In contemporary education there is a need to consistently question the place of a school and a classroom when there are computers in our pockets. The rise of Google in the 21^st century is well documented. This blog will not aim to unpack the ethics of data, as the new global commodity, but rather seek to reflect on one part of the Alphabet Inc empire – Google Classrooms.

As a platform, Google Classrooms has grown to be a worldwide phenomenon. Many studies have confirmed that students enjoy using the platform and find it benefits the growth in independent learning¹.  The benefits include the integration of all other Google tools (YouTube, docs, files from Google drive) that seamlessly integrate into a cloud-based learning platform.  Google Classrooms has been designed to be a time saving and easy to use device for education².

With consistent connectivity there is the benefit of student work saving every five seconds to a cloud-based storage system. Educators that use Google Classrooms effectively also allow disengaged students that are not attending school to access assignments and resources. There is the ability to give real time feedback to students, whether they are physically in your classroom or not. Timely feedback has been consistently proven as a necessary strategy to engage students in learning^3,4.

A big barrier to the use of Google Classrooms is an inconsistent approach from educators. When students are given mixed messages about how to draft or submit work it creates confusion. When there is a whole-school approach it allows the ability to create a shared discourse between staff and students. It also opens the door up to a variety of flexible pedagogical approaches⁵.

The debate for the most holistic pedagogy will continue for the rest of time. As schools and learning institutions we have an obligation to consistently reflect and challenge best practice. To learn from each other and to consider the learning needs of our students over our own discomfort of learning something new.

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References

¹Al-Maroof, R. A. S., & Al-Emran, M. (2018). Students Acceptance of Google Classroom: An Exploratory Study using PLS-SEM Approach. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 13(6).

²Iftakhar, S. (2016). Google classroom: what works and how. Journal of Education and Social Sciences, 3(1), 12-18.

³Wiggins, G. (2012). Seven keys to effective feedback. Feedback, 70(1), 10-16.

⁴Barboza, E. J. S., & da Silva, M. T. (2016, September). The importance of timely feedback to interactivity in Online Education. In IFIP International Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems (pp. 307-314). Springer, Cham.

⁵Shaharanee, I. N. M., Jamil, J. M., & Rodzi, S. S. M. (2016). The application of Google Classroom as a tool for teaching and learning. Journal of Telecommunication, Electronic and Computer Engineering (JTEC), 8(10), 5-8.

AITSL Standards:

Commentators in many sports will discuss obscure and seemingly unimportant statistics. To the average punter this may seem like a waste of time. Though there is nuance in the conversation. To the trained eye (or ear) it is clear how those small 1% efforts are shifting the tide of the game. Lately I have been wondering if walking into the staff room of a school is the litmus test of staff culture.

A school staffroom can wear many different hats. Woods¹ establishes the necessity for staff to create humour in a space free of students and management, though the humour is dependent on the psychological state of the educator. Once more we consider the notion that the conditions in which staff work are the conditions in which students learn. While staff may find a place of mental rest in the staffroom there is not the requirement for this to be at the expense of a positive school culture.

Leadership is crucial in the facilitation of a positive working culture in any industry and schools are no exception. Negative cultures do not happen overnight and are a result of behaviour patterns, an avoidance in navigating conflict and the unwillingness to address the inevitable team failure that is organic for a school². Conversations in the staffroom can colloquial tell you where the staff morale is at. Are the conversations about students built from the foundation of teachers working in any way they can to support learning outcomes? Is there a language of dismissing and devaluing the students’ potential academic outcomes as a result of prejudice?

It makes sense that teachers are going to converse about students in breaks through the school day. I think my main reflection recently has been the tonality of those conversations. Some sociology research has found that teachers are prone to default to negative conversations about students with colleagues³. While this was in an American context, I think that Australian schools are similar.

Having now seen a school staffroom where the dominant conversation is about the support and facilitation of learning for students, my professional perspectives have shifted. Moving through my career I will watch with interest at the conversations in the staffroom to see how they reflect the direction of the learning institution. Improving the 1% statistics for any team is going to ultimately lead to more success.

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References

¹Woods, P. (2019). The meaning of staffroom humour. In Classrooms and staffrooms (pp. 190-202). Routledge.

²Peterson, K. D., & Deal, T. E. (2011). The shaping school culture fieldbook. John Wiley & Sons.

³Hammersley, M. (2019). Staffroom news. In Classrooms and staffrooms (pp. 203-214). Routledge.

