AARE blog

Image from Phonics Plus video with teacher at a whiteboard

Phonics Plus: does the new Victorian approach to reading miss differentiation and meaning-making?

April 14, 2025Phonics, Reading, synthetic phonics, teaching readingAARE blog, Federation University, Naomi Nelson, Phonic Plus, reading

Victoria’s new Phonics Plus lesson plans are being rolled out to support early literacy instruction. But do they actually enhance early reading instruction? As a lecturer dedicated to preparing future teachers, I have serious concerns about the quality of instruction they promote.

I emphasise the importance of research-based practice—my students create literacy lesson plans and justify their instructional choices with evidence. But where is the research backing these lesson plans?

The Victorian government promotes Phonics Plus as a way to enhance early reading instruction, focusing on phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, handwriting, and morphology. To support its implementation, the government has provided lesson plans for teachers. Although not mandatory, these plans set the standard for classroom instruction and warrant closer scrutiny.

Are These Lessons Too Long and Too Rushed?

How long might you expect young children to sit and engage as a whole group? Lesson length and sequencing are important considerations. Each lesson requires Foundation students to sit through a 25-minute Phonics and Word Knowledge session—a demanding duration for young learners, especially when tasks require sustained attention and cognitive effort.

A closer look at the sequencing raises more concerns. For example, in Phonics Plus Set 3: Lesson 9, activities jump from syllables to phonemes. Clapping syllables is a whole-word awareness task, immediately followed by phoneme-level analysis requiring segmentation into individual sounds. This shift from recognising larger spoken chunks to identifying separate sounds demands a significant cognitive leap that would even confuse adults.

The Phonics Plus lesson demonstration video on the ARC website reinforces these concerns. The scripted, rapid-fire teaching style, delivered from the front of the room, shows little to no scaffolding for students navigating these concepts.

Cognitive Load Theory emphasises the need for clear, step-by-step scaffolding over rapid shifts. Additionally, the National Reading Panel found that phonemic awareness instruction is most effective when focused and not overloaded with multiple overlapping tasks.

Where’s the Differentiation?

These lessons follow a ‘spray and pray’ approach, treating all students the same regardless of ability. For example, the high-frequency word ‘at’ appears in Lesson 1 as new content for all students. What happens if some children can already recognise and read this word?

Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development highlights the importance of tailoring instruction to students’ current abilities—too easy, and they become bored; too hard, and they become frustrated. Bruner also emphasised scaffolding as essential for ensuring students build on existing knowledge rather than receiving one-size-fits-all instruction. Snow, Griffin and Burns stress the need for differentiated literacy instruction, particularly in early years classrooms. The evidence is clear: without differentiation, capable students risk disengagement, while struggling students are left behind.

Fluency Without Meaning?

Another area of concern is the use of texts to build ‘fluency.’ In Phonics Plus Set 1, Lesson 3, the Fluency Text is simply a grid of single letters: A, T, and S. The lesson plan directs teachers to use choral reading and partner reading of this text for 15 minutes.

In Lesson 9, students engage in choral reading using:

Tom can tag Sam and Pat.
Tom can tag Sam at the dam.
The cod is in the dam.

These texts align with phonics instruction but lack narrative value. How can students meaningfully engage with them?

Fluency is not just speed and accuracy but also expression, pacing, and comprehension. The lack of meaningful context in these choral reading tasks suggests students are practising letter and word recognition in isolation rather than developing expressive, purposeful reading.

Choral reading might seem effective, but research suggests otherwise. Shanahan (2024) argues that choral reading does not inherently improve fluency because it focuses on group reading without individualised pacing or comprehension engagement. Kuhn & Stahl (2003) found that fluency is best developed through repeated reading with feedback and discussion about meaning, rather than rote repetition of sentences.

Have you ever sung along to a song only to later realise what the lyrics actually mean? Just as choral singing doesn’t guarantee comprehension, choral reading doesn’t ensure students make meaning from text.

What About Meaning-Making?

Perhaps the most pressing issue in Phonics Plus is the lack of emphasis on meaning-making. Young readers thrive on content-rich texts that foster discussion and comprehension. While decodable texts reinforce phonics, they must be complemented by experiences that promote storytelling, prediction, and interpretation.

Duke and Pearson found that effective reading instruction integrates both code-based and meaning-based approaches. Castles, Rastle & Nation (2018) also advocate for balanced reading instruction embedding phonics within engaging and meaningful reading experiences. The Simple View of Reading reinforces that reading involves both decoding and comprehension—without explicit attention to meaning-making, fluency practice lacks purpose.

Prioritising rapid decoding over comprehension mirrors the shallow processing seen in digital reading, undermining critical literacy. Is this the outcome we want for our students?

Concerning gaps

While Phonics Plus aims to support early literacy, its lesson plans reveal concerning gaps in differentiation and comprehension development. Victoria’s reading reforms must balance phonics with meaningful reading experiences to develop engaged, proficient readers. Unless these gaps are addressed, the lesson plans risk doing more harm than good.

Naomi Nelson is a lecturer and literacy coordinator at Federation University Australia’s Mount Helen Campus. She educates pre-service teachers and works with colleagues to deliver contemporary and engaging literacy courses. Naomi’s PhD research investigates reading comprehension, the impact of reading mode (paper vs. screen), and the strategies students use to understand text.

The header image is a still taken from Phonics Plus In the Classroom, a video from the Department of Education, Victoria

‘Woke’: Australian teaching must hold tight to the fair go

April 10, 2025diversity, equity in schooling, Inclusive EducationAARE blog, DEI, diversity, Equity In Australian schooling, inclusion, Linda Graham, Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

When asked last week what he would do about the “the woke agenda” in education, federal opposition leader Peter Dutton raised the prospect of tying government funding to teaching of the curriculum. He said: “Kids… should not be guided into some sort of an agenda that’s come out of universities”.

No details were offered as to what exactly this woke agenda is. Nor could anyone point to specific examples of what is currently being taught in Australian schools or universities that shouldn’t.

Dutton is copying Donald Trump. “DEI” has been branded as “woke” by Trump’s MAGA movement.

As citizens of a sovereign country, Australians might not pay all that much attention to what the president of another country says and does. But those politics are rearing their ugly heads here. It is time to pay attention.

Importation of Trumpian ideals, such as his war on ‘woke DEI policies’, threatens our way of life, one that has long been underpinned by the idea of a ‘fair go’ for all.

This is the essence of the trick being played. DEI is an acronym for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Turning these words into an acronym and dismissing them as ‘woke’ is a way of disguising what these groups are really against. They are against diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Let me say that again. They are against diversity, equity, and inclusion.

So, what are diversity, equity, and inclusion? Is the derisive branding deserved? Are they “an agenda that’s come out of universities”?

Um, no. But these concepts do inform our teaching and it’s critical that they do. We will start with diversity and why it’s important to be aware of it.

Diversity

Recognising that people are not all the same and that we experience the world differently is not just common sense. It’s a necessity for good public policy decision-making. Let’s take what happened in Melbourne during COVID as an example.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, nine Melbourne public housing towers were placed in hard lockdown with no warning.  Bewildered residents were met by police who began locking entrances at the foot of the towers as the Victorian premier announced the lockdown via a televised press conference broadcast. In English. 

Many of the more than 3000 tower residents fled wars in their home countries. They were frightened because they could not understand what was being said. They did not, therefore, know what was going on. Imagine how they felt.

The whole situation could have been averted if those in charge of the emergency response had thought ahead about the need to communicate the need for the lockdown in a range of languages.

Looks like there were no bilingual people on that team, hey?

This is just one public policy fail due to lack of recognition that people are different and need different things. There are more. What about the Queensland government’s purchase of 75 new trains that did not meet disability access standards?

The lack of accessibility inconveniences people with a disability. It prevents them from getting to work or moving about freely as others do. But it also means the government must now spend even more to retrofit the trains.

