to be a key contributing factor to the high rate of student drop-out at university. 

For universities, this has implications for coursework and support services. From a coursework perspective, universities need to consider rural knowledges in their course content and value careers in rural areas. Examples from non-metropolitan locations need to be valued, rather than disincentivised through the pressure to achieve benchmarks dominated by standards from metropolitan regions. This goes beyond inclusion of examples in practice, but recognition of the epistemological dimensions of those practices. From a support services perspective, students need opportunities for students to access mentoring and support from other rural students. Further, metropolitan students need more opportunity to understand what it means to be a rural student, rather than students from rural areas having to learn to ‘be’ like the majority to succeed. 

While we continue to prioritise metropolitan places and knowledges, we will continue to contribute to the gap in rural student participation and achievement at university. We have much to learn from our successful regional university students, we need to listen and to ‘do’ university differently to be a more inclusive and desirable educational destination for regional students.

Natalie Downes works in the Rural Education and Communities Research Group within the Centre for Sustainable Communities at the University of Canberra. Her research focuses on rural-regional sustainability and the sociocultural politics of education for rural futures. She also works closely with the Student Equity, Participation and Welfare unit on equity initiatives for higher education participation.

Sam works at The University of Sydney in initial teacher education. Her work explores how teachers’ engagement with multiple knowledges effects the equity of student experience and how students’ lived experiences impact their understandings of education. Her current research projects include: evaluations of widening participation programs for students experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage; and shifting discourses of gap year and university for regional students in NSW

Kristy O’Neill is a lecturer of Health and Physical Education at the School of Education, University of New England. Concurrently, she has a decade-long professional background and strong passion for social inclusion and student equity within higher education. This grew from her time working on a range of HEPPP-funded schools outreach projects with Widening Participation and Outreach at The University of Sydney. Kristy completed her PhD at The University of Sydney in 2018.

Philip Roberts is an Associate Professor in Curriculum Inquiry and Rural Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Canberra.  He is the research leader of the Rural Education and Communities Research Group in the Centre for Sustainable Communities at the University of Canberra. His research focuses on the role of knowledge in curriculum, rural knowledges and the sustainability of rural communities.

Acknowledgement

This project also includes the team members Fran Collyer, Amanda Edwards, Laurie Poretti and Tanya Willis

COVID coaches: tutoring only works when backed by quality teaching directed at the students who really missed out

COVID-19 and schools, teaching literacy, teaching numeracy, teaching reading, Uncategorized, ,

The injection by NSW and Victorian State Governments of more than half a billion dollars on tutoring programs to help students catch up after Covid-19-related disruptions to normal schooling is welcome.

However, there is a need to ensure the intervention is more than an economic ‘sugar hit’ and that it leads to sustained improvement in outcomes for students, particularly the most disadvantaged.

There is decent evidence that tutoring programs can work, but not all tutoring programs are effective. Research on small group tuition, for example, indicates that the quality of the teaching in small groups may be as important, or more important, than the precise size of the group.

It is vital that approaches to tutoring used by schools to help improve student learning outcomes post Covid-19 have been demonstrated to have positive effects, and they should be rigorously tested in this setting.

Importantly, they must target the most disadvantaged students to support their long-term learning.

Research we conducted last year with Stage 2 (Year 3 and 4) students in NSW schools showed that, contrary to widespread expectations of ‘learning loss’, by Term 4 most students were where they should be, despite the 8-10-week period of learning from home. This is testament to the valiant efforts of teachers, leaders, and families. The narrowed curriculum when schools returned to classroom teaching was no doubt also a factor.

However, the remarkable headline result masks a more complex picture. Year 3 students in the most disadvantaged schools achieved significantly less growth in 2020, equivalent to two months, in mathematics relative to their 2019 peers.

This evidence that remote learning affected disadvantaged students more than others underlines the importance of focusing subsequent interventions on these students.

But I argue that a wider focus on quality teaching across the board is important in the post-pandemic recovery, because when teaching improves, student outcomes improve.

In his address last week, Federal Education Minister Allan Tudge made clear his commitment to raising student learning outcomes, both in disadvantaged settings and among high performing students.

While it’s common to blame teachers for falling education standards on national and international standardised testing, we must not fall into this trap. If there’s real interest in improving student outcomes across the board, there must be investment in improving the quality of teaching. For that to have an impact, we need to understand what constitutes quality teaching and focus on improving teaching, not teachers.

As a profession, we have struggled to come to agreement on what we mean by good teaching. In my experience as a teacher and education researcher, good teaching involves nurturing students’ intellectual depth while ensuring a positive learning environment, and helping students to see the value of their work beyond school. 

This is the basis of the Quality Teaching Model we have developed, which is delivered through the professional development program Quality Teaching Rounds.

Distinct from professional development that asks teachers to focus on improving the teaching of a particular topic or a particular set of skills, our approach focuses on enhancing teaching in general.

Teachers work in professional learning communities in which they observe and analyse lessons in each teacher’s classroom. They are guided by a conceptual framework, the Quality Teaching Model, that focuses on the intellectual demands of the lesson, the quality of the learning environment and the extent to which learning is made meaningful for students.

Teachers are able to judge and refine the quality of their own teaching, and the teaching of their peers, in a positive and supportive environment, using a shared language and simple yet rigorous coding. This leads to significant improvements in teacher confidence and morale, as teachers feel encouraged and recognised for good work.

Last year we were able to demonstrate that the students of teachers who participated in our Quality Teaching Rounds program achieved an additional 25% learning growth in maths (two months in an eight-month period). 

Importantly, in disadvantaged schools the effects were even stronger.

All children can learn and all teachers are capable of delivering great teaching.

At the core of our work is driving improvements in the quality of teaching and student outcomes in all educational contexts, particularly where inequities exist. And doing so in ways that honour the complexity of teaching and demonstrate respect for teachers.

The success of the tutoring programs being used by schools to help students recover post-Covid-19 will depend heavily on the quality of the tutoring they provide. Tutors need to be really clear about what they’re trying to achieve and how best to help. For the current programs to succeed, the quality of the teaching of these tutors will be paramount.

Laureate Professor Jenny Gore is currently leading the Teachers and Teaching Research Program, which represents a culmination of more than a decade of research, mostly undertaken in collaboration with key colleagues at the University of Newcastle.