The Last Word

Significance of indigenous curriculum

EACARA’S CEO, DAVID DE CARVALHO (DDC), SAT DOWN WITH PROFESSOR MARK ROSE (MR) TO TALK ABOUT THE ABORIGINAL & TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER ADVISORY GROUP AND THE IMPORTANT PLACE OF FIRST NATIONS AUSTRALIAN CONTENT IN OUR CURRICULUM.

DDC: You were one of the original members of the Advisory Group; why did you join?

MR: I was interested in the idea of a national curriculum and making sure the Aboriginal voice was there, obviously for Aboriginal people but also for non-Aboriginal people. I do a lot of speeches and I often ask – what did you learn at school about Aboriginal people? And the chorus is “nothing or very little worthwhile”.

DDC: You’ve said when you were at school you were taught that “Aboriginals couldn’t live in houses as they would burn the floorboards to light fires”. Did this play a role in your wanting to have a voice in the curriculum?

MR: I grew up in a convent as a result of my dad being a stolen child, which brought about significant family disruption, and so I found my way into teaching and a principalship. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, of which I co-chaired the Victorian Review in 2003, drew a link between inadequacies in the curriculum tarnishing professional decisions in all the social indicators. Each of the “closing the gap” measures are important, but education for First Nations and the broader communities is the tipping point.

DDC: How much has the curriculum changed when it comes to that First Nations voice in the curriculum?

MR: We used to rely on accidental heroes, creative educators who saw a hole and tried to fill it; sometimes they got it right, sometimes not. But the movement started to become everyone’s business. If you live, work and raise a family on this land, then you have a right to know about your cultural heritage. In the vacuum of the broader community not being educated around Indigenous issues, that void was filled at times with stereotypes and warped paradigms. Authenticity is what we as educators do; it is not about compliance or conversion; it is about letting people know differing viewpoints.

DDC: The proposed changes to the First Nations Australian content in the Australian Curriculum received a lot of media coverage, both positive and negative. What was your perspective of that?

MR: Not far from me, there are schools where I can walk in and be welcomed in Woiwurrung, the language of the Wurundjeri people. When I sit and listen to the stories of Elders a generation above me and they talk about how they weren’t allowed to go beyond Year 8, and I think about the number of Aboriginal PhDs that are flooding the higher education sector and the work I do with Aboriginal students, it is just sensational how far we have come. It’s not just an Aboriginal issue, it’s making sure the curriculum reflects the true picture of Australia. I have read with interest some of the concepts in the press … thank God we live in a country where people can express an opinion … but a lot of that opinion is not well informed, and provides the best argument for why we need to get this curriculum balanced.

DDC: Some advisory group members have been criticised in the media for comments made previously; how has that been?

MR: Everyone has said things that if you had your time again you might or might not have said differently. If you trawl through comments people have made out of context and suggest someone feels a certain way because they retweeted a comment … and then say the whole group is flawed, that is not a rational argument. People were being tagged as un-Australian. We have members who have served on Australia Day Councils and received Australia Dayawards, there are PhDs and a couple of centuries of cumulative education experience.

We were targeted individually and collectively and that is very disappointing – they are as fine group of educators I would ever want to have instant coffee in any school staffroom.

DDC: What would you like people to know about the advisory group?

MR: The group puts the kid first regardless of whether the kid is black or white. We want a balanced curriculum that tells the truth and shows how people can have different perspectives on the same events. If you keep focus on the past you can’t go forward – you have to put the past in context. We need to recognise, as Charlie Perkins said, that “We cannot live in the past. The past lives in us.” We all have a shared commitment to Australia being the best country we can be. EM

Lifelong learning starts at school

EThe report finds that lifelong learning is an important factor in a person’s ability to succeed in labour markets and societies that are being shaped by mega trends such as increasing life expectancy, environmental change, globalisation and rapid technological change. A key feature in this year’s report was the impact of COVID-19 on students who experienced lengthy periods of remote learning: a very important topic, which Education Services Australia (ESA) also examined in an Australian context last year. The OECD finds that the skills needed to continue learning during the COVID crisis are also key to developing a lifelong learning mindset. Teachers, schools and education systems have an important role to play in promoting positive attitudes toward lifelong learning. An estimated 1.6 billion students globally were forced to make the transition from a traditional learning environment to a more challenging alternative: remote schooling. While some students were able to keep up with the transition to remote learning, many others, particularly young and socio-economically disadvantaged learners, experienced large learning losses. It is commonly accepted that unless these learning losses are tackled, these children’s long-term social and economic prosperity will suffer. Factors that contributed to learning loss include lack of digital infrastructure in homes, lack of previous experience with digital tools, differences in parental support, and variations in teacher capability and confidence. These were all factors that ESA found similarly prevalent in Australia.

