Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name's Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education. And today, we don't normally timestamp these because we want them to be relevant whenever you might listen, but, this is a retrospective look back at 2025, and a look ahead at 2026 with our chief executive, Martin Westwell. Welcome.

Martin Westwell: Thanks Dale.

Dale Atkinson: So, 2025 key moments? Key reflections on what the year was like? What have you got?

Martin Westwell: It's been quite a year. Look this year I think has been a real kind of year when we've really got into that notion of the kind of the tight and flexible. And what I mean by that is where, you know, you can see so many of our sites, schools, and preschools kind of taking on that notion that, there's agency there, there's an empowerment there to really think about what's needed in this site, within the bounds of the strategy, those areas of impact. But really saying, okay, great – let's step into this. So when I go to schools and preschools, what I see is this diversity of responses, what's going on in school, what's going on in classrooms, but all broadly in the same direction - the direction of the strategy.

One of the moments for me was going up to the APY Lands and going to Fregon and seeing there how Principal Sara sat down with community and talked about the strategy, public education - but what does that mean for us? And their site's learning plan is an artwork. It's literally an artwork. It's a painting, that the governing council have done. And the core idea, the piece in the middle symbolises ‘tjungu, which is ‘together’. So it's community and school together. It's the Anangu and the pirinpa, the white teachers, together - working together for their students. And they've got a number of things in that, that come from the strategy; but are their representation of the strategy.

One of the ones that I really love is this notion of the spear. They want the children to be like spears - straight and true, and so that's part of what it looks like in the school. And then of course what's happened is with Sara and perhaps then Sara, the principal, taking a bit more of an ownership of, okay, so what does that look like in terms of planning? What are we going for? Still phonics, it's still, you know, the work of schools - but really honouring what's going on with the governing council and what that community's looking for.

And that's just one example, but it is, I think a really good example of what we we’re really going for. To say, well, this is what we're looking for as a system, but you can take ownership of this as a community and a school. And that's exactly what's gone on there, and it's not templated, it's an artwork!

I’ve been to other places as well where they've not got it written down in a document because it's on the wall, you know, and it's not in the staff room, it's out in the reception! So everybody can see it, everybody's having conversations about it, all still in the same direction. So I think that's been almost kind of the characteristic of this year, that shift that's occurred.

Dale Atkinson: We met the other night, you gave a presentation to a group of parents, about 120 of them, on school finance and some of the decisions that are being made. You spoke a little bit there about the theory of change within a big system like ours in Education. Can you describe what the right approach is? And I think it connects back to what you were talking about there in terms of, you know, how that community has worked in their space.

Martin Westwell: Yeah. Look, I shared the story then about Jim Watterston – Jim, a really respected and experienced education leader, has led education systems in Australia, most recently was the Dean of the Graduate School of Education in Melbourne. And I happened to go to a conference in Melbourne that was the week before Jim’s retirement. He did a talk, and he showed this slide and it was a triangle and he said, “I used to think this is how change happened” - and the triangle’s got like the peak at the top, it's like, you know, chief executive or secretary of the department at the top, and then that flows through to you know, maybe the regional directors or whatever the system's got, and then to principals and then to communities and teachers. And he said, “Hmm, that might be how you can get people to do something, but it's not really our change happens”. And he said, “this is how change happens!” and he showed the same triangle the other way up. That sustainable change happens when it comes from the community, when it comes from the students, the teachers, the principals, the community and the job really of the system then, is to get the right settings in place and the right supports in place.

And of course, it's a bit of both. You know, there is something for the system to try and define, not over define, but try and define – kind of, this is where we're going, 'cause you've gotta have some focus, you've gotta make some choices. I mean, that's what strategy is right? You’ve gotta make some choices. But you also know that there's choices that have to be made at a local level. And so while things in education, you know, we do have fads and they come and go, and that's really in my mind because we get people to do a thing and then we say, “oh, stop doing that. Do this other thing.” Or even worse, we say, “carry on doing that, and do these extra 10 things on top”. Whereas, if you look at it from the other point of view where you're saying, okay, what do we want to do? Not so much what are you going to be accountable for, but start with what do you want to take responsibility for with your community and doing this thing together.

And then I think people, I mean, I think we've seen it lots and lots of examples of it across our system. People get activated - you're activating your teachers, you're activating community. We've seen some great examples of how students have been activated in that process as well. I think that's how you get sustainable change and then I think we can really see that getting going now in our system.

Dale Atkinson: So someone like Jim in a 40 year career, was still learning right to the very end. You're obviously, you know, three, four years in your tenure. What have you learned in that time?

Martin Westwell: Oh, so much. You know, we've been doing the Chief Executive student forums - so hundreds, thousands of kids across the state have been involved in that, working together – and the focus this year has been on ‘performance mode’ and ‘learning mode’. So the idea that you know, so very briefly - if you’re practicing your musical instrument, you're in ‘learning mode’ - when you want feedback, you want someone to say to you, “oh, it'd be better if” or “have you tried that”, or mistakes are opportunities to learn. When you're in ‘performance mode’ - mistakes are not necessarily opportunities to learn. They don't feel like opportunities to learn. They feel like you've not done this quite right. Feedback is just heckling, you know, so there's this, and sometimes school, I think, can feel like for students that we're almost always in ‘performance mode’. So we put this idea out there, and of course students have grappled with it in lots of different ways; and then we've got the sense of that feedback.

And I was in a school just last week actually, one of the students said “we've stopped applauding the Acknowledgement of Country”…okay, tell me about that! And they said, “'cause it's not a performance, so we shouldn't applaud it. It's more serious than that. It's learning. It's a reflection and every time you talk about it, it's not a performance, it should be part of our learning.” And so they had worked with the staff and the school in assemblies to stop people applauding the Acknowledgement Country because it's not a performance. And I talked to the community about that. And just that day, they tried at three assemblies and it, people are still applauding, and then this third one and there was no applause that there were very pleased that there was no applause.

So, you know, I know that's a little thing, but those little things all add up to a big thing. And just learning and listening about how that's happened; I think has been really profound.

Some bigger things as well - learning from the schools that have been really delving into the expeditionary learning. Some of the schools have really, really embraced CREW as a proper cultural change, you know, really working on that notion of students not being passengers on this ship - they're the crew, they're making it work. And some of the schools that have really embraced that with staff and students - I think there's so much we can learn from them too.

Dale Atkinson: Now as a system, you know, any period of time you never get away without big system reforms going on. And the big system reform that we have kind of been working on is the rollout of 3-year-old preschool, which will start in 2026.
How's that going? What's the vision? Why?

Martin Westwell: Yeah. Look, I think there's a number of drivers and the two drivers really of course are child development and for the state, there's also a kind of an economic participation of women. And of course there's the Education Department - the piece that we're focused on particularly is the child development and the learning of kids - and there's so many benefits for that, to that. But one of the things for me that is important is that notion of learning to stop and think; the self-regulation.

It strikes me that, you know, this has been something that I've, has been part of my career in lots of different ways – SACE Board, my academic career before that. Actually, you know, oh gosh, now it's a long time ago now, kind of looked at all of the research around the cognitive neuroscience of learning and said, well, “what's the thing that would have the biggest difference? You know, what would you really want to focus on?” - that was probably 25 years ago now - and that the development of that self-regulation, the ability to stop and think then, for me, was quite obviously the thing that would make the biggest difference to individual students and to communities. And I think 3-year-old preschool, the promise of that is enormous through 3-year-old preschool. I think that if we can; and making sure that we realise that actually is the work. That doesn't feel like the work, 'cause the work feels like “how do you get the sites ready? And how did you do this and how did you do that?” Of course it is. And you could do all that, and miss, if you're not careful, you could do all that and then miss the big point about, about you know, the child development point.