Being aware of diversity, realising not everyone experiences the world the same way you do, and factoring it into decision-making is smart. It’s not ‘woke’. So is paying attention to equity.

Equity

The concept of equity is over 2000 years old, yet it is commonly misunderstood. It’s misunderstood – even by politicians, who really should know better, given our modern system of taxation is informed by the principle of distributive justice.

In a nutshell, equity is about fairness. The aim of equity policies is to reduce impacts of inequalities arising from circumstances individuals have no hand in choosing. This is what is meant by Aristotle’smaxim “Treat equals equally and unequals unequally”.

Right-wing commentators in the US and Australia have dismissed equity as ‘Cultural Marxism’ but they are wrong. It would be more accurate to describe them as Rawlsian, after Nobel Prize winning political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002). His Theory of Justice articulates a range of principles aimed at resolving the tension between liberty (or freedom) and equality.

Veil of ignorance

One of Rawls’s thought experiments asked us to imagine that we do not know our place in society, nor our abilities or talents. We are behind a ‘veil of ignorance‘. From this position, we are asked to design the rules and structures of society.

When faced with making a decision without knowing our own position in society, Rawls reckoned we would each want to ensure that the least advantaged members of society are cared for because we might be among them.

You can test this by getting two kids to divide a Mars Bar. The rule is that one divides it, and the other chooses from the results. Nine times out of 10 the divider will try to get the two halves as equal as possible because they don’t want to end up with the smaller bit. Smart, not woke.

In today’s world, Rawls might be described as a “latte-sipping leftie“, but he wasn’t and nor is the concept of equity. Extreme inequality is not a good thing. It dampens productivity, leads to revolutions, and is best avoided through mechanisms that enable a more even playing field. Mechanisms like inclusive education.

Inclusion

Within two months of Trump taking office, a teacher in Idaho was instructed by her school administration to remove a poster on her classroom wall because it was “an opinion” with which not everyone agrees.

The poster, which this brave teacher has since put back on her classroom wall, features images of children’s hands of varying skin tones with the statement, ‘Everyone is welcome here’.

Welcoming, respecting, and valuing diversity is a key principle of inclusion, an approach to education that seeks to remove barriers to access and participation with the aim of producing fairer (more equitable) outcomes for all.

While some right-wing commentators dismiss this as social engineering, greater equity in educational outcomes is good for everyone. Even those motivated purely by self-interest should be a fan of inclusion because more kids doing better at school means fewer unemployed adults on Jobseeker.

Removing barriers to access and participation is not “dumbing down” or “lowering standards”. It means getting rid of the things that get in the way so that everyone can achieve to their fullest potential.

That doesn’t mean that everyone gets an A or that everyone passes. It means that impediments that may prevent an individual from passing are no longer a factor in their achievement.

We’ve recently demonstrated that this approach benefits all students: those with a disability and those without. Why would anyone be against that?

Is any of this taught in universities?

Yes. Because Australia has laws against discrimination and university graduates must abide by them when they enter the workplace.

As future architects, journalists, managers, doctors, teachers, nurses, and more (including politicians and political staffers), university graduates will one day make decisions that have the potential to impact other people.

Do we really want government procurement officers to continue purchasing trains that don’t meet accessibility standards?

And do we want government staffers to continue organising press conferences that exclude the very people at the centre of the crisis?

Do we want university graduates to find themselves in trouble with their employer’s Human Resources department because they have crossed the line in their interactions with others?

Ignorance of diversity, equity, and inclusion leave our institutions in danger of perpetuating unconscious bias and discriminating on the basis of race, gender, disability and other attributes that are protected by law.

Universities didn’t create those laws. Politicians did in response to public demand. And because history has demonstrated what happens in the absence of such laws.

Valuing diversity, aiming for equity, and being inclusive isn’t woke. It’s how mature liberal democracies survive, avoiding revolution through a social contract that prevents the depth of inequity that has upended so many nations over time.

We are now witnessing the wanton destruction of that social contract in the United States. Only someone who didn’t pay attention in their high school history class would invite that to Australia.

Linda J. Graham is director of the Centre for Inclusive Education and a professor in the School of Education at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). She is the editor of the best-selling book, Inclusive Education for the 21st Century: Theory, Policy and Practice, and is lead chief investigator of the award-winning Accessible Assessment ARC Linkage Project.

The header image of Peter Dutton, taken in 2021, is from Wikimedia Commons and used under this licence.

Emotional experiences of teaching: Toxic positivity and cruel wellbeing

April 7, 2025talking about teachers, teacher researchAARE blog, Curtin University, emotional experiences, Nick Kelly, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Saul Karnovsky

Every school day, across the country, education professionals labour emotionally—in the classroom, in the staffroom, online. Yet the language available for talking about these experiences in public conversation has a history of being fragmented, inadequate and polarized as either overwhelmingly negative or unrealistically positive.

Our new edited book from Palgrave Macmillan, Teachers’ Emotional Experiences, articulates emotional realities of the teaching profession. It introduces useful concepts for responding to them as teachers, teacher educators, school leaders and policy makers. Teachers want to have their emotional labour understood by the broader community. This is something that we have tried to honour in this book. Teachers want to be heard and seen by the public and recognised as professionals who labour under difficult conditions.

Only very recently have we begun to publicly acknowledge teachers are struggling. They struggle under the weight of unrealistic expectations and mounting responsibilities of modern teaching. Teachers in Australia fulfil many vital roles alongside their obvious teaching roles. They are de facto security guards, counsellors, data administrators, co-parents, citizen makers and child minders for the economy. Based largely on interviews with 42 Australian teachers (from the NARRES research project) the book presents engaging stories of teachers who shared resonant emotional events with us and our fellow investigators*. Each chapter is focused on a teacher’s emotional story followed by an academic response from education researchers across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Spain. Our book reveals how social and political pressures, intensifying workloads and lowered professional status are impacting teacher wellbeing and reshaping the profession.

Emotional experiences: guilt, demoralisation, helplessness, alienation, anger

The teachers whose stories are included in the book experienced challenging and confronting emotions: guilt, demoralisation, helplessness, alienation and anger. The contributing authors show many of these feelings are generated from the systems, processes and structures of schooling, over which which teachers have little agency or autonomy. The book demonstrates that teachers strive to be ethical, empathic, passionate, and committed professionals. But at present this work is threatened by a range of issues including unnecessary administrative burdens, workload and time pressure, poor work-life balance, vicarious trauma and emotional burnout.

These threats are making it increasingly difficult for educators to make a meaningful difference to the communities that they serve. These themes are common fare for Australian educational research. But our book offers a fresh take by focusing on teachers’ emotional lives and foregrounding teachers’ own experiences. Each chapter begins with a narrative extract from the interviews. The authors in our book shine a light on the complexity and nuance of teacher emotions. These professionals now have a voice that does not have enough presence in public conversations.

Foregrounding emotional experiences

One story in the book (co-authored by Saul Karnovsky and Susan Beltman) focuses on emotional labour in teaching. Alanna (a pseudonym) explains her thinking when confronted by a student who disclosed intentional self-harming behaviours in the classroom setting:

I guess I tried to put on a façade too as, in stay professional; I couldn’t cuddle her or say are you ok? I couldn’t go too deep into it, because I’m not trained in that area. So I was worried if I did say something, you may not think you are saying anything wrong but to them you have said something that is going to trigger them and they will do it again. So I didn’t want to do that, so I was like what do I say? Do I be nice? [Or] Do I just blow it off? Do I give her advice?

Emotional self-training

Alanna’s story describes a type of emotional self-training that teachers often undergo. She explains that she “tried to put on a façade” and “stay professional” during her encounter with the student. Karnovsky and Beltman explore how Alanna exerts substantial effort to modify her initial emotional response, that of feeling upset and helpless in the situation. Alanna enacts a deliberate process of feeling management to ensure her negative emotions will not be shown.

