Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

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

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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 teachers

Emotional experiences of teaching: Toxic positivity and cruel wellbeing

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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.

schooling in a crisis

Schooling now in a crisis: Inky darkness, crippling anxieties, overreactions, love, care and glorious beauty

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Hundreds of schools are closed. We’re in lock down again.

This time it’s not COVID, it’s climate.

Waiting for (now Ex-)Tropical Cyclone Alfred to cross the Southeast Queensland coast, there was an uncanny calm. Just as in the pandemic, we saw the predicted effects of the disaster on the news, and the continuous commentary and advice on local ABC radio. But while writing this post, we have not yet fully comprehended the impact. We’re not supposed to get cyclones in this area of the world. They’re not unprecedented, but they’re very rare.  

It all seemed eerily familiar. Supermarket shelves stripped bare. Not a piece of toilet paper in sight. No bread or milk. Water was all gone. And the kids aren’t at school.

This area of Australia has become used to crises. Maybe the unnatural calmness that has ‘become the vibe’ for over four million people is because we’ve become immune to polycrisis. 2019 saw devastating bushfires that, once put out, were replaced by COVID. We were barely out of lockdown when the second 100-year flood in 10 years hit in 2022. Now a cyclone has turned into a tropical low with the prospect of another flood.

Ain’t nothing like a Queensland summer, to quote son of Brisbane, Evil Eddie.

Schools working overtime

School communities across Australia have experienced droughts, bushfires, floods, the COVID-19 pandemic, widening inequality and student segregation, alongside a deepening teacher shortage. During that time, schools have operated as disaster recovery coordination centres, community shelters and emergency learning environments. While one crisis can have long-lasting effects on the resilience of a school community, cascading disasters are likely to affect communities in new ways.

At the end of 2022, fellow Queenslander Stewart Riddle and I hatched a plan to investigate what it means to school in times of crisis. I had spent my career watching politicians and lobbyists manufacture education crisis after education crisis. We wanted to know how schooling continued to survive after devastation that did not simply exist in the imaginations and spin of a political agenda.

Knowing there were many education researchers and members of the education community expert in schooling in times of crisis we began to collect abstracts for an edited collection.

We defined crises to include natural disasters, climate risk, gun violence, poverty, disease, and schools in war zones. Schools and schooling were broadly defined as the experiences those in an education community—students, teachers, principals, support staff, parents and local organisations— who interact with schools (e.g., structures, halls, grounds, governance and curriculum) and schooling (teaching and learning) in the context of local and global crises.

Schooling in times of crisis

We received so many submissions publisher Routledge asked us to produce an International Handbook of Schooling in Times of Crisis. What began with Stewart Riddle, from the University of Southern Queensland, and me is now expanded to include three new editors: Bridget Hughes from North Queensland and at QUT with me, Joanne Hughes from Queen’s University Belfast and Brian Beabout from the University of New Orleans.  It is due to the publishers later this year.

In collecting these stories, I realised how precious stories of schooling in times of crisis are to how we understand education in the current era. What’s the evidence base for ‘catching up’ two weeks after a tsunami? What does it feel like to be sacrificed to the economy as an essential worker? What does it mean to be ‘future focused’ when members of a school community have been killed in a tragedy?

Transcending the worst possible day in a community’s life

As more stories have come in, I have become more hopeful. I’ve begun to wonder about the power of education to transcend the worst possible day in a community’s life. Why are schools one of the first initiatives set up in a refugee camp? Why is education embedded in a peace treaty? What makes the leadership a principal is most proud of happen during the day and aftermath of a disaster? How do people turn up to teach every day in a guerrilla zone? What is it about education that drives someone to put everything on the line and open a school, as Stewart has done this year?

Ultimately, I have begun to wonder what it means to see schooling as care work that includes knowledge brokering. I have spent much of my career watching and analysing debates about choosing the knowledge and how to broker it, as if children and educators are simply automatons that consume policy, not actual human beings with love and loss.

Generosity in so many ways

In reading so many works of great tragedy I am continually amazed at the generosity of everyday humans. Generosity to their communities and the trust they have put in me and the editorial team to share their stories.

I set my children up to remote school while I tried to get some work done, including writing this blog. But really I was only thinking about holding them close, riding out a storm that looked so impossible. Education, while an enormous part of our lives, is only a part – but it’s not separate.