AITSL Standards:

A dramatic person may say that mathematics is the closest we will ever go to living out our dreams. Whatever the feelings towards the topic – there is intergenerational polarisation that comes from maths. Most people fall into a camp of love or hate.

What has been inspiring over the last decade since leaving high school myself, has been to see the shift in how the topic of mathematics is taught. The old ways of learning by rote from textbooks are no longer inherently a default strategy.

Entering 2020 I had one major obstacle to overcome in my mathematics pedagogy. How do I factor in a wildly inconsistent attendance? Most of my teacher training had built from the assumption that your student cohort will attend each day. Occasionally you may need to alter your planning to accommodate a student who is away for a few days. This obstacle was in place, before the factors mentioned at the beginning of the previous blog.

We know that attendance is not necessarily correlated with academic outcomes¹. But if you never attend school – you will struggle to make progress on your learning². In the first term or two I was still stuck in old habits and trying to teach my maths program like I would in a mainstream classroom. This changed the more I reflected on my teaching.

Halfway through the year I identified that I needed to target more content areas across a wider span of abilities. This would require maths rotations and additional planning. It was not easy, but I felt it was a necessary evil to keep targeting the relevant level my students were at.

It proved a bridge too far and by the end of term 3 it felt as though our maths was no longer moving forward. I decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater for term 4. Our mathematics time and space became unstructured and reliant on a menu approach.³

I was astounded at the results. A classroom of teenagers would enter after a recess break and settle into half a dozen different mathematical activities. No prompting (mostly) before they would settle into a task. As an educator I was then able to target the menu activities around the mathematical progression we needed to focus on – for example, additive and multiplicative thinking.

The approach was not perfect – as with all teaching pedagogies. At times students would be willing to complete an initial activity before losing interest in completing any additional tasks. But I feel it lifted our standards in class from a formulaic repetition of operation-focused problems, into students using their mathematical toolkit. Each activity required the identification of what skills would be required for completions.

A focus for next year’s planning will be to lift this again. To use the foundation of a maths menu, but to also introduce week long micro-units that have an element of mystery involved. These units intend to draw our critical thinking and creativity from the class.

After all, while it is nice if we have numerate students who can engage in the mathematical literacy of the world – what if we facilitated students with the fundamental skills to adapt to a future world that we can’t predict.

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References

¹Guenther, J. (2013). Are we making education count in remote Australian communities or just counting education?. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 42(2), 157-170.

²Purdie, N., & Buckley, S. (2010). School attendance and retention of Indigenous Australian students.

³Reinken, C. (2020). How to Use Choice Boards to Differentiate Learning – The Art of Education University. Retrieved 15 December 2020, from https://theartofeducation.edu/2012/07/11/how-to-use-choice-boards-to-differentiate-learning/

AITSL Standards:

On Tuesday the 28^th of January, I faced my new class for the first time. Over the coming few blogs, I intend to share some targeted professional reflections from the year. At the start of the year we had no anticipation of a disrupting pandemic, a global movement for racial justice, or on a local scale – the opening weeks to be filled with rain.

Perhaps the latter was the most important lesson to learn. In an isolated community you are at the mercy of the weather. Suddenly local roads were closed and people were at risk of being blocked in by a flowing river. The rain also brought in my arch nemesis, an army of flies.

41 teaching weeks later and I have grown in my knowledge and learnt many lessons. One of the most rewarding things to come from the year, has been the celebration of my students’ emotional development. This was a focus area for my planning at the beginning of the year.

At the beginning of the year I introduced a journal book to each student. Hardly an original idea, but in a classroom of male identifying students, I was not confident of success. After the introduction and the teacher spiel about the benefits of journaling, I was shocked to have the next half an hour of complete silence as each student jumped into the activity.

The brief was simple; write whatever is on your mind and forget about English spelling and punctuation. This is your book and I will only read the stories you choose to share. At a minimum, this activity allowed the students to begin to develop their sense of identity. At best, writing has been found by the American Psychology Association as a healer of negative experiences.¹

This activity built to become a beautiful release from a trauma stricken classroom. The lines of a journal became a place where the students could build descriptive imagery of the lives they endured each day. At one particularly challenging point of my own journey this year, I turned to the stories I was permitted to read. I did not expect to be so humbled by the stories that were shared. While the activity may not always be useful, studies have shown that the art of writing can have fantastic physical benefits as well.²

In the second term we started a daily gratitude practise. We know from the research that a daily gratitude routine, if in place for a month, can significantly change a person’s perspective.³ This activity quickly grew in popularity to the point where the students now tell me if we haven’t completed the task on any given day!