This form of emotional labour constitutes a vital element of teacher professional practice in modern school settings. Alanna’s experiences help sketch out the opaque contours of emotional rules in the teaching profession. These invisible boundaries delineate the difference between ‘appropriate’ allowable emotional expression and ‘inappropriate’ emotional expression that teachers learn to police. Teachers must navigate these tacit emotional borderlines. They must take care not to misstep, lest they be seen as “not right for the job”.

Profound emotional events

Like Alanna, many teachers experience profound emotional events in their working lives. As academics, we are able to provide insight into these events by bringing scholarly language, concepts and theories to interpret those experiences. Many teachers work in environments that do not support sharing the emotionally intense experiences that take place in their schools. ‘Solutions based’ leadership is in vogue within school management practice. But this approach can be an impediment that fails to connect with the complexity of context. The authors in our book discuss ‘teacher wellbeing’ as an inadequate lens through which to address teachers’ emotional experiences.

Many teachers are cynical of wellbeing programs and it can be cruel to expect overworked teachers to adopt these practices. They become a further load on top of all that was already present. The primary issue is that the ‘wellbeing’ approach typically places responsibility for positive emotional practice back upon the shoulders of individual teachers. A thread that runs throughout the book is that workplace emotions ought to be a shared responsibility. We suggest a more productive approach. That would be to focus upon reshaping the ways emotions are discussed, interpreted and communicated in the school context.

Collaboration and collegiality

Sustained collaborative and collegial work is required to improve teachers’ working conditions and school climates. Leaders have positions of influence over school policy, climate and structures. They can cultivate trust and introduce practices that allow teachers time and space to decompress, take time away from the business of their work, find solitude when needed and come together in a spirit of honesty and of collective, localised strategic thinking. Policy makers must create the conditions for this important change to occur in schools by trusting our education professionals to create local solutions to issues present in their communities.

Both in Australia and globally there is a turn towards a more critical and nuanced appraisal of teacher wellbeing. We are now recognising the problematic nature of toxic positivity and cruel wellbeing in schools, in which interventions made in the name of individual wellbeing and workplace positivity conversely lead to negative wellbeing outcomes.

Conversations about safety

Conversations about teacher safety, teacher workload and policy conditions shaping the retention crisis are reaching traditional and social media outlets. Community attitude is often on the side of teachers, and the inherent challenges posed by the modern structures of schooling have been laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever education research can provide a roadmap for the profession to reconstitute what is of value and what we hope to achieve through schooling systems. There are certainly models around the world to look to, where policy makers trust and value teachers as professionals, allowing them space, time and resources to focus on what matters most. There is a need for a shared discourse about teachers’ emotional concerns and the book aims to articulate some clear concepts for use by teachers and teacher educators alike.

* We wish to acknowledge Karen Peel, Debbie Mulligan, Bobby Harreveld, Nick Kelly and Patrick A. Danaher as Chief Investigators of the NARRES Australian research team who contributed the 42 teacher interviews.

Saul Karnovsky is a senior teacher educator and course coordinator at Curtin University, Perth which is located on Noongar Country. He is an active researcher in teacher wellbeing, attrition and retention taking an ethical and critical perspective on the profession.

Nick Kelly is an associate professor of design science in the School of Design, Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice, QUT. His research investigates the foundations of design expertise and applies design science to educational contexts including design for learning, design pedagogy, and design of school environments.

Why we should worry about smart glasses in schools

April 3, 2025artificial intelligence, Artificial Intelligence in schoolsAARE blog, Andrew Welsman, artificial intelligence, Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies in Schools, Janine Arantes, Victoria University

Smart glasses are the latest shiny object in the edtech world. Sleek, AI-powered, and promoted as the next evolution in learning, they promise to transform the classroom. Real-time feedback. Immersive experiences. Personalised accessibility support. But here’s the thing: they also record. They see. They store data. And they’re being quietly rolled out in schools, because anyone can go to the Ray Ban Website, pay $500 and get them delivered to their door. Even if they live across the road from a school. Without a serious national conversation about what’s at stake, there are some critical questions we believe need your attention.

While some may enthusiastically praise these devices and paint a picture of tech-enhanced chemistry labs and accessible support for neurodiversity as exciting. Useful, even. Check whether they mention ethics. (Scrolling through the Ray Ban Website….)

Does it mention rights?

Does it mention harm?

What they do and don’t mention matters

Once a device can record, it can surveil. It can be used to monitor behaviour, capture images without consent, and stream content live to platforms beyond the classroom. In the hands of the wrong user, smart glasses aren’t just learning tools – they’re tools of manipulation, misuse, and control. And remember – anyone can buy smart glasses. This is a very different context than CCTV footage in schools. To explain, and let’s not be naive about who’s influencing young minds right now.

The same students, staff, parents and onlookers that might wearing smart glasses may also be influenced by Andrew Tate on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Imagine this: you’re teaching Maths. A student parrots Andrew Tate’s misogynistic views and live streams your response through the smart glasses they were wearing. You had no idea. Its not like they held up their phone. They were just looking at you, through their glasses. Within minutes, it’s online, weaponised, and fed to the Tate army. They didn’t mean to destroy you or your capacity to feel safe teaching. But they did.

You leave teaching.

Not because you wanted to.

But because the damage was done.

Are you being recorded?

Now, even walking the streets feels uneasy – you are left wondering if the glasses people are wearing are quietly recording you while you buy groceries or cross the road. Other teachers start to wonder. What if parent-teacher interviews had smart glasses? Or the swimming carnival? What if someone is just sitting outside the school with a pair of glasses on while kids are playing? They don’t have their phone out, so their activity doesn’t trigger concern. This isn’t speculation. We’ve already seen how images can quickly be used to make AI-generated deepfake nudes of girls in schools. And teachers aren’t exempt. What smart glasses do is lower the barrier between thought and action.

They offer immediacy. Stealth. Power.

We’ve already seen smart glasses banned from ATAR exams in WA. But what banning them from parent-teacher interviews? PE lessons? Swimming carnivals? Where are the boundaries? And while we are asking questions – who is collecting the data? And where is it all going? How does it align with emerging and current legislation? And all of this is being marketed under the guise of innovation. But innovation without ethical frameworks can be weaponised. Smart glasses do not exist in a vacuum.

They exist in a world shaped by misogyny, online abuse, discrimination and algorithmic amplification of harm. If we ignore that, if we look only at the marketing promises and not at the sociocultural context, we are putting not only students, but teachers, parents, and society at the risk of harm. We need to stop treating “real-time feedback” as neutral. We need to stop pretending “immersive” means safe. And we need to seriously question who benefits from “innovation” when surveillance is embedded in the hardware and marketed by people with millions of followers, like Chris Hemsworth.

Let’s be clear: this is not just about a gadget.

Outside of schools, smart glasses are marketed as sleek, cutting-edge tools designed to enhance everyday life, work, and productivity. In the consumer market, they’re promoted as lifestyle wearables that offer hands-free access to navigation, messaging, music, and AI assistance – all wrapped in fashionable, discreet frames. In education smart glasses are being marketed as inclusive and dynamic. But in practice, they are building out a surveillance infrastructure inside schools. Anyone with smart glasses (students, parents, teachers, the person sitting outside the school) might be able to soon have access to real time facial recognition, eye tracking, emotion analysis, and real-time data sharing. That’s not innovation. That’s infrastructure. Infrastructure that we have legislation around to ensure our rights are being upheld.