On Monday, when this blog is published, and I (hopefully) am back at work, I will continue to ask myself what does it actually mean to “education research” with humans, in all their inky darkness, crippling anxieties, overreactions, love, care and glorious beauty.

Naomi Barnes is an associate professor in the School of Education, Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice, QUT. She is a researcher interested in how political actors perform and respond to crises. With a specific focus on moral panics, she has focused on education politics in Australia, the US and the UK. She is editor-in chief of the forthcoming International Handbook of Schooling in TImes of Crisis and executive member of the QUT Centre for Justice.

The header image is of Oonoonba State School in Townsville during the 2019 flood. Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Is the social media ban a moral panic?

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South Australia last week began consultations on a proposed social media ban for children under the age of 14. The federal government quickly announced its intention to follow suit with a national social media ban for children (age to be determined) by the end of 2024. This announcement comes hard on the heels of an increased attention to the harms of social media. Specifically, a lot of that attention has been related to reporting of sexism and misogyny in schools. 

In other words, plans to ban social media for children is exactly how an ‘education crisis’ moral panic plays out. 

A perfect storm

Incidents of young men behaving badly in schools getting media attention exists alongside a long debate about whether children can be banned from using social media. The perfect storm of four well-documented types of moral panic (young male deviance, sex and violence, schools and teachers, and the evils of the media) have led to a mediatisation of education that has sustained public anxiety. 

The evidence that the media causes immoral behaviour is fuzzy (though it is stronger in relation to some acts). But that fact is overshadowed by the confident public appeals to common-sense and intuition by people in positions of authority. We saw this debate play out about Dungeons and Dragons during the 1980s Satanic Panic. We also saw it in 1999 after the Columbine school shooting. The two young shooters’ media choices were extensively scrutinised because they were listening to Marilyn Manson and playing shooter video games.

Such mediatisation of an event sustains well-placed public anxiety for longer than it might otherwise have been maintained. When public anxiety is prolonged, policy makers in a democracy are forced to act. The trouble is that journalistic polemics freeze debate and the kind of important dialogue necessary to address the problem. 

As such, policymakers react to a moral panic with poor policy. In the case of the current social media ban proposal, that’s a reactionary authoritarian policy that stagnates what might be otherwise thoughtful localised protocols working to address underlying community problems.

What is a moral panic and why is the social media ban an example of a moral panic? 

The term ‘moral panic’ has been used by social media scholars in response to the proposed bans. But what is a moral panic? A moral panic generally means that the extent and significance of a concern has been exaggerated or overblown. What makes something a moral panic is when a public fear is politically positioned to the point that systems of power begin to respond to it. This means that there is a significant difference between generalised worry about children using social media, and the generalised worry deliberately being used to justify policy.

Being labelled a moral panic does not mean that the foundational morals and values of the nation are safe. Nor does it imply that the reaction is invalid, hysterical, delusional or fantastical (though it might be misused in that way). Labelling something a moral panic is a rhetorical flag that signals an intense and condensed political struggle. Identifying a moral panic helps a political sociologist identify, quite clearly, the lines of power in society. In other words, it helps identify who is influential, who is a political actor worth watching and who are the traditional political actors being ignored. 

Trying to shift the political agenda

“Moral panic’ is a powerful rhetorical device. When a social group, whether academic, political, legal, or journalistic, labels something a moral panic it usually means a power broker is trying to downplay the public anxieties sparking the panic in the first place. It means they are trying to shift the political agenda by signalling to policymakers that the political agenda is not actually responding to a wide public need. Labeling something a moral panic signals that decisions are reactive and being applied at a surface level, without deep thought about the actual cause of the anxiety in the first place. 

At the end of the day, if a social media ban is democratically popular, no amount of thoughtful, expert advice will have any effect. Ironically, the tools that social media researchers are experts in are the same tools that have shifted how politics works, anxieties are spread, and policies are made in Australia. Experts have to acknowledge this shift in how democratic nations now make laws, and advise policy makers within that reality (at least until the technology companies are better regulated).

What do schools have to do with the social media ban?

Schools may welcome this ban because it means that they can use the law to make policies to limit student social media use beyond ineffective mobile phone bans that do not acknowledge students can still access social media sites on their BYOD devices, or even the school-provided devices via a proxy. 

