15 minute read
The Last Word
ESAFETY COMMISSIONER JULIE INMAN GRANT HIGHLIGHTS THE UPCOMING ONLINE SAFETY EDUCATION TOOLS TO PROTECT YOUNG AUSTRALIANS.
The Online Safety Act came into force at the end of January – and with it brought stronger powers to better protect Australians in the fight against online harms.
And while eSafety can support Australians when something goes wrong online, we know that educators are fundamental to preventing and mitigating harms – giving individuals the knowledge to confidently navigate the online world and knowing where to turn if things go wrong.
As the pandemic forced the education sector to find different pathways to continue to engage and support students and families – both online and off – the work of educators has become even more critical - with an even greater emphasis on online safety education.
To support this effort, eSafety has consulted with educators, parents and students to ensure we develop resources and training that are relevant and useful.
We call on you to join our eSafety Champions Network, which is comprised of teachers/staff representatives who make online safety a priority in their schools, to help us develop and pilot new material to support educators.
Some other resources and ways to get involved in online safety education in 2022 include:
LEADING BEST PRACTICE
eSafety’s Best Practice Framework for Online Safety Education and Toolkit for Schools are being used across Australia to ensure schools deliver high quality programs, with clearly defined elements and effective practices. eSafety and the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority developed the online safety curriculum connection to support this integration.
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING FOR EDUCATORS
eSafety offers a range of targeted and accredited professional learning that can support educators across the learning continuum, from early years to school leavers.
It can be challenging to keep up to date with evolving tech and emerging trends among children and young people, so eSafety has a NSW Education Standards Authority and ACT Teacher Quality Institute accredited webinarbased professional learning program.
This program draws on the latest online safety research, case studies and training strategies to integrate online safety into student wellbeing and curriculum planning. The program is one component of the range of tools and strategies to help integrate online safety into existing programs and student wellbeing planning.
It was pleasing to see that in a recent external evaluation of one of eSafety’s webinars: ‘Online harmful sexual behaviours, misinformation and emerging technology’, after attending the webinar: • All respondents were confident embedding online safety concepts in their work; • educators’ confidence in helping young people to report online incidents increased; • all participants reported that they felt (or would feel) more confident dealing with online safety issues as a result of the webinar.
This webinar will run all year, along with ‘Digital rights and responsibilities of students and educators’, which begins in April.
As part of this professional learning program, eSafety will soon be launching four self-paced online learning modules for educators in lower primary to help support their learning and with links to activities to use in the classroom.
HOME - SCHOOL PARTNERSHIP
We know that a holistic approach to teaching children and young people is key in ensuring online safety messaging is having an impact. Integrating eSafety learning in the classroom and having parents continue these discussions in the home reinforces the learning and creates open lines of communication between school and home.
Our new resource, how our class stays safe online, can be used with students aged 5 to 8 years. The activity encourages teachers and students to continue the discussion in the home using the family tech agreement. The home activity equips parents with discussion starters and tips to help support learnings at home, and to have discussions within the family.
NEW RESOURCES AND VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS
Throughout the year on occasions such as Safer Internet Day, National Day of Action Against Bullying and Violence and during National Child Protection Week, eSafety delivers live virtual classrooms to primary students across Australia.
New resources are also released to accompany these virtual classrooms. To support Safer Internet Day we launched the Play it safe and fair online resource – featuring three Australian athletes – which encourages primary and secondary students to explore strategies for staying safe online and identify how and when to get support if something goes wrong. EM
The progression and evolution of NAPLAN
DAVID DE CARVALHO, CEO OF THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM, ASSESSMENT AND REPORTING AUTHORITY, DISCUSSES THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE NAPLAN TESTS.
NAPLAN has been in place now for thirteen years. Like many things in education, it has its supporters and detractors. Because of NAPLAN, Australia has over a decade’s worth of invaluable data that has been used by parents, schools, governments and researchers to gain insights into student progress and achievement in literacy and numeracy. The NAPLAN data have informed policy development, resource allocation, curriculum planning and intervention programs.
NAPLAN results are also used by researchers to support findings and insights into achievement gaps for First Nations Australian students, and the results allow us to identify what high progress schools are doing that others could potentially benefit from implementing.But teachers, students and schools are so much more than numbers and data crunching, and parents understand that. They know a 10-minute conversation with their child’s teacher will help them gain an insight into their child’s progress that is richer than just the numbers, and they know that the interaction between a teacher and a student is a key determinant of progress.
NAPLAN has evolved over the past 13 years and moving the tests online has been a significant reform. For the next NAPLAN tests in May 2022, effectively all schools will be undertaking the tests online. We have been moving online since 2018 and it is no small task to execute a large-scale, multifaceted IT project involving multiple organisations where the technology and logistics are highly complex. It is akin to climbing Mount Everest at night. It is possible only through the partnership and support of all education agencies, state and territory governments, school sectors and schools. This partnership ensured that over a million students in 2021 had a good test experience … or as good an experience as a test can be!