Which Brings Us to Chris Hemsworth

You’ve probably seen the ads. Chris Hemsworth, superhero, Aussie icon, father of school-aged children, promoting AI-integrated smart glasses with enthusiasm and charm. He’s partnered with Ray Ban to showcase how wearable AI is the future. But here’s the thing: when a celebrity of his influence endorses surveillance tech, especially without reference to consent or harm, it’s not just a missed opportunity. Its reckless. Now, to be clear – this isn’t about criticising Chris Hemsworth – it’s a call to anyone with the power to shape public perception. If you have the platform, the reach, or the resources, you also have the responsibility to bring potential harms of emergent technologies in education into the conversation. Because ignoring those risks, especially when kids, parents, and teachers are watching, can’t be thought of as naïve. You have a social responsibility to consider if it is reckless.

And it is reckless

Reckless means acting without thinking about the potential consequences – especially when those actions could cause harm. That’s why we need an awareness campaign. Kids look up to Chris Hemsworth. So do parents. So do teachers. If smart glasses are going to be marketed to schools and families, there must be transparency about what they do and what they risk. That’s why we need to have a conversation with Chris. Not about banning the tech. But about being responsible with his platform.

Technology will continue to be marketed aggressively, but those with the power to influence and implement it must take far greater responsibility for its impact. Imagine if Chris Hemsworth read this and considered the perspective of a teacher. In the middle of a teaching crisis, a teacher is trying to deliver a science lesson on a sweltering Friday afternoon in a 35-degree classroom packed with 30 students, only to come home and discover that a slip of the tongue, saying “orgasm” instead of “organism,” has been turned into viral content in the manosphere. One more teacher doesn’t return to the classroom, during a teaching crisis.

Where Do We Go from Here?

We are not saying “ban it all.”

We are saying: Pause. Reflect. Regulate.

We are also not blaming anyone. Because this isn’t about blame. It’s about responsibility. It’s our collective responsibility to adopt new technologies in ways that respect commonly held expectations of technology, especially in semi-private spaces. We already know not to film at swimming carnivals, in toilets, or change rooms and we wouldn’t wear our phones on our faces during a parent-teacher interview – but smart glasses would do exactly that. Imagine if you just ‘forgot to take the glasses off’… Further, teachers and schools shouldn’t be expected to manage the risks of tech like smart glasses alone. Meta, Ray-Ban, and others must embed safeguards, transparency, and safety by design, privacy by design and so on. And those with huge platforms, like Chris Hemsworth could use his platform not just to promote, but to help spark conversations about where this tech belongs.

What if Chris Hemsworth posted to his 52M followers that “Some devices are made for skydiving – not for schools” – would the conversation shift? We would love to hear your thoughts.

Bios

Janine Arantes is a researcher and educator at Victoria University and advocate exploring the social, ethical, and psychological impacts of emerging technologies in education. Andrew Welsman is a researcher and educator at Victoria University with expertise in STEM education, digital technologies, and initial teacher education.

Balancing act: can screens really get kids moving?

March 31, 2025physical education, Physical exercise, physical literacyAARE blog, Griffith University, physical literacy, Trent Davis

As digital technology becomes more ingrained in early childhood education, the debate over its effects on young children’s physical literacies intensifies. While there’s no denying the potential of technology to engage children in learning, it’s crucial to ask: How does it affect their physical literacies? This article explores the impact of digital technology on physical literacies and offers practical advice for parents and educators looking to strike a healthy balance. My research specifically investigates how teachers and parents perceive digital technology’s influence on young children’s physical literacies, addressing a critical gap in understanding its effects beyond motor skills.

The Growing Role of Digital Technology in Early Childhood

We live in an increasingly digital world, and young children are no exception. Tablets, smartboards, and educational apps are now staples in early childhood education. They offer children interactive learning experiences that can stimulate creativity, enhance cognitive skills, and foster social collaboration.

Research shows that when used effectively, technology can support literacy and numeracy development, catering to diverse learning needs (OECCED). But as screen time increases, concerns about its effect on physical literacies also rise. With children spending more time on devices, is there enough time left for physical activity, the kind of play that builds motor skills like running, jumping, and balancing?

What Is Physical Literacy?

The Australian Sports Commission states that physical literacy is about more than just mastering physical skills—it’s about confidence, motivation, and the ability to engage in physical activities for life. Early childhood is the perfect time to nurture this because active play lays the foundation for lifelong health. The Australian Physical Literacy Framework and The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) stress the importance of physical activity in children’s overall development, highlighting that active play is essential for physical, social, and emotional growth.

Yet, with the rise of screen-based learning, educators and parents must ask: how do we ensure that technology enhances, rather than detracts from, children’s physical literacies? Despite its importance, current research lacks a comprehensive definition of how digital technology influences physical literacies in young children. My research seeks to address this gap by exploring how teachers and parents perceive and define physical literacies in today’s digital age.

How Does Digital Technology Affect Physical Literacies?

Research on the intersection of digital technology and physical literacies presents a complex picture. On one hand, increasing screen time is linked to lower levels of physical activity, which can hinder the development of essential motor skills such as balance, coordination, and agility. While studies show a correlation between increased screen time and reduced physical activity, little research has explored how parents and educators actively manage these challenges in early education settings.

On the other hand, there’s growing evidence that digital technology can support physical literacies when used creatively. Motion-based games, such as those using augmented reality (AR) or exergaming, encourage children to move while they engage with technology. Apps that promote activities like dance or yoga can integrate fun physical challenges with the engaging aspects of digital play, making them excellent tools for developing motor skills.

So, how can we ensure that technology is a tool that promotes, rather than stifles, physical development?

Striking the Right Balance: Practical Tips for Educators and Parents

The key is balance—striking the right balance between technology and physical activity in early childhood education is essential for fostering healthy development. Here are some tips to help educators and parents find the right balance when incorporating digital technologies into young children’s physical literacies:

Incorporate active digital play, where educators and parents can choose technology tools that encourage movement, such as interactive whiteboards for dance activities or apps designed for physical exploration. These tools help make learning more dynamic and engaging.
Limiting screen time according to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines is important to prevent it from replacing physical activity. It is essential to prioritise free playtime, where children can move, explore, and engage physically, which is vital for their development.
Blending technology with outdoor play provides another valuable approach. By using nature exploration apps to guide outdoor activities or integrating storytelling apps with physical role-playing, educators and parents can ensure that technology supports active learning while fostering both cognitive and physical growth.
Engaging parents is equally important. Encouraging co-play or co-viewing during screen time transforms it into a shared experience that prompts movement and meaningful interactions. This not only strengthens parent-child relationships but also supports the development of physical literacies.
Prioritising unstructured outdoor play remains essential, as it offers children opportunities to develop motor skills and interact with their environment. Ensuring children spend time outdoors every day, free from screens, supports their physical and emotional well-being.

Doesn’t have to be a battle

The relationship between digital technology and physical literacies doesn’t have to be a battle. The truth is, when used thoughtfully, digital tools can complement physical play and support young children’s overall development. It’s about finding a balance—one where technology enriches learning without overshadowing the need for physical activity.

By integrating technology that encourages movement and setting clear boundaries around screen time, educators and parents can help children thrive in both the digital world and the physical one. By examining how digital technology intersects with physical literacies, my research aims to provide educators and parents with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about integrating technology while fostering active play. Understanding these perspectives can help bridge the gap between concerns about screen time and the opportunities digital tools offer to support movement and engagement.

What’s your experience with balancing technology and physical activity in early childhood education? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Trent Davis is an experienced early childhood educator and is passionate about advancing research in the early years’ domain. He is currently an adjunct academic and PhD candidate (post-confirmation) within the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University. His study applies a case study and phenomenological approach to uncover these perspectives, offering practical insights that can shape future early childhood practices.