But all the bans in the world will not address the fundamental social issues that create problematic classroom and schoolyard behaviours in the first place. It is not social media that leads young men to distribute ranking lists of their female classmates, nor was it AI that caused them to place the heads of classmates and teachers on naked bodies, nor is it the algorithm that causes them to call their female teachers and classmates foul names. All these tools do is make it easier but even if the tools are banned, misogyny will find another way. 

So the real issue is the lack of time and space that schools have to engage in difficult conversations about how to act in society. We have seen scholarship after scholarship after scholarship about the curriculum crunch and the time poverty of teachers and school leaders. We have seen debate after debate about how to fit more into the curriculum, and very little about finding the time to have conversations about democratic values like equity, inclusion and diversity. Time that is necessary to process big feelings as children come to understand their world. 

Students need time to process ideas

Often this world holds no resemblance to what they thought the world would look like because important skills like critical and media literacy have shattered their world view. It is quite natural for an adult, let alone a teen, to lash out when their worldview is challenged. Teaching of these skills needs time to allow students to process the ideas but schools are so time poor that often critical skills are shoehorned in because a teacher thinks they are important. The reality is that critical skills are not something that can take one lesson. They develop over time, even years. 

The concerns of parents, teachers and school leaders about sexism and violence happening in their own communities has been heard by politicians but because moral panic mechanisms have been deployed through the mediatisation of schools, young men, sex and violence, the political solution is poor and will not address the real issue. Schools and their communities need time to come up with a localised plan. This might include banning social media, but that cannot be something the federal government decides.

Naomi Barnes

Naomi Barnes is an associate professor at QUT. She has a specific focus on moral panics and has demonstrated how online communication influences education politics in Australia, the US and the UK. She has analysed and developed network models to show the effect of moral panics on the Australian curriculum. Naomi lectures future teachers in Modern History, Civics and Citizenship and Writing Studies.

Australia doesn’t need a ‘Behaviour Curriculum’. We need to implement Social and Emotional Learning now

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Last month, the Senate Education and Employment References Committee released an interim report on the Senate Inquiry into increasing disruption in Australian school classrooms – and it looks like we will get the final report today. It used an unsubstantiated decline in Australia’s rank in the OECD’s disciplinary climate index to claim Australian classrooms as among the most disorderly around the world and raised concerns about teacher safety, job satisfaction, and retention, and the impact of classroom disruption on students’ academic learning. Meanwhile, rigorous research has demonstrated no decline in three of four measures of learning.

The interim report’s recommendation for a ‘Behaviour Curriculum’ is similarly flawed. Student behaviour is complex, shaped by a myriad of social, economic, political, and environmental factors. Consistency in the school-wide use of evidence-based classroom management techniques, such as the use of clear routines and coherent reward/consequence systems, provide effective parameters for expected behaviours but they are not enough on their own. There is also significant danger in a simplistic “tips and tricks” approach that implies that all problem behaviours are misbehaviours that can be corrected by teachers who have mastered basic techniques to which they have (allegedly) never been introduced.

It is seductive to imagine that all challenging behaviours can be magically fixed by teachers learning how to “run a room”, but this ignores the reality with which today’s classroom teachers must grapple. Many of the most troubling behaviours for teachers are not deliberate actions of indolent children who could otherwise comply with the help of stricter discipline. Rather, they reflect differences in cognitive processing, underlying stress responses, and/or the outcome of emotional overwhelm by students who have experienced childhood complex trauma or who have a disability.

There is a disturbing current of ableism running through the report and through the submissions of various advocates for the behaviour curriculum. Look, for example, at the definition of disruptive behaviour used in the interim report. The parallels between these five criteria and the diagnostic criteria for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are obvious to anyone with any knowledge or experience of ADHD but, as that is clearly not the case for some, we have placed both in a table to highlight the overlap.

Senate Interim Report Definition of Disruptive Behaviour (p. 3)Diagnostic Criteria for ADHD
1.      talking unnecessarily and calling out without permissionOften talks excessively.Often blurts out an answer before a question has been completed.
2.   being slow to start work or follow instructionsOften avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort. Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks.
3.   showing a lack of respect for each other and staffOften does not listen when spoken to directly.Often interrupts or intrudes on others.Often leaves seat in situations when remaining seated is expected.
4.   not bringing the right equipmentOften loses things necessary for tasks or activities.
5.   using mobile devices inappropriatelyIs often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli.