And yes, there's some other things, some other social, emotional learning in that, of course. There's the underpinnings of the knowledge, skills, cognition, dispositions towards literacy and numeracy. You know, all of those things come too. But I do think that this notion of self-regulation is the biggest one. So yep, the pragmatic logistics of doing this thing is gonna be a challenge – but let's not lose sight of the big picture.

Dale Atkinson: Another big picture item really is around; we made the brave decision when AI and the model started to kind of emerge to embrace that, take that on. And we've rolled out over the last 18 months our own EdChat platform. What are we getting out of that? And what are the benefits that we're starting to see from that early adoption?

Martin Westwell: I think there's a bunch of things. I think there's something about putting this notion of, kind of you know, AI is like this flawed, expert - knows stuff, but you know, but let's just be a bit critical in the thinking and have some, be judicious in how we use the information that comes from it. Putting that in the hands of students, I think, is really interesting. It has got a chance to support students in a way that improves equity in our system, 'cause not everybody has access to that expert, other than perhaps their teacher. Some people have that at home, others don't and so, I do see it as potentially as a significant equity measure.

For teachers - you know, we've seen already through the work around curriculum and how it might help with planning, how it might help with, you know - so I've got this resource, I've been using this for a while, I really like it, I think it's really good, kids respond well and learn from it - how might I adapt this for students who, you know, might have some challenges, or I've got students in my class who are particularly interested in this, or I've got a student in my class who I find it really hard to stretch - how could I adapt this resource - just to give you some ideas as a teacher. So, it's not about offloading the hard thinking. In fact, I think AI's done best when it helps you to do even harder thinking yourself, right? So, giving you some suggestions and making you think about, well, what would actually make the biggest difference for students. So I think we can see it in student use today. I think we can see it in teacher use today.

I think the benefit of being an early adopter has been that we've been at the front of this, and we've actually been able to set the tone for Australia in terms of being a learning system. So, the conversation about AI was in danger of becoming about, oh, students cheating using AI; you know, and there's a bit of that, and we're grappling with that; and I know the SACE Board are doing some great work around that as well. You know, so oh it's about cheating, or it would be about - are we going to use it or not? And we've been able to frame the conversation about, it's not whether students are using it or not - it's whether they're using our thing or not - 'cause they're gonna be using it anyway. Once you take that position and you understand that position - that it's not an either or - it's a “this is happening, are we gonna step in and support our students or not” - it changes the conversation. And I think we've changed the conversation, nationally.

It's also allowed us to learn. I think, some of the work that we did early on where, you know, where we looked at students' prompts and they were analysed in terms of SOLO. So, on SOLO it’s normally used to look at students' responses - so you know, do students know one thing? Do they know a bag of things? You know, lots of bits and pieces of knowledge. Or do they understand how all these things fit together relationally to form a, you know, a bigger, interconnected idea? And you can see from the prompts that students are asking - whether they're asking for a response that is just one piece of information, multiple pieces of information, or actually helping them to form these interrelated questions - nobody else has ever seen that. The thinking that we can do… you know, one of those definitions of kind of creativity or invention, that notion of seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought. We are in a position where we can think what no one else has thought because of the learning that we're doing and the stepping in that we're doing.

The last bit is thinking about the future. So we're now, what we're in is thinking about; how do we do what we're doing a bit better, with some improvements, right now using AI. If we stayed there, that'd be okay - it's not really the question though. The question is - what should this thing look like in the future? What could education look like in the future when AI is in place. And the world is going to change more and more because AI is in place - how does education need to respond? And I think South Australia is positioned now to be able not only to respond to that, but actually to be able to lead that response for Australia and beyond.

Dale Atkinson: I think one of the things we've seen from the early adoption, from the educators out in the field, is just how adept they are at solving for some of the problems – well, identifying them first and then solving for them. We had a presentation from one of our educators, another one of the parent forums, where he spoke about that issue of cheating and the license that he'd discussed with his kids around what they can and can't do to develop a stoplight system. And we're seeing so many of those innovative solutions that are coming through. What else have you seen out there in the field?

Martin Westwell: Look, I think that's right - and that's such a good example, right, of a system that's put some settings in place. You've got people innovating in their sites, in really sophisticated ways. Because that traffic light stuff, you could look at it and go, oh well, it's just an indication of whether you can or can't or, can I can't I, use AI for this assignment, or whatever. That example that you gave, what you can see underneath it, you could see in that presentation was - it was helping the students to understand when they should and shouldn't - you know, in their lives and in you know, building their metacognition to understand, you know, when this tool’s gonna be useful for me and when it's gonna give me an answer that's gonna usurp my thinking, you know, and it's, and it's not necessary. So it's a really good example of how that's emerged.

I do think that some of the things around, you know, going back to the student culture work - Port Lincoln High School has probably been the, one of the leaders on this. And what you can see there is that change in the culture, that activating of students, which was just, you know, put out there as a suggestion - Craig, the principal, said, I think my staff are in the right place for this, I think my school's in the right place for this. I think we could do something. Started out gently, tried some things, got good responses. And now, you know, the culture in that school, I think has, especially amongst the students, has really changed and they've seen improved attendance, fewer behavioural issues - you know, it's really changing the school.

Now what, what would be terrible would be if we said, okay so that's a program now, and we're gonna replicate that in every school. Because every school’s not, might not be ready for it. You know, what's going on with the staff, what's going on with the community - it might not be their thing. So now, instead of doing it from the top down and going, okay, so we've seen this thing, it works, we're gonna scale it, you know, that's the kind of standard thing. Saying, okay, well here's the thing - it's been successful, it's been successful for these reasons. We've got some understanding of what would have to be true for this thing to be successful. Let's share that with people who think that they're ready for that and that might be something for them.

It's more of a professional learning and development of the system through sharing rather than through a kind of top-down approach, and I think we're just stepping into that. Next year, you know, more networks of intentionally connecting people together who can learn from each other, and yes, we might get some external expertise in there, but I think we underestimate the expertise, the potential for innovation within our system.

Dale Atkinson: What message would you like to share with the educators on their accomplishments and achievements of 2025?

Martin Westwell: The first thing I'd want to say is, thanks for stepping in.

The approach that we're taking doesn't provide, you know, the step-by-step clarity that other approaches provide. And I know that school leaders and sites have tried, have worked really hard and a great job of saying, well you know that's the strategy and there's a lot in it - but our piece is just going to be this piece, so kind of reducing that down to say this is what we're focusing on in our site. But there still has been a little bit of ambiguity, and people have been, you know, really rolling with that - sometimes in positive ways, sometimes you find it a bit difficult to grapple with that. So first thing is kind of thanks for stepping in. And the other bit is to say - we're not rushing with this. So time is gonna be a big part of this for us to grapple with getting comfortable with it and what was working, so, you know, take the time as well to do that.