The two above activities are examples of how small steps can make a big difference in a classroom setting. Both activities encourage participation, while neither of them expects perfection. This allows students struggling with a trauma background to feel secure enough to have a go at either one. It also accommodates a classroom filled with students learning English as an Additional Dialect.

I have seen in my students the growth of confidence. From quiet and shy humans in the first term, to curious and reflective students towards the later part of the year. The ability to ask questions of the world around us, and our place in it, is still fundamentally part of the education process.

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References

¹Writing to heal. (2020). Retrieved 14 December 2020, from https://www.apa.org/monitor/jun02/writing#:~:text=Writing%20is%20no%20stranger%20to,terminal%20or%20life%2Dthreatening%20diseases.

²Hammond, C. (2020). The puzzling way that writing heals the body. Retrieved 14 December 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170601-can-writing-about-pain-make-you-heal-faster

³Publishing, H. (2020). Giving thanks can make you happier – Harvard Health. Retrieved 14 December 2020, from https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/giving-thanks-can-make-you-happier

AITSL Standards:

If a week is a long time in politics, how long is a week in a school? A good mathematical estimate would be twice as long as half its length.

Heading into a second year as an educator there are moments to reflect on, areas of growth to identify and goals to achieve.

A teaching moment is found in those split-second decisions where an opportunity presents to diverge from the current topic, in order to explore something related, build additional skills and knowledge that can then be transposed back to the starting point. In particular I will be looking through a lens of mathematics teaching.

As a subject, mathematics is notoriously taught by a curriculum organised in a linear way. There is common sense approach that there is the necessity to build some foundational skills before moving forward. Though I wonder if we hold onto this approach for too long in our education system. A lot of international mathematical teaching models are building from a constructivist approach, a “hands-on approach in the United States, “la main à la pâte” (hands in the dough) in France, or learning by doing in China.”¹

It is important we consider the constructivist approach when unpacking the opportunities for a teaching moment – this is what is driving our pedagogy. One definition of constructivism to is, ‘an approach to learning that holds that people actively construct or make their own knowledge and that reality is determined by the experiences of the learner’² A guiding question organically forms about how this might impacts the moment.

How as educators do we build our skills? Reflective practice.

As usual, at the end of a post I am left with more questions than answers. I believe that I have a good grasp on being flexible in the classroom and intuitively sense a moment to pause and teach what is required. Though perhaps the effectiveness of my approach can be reflected and improved on.

There are 31 million, 536 thousand seconds in any given week to do so.

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References

¹Munier, V., & Merle, H. (2009). Interdisciplinary mathematics–physics approaches to teaching the concept of angle in elementary school. International journal of science education, 31(14), 1857-1895.

²Elliott, S.N., Kratochwill, T.R., Littlefield Cook, J. & Travers, J. (2000). Educational psychology: Effective teaching, effective learning (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill College.

³Hill, H. C., & Ball, D. L. (2004). Learning mathematics for teaching: Results from California’s mathematics professional development institutes. Journal for research in mathematics education, 330-351.

⁴Stockero, S. L., & Van Zoest, L. R. (2013). Characterizing pivotal teaching moments in beginning mathematics teachers’ practice. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 16(2), 125-147.

AITSL Standards:

One of my favourite sayings from an old Dean of Education (or somebody before them) is that when communication breaks down, imagination takes over. It is easy to forget how impressionable we are as educators. How as we communicate each day in the classroom, our tonality, body language and chosen words can impact the reaction of our students.

Feeling a little less green now as I approach 12 months in central Australia and 6 months with my current cohort (admittedly, a chaotic 6 months), I find myself reflecting on the classroom culture we have created. I find myself reflecting on how classroom culture is fluid and will always continue to change. I am shocked when my students notice if I am down by a few percentage points, asking me if I’m “little bit sleepy” or “you little bit sad”.

One of the things I am proud of in our classroom is our set of co-created rules and expectations. Back in week 1, before coronavirus was a thing, the students and I stood around a table and created our expectations together. It is astounding at what students can come up with when you ask them, ‘what can we do so that we all feel safe in this classroom space’. Some of the co-created rules are;

Having students create our expectations has allowed easier communication because students boughtinto the process. This provides clear expectation for students. Khan (et al. 2017) reported in a study that ‘the majority of students opined that they learn well from those teacher who has good communication skills or who adopt food communication skills.’¹

The last thing I will touch on is routine. If you read my last blog you may remember how I wrote that routine assisted in challenging behaviour. I would also take the opportunity here to add that routine is an essential part of a class communication strategy. This needs to be unpacked further in a further post.