HEADER IMAGE: COURTESY OF AB PATERSON COLLEGE

What happens when the manosphere goes to university

March 27, 2025misogyny in higher education, misogyny in schools, sexism in schools, sexism in universitiesAARE blog, Adolescence, misogyny, Sam Schulz, Sarah McDonald, sexism, UniSA, University of Adelaide

We are part of a broader research team* investigating how online worlds are shaping Australian schooling. It’s a timely issue floodlit by the Netflix drama Adolescence. In 2024, our study contributed to a flood of reportage and academic research concerning a rise in sexist and misogynistic encounters in Australian schools, and the broader social need for a coherent strategy around gender based violence (GBV) that challenges the power structures and rigid binary norms that underpin it.

Universities are spaces where this work is both needed and occurs.

What universities should do

As social institutions and major providers of education, universities can and should play a role in promoting long-term social and cultural change through supporting diversity and justice oriented research and teaching. Indeed, universities are not only where specialists like teachers, lawyers, journalists, and health professionals are prepared to work in society, but where GBV itself is occurring to the extent that the Federal Government recently released its Action Plan Addressing Gender-based Violence in Higher Education. This is a welcome development but does not mean that education around gender justice has been mainstreamed. Nor has it manifested in greater institutional support for academics who teach this complex terrain. In fact, our research indicates that academics teaching diversity-related content are experiencing a sharp rise in GBV and ‘anti-woke’ backlash.

The second phase of our research into digital worlds and their impacts on Australian classrooms turns to the university sector. It includes surveys and interviews with tertiary educators from across Australia. We ask if they have witnessed or experienced a rise in anti-social language or behaviours amongst tertiary students. Thus far, we have received 59 surveys and undertaken nine in-depth interviews, each approximately two hours long. While a modest sample, our data mirrors patterns playing out in schools and society more broadly.

Most phase two respondents are women or culturally minoritised academics from across disciplines (i.e., education, politics, journalism, business, human resource development, health, and humanities). They teach diversity content relating to racial and gender justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, multiculturalism, First Nations sovereignty, and religious inclusion. As a dispersed teaching body, these academics share stories of the emotional burdens of this work. They describe this as having grown harder recently, and often having deleterious impacts on student evaluations of teaching which affect academics’ health and career progression.

As a casual academic in education explained:

“Over the past three years behaviour has grown progressively worse from largely Anglo Australian cohorts of … young men. They watch sporting matches and do online betting during class … They do not like strong female tutors who talk about Aboriginal education or inclusion. [They] hide these sentiments until anonymous feedback is due. Then they write about the tutor being ‘dangerous’ and opinionated and say that politics shouldn’t be part of education.”

Academics across disciplines note diversity content is increasingly being framed by some students (and staff) as woke or politically extreme. The consequence for those who teach this content is a rise in feelings of precarity, anxiety, and frustration:

“I have stopped challenging students for fear of the feedback as I am on probation. I can’t do a good job ethically and morally. I don’t want to teach any more.”

Student evaluations are a real problem in this context. They have always been problematic. But with an ever more polarised discourse and the necessity to take firmer stands in class which make you inevitably unpopular with some students it is now completely unacceptable for universities to continue using these tools to evaluate performance.

LGBTQIA+ and Gender Equity Backlash

Australian academics also speak of a rise in anti-LGBTQIA+ backlash and pushback against gender equity specifically:

“Every year I consider just not teaching anything about gender equality or diversity, to avoid the grief. But on I go …

The anti-LGBTIQA+ backlash from students really shook me … There have been several examples of transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny in my classes especially in recent years, managing these interactions in class is getting increasingly difficult as opinions are becoming more polarised.

Just last week, a student expressed their opinion that it was ok to persecute lesbian and gay people because “they do not have children and contribute nothing to society, just like childless, single straight women” and therefore do not ‘deserve the protection of the law’.”

Lack of institutional and policy support

When asked if they feel supported by their institutions or what, specifically, is being done when challenging encounters arise, most respondents describe feeling insufficiently supported or institutionally gaslit, saying “nothing is ever done. Complaints get swept under the rug.” And “staff who experience bullying, harassment or mistreatment are made to feel they don’t know how to handle the situation.” Academics collectively speak of feeling alone, experiencing anxiety, and exhaustion.

But institutional inaction around GBV or anti-diversity backlash in classrooms links to a broader history of policy failure. This contributes to workplace cultures in which responses to such incidents are often ineffectual, absent, piecemeal, or left to individual teachers to resolve. This happens in schools and in universities. As funding to universities has been reduced, the higher education sector has grown more ‘masculinist’ and ‘business-like’. Courses centring diversity content are less institutionally prized than, for instance, the industry-aligned ‘hard’ sciences. This means academics who teach diversity content may often be working in isolation.

This also comes at a time when the manosphere (online groups unified by anti-feminist, right-wing populism) is shaping gender and racial politics worldwide through circulating extreme beliefs that many Gen Z boys and young men, in particular, are taking to be true. Common manosphere messaging includes the idea that feminism is a conspiracy, immigrants and cultural minorities are threats, social problems such as poverty or insecure housing are the result of women and minority groups advancing at men’s expense, and LGBTQIA+ people and single unmarried women are a threat to the natural order.

Universities are some of the last places where informed social critique and engagement across differences is nurtured. These are vital elements of a healthy democracy. Formal education should provide strong intellectual resistance to the polarised beliefs currently being amplified by digital worlds. Simply banning social media is insufficient. Yet, women and minority academics are increasingly carrying this work alone. They report feeling isolated, burnt out, and targeted by students labelling them ‘woke’ or ‘politically extreme’ – dynamics that will undoubtedly intensify with the Trump Administration’s blatant ‘war on woke’. Education is political and backlash against diversity is becoming extreme. Education must be part of the solution. Diversity work including gender justice must be valued as a core curriculum mandate across Australia’s pre-tertiary and tertiary education fields. Our social fabric depends on it.

* Professor Ed Palmer, Dr Eszter Szenes and Dr Daniel Lee all contributed to the research on which this article is based. Research ethics approval #2024-017.

Sam Schulz is an associate professor and sociologist of education at The University of Adelaide. Sarah McDonald is a lecturer at the Centre for Research in Education & Social Inclusion in UniSA Education Futures, University of South Australia.

The header image is from the Netflix series Adolescence

There are now too few Asian teachers. Here’s why

March 24, 2025anti-racism, racism and schools, racism in Australian schoolsAARE blog, Aaron Teo, Monash University, racism and schools, Sun Yee Yip, University of Southern Queensland

Few Asian students choose to become teachers.

This is a lost opportunity to bridge the current diversity gap in the teaching workforce and a lost opportunity to address the concerning national teacher shortage. Ethnic minorities, including Asians, are caught in a vicious cycle of underrepresentation, where small numbers of existing ethnic minority teachers in Australia equates to difficulty attracting new ethnic minority teachers.

Asians are the fastest-growing ethnic group in Australia. They make up about one in six of the overall population. We don’t have specific data for Asian teachers and students but we know teachers from minority backgrounds, including Asians, account for only 4% of the P-12 teaching workforce in 2022. We also know there is increasing student racial diversity in schools. The result is a widening teacher-student racial parity gap.

Research has consistently captured the benefits of teacher-student racial-cultural-linguistic alignment. For instance, scholarship demonstrates a racially diverse teacher workforce contributes to minority student perceptions of schools as more welcoming places. It allows minority teachers to bring their own understanding of relevant cultural contexts, while also acting as role models for students from non-dominant backgrounds.

Raising expectations

They may also enhance broader cultural awareness, diversify worldviews, raise expectations and tackle negative minority student stereotypes.

Research shows that they are crucial in supporting student well-being, especially among academically vulnerable minority students. Minority teachers are instrumental in providing an equitable and inclusive education, ensuring that students from diverse backgrounds can have their needs and voices heard and understood in their schools.

Similar considerations apply to Asian students and teachers in Australia. For instance, many Asian students tend to be seen as a culturally homogeneous whole, and are consequently (unfairly) held to a one-size-fits-all expectation around linguistic ability and academic performance.