I think what we also recognise is that schools are complex places and probably getting more complex. And children, young people of course, you know - like anyone are pretty complex. But young people are probably getting more and more complex - all kinds of influences that weren't there in the past. You know, you kind of chuck COVID in there and see the COVID generation coming through now. I think teaching is more complex than it's been in the past, so to recognise that, and again, to thank educators for the ways in which they're dealing with that. Often the persistence and resilience, as well as the kind of professional judgments that they're bringing to bear.

Dale Atkinson: What does 2026 look like and where should the focus be there?

Martin Westwell: The first, the most important thing is just to say - it's holding the line, steady as she goes, you know, not big changes. Recognise that what we're trying to do in South Australia is gonna take time to bed in. So, there's no rush to introduce, you know, the next thing and the next thing and the next thing - we're not doing that. Keep with the focus that you've got, develop that, mature that, keep that going.

There are some things, you know, so the South Australian Curriculum. There'll be a new draft of that to look at and grapple with, and I'm, you know, really proud of the work that we've done there to take the Australian Curriculum and really make it work for South Australia; really make it work for the strategy. And the way in which it's, you know, we've been working with educators; to say well give us some feedback 'cause we really want this to work for you and for our students.

Curriculum at its worst, if it becomes a, you know too much of a syllabus, and too, you end up with students and teachers serving the syllabus rather than curriculum being a tool that helps teachers to serve the students and the learning needs of the students. So, you know, certainly see the curriculum in that way. And again, we're introducing a little bit of ambiguity around the dispositions and what they look like. But again, there's no rush to, you know, there's no curriculum police going “this and this and this, and this”. Find the thing in there that works for you and experiment with it and try things out, and, you know, some of the dispositions are about kind of resilience and those kinds of things - if you know that that's something for your students, you know, think about, you know, what would that look like for a lesson or for a period of time to think about - okay, yeah, I've got the content - but if I started with a disposition, how might this thing look differently? You know, so have some of those conversations with colleagues. It's not a kind of, implementation rollout - do this, do this, do this. It's a - alright, well here's an opportunity, what does this look like for you? How can we take this opportunity and, and make the most of it? And are we doing it right? Is it, have we framed it in the right way? Is it expressed in the right way, to be able to support you to do that?

So don't see it as a kind of compliance thing. I really want people to see it as an opportunity to activate themselves, their colleagues, and the students in their class. But all the while, you know, still… this is a direction, this is the strategy, this is the focus that we've got at our site, our school, our preschool - let's just keep going with that, 'cause that - I strongly believe that that is how we'll make the biggest difference for our students.

Dale Atkinson: Now we're just on the cusp of the end of term four. Almost time for family time. What does Christmas look like in the Westwell household?

Martin Westwell: It's gonna be a good one this year - we've got no visitors, we're not going anywhere, so it's gonna be a quiet one; which I am all for! So, you know, we've been here for, been here in South Australia for almost 20 years now, but we don't do the Pommy, you know, roast turkey or anything like that. It's for us, it's alright - what's your favourite food, what's your favourite food? Right. That's what we're having on Christmas Day. So it's gonna be a pretty, pretty relaxed affair at our house this year, and I'm very happy about that.

Dale Atkinson: That sounds nice. It sounds like you're fully assimilated, so it's good to hear. Martin Westwell, thank you very much for your time.

Martin Westwell: Thanks so much.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education. And today we're talking Curriculum Leaders’ Network with a couple of new friends for me. Stew Nancarrow, who's the Assistant Principal of Colonel Light Gardens, welcome to you.

Stew Nancarrow: Thank you very much.

Dale Atkinson: And Sarah Bradbury, who's the Assistant Director, Primary Years in the Learning and Teaching Directorate. Welcome to you, Sarah.

Sarah Bradbury: Thank you.

Dale Atkinson: I'm going to address my first question to you, Sarah. What is the Curriculum Leaders’ Network?

Sarah Bradbury: Great question. So this year, as part of our work in activating the strategy, and starting to work with the SA curriculum framework prototype, we know there's this amazing expertise that is in our system, and it lives in schools and the Curriculum Leaders’ Network was born to bring those people together to talk about how we're going to design for learning that activates the strategy and the new curriculum.

Dale Atkinson: So the traditional way of developing curriculum within education departments is you bring a bunch of people in, and they sit there as curriculum writers, and they produce a thing and then they fire it back out into the system and they're like, there you go. That's what you do. What's different this time, Sarah?

Sarah Bradbury: What's different this time is that we're working with the system to create a curriculum document, a curriculum framework that's going to work for us in activating our strategy in our context. So we had this wonderful team of people who are writing the curriculum. But what's happening is that we're getting feedback from the system, to evolve that curriculum and make it work for us.

Dale Atkinson: Now, I guess that's a good point to bring Stu into the conversation. What's your role been in this?

Stew Nancarrow: I'm so I've been lucky enough to be a participant, so I've been able to head in, as a, as a site leader with some key members of my team and have a bit of a look at this network and engage in conversations with people about how we can increase our awareness of the pedagogy and the dispositions that we that we're trying to embrace at the moment, which is really exciting.

Dale Atkinson: So we've had a series of professional learning days. What’ve they looked like, Sarah?

Sarah Bradbury: So we have them in both primary and secondary. So at the moment we've got the Curriculum Leaders’ Network. But there's many networks within that network. There are primary leaders’ networks that are focused on thinking about our new maths curriculum and, and how we bring that to life.

And in secondary, what that looks like is it's different networks across the different learning areas we have in the SA curriculum to bring curriculum leaders who are leading those learning areas together to have conversations. So we've had two professional learning days. When you're in a network, you get access to two days of professional learning happening in semester one and semester two. In the primary network, what that looked like was we we partnered with Professor Amy Ulbrich, who is a professor at University of SA. And we talked about pedagogical pragmatism. So, the idea that we don't have one dominant pedagogy that we're using all the time, that we have a toolkit of pedagogies that we're using,

In the secondary years network, we also partnered with SACE Board, and there's a lot of changes happening at the SACE end of schooling at the moment, and they're really exciting. And so there's a wonderful opportunity with the SA curriculum to make sure that we're supporting learners as they're moving into that new model of learning in SACE.

Dale Atkinson: Now, Stu. You're an assistant principal. You're a busy guy.

Stew Nancarrow: Yep

Dale Atkinson: What are you getting out of this?

Stew Nancarrow: This has been really interesting because we initially went, “our focus is literacy we're going to pause”. And then someone reached out and said, “before you miss this opportunity. I think this is a really good idea”. So we're, okay – eyes open, we head inside. And what we got out of it straightaway was just this, this insight into how to access the SA curriculum and how it actually can look boots on ground and how it can look in our school. So as a leader, I walked straight away going, “I have so much more language and so much more understanding of how to to embed this in our school”.

So I've got the language, I've got some of the key phrases, I've got some application, some really easy pick up and runs that I can use with our staff to open the door to the SA curriculum. So it was instantly – straight away went, “I can see how this works for us”.

Dale Atkinson: And what are the changes you've been able to implement in your school?

Stew Nancarrow: The big one for us is, looking at how we can take some of these dispositions and embed them in what we're doing. So we've made the conscious choice at our site to play with the SA curriculum this whole year. And we've gone nice and slow, which has been really exciting, but we've been able to go, “how can we take some of these, these tweaks and how do we embed a bit more of our dispositions, some more of our dispositions in there? How do we embed some more capabilities and be really purposeful in that?”.