NAPLAN continues to progress and evolve, and education ministers have agreed to important changes that will improve the usefulness of NAPLAN for teaching and learning. The biggest change that will affect schools, students and parents is that NAPLAN is on the move and will be held in Term One from 2023, instead of the usual slot in early Term Two, in May.This is important as it means that results will be available to schools earlier in the school year, allowing teachers to use insights gained from the results to help plan their teaching and learning programs so they can support students to gain important literacy and numeracy skills.
The NAPLAN tests are not assessing the skills a student has learnt in the year to date. They are collecting a snapshot of information about the student’s overall literacy and numeracy skills. For example, a Year 5 numeracy test might ask students to demonstrate their understanding of place value, that is, whether a particular digit represents units, tens, hundreds or thousands depending on its position in a number.
For example, a Year 7 numeracy test might ask students to demonstrate their understanding of place value, that is, that the value a particular digit represents depends on its position within the numeral representation of a number. For example, the digit 3 in 4.563 is in the thousandths position and so represents a value of 3 thousandths.
Place value is something students begin to learn about in Year 1, decimals are then introduced at Year 4 and by Year 6 students are operating with decimals, so by the time they take the Year 7 NAPLAN numeracy test, they should be able to use their understanding of place value to solve, for example, problems involving multiplication of large numbers or addition and subtraction of decimal numbers. Teachers may already know whether individual students can do this or not, but NAPLAN allows teachers and parents to see how the individual child is progressing against national standards.
Importantly, the data allows learning gaps to be spotted to make school- or system-wide reform. With testing done in March, parents, teachers, principals, and system authorities can act earlier in the school year if required.
Writing results will be returned later. While marking of multiple-choice answers in numeracy, reading, spelling, grammar and punctuation is automated, writing continues to be marked by human beings, not machines due to the nature of the assessment, so writing assessments take longer to be marked. Another important change to the National Assessment Program (NAP) is that schools will also be able to opt into tests that assess Year 6 and Year 10 students in science, civics and citizenship, and digital literacy. These assessments will be in addition to the current NAP Sample program of national assessments in Science, Civics and Citizenship, and Digital Literacy, which occurs every 3 years. Results of these opt-in assessments will not be published by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), but used by schools to drive improvements in teaching and learning.
The new assessments will be available from 2024, starting with Science, with Civics and Citizenship, and Digital Literacy to follow in 2025 and 2026 respectively. From 2023, the existing NAP Sample program will move from October to Term Two. This means it can be undertaken at the same time as the opt-in assessments, which will allow those results to be compared against the national scale and results from the NAP Sample program.
At 13, NAPLAN is hitting its adolescence and the data has helped shape where we are today. These new measures will mean our data will become even more valuable as NAPLAN continues to grow. EM
Making sense of the digital education landscape
THE CONSORTIUM FOR SCHOOL NETWORK HAS RELEASED ITS DRIVING K–12 INNOVATION REPORT, EDUCATION SERVICES AUSTRALIA CEO ANDREW SMITH DISCUSSES.
Technology is an essential element of learning, yet its use and application in the classroom and the home is inequitable. To help solve some of these barriers, a global panel of education and technology experts has been working together to identify ways to realise the benefits of technology in ways that promote greater equity.
The Consortium for School Network (CoSN) recently released its Driving K–12 Innovation report, drawing on the expertise of education and technology leaders from across 18 countries.
The purpose of this annual report is to help us make sense of the digital education landscape and chart paths forward by identifying the most important topics in teaching, learning and education innovation around the globe.
The report outlines Hurdles, Accelerators and Tech Enablers that influence our ability to positively impact student achievement. This is a valuable framework for educators and school leaders to consider as we emerge from two years of severely disrupted education for many students across the globe.
Hurdles are the roadblocks that force schools to slow their application of digital technologies to support student learning. Accelerators are the real-world trends that drive the needs and skills expected of learners and teachers, while Tech Enablers are the tools that grease the wheels for schools as they work to overcome the Hurdles and leverage the Accelerators.
The panel identified digital equity as a key Hurdle to digital innovation in the classroom. Along with equitable access to high-speed internet and contemporary devices, digital equity also means ensuring students have the knowledge and skills to use technology effectively to support their learning, with access to content that empowers them as learners.
A second Hurdle is how to effectively scale innovation and overcome the natural drift back to pre-pandemic models of education. Whether it be practices for effective teaching and learning, school administration processes or technology usage, schools and systems are challenged to engage in innovation, adapting what is working well and scaling it out across a school, system or sector.
Accelerators highlighted by the panel included personalised learning, which is when the learner is empowered to direct aspects of their learning. This involves opportunities for teachers to shape the learning outcomes, and students direct their learning, in ways that recognise individual student strengths, interests and preferred learning styles.
Building the capacity and confidence of teachers to seamlessly integrate technologies into their pedagogy will accelerate their impact. Strengthening the knowledge and skills of teachers will open the door to innovative practices that can enhance student experience and create a culture that recognises and fosters learning across the school community.
