The first 100,000 words: Writings on Education by a Teacher

  Australia seems to have a dearth of care about care. The work of caring for people is of utmost importance to our society, as the pandemic has made even more clear. Hospital workers, childcare educators and teachers were abruptly noted as essential workers.   Yet the pay, conditions and time allotted to those who reliably care for those in our society who require it remains low or zero.   Within education, Union-adjacent research has noted that Higher Education and Early Childhood are the two most precarious settings, places where stable employment is hardest to find. Whilst women, who carry much of the caring duties have 45 percent of their jobs are part time.   Within the Primary and Secondary school settings, Australia ranks above the OECD average for time spent in class, meaning that both students and teachers within these settings lack opportunities to develop their skills.   For the parents of children and young people, Australia ranks ...

    Unlike many other things I tend to write, which are theoretical or based in research. This one is about a big topic, conspiracy theories and how we should address them in schools. I’ll be drawing on examples found online and the thinking that I’ve worked through as to how they might impact on our students and if schools can be doing more to address it.   I don’t feel the need to elucidate the reason why students graduating from their formal primary and secondary levels of education as conspiracy theorists is problematic. Though the recent example of the Melbourne protests is a neat recent example of conspiracy theorists being activated to wreck real havoc upon their fellow citizens. No longer bound to message boards and 4chan, these netizens influence elections, protest violently and collect more believers as they go.   I’ve seen many dismiss these people and their ideas (including the most extreme examples perhaps, such as Qanon) as illogical and there...

              ‘Don't let a win get to your head or a loss to your heart’ - Public Enemy, He got game   Teachers are often expected to be reflective, but never provided time or strategies to do so. In some school settings and organisations there are tools and practices that make this much easier. But, for those of us who work in places where this isn’t true, what can we do to remain reflective and continually improving our thinking, and as a result or practice?   The importance of student feedback   There is great value and utility in student feedback, not because your class, or students know about good teaching and learning. Mostly they don’t, but they can give us a guide to what they are preferring or finding value in. As with all data, student feedback data is both useful and useless, but always superior to no information at all. So, treat student feedback lightly, never allow yourself to get too high or too low. As a human...

  On definitions Professional learning is itself a term that engenders a shift in thinking, previously referred to as professional development. It now comes to be limited to learning about teaching, but development can take many forms and is the most important way to view these opportunities. If you spend a week caving during your holidays, you will have developed yourself, if you’ve read widely, or binged TV shows or movies, or even indeed if you’ve spent time playing video games, or browsing social media - each of these things have developed you. As a person, as a teacher, and as a professional. A superb teachers with flawless content knowledge and pedagogy, with no outside life experience or other interests is unlikely to be effective. Because teaching is interacting with young people, or indeed people of all ages, and for that task, being a part of the world is of the utmost importance. So always view professional learning as personal and professional development, f...

Teaching is part of a complex system, full of conflicting ideas and unclear goals. For many teachers, we remain content and quiet, toiling away in our own classrooms with our own students. Ambition being a dirty word, or something for people other than ourselves. Yet, perhaps there are many among us who have things worth sharing: ideas that can assist others, challenge preconceptions, and move our profession forward?   And what if it was the right time for you to share beyond the walls of your school? Not just within your own school building necessarily, but elsewhere as well? What if it was your time?   For me, this time arrived during 2019, when I first took the leap to speaking at conferences, after attending many. Since then, I’ve spoken and written about education in many spaces, conferences and fora. I recall that making that jump from teaching and tweeting to speaking and sharing was a monumental jump, requiring a big leap of faith that challenged my view of m...

As teachers and educators, we know all too well the immense pressure placed upon our time. With the language of school term being a chance to ‘come up for air’ and to push aside the overwhelm, if only for a moment. As we end our brief hiatus from the hustle and bustle of classrooms again, it seems timely to consider:  Why doesn’t our profession share the skills and techniques that excellent teachers use to streamline their processes, to squeeze more time out of what we’re given in each work day?  The world is full of ‘life hacks’ and productivity talk, but in education it seems this trend has been almost completely missed.  A book like James Clear’s Atomic Habits (2018), has been read widely within the teaching profession, but, to my knowledge, there exists no alternative solution for teachers. This seems most important as we know the rise of ‘administrivia’ (Dinham, 1994), tasks that are not central to the process of teaching students or assessments is increasing apace. ...

  1.       Introduction / Context: The issues of identity and what has been termed ‘identity politics’ are all over the news cycle of late, neopronouns and inclusive language abound in policy documents and discussions. Whilst the needs for principals, teachers, and students to safeguard their own well-being is also important. These two elements, and where they interact, are the essential and timely challenge for our time. 2.       Main content: Exploring the changing world of language and identity is essential for leaders practicing their craft within 2022. This means following the lead of Researchers who are at the cutting edge of the well-being and identity challenge. The 2022 International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement virtual congress took the theme of ‘Back to the Future? Problems and Possibilities for Educational Equity, Quality and Sustainability’. Whilst presenting at this congress, I was exc...

  1.       Introduction / Context: Engaging with research is for many leaders something they would love to do, but something many struggle to make time for. Whereas the affordances of learning online have continued to become increasingly well understood. The online social media professional learning group, #edureading, provides an outlet for timely, and school-relevant, research to inform leaders around a range of core topics. 2.       Main content: Teaching is complex and Professional Learning is failing to match it Teaching is a complex endeavour (Beckett & Hager, 2018; Kurtz & Snowden, 2003), becoming increasingly nuanced and difficult to navigate. Meeting the Professional Learning (PL) needs of teachers is equally challenging; within any one staffroom, there is a bewildering array of knowledge and experience. Despite this diversity, PL for many teachers remains largely the same: it is uniform, lacking any tailo...

1.       Introduction / Context: Many schools do not have effective processes for teachers to improve their practice in systemic and clear ways. Many individual teachers can go years without ever having their practice observed by colleagues. Whilst educators have differing professional needs depending upon their career stage, the task of selecting an approach most suitable is the focus of this article. 2.       Main content: Teachers are understood as the most influential ‘in-school factor’ affecting student learning outcomes, yet the classrooms of teachers within a school too often remain closed and opaque to leaders (Waters et al., 2021). There has been emerging research into ‘Middle Leadership’ (Grice, 2019) and how these leaders who are neither clearly teachers, nor principals, can improve teachers’ professional practice through their liminal role between these layers. Yet the improvement of all teachers, in a manner that can...