So straight away we've got teachers playing with the idea of, “how do I plan a split screen approach with some curriculum, but also some skills and some dispositions as well?”. And that was just through one professional learning day here, taking it back and discussing the ideas and the benefits with the staff and the why. And the staff went, “yeah, okay, we can give that a shot”.

So it hasn't added to our workload. It's good conversation. There's more conversation, there's more purposeful thinking in the fore.

Dale Atkinson: And, Sarah, what's the role of the networks in terms of supporting the activity at the individual sites?

Sarah Bradbury: So we know through research that professional learning – attending the day is great. You know, you get out of the school, you get to have a really good feed, and you get to connect with other educators.

But the evidence shows that it doesn't actually make a lot of difference on our teaching practice and the difference it can make in the classroom. So the idea of the networks is that we're continually bringing those layers together to have discussions about what they're doing in their site, what they're trialling, maybe what they're grappling with, the mistakes that maybe they've, they've made in the process so that we're nurturing that idea of a learning system, learning within from each other, and really activating that guiding principle of collective responsibility that we have for our kids across the state. So that the network is the thing that's the driving force that enables the work to keep on progressing.

And especially the wonderful opportunity we've got at the moment with the curriculum being a prototype in that we're playing with it, we're learning with it before it actually becomes, a version that will be our written curriculum document.

Dale Atkinson: And Stu, do you find that you're getting quite a bit out of the peer-to-peer interactions?

Stew Nancarrow: Yeah, I, I am actually quite blown away with how much I'm getting away from the networking, and the, the constant check-ins with other leaders because there's that familiarity. It's not somebody on the stage telling me what to do. We're actually talking as I saw leaders going, oh, I'm really struggling with this. How are you? Fine. Yep, we're in the exact same boat.

So then our conversation, instead of just being kind of tokenistic, it's really purposeful. And we're also getting a lot of successes where, you know, here we're going to look at feedback. “Oh, our site has just done something. Let me flick it through to you and have a look and see what fits”. And we can take bits of it and make it our own. And then conversely, that feeling of going, oh, I've actually been able to help another site leader and not go through the same challenges that we've gone through, is really powerful.

And I didn't appreciate necessarily how much those, those check-ins on Teams, they were so beneficial. Like, I've actively looked forward to them. I'm like, “right, I've got a question for the network today I need to know”.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, that's one of the huge benefits of having these sorts of online forums, isn't it, Sarah?

Sarah Bradbury: Absolutely, so we have our Teams channel. That's where all our networks live. In those networks that are online is there's a huge generosity, I think, of sharing resources and sharing practice and people learning with and from each other.

You've got access to a learning partner, someone from my team who's supporting those conversations, sharing research and sharing updates around what's happening with the curriculum as it's evolving. And it also enables us to meet, no matter where we are in the state. So our networks have been intentionally designed to be a mix of geographical regions.

So you might be a leader who's based out in Ceduna now, for example, on the Eyre Peninsula, you might be the only leader of a particular learning area within 200km. But we're connecting you with other curriculum leaders of that area. So that you can have those rich discussions and learn from each other.

Dale Atkinson: So, Sarah, we've currently got 500 primary, and 300 secondary educators involved in these networks. Who else should be involved and how do they do that?

Sarah Bradbury: Okay, so we're really keen to get more people on board next year. So you can register to be part of the network in 2026 if you lead one or more curriculum areas in a secondary setting, or you’re an executive leader, or if you lead mathematics in a primary setting – you are absolutely welcome to register for the leaders’ network in 2026. There'll be some information coming out on EDi in the next few weeks, so keep an eye on that.

Dale Atkinson: And final word for you, Stew. Recommendations for others? What's your advice?

Stew Nancarrow: I would absolutely tell anyone to jump in the amount of stuff that my staff have walked away with and gone, “this has worked really well for us”. What I was just saying to Sarah as I was walking in, we had people come in for this, looking at a fantastic maths lesson that one of the learning partners ran and both of my staff that went to that session have taken it and are now using those pedagogical shifts, those really minor tweaks across in English and in HASS.

And we've got a JP teacher doing it in reception with amazing results. And then we've got a year five teacher doing some fantastic stuff and feedback purely out of watching a learning partner teach a lesson in one of these PD days, and then also connecting with the people in the network, going, “I like this idea. I'm going to try this, or I’m going to try this”. I'm a big advocate for it.

Dale Atkinson: Well, we might leave it at that. Stuart. Sarah, thank you for your time.

Sarah Bradbury: Thank you.

Stew Nancarrow: Thanks, Dale.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education and today we're talking about Positive Behaviour for Learning or PBL as it's known and we're joined by Sylvia Groves, principal at Salisbury High School, and Sally Schwarzkopf, principal at Renmark Primary School. Welcome to you both.

Sally Schwartzkopff: Thank you

Sylvia Groves: Thanks.

Dale Atkinson: Now, first of all, let's find out a bit about your site. Sylvia – tell us a little bit about Salisbury High School.

Sylvia Groves: Okay. Well, Salisbury High School is in a low socioeconomic area, has a high degree of complexity and is currently a category 2 school. We have a community that's very reliant on the school but does have a strong belief that our school will support their students.

But the trial opportunity that we were able to get involved in provided us with guidance and direction and that opportunity to review and refresh, which we very much needed. Our initial intensions in introducing PBL was to create a change in behaviours to improve learning outcomes for our students. We were at a stage initially where we felt that we couldn't really teach students, and we needed a real cultural shift in what we were doing.

We also recognize that many of our students didn't know how to act in a school setting, and that they needed to be explicitly taught that, and we needed to make sure that our staff and students were all on the same page.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, nice. And Renmark Primary School, Sally. What's that like as an environment?

Sally Schwartzkopff: I suppose a little bit similar to Salisbury in some ways. We’re a category 2 school as well. Obviously located Rurally in Renmark, so about two-and-a-half hours away from Adelaide, we've got approximately 220 students. And amongst those students we actually represent a really diverse community. We have a really rich mixture of cultural backgrounds. Over the past couple of years, we've had a significant increase in enrolments of about 20% increase in our enrolment numbers.

Lots of our families do come from low socioeconomic circumstances, but we've also got a growing number of families whose circumstances are very different to that and also a lot of non-English speaking backgrounds, families as well. 25% of our students are Aboriginal. Another 25% of our students are diagnosed with an additional need or a disability. So our actual context is really quite diverse and rich in that way.

Dale Atkinson: So you've got incredible degree of diversity out there, Sally. So in terms of Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL), how would you describe it? What is it and what stood out for you around that?

Sally Schwartzkopff: I think what stood out for us initially was that it's a framework. It's not a program. It's not a program that you pick up and you can run with. It's actually a framework that really supports schools to model and reinforce positive behaviour, in the same way that we teach academic skills to our children. It's really about creating those clear expectations that are really consistent across the schools, so that our students can really learn and understand what success looks like and what they need to do to get there and how we're going to help them with that.

And I think for us, it was really about the emphasis that's placed on explicitly teaching behaviour.  Similar to what Sylvia just said about students that don't know how to behave in a school setting or know what's expected in a school setting. It's that emphasis on teaching explicit behaviour. But then alongside of that, it's also about the flexibility that we have within that framework to shape it and fit with our own values and our own community, which for us is really diverse.