Tech Enablers that are key to overcoming Hurdles and leveraging Accelerators are the effective use of digital collaboration environments and the safe and secure use of data analytics and adaptive technologies. Digital collaboration technologies aligned to effective pedagogy enable high levels of collaboration and support for both online and in-person learning. Digital collaboration environments include both synchronous and asynchronous communication tools – platforms that allow multi-user, virtual communications, whether across the room or across the globe.
Another example of Tech Enablers are the digital technologies that collect and use data related to teaching and learning to inform instructional decision making. These include adaptive technologies that adapt to individual students, based on their interactions with the technology. This could be in the form of suggesting next steps, providing remediation, controlling pacing, or providing feedback based on analysis of the student’s performance.
It is important to remember that any technologies that rely on student data to inform teaching and learning must also meet high standards for privacy and data security to ensure they can be used safely in and out of the classroom.
Australia is well placed to make the most of these technology enablers and overcome hurdles to the effective use of technology in teaching and learning. We have a teaching workforce that reports high levels of confidence and capability in their ability to integrate technology with pedagogy, and schools with the ambition to scale and embed effective practice. We must use these assets to retain a focus on overcoming the challenge of digital equity if all students are to benefit from the impact of digital technologies in learning. EM
Teaching writing in secondary schools: a story of professional learning
DR DAVID CALDWELL, PROGRAM DIRECTOR: MASTERS UNISA EDUCATION FUTURES, EXPLORES USING META-LANGUAGE ACROSS KEY LEARNING AREAS TO IMPROVE SECONDARY WRITING SKILLS.
Ever since the introduction of NAPLAN, improving students’ writing has been a priority for Australian schools. As the foundation of communication, writing is an essential skill, yet with 20 per cent of boys and 10 per cent of girls in Year 9 still not meeting minimum standards, secondary schools are under increasing pressure to improve writing production.
The challenge appears to be associated with the specialisation of subjects as students progress through secondary school. While teachers recognise that writing styles become more distinctive within each learning area – for example, writing for science is very different to writing for music – the responsibility to deliver solid writing skills sits squarely on the shoulders of specialist teachers, creating a need to support all teachers to develop a meta-language for writing within their own subjects.
In 2020, I led a year-long professional learning program with Marryatville High School, a large public secondary school in metropolitan South Australia.
My task was to have each learning area produce at least one model text, that is, an exemplar text from their discipline that aligned with relevant Australian Curriculum content descriptors (for a specific year level). I also worked collaboratively with the teachers to analyse and annotate their model texts, highlighting important language features to teach in the classroom, such as technical language, relating verbs and causal sentences in a science lab report.
The resulting text production was outstanding. In total, the Marryatville teachers produced 19 model texts across eight learning areas. All texts were accurately analysed for genre and grammar, with teaching staff producing a range of genres in line with their respective learning areas, including responses, explanations, reports, and arguments.
So, what helped facilitate this level of teacher engagement and text production?
The key was three-fold: professional learning, empowerment through production, and leadership.
Firstly, it’s important to understand that this teaching intervention was one part of a three-year sequence of professional learning. In the year prior, staff had undertaken rigorous training in genre and functional grammar; they analysed texts, experienced joint construction, and had essentially been ‘taught’ explicitly about the language of their disciplines. By year two, they had a reasonably strong sense of how language works in their learning area. Then, in the third year, after producing model texts, the staff focused on classroom pedagogy – how to use the model texts in the classroom.
Giving staff ownership over their own text production and analysis was especially critical. First, it forced teachers to think hard about what language constitutes the kinds of texts their students produce – scientific reports, narratives, or data-driven descriptions – each has different structure, vocabulary, and grammar preferences. Second, it made teachers experience the same linguistic demands that their students experience when writing for their discipline. Finally, teachers were empowered to write as the experts in their respective fields, and unlike traditional literacy learning, where decontextualised grammar exercises can be both frustrating and boring, the teachers tended to be engaged because it was their world they were writing about! Technology teachers bonded over the construction of spatulas; English teachers argued about the aesthetics of poetry; and HASS teachers related the Black Plague to COVID. Their field expertise kept them engaged in the hard language work.
Finally, and most critically, the school leadership had a clear vision for this professional learning, hence the three-year time commitment. Leadership recognised the importance of a whole-school approach to language –- they were not afraid of meta-language (language about language); they readily used terms like genre, nouns, alliteration, and conjunction. They understood that to effectively teach writing in secondary school, each discipline area needed to understand how language works for the different kinds of texts they demanded from their students. In fact, staff were encouraged to display posters of meta-language in classrooms across the school.
So, what did we learn overall? Well, as tempting as commercial products and shortterm professional development courses might sound, the reality is that improvement for something as complex and critical as writing, takes time. It cannot be rushed or crammed into a one-day seminar. However, with the support of leadership and commitment from teachers, it is possible to build a positive and productive culture where metalanguage for each learning area is commonplace in secondary schools. Only from good foundations will good writing flow. EM
