Supporting collaboration in education using student voice data

Today I had the pleasure and privilege of presenting consolidated insights and recommendations for supporting collaborative improvement and reflection using student perception data at the Australian Association of Research in Education.

These insights emerge from Pivot’s partnerships and pilot projects I’m leading or supporting around Australia, including the Victorian Government Professional Learning Communities program (within-school collaboration among teachers) and Communities of Practice Program (inter-school collaboration between school leaders), the Northern Territory Learning Commission (student action teams), Learning Sprints, Teach for Australia, Sydney Catholic Schools and more.

We found that using student voice data on teaching practices:

  1. Built trust between schools and within schools

  2. Prompted deeper and more regular collaboration

  3. Facilitated goal setting and tracking by teachers and leaders

  4. Spurred teachers and leaders to change practices

  5. Supported sharing of practices and inquiry

Keen to learn more? Reach out! (You can also check out my slides, here)

What makes an excellent teacher of mathematics? How can Australia grow teaching expertise and student engagement in maths?

It was these questions that guided my latest research report for Pivot Professional Learning, undertaken with Dr Lyndon Walker and Mike Witter in association with the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers, which was launched today.

Our study explored key characteristics of 986 teachers (including qualifications, beliefs, experience) alongside the learning experiences of their students, using nearly 28,000 student perception surveys, following up with qualitative interviews to explore patterns and puzzles. It was the first research to combine these key data sets on teacher voice and student voice.

We found that:

  • Excellent maths teachers can be early or advanced in their teaching careers, male or female, and possess a variety of qualifications, from a primary teaching degree with specialist post-graduate or bridging qualifications in maths, to PhDs. 

  • Maths-specific professional learning (PL) and courses enhance teachers’ confidence but don’t always correlate with higher student learning experiences. This suggests PL is not always relevant to teachers’ or students’ needs and priorities, and that teachers need more time to embed, refine and share their PL lessons.

  • Strong connections with students are a critical foundation for effective teaching practices and positive student learning and maths engagement. This connection involves mutual respect, high expectations and knowing how to stretch and support each student.

  • Mathematics expertise (deep mathematical content knowledge) and teaching expertise (deep pedagogical knowledge) are different skills and that excellent maths teaching requires both. 

These findings are already making an impact in education and media, including a feature article in the Sydney Morning Herald and television interview on ABCNews24.

Want to know more? Well, you can:

  1. Join free Pivot webinar I’m hosting with co-author Mike Witter on Tuesday 26 November 8-9pm (free, but you need to register here);

  2. Read our full report here; or

  3. Get in touch! I’d be delighted to take you through the findings and how they might connect with your work.

Some thoughts on the Gonski "2.0" report

The second Gonski Review was publicly released this week to a storm of controversy and diversity of opinions among educators, policy wonks and researchers. 

The panel had a hard task. It was asked to focus on the school and classroom factors that can make the biggest, sustained difference to educational achievement, while ignoring the many, meaty structural issues such as funding allocations, residualisation, federalism and system coherence, which influence schooling outcomes. These had been explored in the earlier review chaired by David Gonski (and in my own work).   Despite these limitations, the panel did a pretty good job, outlining a vision of where Australian schooling should be heading (spoiler: a student-centred school system which values and supports educators) and some of the tools and changes needed to get there.

I was pleased to read the priority reforms put forward in the Mitchell Institute submission were endorsed as recommendations in Gonski2.0. And I was particularly enthused to see learning growth over time, personalised learning, and student agency plus additional time and evidence-based tools to support teachers and principals in their vital work as educators and instructional leaders at the centre of the report.

Of course, many of the key recommendations put forward are already happening in schools around Australia, including schools I've had the pleasure of working with over the years. (Check out Templestowe College, Rooty Hill High School and Marlborough Primary). But such approaches are not systematically supported or encouraged by current policy, accountability and regulatory frameworks, nor are they made easy for already over-stretched schools or teachers.

One of the biggest obstacles - recognised in this report - is the absence of timely, fine-grain and useable data at classroom level on teaching impact, and of tools to put such insights into practice in a way that is tailored to individuals and their different contexts.  Such data is in many ways the missing link, connecting teaching with learning in real time.  

Pivot, the organisation I've just joined, works with schools and systems to gain these vital insights into teaching effectiveness using student perception data and peer feedback, and uses this to provide confidential reports and curated resource packs to teachers, and aggregated reports to school leaders, on their greatest strengths and development areas.  These insights and tools are keys to unlock greater effectiveness and learning growth.

Student and peer feedback data can rightly take emphasis away from NAPLAN, which has been misused and conflated in both purpose and importance, with perverse effects at the individual, school and system levels. NAPLAN should be put back into perspective - a nationally-comparable point-in-time assessment of a few essential learning areas, to be used alongside other data sets and most importantly, formative assessments, to guide decisions on programs and resource allocation.

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