Dale Atkinson: So, Sylvia, how's this worked in your site? What have you been doing to implement the change?

Sylvia Groves: Well, we've looked closely at the data, and we've looked at what we felt we needed because we're already dabbling in it. We thought we were doing PBL for quite some time. What we had to do was revisit what was happening and look at what did our staff need and how did we reframe that in our site.

And the framework that PBL provides is that it was focusing on the positive and hunting for the good, and we had to change that mindset that our kids weren't teachable, that we really needed to find a way to improve relationships and behaviour and learning outcomes for them. And it was changing the school culture, which for staff and students that we needed to have that really big shift.

And it reframed expectations to create that positive culture across our whole site and has been an absolute game changer for our site, particularly in a complex school. And we have many of the complexities that Sally was talking about as well. But the thing about PBL is it's respectful, it's caring, but it also it creates high expectations, which we didn't want to let go of for our students.

And once again, too, like Sally said, it's about explicitly teaching both staff and students what is expected and what we expect to see in a classroom, and those staff and students didn't really know what that looked like. So that was really important for us.

Dale Atkinson: How do you change the mindset? What's the frame of reference for that kind of work?

Sylvia Groves: Well, we looked at what were some key issues that we were having at our site and how did we then address those issues. So we slightly picked up on 1 or 2 issues, and we then worked on those issues and found a way to reframe them, to put the positive slant on them. And then what sort of behaviours did we want that to look like.

And we then provided resources and ‘Salisbury-ised’ those resources for our staff to then teach the students and the staff what that should look like in the classroom.

Dale Atkinson: Now you’ve used the phrase ‘Salisbury-ised’, which I like. Sally, do you ‘Renmark-ise’ the PBL? Is that also something you do?

Sally Schwartzkopff: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, we ‘Renmark-ised’ it. I think for us, you know, the way that we kind of got the people on board and really showed the sense of urgency around we needed to change something, for us, it was about vulnerability. It was about being really vulnerable as a leadership team with our whole staff.

So I talk about this number of 247. And when I've shared the PBL story that number always comes up because 247 was the number of times leadership were called in my first 6 weeks as principal at Renmark Primary School, and that was called to support teachers with the behaviour incidents.

Now, if you think about what 247 means across 6 weeks, we were run off our feet, like, we did not have time to do any other work other than support behaviour issues across our school. And I think for us, teachers often said, you know, I need support with managing this behaviour, but I didn't actually think about what that looked like across the whole school.

So we shared that number of 247 with every teacher and every SSO and said, we need to change something because we can't keep going at this rate. Because at the end of the term, this number, you know, ended up being 400 and something. So for us it was about being really vulnerable with our staff, really sharing with them where we were at as a leadership team and the challenges that we were facing. Because those challenges they're facing in the classroom, too, in individuals and we knew that we needed to get some collective responsibility around that number.

So for us, it was about being really, really vulnerable with them, but then being able to say we're going to be able to fix this, we're going to work together. We're going to kind of come on board with this framework. We're going to learn about this framework. We're going to, you know, carry out all the PBL professional learning.

We're going to do it together. We're going to involve them in every step of the way, which we did. And we developed this sense of shared understanding of the purpose of why we needed PBL and what difference it was going to make. And then along the way, as we started to see small changes, we celebrated them with our whole staff, and we celebrated those small wins and we slowly got traction.

Dale Atkinson: Do you need to demonstrate outcomes to get some buy-in from your staff. Or has it been kind of organic? I think we've had to share the wins with them, like intentionally share the wins with them so that they could see the impact of what they were doing collectively was making a difference. But then I think on the flip side of that, teachers also started to go, “Oh my goodness”.

Like while I'm focusing on the positive here, while I'm explicitly teaching the behaviour, and I've set up these really clear expectations in my course, I've got more time to teach. I've got more time to actually spend on the really important academic work and build relationships and all those things that are so important in our classrooms. I think they kind of started to feel that shift as well.

Dale Atkinson: Now Sylvia you've been nodding away at that a little bit. What's the impact on staff wellbeing and the sense of teaching efficacy among your crew been like?

Sylvia Groves: It's been amazing, really. We were very fortunate when we first asked the staff whether we should reinvest in PBL as a framework, and we had 99% of staff who wanted to be on board, so they saw a real need for it.

So they felt, the focus was whole school immediately. And so that made it a lot easier for us. They felt very supported in their wellbeing because we're talking about what's happening in their classrooms every day. And just like Sally, we wanted to work smarter, not harder. So the resources that we create, that they use on a daily basis, we're not adding to their workload.

We're making sure that the PBL team is creating those that they're readily available and very usable, and they're very appreciative of that because I can see it's just not more work. And that's always a concern for teachers. We made sure it was consistent across the site and that each teacher was supporting each other, because that's really important as well.

Probably the biggest game changer is that the consistency across the site. Every single person has to be on board and the teachers have to be backed up so relationships for them improved in the classroom. They had more time to then focus on what's really important. And that was really clear quite early, particularly with the mini lessons we do and the clarity around behavioural expectations was really important too, because teachers don't want to feel isolated in their classrooms or through doing behaviour management.

They want to feel supported in that. So as priorities change, we also listen to staff and what are the current priorities that we need to address and will then move forward with PBL framework to make sure they're being addressed. So they're feeling heard and that's important to their wellbeing as well.

Dale Atkinson: Now you both spoke about really diverse communities, diverse cohorts of students. Sally, how have you gone about getting buy-in and support from parents and caregivers in the wider community? Has that been necessary, or has it just been more about how they've kind of responded to the to the work?

Sally Schwartzkopff: We definitely got the buy-in from our parents and community through our social media app in the very, very early days. So when we very first started to shape our new school values and talk about PBL and the why behind why, you know, why we needed to reshape these values for our school and really connect into our community.

We got a lot of buy-in around that. And the way we did that around, you know, creating a bit of atmosphere around, you know, the excitement of the unveiling of the values and all that, all that sort of stuff. I think the other buying we got was obviously through our governing council to really involve them as part of the process, as well.

So, you know, at every governing council meeting, making sure that PBL was on the table and making sure that they sort of understood where we were at with what we were doing, what impact it was having, making sure we shared the raw stories with that governing council was really important. And then I think the last part is we have a token system at Renmark Primary, and we have a token collector – a collector house – and the collector house actually sits right outside my office door in our office space.

And I think that that for us has become a really big talking point in our school. Visitors coming to our school see it there and kind of go, well, what is this? Talk to me about what this is. And if children are they're popping their tokens in, they will happily tell parents or visitors, I got this, you know, this is an orange token and it's because I was kind and this is what I did to, you know, get this token.

So I think that for us, it's everywhere in our school. We've got our values displayed. You cannot stand in our school and not see our values on a wall somewhere. So I think that's the other part as well. So our parents know, and I feel that as I walk in and I can see all these are the four things that, you know, make up, primary school, who they are.

Dale Atkinson: Has that visibility been important for you as well, Sylvia?

Sylvia Groves: Definitely, and definitely the celebration of when we are achieving through the PBL. We also completely revisited our values and shared that with our parents. And that was a significant change as well that both staff, students and the community were involved in that. The mini lessons I shared at Governing council and the parents get really excited.

And one example was use of ICT and, you know, the challenges that our parents are facing often with their children that we can help mirror and support them as well. So we'll also try and pick up on their needs and use PBL as a means to support them as well. So we also use our social media as well.