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References

¹Khan, A., Khan, S., Zia-Ul-Islam, S., & Khan, M. (2017). Communication Skills of a Teacher and Its Role in the Development of the Students’ Academic Success. Journal of Education and Practice, 8(1), 18-21.

²Hawthorne, S. (2008). Students’ beliefs about barriers to engagement with writing in secondary school English: A focus group study. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, The, 31(1), 30.

AITSL Standards: 3.3, 3.5, 4.1, 4.2, 4.4

Even early in a teaching career it is already to identify some of the greatest philosophical battles that take place in academic corridors. Recently at a gathering of mathematical educators I started a robust conversation over the merits of learning timetables by rote learning.

Questions on the intent of education, specifically mathematically based, are not anything new. Twenty years ago we were asking whether there is benefit to using calculators in a classroom or if the underpinning mathematical knowledge is more important, this is still relevant.¹ There seems to be a disconnected between the academic debates on education and what is practised within classrooms. It is necessary for a teacher to be equipped to take the best research and apply it to their learning context.²

It can still be argued many educators focus on the assessment and data, as well as replication of skills instead of the core educational outcomes that drive our knowledge forward.⁴ At times this can be driven forward by cluttered oversight of educational systems.

Still it is worth entertaining a notion that within rote learning, comes routine. Routine in education can be a magical strategy. It can assist with challenging behaviour and provide opportunities for deeper learning from students.⁵ Though it needs to be considered with the same meaningfulness as other teaching strategies – not as an activity to consume time. It is worth exploring if rote learning can be differentiated by definition. If there is the potential for this versatility – perhaps rote learning in a diverse education setting becomes a key player for learning outcomes.

In the context of the Australian Curriculum, the necessity for knowledge of multiplicative thinking is self-evident. It is clear that a student needs be able to use timetables by rote in their thinking to free up cognitive space for higher order thinking. The jury is still out on how that education takes place.

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References

¹Hiebert, J. (1999). Relationships between Research and the NCTM Standards. Journal For Research In Mathematics Education, 30(1), 3. doi: 10.2307/749627

²Hiebert, p3

³Lithner, J. (2007). A research framework for creative and imitative reasoning. Educational Studies In Mathematics, 67(3), 255-276. doi: 10.1007/s10649-007-9104-2

⁴Ritchhart, R., Church, M., & Morrison, K. (2011). Making thinking visible: How to promote engagement, understanding, and independence for all learners. John Wiley & Sons.

⁵Ritchhart, R. (2015). Creating Cultures of Thinking. Jossey-Bass.

AITSL Standards: 1.2, 3.3, 4.3

I have recently been exposed to the Brightpath assessment tool as a measure to assess student writing. Brightpath allows, ‘[teachers to] compare their student’s work to calibrated exemplars to arrive at a scaled score,’ and notes that, ‘these judgements are comparable across teachers, schools and over time.’¹

It is evident there is some higher order, mathematical thinking within the program. I think it would both arduous and potentially irrelevant to unpack this. What is essential to consider though, is the application to the education process. We are brought back to the consideration of assessment and what is means for the education process. The beautiful part of a Brightpath tool is the ability to use it in a formative capacity. We can take one definition of formative assessment as obtaining evidence of student knowledge through the use of formal or informal processes to improve the outcome of student learning.⁴ A Brightpath program allows the teachers to collect data and make meaningful adjustments to a teaching program, based on where the students’ learning is at.

This approach ties in nicely with some key values of the Australian Curriculum. Consider how formative assessment can be used as a tool to diagnose learning difficulties, improve our teaching practise and to allow for timely feedback for both educator and learner.⁵ Succinctly, we want as many tools in our teaching kit that empowers every student in the classroom to be given the opportunity to learn, regardless of any barriers in the education process. From a higher order mathematical equation speculating on teacher judgement, to an in school tool that can be used to analyse writing samples, Brightpath shows potential to add another element to an already diverse range of assessment opportunities.

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References

¹Brightpath – Brightpath. (2020). Retrieved 3 April 2020, from https://www.brightpath.com.au/

²Bramley, T., Bell, J. F., & Pollitt, A. (1998). Assessing changes in standards over time using Thurstone Paired Comparisons. Education Research and Perspectives, 25(2), 1-24.