In fact, all five are consistent with ADHD, a neurodevelopmental disorder which is underrecognised and poorly understood/supported in Australian schools. Education providers are obligated to provide reasonable adjustments to ensure that students with a disability, including those with ADHD, can access and participate in education on the same basis as students without disability. Yet these students are commonly do not receive adjustments and are commonly (but mistakenly) perceived as wilfully non-compliant. Not surprisingly, they are overrepresented in school suspension, exclusion, and early school leaving.

While we acknowledge that challenging behaviours exist in classrooms and that these can be better managed (and that these students can and should be better supported), the real solution extends beyond a reductive curriculum focusing only on ‘behaviour’. What Australia needs is a holistic, forward-thinking approach that prioritises the whole child; one that addresses not just the symptoms but the root causes of disruptive behaviour.

Thankfully this need is being recognised elsewhere in government, judging by various recommendations to implement Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). MTSS is a comprehensive and integrated service delivery framework that systematises the provision of evidence-based prevention and intervention support across all developmental domains (academic, behavioural, and social-emotional) in three tiers (universal, targeted, intensive) that increase in specialisation and intensity.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is a key component of MTSS, which recognises that there is more to education and child development and wellbeing than academics and behaviour, and that all three are inextricably linked. SEL involves teaching children to understand and manage their emotions, set goals, show empathy, establish healthy relationships, and make responsible decisions. SEL is both preventative and educative, proactively laying the groundwork for children to gain a deeper understanding of themselves and others, while cultivating the essential skills necessary for positive life outcomes.

(Close, 2023).

SEL is operationalised through evidence-based programs, integration into core academic instruction, and student-centred learning environments. Implementing SEL through a multi-tiered, systematic approach ensures it reaches all students and is integrated into various aspects of their lives, including the classroom, school, family, and community. The aim is to provide students with the skills they need to actively engage and succeed, rather than merely setting up a framework of rules and routines designed to contain and constrain with consequences when some students inevitably transgress.  

Developing students’ social-emotional competencies is already a recognised priority in Australia, as evidenced by the Personal and Social Capability strand of the General Capabilities, which includes four of the five core SEL competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social management (akin to relationship skills). The fifth competency, responsible decision-making, is integrated within the social management domain. The Personal and Social Capability strand provides an encouraging starting point for SEL, indicating that the curriculum infrastructure already exists.

The critical issue that has so far prevented this approach from achieving its aims in Australian schools is that this aspect of the curriculum is not assessed. And, due to the emphasis on literacy and numeracy—which is assessed—this important area of child and adolescent development does not currently receive the time and attention needed for it to be effective.

The recommendations emerging from the Review to Inform a Better and Fairer Education System and the Review of the National School Reform Agreement before it, are an ideal opportunity to streamline student mental health and wellbeing support across Australia. Traditional approaches, such as defaulting to a behaviour curriculum, the concept of which has been imported from England, is not the answer.

Australia needs to adopt a more intentional approach to address challenging behaviours, transitioning from reactive methods to proactive approaches. This involves laying the groundwork to explore how SEL can be implemented within an Integrated Multi-Tiered System of Support that includes—but is not limited to—evidence-based approaches to positive behaviour intervention and support. Relying on a behaviour curriculum of the type being advocated in submissions will continue to leave students behind who struggle with social-emotional skills, particularly those exhibiting the most challenging behaviours —the very students who stand to benefit most from SEL.

Melissa Close is an Outreach and Engagement Officer with the Centre for Inclusive Education at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). She has over a decade of experience as an educator in international and domestic settings. She holds a Master of Education (Leadership and Management) and is currently pursuing a Master of Philosophy at QUT focused on the systemic implementation of Social and Emotional Learning in educational settings in Australia and the United States. 

Linda Graham is professor and director of The Centre for Inclusive Education at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). She has led multiple externally funded research projects and has published more than 100 books, chapters and articles. Her international bestseller, Inclusive Education for the 21st Century, is now in its second edition. In 2020, Linda chaired the Inquiry into Suspension, Exclusion and Expulsion processes in South Australian government schools. She also gave evidence to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability on the use of exclusionary school discipline and its effects.

Distorted: this feeble report misses the boat on classroom behaviour

classroom behaviour management, Managing student behaviour, PISA, , ,

At an event at Parliament House earlier this year I heard that 2024 is going to be the year of education. That is excellent news given that we haven’t heard much about education from the Albanese government but, to be honest, that has been somewhat of a blessed reprieve given the hyperventilation of the previous Morrison LNP government.