While teachers have always played a particularly important role in the educational development of students, the pandemic has highlighted the creativity and resourcefulness demanded of teachers in a digital society. The increased need for teachers to provide socialemotional support to students and to collaborate with parents in supporting students’ learning goals during distance learning are trends that will likely continue into the future.

The OECD report found that in the short term, the pandemic could lead to an increase in early school leavers. In the medium and long term, lower engagement could result in the current generation of students failing to develop positive learning attitudes at a time of profound structural changes that will require people to upgrade their skills throughout their life.

Beyond the impact of the pandemic, today’s students will need to be successful learners in the digital world. Research shows that there are two key roles for education here. First, to drive student uptake of digital technologies for learning, and second, to develop students into discerning and critical users of technology.

As technology advances, it is increasingly important that young people are prepared to take part in a workforce that is increasingly shaped by technology. Given the rapid rate of technological change, students today must develop a set of broad skills and perspectives that support lifelong learning in novel and unfamiliar digital environments.

Teachers, schools, and systems have been creative in adopting digital and technologybased strategies as alternatives to the traditional

THE ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT (OECD) RECENTLY PUBLISHED LEARNING FOR LIFE: THE LATEST EDITION OF THEIR SKILLS OUTLOOK REPORT, EDUCATION SERVICES AUSTRALIA CEO ANDREW SMITH DISCUSSES. classroom. Following the experience of COVID-19 and the resulting digital transformation across education and schools, we can expect systems to accelerate their efforts to address challenges and harness opportunities in digital innovation more widely.

To combat these risks, teachers in classrooms across the country are working hard to identify the learning and wellbeing needs of their students, because when teachers know what students need, they can plan and teach in a targeted way.

Teachers themselves are lifelong learners. Providing access to high quality professional learning that is made freely available through trusted online platforms is vital to supporting classroom teachers.

Teachers looking to enhance their understanding and skills in supporting student wellbeing can find self-paced online professional learning available on the Student Wellbeing Hub.

For those with an interest in developing engaging programs that embed digital technologies into classroom practice, the Digital Technologies Hub has an array of resources to expand teacher’s repertoire.

Working together to meet the needs of teachers, we can help ensure that young Australians establish the habits that will make them lifelong learners from the early days of their schooling. EM

A framework for getting students to safely navigate the online world

ELAST MONTH, OUR TEAM LAUNCHED THE BEST PRACTICE FRAMEWORK FOR ONLINE SAFETY EDUCATION. THIS IS AUSTRALIA’S FIRST-EVER NATIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS DESIGNED TO HELP EDUCATORS EQUIP YOUNG PEOPLE WITH THE NECESSARY SKILLS TO SAFELY NAVIGATE THE ONLINE WORLD, WRITES ESAFETY COMMISSIONER JULIE INMAN GRANT.

It establishes a consistent national approach that supports education systems across Australia to deliver high quality programs, with clearly defined elements and effective practices.

Schools across the country now have access to this Framework that can be used to develop, assess or refine whole-school online safety education programs using evidence-based practices.

The Framework is designed to address the needs of every student from F-12 in ageappropriate ways, providing guidance in five key elements, outlined below

Within the Framework each element has associated ‘effective practices’ designed to guide educators when developing online safety education programs and policies.

The foundation of these elements and effective practices were developed out of a two-part process to research and identify ‘what works’ in online safety education, led by Professor Kerryann Walsh from the Queensland University of Technology.

Online safety education has often been inconsistent, both in content and delivery, this is why we designed and developed the Framework in consultation with child online safety education experts and educators across the country, to ensure that schools are equipped with practices that are evidence-based and can be tailored to meet the needs of their own communities.

What can these evidence-based approaches look like when designing online safety programs?

1) An approach needs to recognise the rights and responsibilities of students to participate safely online, and to empower them to have a voice when it comes to their online safety education.

The framework encourages educators to work together with their students, understanding how they use technology to engage online and the challenges they face, and building this into a co-designed online safety program that is relevant and age appropriate. 2) Online safety programs should be framed around the pillars of building resilience and managing risk. Programs should be strengths based and grounded in recognising the positive impact technology has in the everyday lives of students - for example, helping students understand the positive role social media can play to amplify messages about social issues in a community. Fear based messaging should be avoided. To help them cope if things do go wrong, education should provide students with an opportunity to understand the different types of risk they can be exposed to online, and strategies that can help build resilience and prevent risks turning into harms. This means teaching children when and how to seek help - and how to help others if they can see they are struggling. Teaching students about risk of harm and resilience needs to vary depending on the age and particular needs of students – it is not a one size fits all approach. 3) For online safety education to work, it needs to be an effective school wide approach. It should aim to build the capacity of students, as well as every member of the school community. That’s why the framework recommends that online safety lessons are structured so that each lesson builds on the previous ones, with clear goals and learning objectives.