³Heldsinger, S., & Humphry, S. (2010). Using the method of pairwise comparison to obtain reliable teacher assessments. The Australian Educational Researcher, 37(2), 1-19.

⁴Bennett, R. (2011). Formative assessment: A critical review. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 18, 5–25. doi:10.1080/0969594X.2010.513678

⁵Van Der Kleij, F., Cumming, J., & Looney, A. (2018). Policy expectations and support for teacher formative assessment in Australian education reform. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 25(6), 620-637.

AITSL Standards: 1.6, 2.3, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5

It would be an understatement to say the world is changing. For years to come, there will be opinions, analysis and conjecture about how a pandemic swept across the world and impacted the ways humanity existed. Bringing the scope into a narrower focus, there is an opportunity here to consider the changes through a lens of education.

While many countries have taken different approaches to schooling, Australia has insisted (at the time of writing) on keeping the doors open. While I would refrain from commenting on the politics of this decision, we can also consider the consequences for learning of this decision. Around the country there is an urgent rush for schools to prepare for online/distance/remote/alternative teaching models.

An article from The Conversation notes that while the gap between the bush and city populations is slowly closing, it neglected to include statistics on Indigenous communities, ‘where the evidence suggests that internet access is usually very poor’⁴. We only recently heard from Indigenous Affairs Minister, Ken Wyatt, about how powerful education is for ‘further success in life’⁵. Though the comments were largely focused on increasing participation in the tertiary sector there must be an assumption this would trickle down into improving the outcomes of the high schooling system.

There is a disconnect between the inability to connect into digital technologies and the expectation that we can achieve educational outcomes by doing so. In these uncertain times, we must make certain we do not leave an entire group of peoples behind.

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References

¹Garthwait, A. (2014). Pilot Program of Online Learning in Three Small High Schools: Considerations of Learning Styles. Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 12(4), 353-366.

²Milakovich, M., Wise, Jean-Marc, & Edward Elgar Publishing, publisher. (2019). Digital learning : The challenges of borderless education.

³8146.0 – Household Use of Information Technology, Australia, 2016-17. (2020). Retrieved 26 March 2020, from https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/8146.0?OpenDocument

⁴Thomas, J., Wilson, C., & Park, S. (2018). Australia’s digital divide is not going away. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/australias-digital-divide-is-not-going-away-91834

⁵Hunter, F. (2020). ‘Focus on the successes’: Ken Wyatt says lessons to be learned in Indigenous education. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/focus-on-the-successes-ken-wyatt-says-lessons-to-be-learned-in-indigenous-education-20200306-p547l9.html

AITSL Standards: 2.6, 3.6, 4.5, 6.1,

There is a colloquial expectation that teachers will know the students in their classroom. While it is dangerous to step into the realms of the politically savage spaces of race, gender, culture, sexual orientation or class, it is almost impossible to ignore the influences these things may have on education outcomes. Teachers are constantly challenged to respond to questions of morality and ethics. In many regards, teaching could be considered inherently political.

In reality, there is a naivety that one could educate in a community context without consideration of the above. However there are also other factors to consider in a remote context. In the article, Strengths and challenges for koori kids, it becomes clear that it is more difficult to achieve a Western idea of successful health and well-being as a result of being Aboriginal¹. Students may come to school on an empty stomach. Knowing the reality of where you teach is a necessity that underpins your day of education. There is an opportunity, with the student in your classroom who struggled to sleep overnight, to demonstrate a level of empathy. Demetriou² describes the process of empathy in schools as a two way process that,

‘Only works when you have effective relationships, when there’s mutual respect between staff and pupils, when pupils know that we are committed to listening, and when we treat pupils with unconditional positive regards.’

So what does all of this mean? Essentially, it means what every good teacher already knows. Students are incredibly diverse and unique. Each student brings into the classroom a range of lived experiences that inform the way they approach any education process. We need to be aware of these factors. We need to teach for these factors. We need to have the humility to accept when we don’t quite get it right.

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References

¹Priest, N., Mackean, T., Davis, E., Waters, E., & Briggs, L. (2012). Strengths and challenges for koori kids: Harder for koori kids, koori kids doing well – exploring aboriginal perspectives on social determinants of aboriginal child health and wellbeing. Health Sociology Review, 21(2), 165-179. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.flinders.edu.au/10.5172/hesr.2012.21.2.165

²Demetriou, H. (2018). Empathy, emotion, and education. London: Macmillan Publishers.

AITSL Standards: 1.1, 1.3, 1.4