I have mixed feelings about what might be coming but wouldn’t if education policy was informed by evidence rather than politics. It isn’t. The impact of that politicisation is never openly acknowledged and the policy decisions that are made (or not made) by governments are never the focus of inquiries or reviews. Instead, the “problem” is always framed by alleged deficiencies in students, parents, teachers, and/or universities.

Disagreement among panel members

Take, for example, the Senate Inquiry into the issue of increasing disruption in Australian classrooms. The interim report has just landed, and, like the final report of the Disability Royal Commission, there was disagreement among panel members. Labor and Greens senators have made additional comments that acknowledge the complexity of behaviour in schools and the Greens have only one recommendation: to fully fund public schools at the beginning of the next National School Reform Agreement in 2025. 

I was called to give evidence at the senate inquiry. At the time, I expressed concern that the Inquiry based its case for ‘increasing disruption’ on PISA data, noting first, that there are cultural and other differences between countries and second, that there are problems with the rankings. I will have more to say about the report and its recommendations in time but for now I want to take readers through points I made in the new first chapter of Inclusive Education for the 21st Century, which extend my comments from the evidence I gave to the inquiry.

Since that hearing, I have looked more closely at the data on which these claims are based and I’m frankly astonished that the Inquiry team did not do this themselves. Even a cursory glance should have been enough to signal to the Senate that these rankings were not a rigorous enough premise on which to base an Inquiry. 

Let us wade through this numerical sewage together

The claim for ‘increasing disruption in Australian classrooms’ is based on the difference in results from two surveys of 15-year-olds who participated in the OECD’s Program of International Student Assessment (PISA). 

The first survey occurred in 2009 and the second in 2018. The disciplinary climate data is based on five survey items:  

1.       Students don’t listen to what the teacher says. 

2.       There is noise and disorder.  

3.       The teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down.  

4.       Students cannot work well.  

5.       Students don’t start working for a long time after the lesson begins. 

Here’s where things get interesting! Here are relevant findings from the two reports.

PISA 2009PISA 2018
Participating countries were ranked on the percentage of 15-year-old students who selected ‘never or hardly ever’ and ‘in some lessons’ for Item 1 ‘Students don’t listen to what the teacher says’, and Item 3 ‘The teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down’.79 countries participated and 76 were ranked, however, this time the OECD developed a disciplinary climate index that encompasses all five items with some minor changes in wording.
Australia was ranked 28th for the first item and 25th for the second.Countries were ranked using their respective Index scores.
Differences between PISA 200 and PISA 2009 were calculated.Australia was ranked 69th
Australia deemed to have an average disciplinary climate that had not significantly changed between the two timepoints.
Differences between PISA 2009 and PISA 2018 were calculated 
There was a significant difference between timepoints in the responses of Australian students for only two of the five items: Item 3 ‘The teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down’, and Item 4 ‘Students cannot work well’. 
Item (5) also declined (-1.8%) but not significantly, while Items (1) and (2) improved (both +0.8%), but again not significantly.

What does all this mean?

First, Australia has not fallen from 28th or 25th in the ranking to 69th. Rather, the number of participating countries has changed over time and so therefore have the rankings. To be clear, the number of participating countries has grown from 43 (2000) to 65 (2009) to 79 (2018). And, because comparisons can only be made between countries that participated in each assessment, the number of countries in the rankings has changed from 38 in 2009 to 76 in 2018. This is not to dispute that Australia is ranked lower than anyone would like but there are problems with the rankings which render them meaningless. 

Here’s why

1)    The types of countries participating in PISA 2009 and PISA 2018 substantively changed due to the entrance of Asian countries. Unlike Australia, these jurisdictions/systems are grounded in Confucian culture, which has a profound effect on teacher-student relationships, classroom interactions, and climate. 

2)    There was a significant difference between timepoints in the responses of Australian students for only two of the five items. The case for increasing disruption in Australian classrooms therefore rests on a 3.7% decrease in the number of students saying their teacher ‘never or hardly ever’ has to wait a long time for students to quiet down, and a 2.8% decrease in the number saying students cannot work well ‘never or hardly ever’. Given that there was no difference in students’ responses between PISA 2000 and 2009, that suggests that there has been no change in more than 20 years for at least two of the five items.