So I think for the first time, all of our students can articulate very clearly what our values are and the celebrations that occur. For example, if we get to 150,000 PBL points in the term, they get a casual day on the last day of term. So, you know, they easily cleared that. You know, there's so many things we'll do, like we might have if everyone's been in uniform for so long, we might have a Zooper Dooper day, and all the kids will get a Zooper Dooper.

Those little celebrations make a big difference because we're acknowledging that there is a real culture shift, and the kids love it and really thrive on it as well. So in the parents do as well. So it's really important that our kids want to come to school and they, you know, primary school can be quite different from high school.

And they want to feel that they belong, that they feel connected. And the PBL has really helped enormously. But the celebrations make a big difference.

Dale Atkinson: Celebrations always make a big difference!

Sylvia Groves: With staff too!

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, absolutely. Sally, I'll start with you first. Has there been a memorable moment or specific success that you can remember that's really kind of reinforced why this has worked in your site?

Sally Schwartzkopff: The standout moment for us was kind of getting to our first end of term reward. I think that that has got to be the standout moment. It was ice cream day. You know, we'd field the token collector, and we'd got there and as a whole school, you know, was sitting under the shelter and we’ve all got our ice cream sundaes and we've got every topping under the sun.

And that that sense of excitement and pride and community was so incredible that day that we'd made it, that we were genuinely proud of something that we had achieved together. And it was about collective effort and every teacher, and every student was involved. I think that that for us has to be a standout moment. And then I think about, you know, I think we've had 8 more end of term awards since then, and every one of them is just as special.

And I think we haven't lost any of the excitement or pride or joy around achieving those things. I think that that for us is a real stand out moment.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, it's really it sounds like a lovely, lovely moment. Sylvia, is there anything for you?

Sylvia Groves: We actually had an issue with our toilets, which lots of schools have, and we're really concerned about how we could address that because nothing we were doing was working.

And, you know, we're going around the classrooms. And in the end, I decided to say to the students that I would give $6000 of my principal's fund to the students if the damage stopped, and every day there was no damage, they would get $100. And I thought that we weren't going to achieve that, but I might save money on toilet damage.

Well, we'd certainly achieved it. And it was beyond belief. The difference. And I've heard so many schools who've tackled this problem and not been successful. And not only have I saved more than $6000 on the toilets, at the end of that time, the students could choose what they would do with that money, and they used it for activities in the last week of school.

And it was just an amazing sense of pride and them owning the issue. Because they knew it was only a small group of students doing that damage, but they suddenly became the owners of it. It's about explicitly teaching the students that, you know, there's positive outcomes and the celebration is a big part of that. And yeah, that was definitely it was a bit of a different tact to take, but definitely worked. So yeah.

Dale Atkinson: What a way to change that frame of reference around things like that. It's incredible. So obviously you've you're both into the journey a little way now. Sylvia, you first – what advice would you give to schools contemplating coming onto it or who have just started?

Sylvia Groves: I think tap into schools that are already involved and see and feel what is happening because it's exciting.

Like, I have a very firm belief that every school should be doing this regardless of the context, because every student deserves to come into a learning environment that is positive and productive. And that's what it's all about. When I do our walkthroughs, I'll ask the kids for other ideas on how can we learn better? What sort of things can I do as a principal to make your learning environment better?

I would certainly probably my biggest challenge was going too fast because I love things to happen quickly. So being guided by the PBL team and revisiting, reviewing, refreshing, listening to your staff, listening to the students, and using the framework that's already there because it already exists. You know, we really need more schools to tap into it. And I'm, you know, hopeful that when I leave, this will continue for many years to come.

Dale Atkinson: What about you, Sally? What's your advice for newbies?

Sally Schwartzkopff: My advice to newbies is to definitely start small and just build gradually. And don't try to implement everything at once. It's an amazing framework. And you do – I hear what Sylvia’s saying about – you really want to just kind of jump in and do it all and get it all into place and, and run with it, but you can't.

Like, you've really got to start small. Build gradually. Work out, you know, what are the things you need to address first, that you're going to get your most shift or buy-in. And then the other part is anchor everything in your values, like your school values are the heart of PBL, and you have to make sure you've got them right for your school that they match your context. They are understood by your students; they're understood by your staff and your families. They are your grounding, and they are your foundation. So make sure you've got those really strong.

And then I think the other last part is for schools as they get involved, PBL is about data. It is about looking at your behaviour data and working out, you know, where the issues are in your school and what you can do to shift around you know, teaching specific behaviour around those areas.

But you've got to have heart. PBL is about the heart of the school, and it's about the heart that we put into it. And I think while the data kind of guides the journey, it's a heart as a school that we put behind it that's made the biggest buy-in, and that's around making sure that, you know, we're developing a culture where every student and staff member feels valued and understood and that, you know, families are part of the journey and making sure that we are kind of sharing the stories and the experiences that go behind the data, because that is the part of PBL that makes it so valuable.

And, you know, alongside the support of the department and our mentor in particular, we have completely reimagined our school because of PBL. And I'm so grateful for that.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah. That's great. That's such a good message, Sally. So where to next for both of you? Sylvia?

Sylvia Groves: Well, we will make sure that we continue with the practices we're doing. We have a really strong PBL team. We have to make sure that when staff leave or new staff come on board, that they're inducted, and that the consistency remains. We will continue to use the data to guide us. And there's no end to this journey. It is a cultural feel and shift that we want to keep the momentum going and for our staff, as much as for our students.

So it's part of what we do. I find it hard sometimes even thinking, “was there another way?”. And when people come to our school, they feel it's really positive. We get amazing results and it's all part of that cultural shift that we got through PBL and it's exciting. It's an exciting place to be. People love being at the school.

We have high retention rates of both staff and students, and it's because of the PBL. So it's there to stay for us and it's just what we do at Salisbury High School.

Sally Schwartzkopff: We are going to sort of shift to think about what does our PBL team look like? And there's a bit of work we're doing currently around that. What's that going to like in 2025? We want to shift and reimagine that a little bit, to make sure that we can continue to embed and strengthen our PBL across the school to make sure it stays, you know, a very firm part of who we are.

Continue to look at how we’re tracking our behaviour data and what we're doing with that, that data and try and make those processes even easier visually as well, for our staff to kind of be part of that journey. That's a real focus at the moment. And then the last part about that is that we really want to strengthen our student voice. Our teachers love being here, our students love being here, our enrolment numbers are growing.

We're not a PBL school, we are Renmark Primary School, and this is who we are.

Dale Atkinson: This is who we are. Well that’s such a good moment to leave on. So for people who want to know more about positive behaviour for learning, there'll be notes in the show notes and some links away for information. There’s also a team within the Department for Education who are chomping at the bit to help you out and talk to you about how to implement this in your site. So please check it out.

Sylvia. And so I thank you very much for your time.

Sylvia Groves: Thank you.

Sally Schwartzkopff: Pleasure.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today we are joined by two very special guests to talk about the Resilient Lenswood Project, which is a Parents in Education funded project. So we're joined by Caroline Williamson, who's the parent and project lead of Resilient Lenswood. Thank you very much for coming in.

Caroline Williamson: It's a pleasure.

Dale Atkinson: And we're also joined by the principal of Lenswood Primary School, just 9 months into the role, Sokhan Greenwood. Thank you very much for coming.