Educators can also bring parents and carers on the journey by sending relevant information home – the eSafety website has a wealth of information for this. Teachers should also be trained in teaching online safety, using training such as eSafety’s Teacher Professional

Learning program. 4) Online safety education should be integrated across the curriculum, teaching a range of skills from critical thinking, to help seeking and social and emotional learning. There should be specific lessons focused on online safety, as well as opportunities to build skills into lesson plans across learning areas– for example, teaching critical thinking should include examples of how this applies in an online context. 5) Online safety can never be ‘set and forget’, but continuously improved through review and evaluation. This allows schools to ensure that approaches are working for the school, and programs keep up with emerging issues and evidence about what is working. To download and implement these landmark resources visit esafety.gov.au/educators/bestpractice-framework. EM

Goldilocks Day: How should children be spending their time?

EAs parents and caregivers, many of us spend a lot of time shaping our children’s time. From when we wake them in the morning, to when we put them to bed at night, we’re prompting them to do their homework, take out the rubbish, turn off their screens, practice their instru-ment, eat their lunch, and play their sports. The list is endless! Yet, with all these activities on the go, how do we – and they – achieve the best balance? As competing demands have become more complex and varied with increased digitalisation and ever-present social media, not to mention being turbo charged by the pandemic, finding a way to bring healthy balance to our daily activities seems more important than ever. Government guidelines recommend that school-aged children achieve at least one hour of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in their day, but that they also get between nine and 11 hours of sleep, all the while restricting recreational screen time to less than two hours. Alt-hough this recommended daily balance of activities has been approved by panels of experts and adopted by many countries and health bodies (including the World Health Organisation), it’s very difficult for children to achieve. In Australia, it’s estimated that only about 15 per cent of children meet all three guidelines – sleep, screen time, and physical activity – which, while being relatively low, still trumps those in other countries where compliance is as low as 6 per cent. Such a low compliance for all three guidelines is striking, especially considering compliance for individual guidelines can be quite high (up to 70%) essentially, it’s easier to achieve one guideline, but reaching all is much harder.

Of course, as we only have 24 hours in any given day, increasing one activity means decreasing another, we must make trade-offs.

From our research, it seems that children who are increasing their physical activity to one hour a day are taking this time from sleep, so while they may achieve guidelines for physical activity, they now fall short of sleep. Or, if they increase their sleep to meet the sleep guidelines, they no longer have enough time to meet required hours for physical activity!

Exactly what the best balance of daily activities looks like, may depend on what families value, and in terms of how these activities are expected to impact their child’s health and wellbeing. For example, if physical fitness is prioritised over mental health, we might sacrifice sleep for an early morning gym session. Or, if reducing adiposity is preferred over academic performance, we might skip studying to take a run. But can we have the best of all worlds – a ‘Goldilocks Day’ – where the balance of daily activities is, as in the children’s fairy tale, “not too little, not too much, but just right”? We all know that families are busy places, where parents, carers and children alike try to fit in all number of activities into the 24-hour window. But in doing so, we’re making decisions about which activities we value over others.

How we balance our time can impact our health and wellbeing. As our research shows, the op-timal durations of sleep, sedentary behaviour, and physical activity will vary depending on our motivations. For example, if we want to boost children’s physical health, their optimal sleep should be about 10 hours a night, but with moderate-to-vigorous physical activity about two

DOT DUMUID, SENIOR RESEARCHER FELLOW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA, DISCUSSES THE GOLDI-LOCKS PRINCIPLE AND HOW GIVE CHILDREN EQUAL PRIORITY TO PHYSICAL, MENTAL, AND COGNITIVE HEALTH DOMAINS. and a half hours a day – more than doubling the recommended Australian guidelines. If focusing on improving mental health, children need to sleep even longer – for at least 11 hours – with the extra sleep being subtracted from all other remaining activities. In contrast, the optimal time-distribution for cognitive or academic health needed very little moderate-to-vigorous physical activity – only about 40 minutes – which is nearly half of what is recommended by Australian guidelines. Instead, optimised cognitive health required additional sedentary time (about 11.7 hours), while maintaining sleep within recommended levels. So, physical, mental, and cognitive domains of health are optimised by different allocations of time across daily activities.

As parents and caregivers, we care about all aspects of our children’s health and want to find the best middle ground. That’s where the Goldilocks Principle comes in: what is the best bal-ance of all activities to achieve the best health outcomes overall? Well, if we give equal priori-ty to physical, mental, and cognitive health domains, a Goldilocks Day comprises 10.4 hours of sleep, 9.7 hours of sedentary behaviours (which could be reading or screen time), 2.4 hours of light physical activity, and 1.5 hours of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.

Apply-ing an individual and tailored approach to what works best will, well, work best. Making the most out of your day, and helping your children make the most out of theirs, is a juggling act. EM