3)    Countries with almost identical disciplinary index scores are ranked above and below each other. For example, Australia and Belgium received Index scores of 0.20 and 0.21, respectively yet Australia is ranked 69th and Belgium 70th. There is a snowball’s chance in hell that these scores are statistically different to each other, so why is one being ranked above the other? Doing this simply expands the number of places in the ranking which makes the distance between countries look larger than it really is.

4)    No tests of significance between countries or ranks were conducted, so we do not know whether there is a statistically significant difference in Australian students’ responses to the OECD average or how much of a difference there is between Australia and the countries at the top of the ranking. Similar points have been made numerous times over the years in relation to the rankings for student achievement in reading, mathematics, and science, but at least in those cases, countries with statistically indistinguishable performances are grouped together and given the same rank. 

5)    Recent research by Sally Larsen from the University of New England has indicated no decline in TIMMS, PIRLS or NAPLAN results of Australian students. Any observed correlations between declines in PISA’s disciplinary climate survey and student academic outcomes should not be causally interpreted.

My view

If politicians are going to look at rankings, then look at them all. Let’s consider, for example, that: 

1.     Australia is sitting at the top of ranked countries in terms of the hours that teachers spend in face-to-face teaching. 

2.     Australian teachers spend more hours teaching than the OECD average (838.28 hours/year vs 800.45 hours respectively)

3.     Korea is ranked first in classroom disciplinary climate and Australia is ranked 69th. However, Australian teachers spend 323.30 more hours per year in face-to-face teaching than their Korean counterparts, who teach just 516.98 hours/year.

4.     In disciplinary climate, the difference between advantaged students and disadvantaged students in Australia (0.34) is double that of Korea (0.17). 

These are just some of the gaps and anomalies that arise when the PISA data is subjected to close reading, which is the absolute minimum amount of analysis that should have been conducted (if not, prior, then at least) during an Inquiry that used these data for its rationale.

The questions education ministers must ask

Readers of the Interim Report, especially Education Ministers, should regard it very critically and start asking serious questions:

  • Who stands to benefit from such simple representations of these data?
  • Might there be financial benefits for non-university providers from the ‘deregulation’ of initial teacher education?
  • Are there other data that have been ignored and, if so, what does their omission suggest about rigour and bias?
  • Might Australian students tell a different story if asked by expert researchers using both open and close-ended questions? 

Are we brave enough to ask them?

Linda Graham is professor and director of The Centre for Inclusive Education at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). She has led multiple externally funded research projects and has published more than 100 books, chapters and articles. Her international bestseller, Inclusive Education for the 21st Century: Theory, Policy and Practice, is now in its second edition. In 2020, Linda chaired the Inquiry into Suspension, Exclusion and Expulsion processes in South Australian government schools. She also gave evidence to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability on the use of exclusionary school discipline and its effects.

Andrew Tate

Andrew Tate: Why the blind hope of a mother needs urgent help from the underworld

civics and citizenship education, Gender, Humanities and Social Sciences, teaching gender respect, , , , ,

Andrew Tate, sent to trial overnight, is a hugely popular influencer whose extreme misogynistic views are infiltrating classrooms and playgrounds across the world. His impact on classroom behaviour has been reported in popular media and include teachers overhearing jokes about sexual violence and  children writing misogynistic essays. Wescott and Roberts recently published insights on their study of Australian classroom experiences with the manosphere. Their study ‘illuminates the presence of rampant disrespect towards teachers, sexual harassment of teachers and girls, physical intimidation and blatant disregard for women’. 

My own experience with the ‘manosphere’ has been through my own child being called names so horrible it took my breath away. How does a child in primary school even know those words? What does a teacher or parent even say to that? I’ve taught in pretty rough schools in my time: been sworn at, even emailed pornography. But I kinda thought for a long time that ‘feminism had done its job’ by now. We just simply don’t speak to each other this way! Let alone eleven-year-olds. I know that’s naïve but there is nothing quite like the blind hope of a mother.

Maybe it’s because I research social media and education, but I have also had a number of people ask me about ‘what should we say about Andrew Tate’? Many parents and teachers are concerned. He’s not really on my research radar but online democracy is. So I turned my 25 years of Civics and Citizenship teacher skills to the problem of ‘Talking about Andrew Tate and the manosphere’. 