Sokhan Greenwood: Thanks for inviting us.

Dale Atkinson: So, Caroline, can I come to you first? Let's go back to 2019. I mean, all South Australians, I think remember what happened at that time. But can you just tell us a little about what the experience was like for the Lenswood community and the Cudlee Creek bushfires?

Caroline Williamson: Yeah, I mean, the Lenswood the community and the Adelaide Hills community has faced significant challenges since the Cudlee Creek fires. There was extensive loss to properties and homes and the emotional toll as well of recovery and rebuilding.

It's been a really deep impact, including for my own family. I mean, this really sparked, motivated the project. So building from that experience of adversity, let's try and build agency in our kids and that sense of empowerment from, you know, a sense of loss of control to, being able to build the sort of future that they want and build that resilience in them, for future events.

But I think that the most meaningful impact is from the student voice, the voices themselves. Recently, a year 4 student mentioned that since the resilience program, I haven't felt too afraid to think about fires and what's going to happen. And I think that really speaks to the heart of what we've been trying to do to transform that sense of fear and uncertainty.

To know that they have the tools and the community behind them to support them. It's just yeah, it speaks volumes to us.

Dale Atkinson: What an incredibly nice piece of feedback for you to hear.

Caroline Williamson: Absolutely. It makes it all worth it.

Dale Atkinson: So what was it you were observing in your own children and children from the community that made you think that something needed to happen at a community level through the school?

Caroline Williamson: Yeah, absolutely. So for my own kids, after the fires, they carried a deep anxiety around fires, around safety, around the unpredictability of the world in general. So for us, building resilience was really much more than just preparedness, although that's a really big part. It was about wanting to foster those coping skills, the emotion regulation, to give them a sense of a stake in the future that they wanted to create, and to lead preparedness efforts so that they could really move from a place of fear and uncertainty towards agency and collaboration, and knowing that they had this community around them to support them to do that.

For my own kids, for example, the project has really helped them to reengage with the landscape around them again from a place of stewardship and care. And so whether it's been learning about First Nations understandings and relationships with fire, to the importance of listening to country, biodiversity and native species, even to monitoring weather patterns through our school weather station and our work with the Bureau of Meteorology.

All of this has really helped them to repair that relationship with the landscape around them that they love so much. And so to restore that sense of trust in themselves and in the community

Dale Atkinson: Now you've been able to go on a journey where you've essentially embedded some of these activities that build resilience into the curriculum.

Caroline Williamson: Yes.

Dale Atkinson: Now, that's a daunting challenge for any school – to completely reset some of the activities that you do during the school day. What was it that you identified out of all the multiple layers of impact that these traumas can have that you wanted to go after specifically?

Caroline Williamson: I think absolutely key is that sense of agency and self-efficacy. A lot of kids felt a sense of loss of control of their environment. Perhaps they weren't included in conversations around what would happen in an emergency. I feel that when kids are equipped with the tools to face challenges head on, and when they're also given the chance to be part of solutions and preparedness efforts and real world, you know, solutions.

They have that, it builds that sense of confidence and, belonging and self-efficacy that really I think holds them in good stead, not just in full successful learning, but also for lifelong wellbeing – what it means to me to be thriving. So that's the key thing that I want. The kids would want the kids to get out of this project.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, absolutely. What's been the interplay between, you know, your vision – you obviously identified something that you felt needed to be addressed - what was the interplay between your identification of an issue that you wanted to go after. How you kind of brought the school into that. How the Parents in Education project kind of worked, and how the kids were involved. How did you activate that initially?

Caroline Williamson: Yeah. So lots of conversations, lots of talking and lots of listening. I didn't want to, you know, ram this down people's throats! I was very careful to speak about it in a trauma informed way as well, because there is still trauma in our community.

I also really wanted this to be something the whole school could get behind. So I set out from the beginning with that – with a strategy to really embed disaster resilience into what we learn and how we learn as well as a school. So, multiple layers. We have the amazing parent group who have been absolutely extraordinary in their level of commitment.

We've had parents facilitating workshops, planning ideas, liaising with community subject matter experts and stakeholders. We've also very clear about wanting to highlight student voice precisely for the reasons that I mentioned earlier. So we're having students facilitate some disaster resilience workshops. We also are embedding disaster resilience into the curriculum learning as well. So we want that to be embedded that across all year levels.

So that resilience isn't just a one-off topic. It's something that we sort of change the way we approach our learning in many ways. And it's sort of, that part of our culture now.

Dale Atkinson: It's an incredible journey and a good point at which to bring you into the conversation, Sokhan, which is I guess my question is, how do you operationalise that vision at a site level? What are you doing to implement these things?

Sokhan Greenwood: Well, there's 3 factors at play. You've got your student cohort and what they can add to this project. Students leading the conversation with their parents at home. Because we know that if we can embed that understanding with children, they often will go home and talk about learning they have school they find is exciting or fun or interesting.

And then obviously involving parents into that conversation and making it in a way that is accessible for everyone. So looking at, you know, time slots of when workshops might run or when we might share information utilising all of our social media newsletters and that kind of stuff, to get the information out there so we can have as much voice as we can back into the school, and then obviously our staff being part of that.

So 3 really important plays. I think I'm really lucky in that in my school we've got very strong student voice. Before I even started the school, I had a group of year 6 girls who were quite passionate about leading change, and there was a group that were very passionate about me rejuvenating this secret garden project. And what I've discovered over the years is how much that connects to what we're already doing, which is a piece of landscape that we can actually apply all the learning that we're doing in the classroom, back into that landscape space and having that sense of control.

So it's been it's been a lot of work. I'm not going to deny that. And each time we've, you know, maybe have something in our, in our mind about what we might do, we get some feedback from the students or the parents or the teachers, and then we might have to pivot a little bit. So it's always kind of evolving.

And we've got some really decent suite of workshops now that we've got lined up and have been going for a couple of weeks. And I'm sure as we continue throughout the year and into next year, will just keep evolving. It won't stop just because the year's finished – I don’t envision that.

Dale Atkinson: Amazing. What sort of work have you had to do with your teaching staff around embedding this as a focus of their concentration and the work that they're doing?

Sokhan Greenwood: I'm very lucky to have Caroline. She is not just an amazing parent, but she's actually fantastic at research. And I've not met a parent like her. She's not allowed to leave me ever. So her children will be 25 and still at school! But she actually went away and curated a whole bunch of resources working with Hills Council. They provided some beautiful books for us to use in our library that were really targeted around natural environment, how to prepare, First Nations perspective.

So having those hands-on resources is really great for teachers to use straight away. She then curated a whole bunch of lessons and resources and put into one location. And if you know, education, that's always the hardest part is finding quality resources and then delivering that. So having all that ready to go meant that our teachers could hit the ground running.

We also had Caroline coming in for a staff meeting, a couple of staff meetings just to share some of her progress and the lessons suite that she had developed, including fire scenarios that the children had to kind of work their way through in an animated setting. But some of the realities were there for them to navigate their way through and then having access to some great resources online that really incorporates Aboriginal perspective as well.

So we could just do the learning. And I found that the staff didn't really take much convincing because they knew it was important. We either live in the community or work in there or knows what’s impacted by the fires. So it was easy to convince them, and they were quite keen and having everything ready to go made it so much easier.