These students often grapple with racial bias, discrimination, and lack of belonging in Australian schools.

But Asian teachers can leverage cultural knowledge and community connections to support Asian students. They can also debunk stereotypes among non-Asian students and educate non-Asian colleagues. While we are not suggesting that Asian teachers represent a distinct typology of educators or that racial matching is always necessary, research has shown us that educators who understand the cultural and social dynamics that shape their students’ lives are best positioned to support their learning. Asian teachers help challenge current dominant white and monolingual racial stereotypes of teaching, thereby encouraging more Asian students to aspire to become teachers.

There are a range of personal, cultural and structural barriers that contribute to this Asian underrepresentation in teaching. At the personal level, (racial) marginalisation in schools is still prevalent and causes minority students more broadly to perceive that the teaching profession is not for them.

Impacts on belonging and safety

Student experiences of racism and discrimination impact a sense of belonging and safety. That’s been a barrier to wanting to work in schools. Those memories of being belittled by school staff cause negative self-concept and lower minority students’ confidence in future teaching abilities.

Cultural and parental influences can also discourage Asian youth from choosing teaching in favour of securing employment in high-status, and high-salary careers. Many Asian students come from families who have internalised the racially-driven ‘model minority’ status. They often face significant familial pressure that emphasises high academic achievement as a stepping stone to employability and financial security. Asian parents may encourage their children to focus on prestigious and high-paying jobs as a protective factor from discrimination in a white-dominated labour market.

Negative experiences within teacher education programs have led to premature attrition of minority preservice teachers. These include racism, marginalisation and negative stereotyping, leading to a feeling of not belonging. There are some underlying sources of bias that favour white preservice teachers, including privileging Western-centric views over minority knowledge and perspectives in teacher education curriculum. Moreover, studies have shown that minority preservice teachers are confronted with a disproportionate amount of race-related structural and institutional challenges in initial teacher education.

What we must do next

Some recommendations include increasing the number of minority teacher educators and creating an inclusive teacher preparation curriculum that reflects diversity to help attract and retain minority teacher candidates. Of course, this needs to first be grounded in formalised antiracist agendas within teacher education programs and at the institutional level. Similarly, beyond higher education, schools need to nip this problem in the bud by adopting a similar antiracist approach. Here, collective and coordinated support from school leadership, staff, and broader school communities is essential in rejecting racism and discrimination against Asian students and teachers.

Australian education research has remained relatively silent on Asian Australia despite the growing presence – and increasing importance – of Asian teacher and student populations alike. A growing body of scholarship is interrogating the racial-colonial discourses that impact this key stakeholder in Australian education.

Given the clear implications this discussion has for teacher attraction and retention as a means to improved (racial) equity in schools and higher education spaces, we contend that there is much that urgently needs to be done in this space.

Aaron Teo is a lecturer in curriculum and pedagogy at the University of Southern Queensland’s School of Education. He is convenor for the Australian Association for Research in Education Social Justice Special Interest Group. His research focusses on the raced and gendered subjectivities of migrant teachers from “Asian” backgrounds in the Australian context, as well as critical pedagogies in white Australian (university and school) classroom spaces.

Sun Yee Yip is a lecturer at the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Her research focuses on teacher knowledge development, teacher diversity and raising the status of teachers and the teaching profession.

House of horrors: What the ABC revealed about early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Australia now

March 18, 2025Early childhood education and careAARE blog, ECEC, Marg Rogers, University of New England

The ABC’s Four Corners television episode ‘Betrayal of Trust: Australia’s Childcare Crisis’
into the worst excesses of the troubled early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector was
gruesome viewing. This article discusses the central challenges the program revealed rather
than the horrific stories of abuse, injury, and neglect. Such reports are likely to scare parents
with over a million families and almost 1.4 million children using Government-subsidised
services.

The ABC’s six-month investigation revealed what happens when the values and goals of
education and care are misaligned with corporate agendas but are fuelled by Government
policies and practices. While the program interviewed a service director within a service
where the children had a chance to flourish, and the system worked well, these scenes were
few and far between.

These services supposedly make up about 90% of the sector. Such services are said to meet or exceed sector standards set by the ECEC federal governing body, the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA).

Under-reporting

However, as the investigative journalist, Adele Ferguson, revealed, there is an under-reporting of breaches of the national standards as educators fear losing their jobs. Additionally, many
services are not accredited by the state and territory authorities. Even those
services with breaches are still often able to open new services. One of the challenges within
the system is that the federal and state and territory governments share responsibilities, and
therefore can blame each other when things go wrong.

The episode is like the nursery rhyme:
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good
She was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid.
Many very, very good community-led and for-profit services in Australia are supporting
children to thrive. But there is also the house of horrors as Four Corners revealed. So then,
how did we get here?

A misalignment of values and goals

When we try to marry corporate values to make a profit with the wholesome philosophies of
education and care, there is bound to be a misalignment. Education and care were once
mainly entrusted to families, community and government organisations. It cannot be said that
there were no breaches in these types of care. That said, the starting point was generally
agreed upon as being that children had a right to education and care to reach their potential.
In this not-for-profit model, there is no need to keep shareholders happy and keep enrolments
full at all times. There are many instances in Australia where this model works very well, for
example, community preschools, mobile preschools, ECEC services attached to schools, family daycare overseen by community bodies, and long daycare services operated by shire
councils and other educational organisations (such as universities).

Figure 1: The balancing act between for-profit and community and government owned
services

In these places of work (shown in Figure 1), educators are more likely to:

a) Be permanent employees;

b) Enjoy working in an environment where they can access leave and professional
development and generally work with reasonable child-to-educator ratios, and

c) Feel empowered to report breaches and be true to their role as mandatory reporters.
This is because the power dynamic is quite different to for-profit providers. The educator
knows this is a community or government-owned service that their rates or taxpayer dollars
fund. They are more likely to report misconduct because it is what the community expects,
and they are less likely to face negative ramifications from those within the service. While
community and government ownership and funding sources are transparent in these cases, it
can be quite different in for-profit services.

Power dynamics and hidden funding

In for-profit services, there are more likely to be more casual employees and higher staff
attrition. This is the case with any profit-oriented social service. Attrition often feeds on
itself as it negatively impacts all concerned, creating attrition cycles (see Figure 2). Insecure
work means workers have less power, so they are more likely to comply with employees’
demands and keep quiet when things go wrong (see Figure 1). This might include
deliberately ignoring breaches, such as not following guidelines for educator-to-child ratios,

not providing children with adequate nutrition or care, as well as injuries, abuse, and children
going missing. Additionally, there are likely to be higher numbers of staff sponsored by the
organisation on temporary visas, adding to the insecurity they feel.

Figure 2: Cycle of attrition of ECEC educators (from Rogers, 2025)

Adding to this mix is the hidden government funding. Educators and families are often not
aware of how much tax-payer funding is poured into ECEC services. The vast majority of
these are privately owned, with Australia having one of the highest levels of for-profit
services in the world, and this is increasing. Educators unaware of this funding may be less
likely to hold the company accountable than they would in a community or government-
owned service.

Hidden government funding

While there are a few single-service providers, most of Australia’s for-profit services are run
by over 60 large providers with 25 services or more. These are often male-led publicly listed companies, meaning they need to keep their shareholders happy. They profit from generous Government funding designed to encourage the private sector to open services due to the high demand for ECEC services.

In a market-driven economy, enthusiasts of this system would say those services that are not
performing well will not be used, will experience debt, and eventually close. However, this is
not the case due to generous Government subsidies that fuel the system.

Also, there is an overwhelming shortage of educators, as Australia now needs a further
21,000 educators to meet demand. There is also a lack of services, especially in ‘childcare
desert’ areas, mainly in regional, rural and remote areas and low-income metropolitan
suburbs where three or more families are competing for one enrolment space. Families are
desperate for access to ECEC services due to the cost of living crisis, household debt, and the
desire for their children to have a head-start in learning before they go to school.