The first thing to get straight is that it is pretty much impossible to ban Andrew Tate, despite what he says. He is hugely popular, even after Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook banned him. 

Suddenly people began to wonder who this person was, and his name got more clicks. Nearly every news outlet reported bans, bringing him into the sphere of older people who might not have heard of him before. If we are thinking in democratic terms, since 2016 we have seen underground extremist groups collectivise, radicalise and come to dominate political decision-making in the US, the UK and even in Australia. Indeed, reactionary approaches to extremism are more likely to send kids underground. Collectivised underground groups provide a sense of community a lonely teenager will most likely value and fight hard to keep. What we need is to be responsive and use well-worn democracy tools to help shift kids’ thinking. 

The following advice can be applied to any influencer you find in the dark parts of the Internet. All you have to do is remember PLUTO. Yes, PLUTO the mythical god of the underworld and the poor, hard-done-by dwarf planet. Yes, it’s a planet again.

PLUTO stands for: Partnership, Listening, Understanding, Talk with purpose, and be Organised.

Partnership

When speaking to kids about someone like Andrew Tate you must be a partner in the conversation. Do not pretend that you know more than the kids. You don’t. You will never catch up to them, especially if they have been down the rabbit hole for a while. Besides, Andrew Tate has already given them all the comebacks. 

What you do need to know about is what it means to be a part of a fair and just society, what the laws are about hate speech and defamation, and what it means to be an active and informed citizen. You can use these tools to speak with the kids about whether misogyny progresses a good society or sends it backwards.

Listening

Listen. Don’t judge the words that come out of their mouths. Andrew Tate has given language that does not necessarily match their development. Ask them to think deeply about the meaning of the words they are using and how that might make others feel. How that makes them look to others. Do some detective work. Ask them what the evidence is that they would use those words to describe another person. Let them know that freedom of speech only applies when it’s true.

Understanding

The goal is to achieve a collective understanding of what is going on with your classroom or family when a member is listening to Andrew Tate. How is that affecting the dynamic? 

All of these conversations need to happen with a trusted adult. A school inviting ‘an expert’ to speak about the manosphere on assembly is only going to alienate people and probably bring in parental complaints. You don’t want strangers talking to them about Andrew Tate. The same thing goes for a package bought and implemented in a life skills lesson. A package will speak at the young people, not with them. There needs to be a skilled classroom teacher for those kids. Someone who has built a relationship of trust who can work in partnership with the kids, not tell them what to do. 

Talk with purpose

Too often conversations about misogyny happen on the fly. Maybe driving in the car or when it comes up in class. When speaking to kids who have potentially been radicalized, these occasions are not the time to try and shift thinking. When, where and with whom the conversation occurs needs to be well planned. It also needs to have a purpose. Be well designed in its resourcing and intention. Reactionary conversations are most likely going to be ‘won’ by someone who the manosphere has already given all the answers to. 

Be Organised

You, as the teacher (or parent) need to demonstrate a rigorous decision-making process. You need to educate yourself about what it means to live in a fair and just liberal democracy. The discipline area in the Australian curriculum most suited to these conversations is Humanities and Social Sciences, specifically the Civics and Citizenship strand. This, often overlooked, cousin of History and Geography has all the tools needed for talking about how misogynistic views affect our democracy and ultimately society. Civics and Citizenship, as a part of the HaSS suit has purposeful, structured inquiry embedded in its pedagogy and has since Socrates. It also has decades of resourcing about what it means to be an active and informed citizen. 

So, remember PLUTO when you need to talk about Andrew Tate, or any of the people and ideas in the dark, reactionary, radicalizing areas of the Internet. PLUTO: Partnership, Listening, Understanding, Talk with purpose, be Organised.

This is an extrapolation of a lightning talk I gave on a panel ‘Talking about Andrew Tate and the manosphere with boys and young men’ at the Centre for Justice research group at QUT. You can find a recording of all the speakers here. The licence for the header image is to be found here.

Dr Naomi Barnes is a senior lecturer at QUT and is interested in how crisis influences education politics, specifically the effect of moral panics. She also considers how the curriculum relates to nationalism, identity, and democracy. Naomi lectures future teachers in Modern History, Civics and Citizenship and Writing Studies. She has worked for Education Queensland as a Senior Writer and has worked as a Secondary Humanities and Social Science teacher in the government, Catholic and Independent schooling sectors.