What is this doing to our children, families and educators?

The impact on children is devastating, as we know any trauma that occurs within the first few
years of their lives can have profound consequences for their development. Also, when their
child experiences trauma, their lives change as they are then dealing with the impacts of
trauma within the household every day. For parents, especially women, and carers, these problems in the system fuel potential feelings of guilt for leaving their children to go to work.
For educators, the news is probably no surprise. Many have witnessed or heard of the
challenges in some services, while others have moved to other services or left the sector to
escape.

While leaving the sector might seem like a good idea, the Four Corners episode revealed how
this impacts qualified, dedicated and passionate educators. Many of them talked of mental
health crises potentially fuelled by moral injury. They were disillusioned and disappointed
that the current system allows this to happen when educators are dedicated and passionate
about the children and families they support.

Leaving the sector means walking away from qualifications they have spent years studying
for, many of them accumulating debt to do so. Despite recent pay increases for some,
educators are still one of the lowest-paid workers, 92 per cent female, in Australia.

Where to from here?

The Government, ACECQA and the state and territory regulators must urgently meet with
organisations such as The Parenthood, Thrive by Five and other advocacy groups. They need
to meet with educators in both community and not-for-profit groups. They should heed these
groups’ recommendations to reform the system. Thanks to the work of the ABC, this can no
longer be hidden away. The girl with the curl in her hair can be very, very good, and so can
our ECEC services. Importantly, our children, families, educators and taxpayers deserve very,
very good services.

Marg Rogers is a senior lecturer in early childhood education at UNE and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Manna Institute.

Header image is a still from the Four Corners program.

Reading for Emotion: we need more from the NAPLAN marking guide

March 17, 2025NAPLAN, teaching reading, teaching writingAARE blog, Ania Lian, Anneliese Powell, Charles Darwin University, NAPLAN, Reading for Emotion

NAPLAN testing is on right now. Researchers at Charles Darwin University (CDU) critically examined NAPLAN’s narrative marking guide. We developed an alternative approach – Reading for Emotion – that redefines literacy assessment. Instead of treating reading and writing as mechanical exercises in structural correctness, this model frames reading as an intentional act of guiding the reader through an emotional journey.

The Reading for Emotion (RfE) approach, first developed by Ania Lian, shifts the focus of assessment from surface-level linguistic accuracy to the writer’s ability to shape an affective experience for the reader. Drawing on evidence from affective neuroscience (Panksepp, 1998; Solms, 2013), the model positions emotions as the primary structuring force in text analysis.

By evaluating how effectively a text orchestrates emotional shifts and engages the audience, the researchers argue that the model offers a more cohesive and internally consistent framework for assessing student writing—one that better reflects the complexities of authentic communication. This post reports on a study conducted by Anneliese Powell as part of her Master of Education coursework at CDU.

The Problem with Formulaic Literacy Assessment

Current NAPLAN’s narrative marking guide assesses writing across a set of predefined categories:

Audience – Whether the text engages and orients the reader.
Text Structure – Whether the text follows a logical narrative sequence.
Ideas – The selection and development of key concepts.
Cohesion – The use of linking devices and grammatical connections.
Character & Setting – The portrayal and development of story elements.
Vocabulary – The variety and precision of language choices.
And more.

These categories serve a purpose, but they also fragment writing into a checklist of structural components, without a coherent framework to explain how these elements interact to shape meaning, sustain engagement, or create an impact on the reader. As a result, the assessment guidelines feel arbitrary. They have criteria only loosely connected to how writing actually creates meaning. In some cases, even work against it by reinforcing formulaic responses over authentic storytelling.

NAPLAN shapes classroom instruction

As Thompson and Caldwell & White argue, NAPLAN influences teaching practices, despite being officially a low-stakes test. By prioritising compliance over expression, the system produces writing that is predictable, emotionally hollow, and disconnected from authentic storytelling, failing to engage, inspire, or move the reader. Without clear principles for understanding how writing sustains emotional impact, teachers prioritise technical compliance over fostering creative, purposeful writing. This concern echoes Rosen’s critique that treating literacy as a fixed form rather than a creative act stifles originality, agency, and meaningful engagement.

A Better Approach: Writing with Purpose

If students are to develop as writers, they need more than training in formulaic structures—they need to see writing a way to make sense of their experiences and shape how they engage with the world. Too often, language remains disconnected from individuals and is taught as a reified object, rather than as an integral part of a person’s lived experience—one that allows them to make sense of the world and communicate meaningfully with others.

How the Reading for Emotion (RfE) Model Re-Theorizes Writing Assessment

The Reading for Emotion model provides an alternative by evaluating writing based on its ability to sustain emotional engagement, build narrative coherence, and shape the reader’s experience. By integrating Reading for Emotion’s structured emotional framework with Ramachandran and Hirstein’s (1999) aesthetic principles of engagement, researchers have re-theorised NAPLAN’s narrative marking criteria, creating a systematic and internally consistent model for writing assessment. The table below briefly illustrates the difference.

Category	NAPLAN Approach	RfE Model Approach
Audience	Orient, engage, and affect the reader separately.	Focuses on how the writer intends to affect the reader and what needs to be told to achieve this impact.
Text Structure	Assesses orientation, complication, and resolution.	Examines how smoothly emotional stages (Focus, Disturbance, etc.) progress to create a cohesive emotional journey.
Ideas	Evaluates the presence, selection, and crafting of ideas.	Uses aesthetic principles to assess how ideas contribute to emotional impact and sustain reader engagement.
Cohesion	Focuses on grammatical and lexical connections.	Evaluates the emotional flow and smoothness of transitions between narrative stages.
Character & Setting	Measures descriptive detail and portrayal.	Examines how character emotions and setting reinforce the text’s emotional journey.
Vocabulary	Assesses variety and precision.	Evaluates how effectively vocabulary enhances emotional tone and resonance.

Key Findings: What We Learned from Applying the Reading for Emotion Model

Analyzing student NAPLAN writing samples through the Reading for Emotion model – enhanced by ChatGPT (which we trained to use RfE) – revealed deeper patterns of engagement, coherence and meaning-making, far beyond what conventional NAPLAN rubrics capture. Instead of merely identifying surface-level errors, this approach uncovered deep structural and conceptual patterns, highlighting areas where student writing lacked intentionality, coherence, and affective impact—key elements of authentic literacy. The table below categorises key conceptual and emotional gaps in student writing.

The limitations of conventional writing assessments

Our findings highlight the limitations of conventional writing assessments and demonstrate the need for a multidimensional, reader-centered approach, showing that no single perspective fully captures its richness.

Category	Findings
Audience	Lack of intentional emotional impact – Many texts listed events without shaping the reader’s emotions, resulting in detached, uninvolving storytelling.
Text Structure	Disconnected narrative structure – Many texts failed to connect their resolutions back to the initial issue, making endings feel rushed or unresolved.
	Abrupt transitions – Stories jumped between events without emotional continuity, reducing their effectiveness.
	Repetition without narrative purpose – Some texts repeated key moments or actions without variation, resulting in redundancy rather than reinforcing meaning or building emotional impact, making the writing feel stagnant.
Ideas	Surface-level concept development – Many texts introduced promising story concepts but failed to develop them fully, reducing them to simple plot devices rather than emotionally resonant elements.
	Weak emotional and conceptual contrasts – Many texts lacked deliberate contrasts between tension and relief, fear and safety, or struggle and resolution, making narratives feel flat and monotonous.
	Missed opportunities for symbolism and thematic depth – Objects, characters, or events were often presented literally, without being used to reinforce a deeper theme.
	Limited use of metaphor to deepen meaning – Many texts stated ideas directly rather than exploring them through imagery or symbolic connections.
Cohesion	Lack of narrative coherence – Many texts listed disconnected events rather than weaving them into a meaningful sequence, creating episodic storytelling that lacked “perceptual grouping”.
	Abrupt transitions between emotional stages, disrupting narrative flow and weakening reader engagement.
Character & Setting	Underdeveloped characters and settings – Many characters lacked emotional depth, and settings were stated rather than used to enhance atmosphere and engagement.
Vocabulary	Limited expressive vocabulary – Many students relied on basic word choices rather than descriptive and affective language.

Bios

Ania Lian is a senior lecturer at Charles Darwin University. Ania specialises in language and literacy education. Anneliese Powell is a teacher in Adelaide and a PhD student at Charles Darwin University.

White writing on green background: Well, here we are in 2025 and no closer to the top of the OECD’s league tables than we were fifteen years ago when the boast was made

Why AERO should take a long hard look at itself

March 13, 2025Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO)AARE blog, AERO, Dean Ashenden, University of Melbourne

How AERO’s failures fail us all: part one published yesterday

To look at AERO’s teaching model is to wonder whether the organisation is living in some other reality, a world in which there are no students who refuse to go to school, or leave school as soon as they can, or last the distance but leave with not much to show for it, or wag it, or bully and harass or are bullied and harassed, sometimes in the classroom often outside it, or have little or no sense of “belonging” at school or “attachment” to it. Why on this crowded stage is AERO putting the spotlight solely on what the teacher is doing in the classroom? Can teaching be expected to change the whole experience of being at school? Or is that somebody else’s problem?

And what about kinds of knowledge other than formal, out-there, discipline-derived knowledge, the staple that has launched a thousand curriculums — know-how, for example, knowing how to learn, how to work in groups, how to think through complicated life and ethical questions? And what about students’ knowledge of their own capabilities and options? The suspicion arises that what AERO is after is schooling for the poor, for the denizens of the “long tail of attainment,” cheap, narrowed down and dried out, a something that is better than nothing.

AERO is misconceived

As well as misconceiving, AERO is misconceived. Its job is to gather research from up there and packaging it for consumption down below. It wants teaching to be based on research evidence — on just two kinds of research evidence, in fact — as if what teachers and school leaders know from experience, debate and intuition isn’t really knowledge at all, as if it’s research evidence or nothing. That most teachers and others in schools don’t use research evidence very often is taken not as a judgement about priorities but as an “obstacle” to uptake.

AERO claims that “evidence-based practices are the cornerstone of effective teaching” without providing or citing evidence to support the claim. More, it implies that the “how” of teaching is the only thing that teachers should concern themselves with, that teaching and schooling are free of doubts and dilemmas, of messy questions of judgement, decision and purpose.

A deeply hierarchical idea

AERO’s deeply hierarchical idea of the relationship between researchers and practitioners is of a piece with its conception of the relationship between teacher and taught. It is, in fact, the kind of institution that John Hattie feared. “There’s a debate going on about building an evidence institute for teaching,” he told Larsen in 2018. “My fear is that it will become like [America’s] What Works Clearinghouse and people will be employed to take academic research and translate it into easy language for teachers.”

At the risk of an apparent sectarianism, let me suggest that Martin Luther had the necessary idea: the priest should not stand between God and the flock but beside the flock reading God’s Word for themselves and finding their own way to salvation. AERO should stand beside teachers and schools, and it should help them stand beside their students. But that is not what AERO was set up to do.

What is AERO?

Nominally the creation of the nine ministers of education and their departments, AERO is actually the handiwork of the NSW Department of Education, long the bastion of the “traditional” classroom, and Social Ventures Australia, or SVA, an organisation privately funded to “influence governments and policymakers to create large scale impact.”

SVA was much taken by Britain’s Education Endowment Foundation, and pitched to the Commonwealth the many benefits that would flow from an Australian equivalent. The pitch included some words about new things to be learned in new ways but more about a “robust evidence ecosystem” serving the cause of “continuous improvement” that would boost school performance. SVA wanted the new organisation to be independently funded and established through a tendering process. As the proposal made its way through the machinery of the “national approach” it was shorn of the progressive talk along with the independent funding and the creation by tender.

The organisation that emerged is indistinguishable from the NSW Department of Education in its underlying assumptions about “evidence-based teaching,” its “teaching model,” its definition of “evidence,” and its view of the relationship between theory and practice and of the control of schools. AERO’s board is chaired by the former chief executive of the Smith Family, a charity so committed to “explicit teaching” that it has taken ads in the mainstream media to urge its universal adoption. The chief executive is a former senior officer of the NSW department and AERO references the department’s Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (“the home of education evidence”). AERO’s “partner,” Ochre Education, a not-for-profit provider of “resources [that] support effective, evidence-based practices,” has one “partner” larger than all the rest put together, the NSW Department of Education.

Embedded in its own dogma

AERO is deeply embedded in its own dogma and in the national machinery that was supposed to deliver “top 5 by ’25.” Well, here we are in 2025 and no closer to the top of the OECD’s league tables than we were fifteen years ago when the boast was made. To the contrary, as the former head of Australia’s premier research organisation and of the OECD’s mighty education division concluded recently, inequality is rising, quality is falling, and the system is resistant to reform. What reason is there to expect that another fifteen years doing the same thing will produce a different result?

AERO is not going to go away, but perhaps it can be pressed to lighten up. It should be persuaded, first, to accept that teaching is a sense-making occupation and that schools are sense-making institutions. Schools should not be treated as outlets applying recipes and prescriptions dispensed by AERO or anyone else.

Second, AERO’s evidence should bear on the system in which schools do their work as well as on the schools and their teachers. That should include evidence about whether and how Australia’s schooling system should join schools and teachers as objects of reform.

Rethink the conception of “evidence”

Third, AERO should be pressed to rethink its conception of “evidence.” Schools do and must use many kinds of evidence, including some that they gather formally or informally themselves. Evidence derived from academic research may well be a useful addition to the mix, but that is all. It is — and AERO should say so — provisional and contingent, not altogether different from other kinds of evidence schools use. The contrary idea, that evidence generated by formal academic research is scientific and therefore beyond debate and disagreement is encouraging the gross misconstructions of effectiveness research described by John Hattie.

AERO should also expand the range of academic sources it draws on and the kinds of evidence it embraces, going beyond the “how” to include the “what,” “why” and “whether to” — debates over evidence and evidence-use, and evidence from educational philosophy, sociology, economics and history as well as from that dubious disciple psychology (the source of both the effectiveness paradigm and cognitive load theory) and from beyond the all-too familiar Anglosphere.

The lens must be widened

And, most important of all: while many teachers are no doubt grateful for at least some of AERO’s output, and perhaps particularly for the resources distributed by AERO’s partner, Ochre, those resources go no further than helping teachers do a job in need of a fundamental rethink. The lens must be widened to include the organisation of students’ and teachers’ daily work and the organisation of students’ learning careers as well as what teachers can do in the classroom as it now exists. AERO should identify schools working to organise the curriculum around each students’ intellectual growth and the development of their capacities as individuals and as social beings. It should put those schools in touch with one another, and work with them on a different kind of research, on finding ways through an essential but immensely difficult organisational and intellectual task. •

This is part two of the story by Dean Ashenden on AERO. We published part one yesterday. This was first published in Inside Story. We are republishing with the permission of both Dean Ashenden and of Peter Browne, editor of Inside Story.

Dean Ashenden is a senior honorary fellow in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, the University of Melbourne. He has worked in and around, over decades, as a teacher, academic, commentator and consultant: He is co-author, with Raewyn Connell, Sandra Kessler and Gary Dowsett, of the 1982 classic Making The Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division. Unbeaching the Whale: Can Australian schooling be reformed? was published last year.

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