Dale Atkinson: What's it been like bringing the parents on the journey, and has that had to be a deliberate thing, or have they kind of leaned in on the work?

Caroline Williamson: I think that every community is very different, and they all have their shared history and their culture, and you have to be very mindful of that. I would say from my work on the Governing Council, I have had the opportunity to build some really strong relationships with parents and families.

Just picking our kids up from school, having a chat here and there. And also, it’s the kind of school it is. The kids will just chat with you, you know, say, “Hi. How's your day going?” It's that kind of family, small community vibe, so that our parents also have a really strong culture of showing up and helping out as well.

Our volunteers are incredible, so we’re very fortunate. I would say, to have that parent involvement from the beginning.

Sokhan Greenwood: And I think strategically, we make sure we use things like Facebook as a way to share quick information, and I always think more information is better than not enough. So it's things like having posters on our gates. Often families will sit around tables under the verandah.

So we had little posters and QR codes so they could register for things or get their feedback. So as much as we could, we made information really easy to access and also sharing back information – really simple. And sometimes it is me stalking them in the in the playground while they're picking up their children to have conversations.

But one thing they always say is how much they appreciate that and when they can’t attend because of work, that having that information there. And just a recent suggestion was maybe we could record and put onto Teams for families who are busy with sports and that stuff right now in the Hills, but down the track, when things settle, they might be able to come back and watch it again.

So that was really good feedback recently too.

Caroline Williamson: Absolutely. It's very much about meeting parents where they are with everyone so busy. And yeah, taking that feedback and being able to adapt. I think parents really appreciate that.

Dale Atkinson: Obviously, you've been able to coalesce around a common trauma, fit for your community or a common area of interest. What's the way in for other schools where perhaps they don't have that as the trigger point for this type of activity? What should they be thinking about if they're looking to embed the things that you've embedded, which is incredible student voice, parent involvement in the delivery of something, the coalescing around a really strong common interest. But what should they be looking for?

Caroline Williamson: Well, I think it goes back to what we mentioned earlier about having that conversation. You know, if you're a parent, for example, thinking about starting a Parents in Education funded program, I would say start by talking to your principal. Start by talking to the teachers and to the families. You know, have a chat with your kids and their friends and sort of try to understand, you know, what the school's doing well, you know, what's missing. And also the things that they really deeply care about. And I think from there, you know, a really meaningful project always starts with that listening so that you can really build something inclusive and meaningful to your school because every community is different, and every culture is different.

Dale Atkinson: How do you create an environment where parents feel comfortable to bring ideas to you and to have these conversations?

Sokhan Greenwood: I think it’s about not shutting down ideas. And the more you talk and listen, the more you can really get a sense of the place they're coming from, you know? Is that a place of empowering their children? Is it a place of, there's something lacking in my knowledge set that I'd like to be able to utilise and then going from there.

But what I've always found with our families, is they're just really open and honest. And it might be a private conversation that we have in my office. It might be a casual conversation in the yard. It might be through Governing council or PNF. I think listening is really important. And then from there you can decide what actions you take based on that.

And the children are really very good at sharing information from home as well. They’re very honest. So listening to them, I think it's really important having their voice. And I guess the great thing is with our Public Education Strategy, it really is about your community and how you deliver education that's purposeful for your context, which I think has been very liberating, that you're not comparing yourself to another school down the road, and that your parents and children are unique to your site.

So my biggest thing is about listening. Because if you don't listen, you don't know what to do next.
Dale Atkinson: That is such a good way to leave this conversation. Thank you very much for your time and all the best with the project going forward.

Caroline Williamson: Thank you so much for your time.

Sokhan Greenwood: Thank you, Dale.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today we're talking about anti-racism in education. And we're joined by Natalie Gentle, who's the education programs manager at Reconciliation South Australia and Leonie Shelley, who's the principal at Blair Athol North School.

Thank you both for joining us. Now we're here to talk about Reconciliation SA’s ‘Education Action and Change’ anti-racism resource for schools and preschools. When we talk about anti-racism. Natalie, I might start with you. What do we actually mean by that?

Natalie Gentle: Anti-racism really is about action, like, taking an active role in dismantling the systems and your own, I guess, personal ideas and values that might impact your relationships with people. So we often talk about that as individuals, we don't want to be racist, and our kind of role is to reframe that we want to be anti-racist.

So it requires action, thought, ongoing effort to dismantle racism. It's not enough to just say, I don't want to be racist anymore.

Dale Atkinson: So it's more of an active stance than a passive belief set.

Natalie Gentle: So that's a really nice little segue because we often talk about anti-racism is not like a set of values. Like that is important because obviously none of us want to be racist. But if we just rest on that idea that we don't want to do that, nothing changes, we need to build our skills and capacity to be anti-racist. So anti-racism for me is about building skills, building our own capacity,

Dale Atkinson: And if there's one place that we like to build skills and capacities, it's in schools  and preschools. So can you tell me a bit about what the new resource for schools and preschools is and what does it intend to do?

Natalie Gentle: Yeah, so we developed the ‘Education Action and Change’ resource in, well, it was developed for a very long time, but launched officially in April last year. And it basically exists to support anyone working in education. So, from preschool all the way to secondary school, to engage in anti-racism practice.

So, it's not just about anti-racism, the ‘education’ component of it is to learn about what racism is, the history of racism in Australia, and how it impacts our students. ‘Action’ is really about anti-racism; so how can we be anti-racist educators and teachers? And then the ‘change’ section is our curriculum. So we've actually developed an anti-racism curriculum where anyone can pick up the resource and basically teach about racism with students from 4 years old to, you know, years 10, 11, 12, if they like.

Dale Atkinson: Might be a good point to bring Leonie in on that. So obviously your school is engaged with this resource. What have you found helpful about it and how have you used it?

Leonie Shelley: I think it's been – it's been helpful for our teachers to have something that really sets it out. So what's different from a junior primary to a middle primary to an upper primary, and how to approach that. We've sort of had a bit of a dovetail approach where we’ve done some action around challenging racism, but then bringing in that education side because that's where that will move us closer to reconciliation.

So what's been really useful is having that education side where it opens up the dialogue in classrooms around who we are, what we, you know, what might be the same, what might be different, but also what hurts people as well when we are having those conversations with each other.

Dale Atkinson: How are you interacting with families, students, your teachers? What's the journey that you need to go on in terms of engaging with this resource?

Leonie Shelley: So we've been on quite a journey, we started by really understanding our own positionality, so what are our biases, and allowing people to sit in that uncomfortableness of understanding that, and then how that might kind of colour the way that we see things and what we value as well. Right from, you know, what are we teaching that kind of brings through our values, to what are we standing up for, and what are we kind of interrupting when we hear and see racism as well.

So, Natalie and Kirsty came in with Reconciliation SA and we did some education with our whole staff. And then as a leadership team, we gave people some really easy actions and phrases that they could use, just to get them started because it is a challenge for people and I think people do feel a little bit scared about taking that on.

We had lots of conversations with our families. Our school is quite multicultural and so, it was really important for us to have those conversations with families. And then with our students, we had some really strong conversations, so we had to be quite fiercely anti-racist as a staff and then have a no tolerance kind of stance.

But as I said, dovetailing into that education around who we are and how we value each other, and, you know, ensuring that we have that sense of belonging. Yeah, so, it's quite multifaceted, I suppose, about the approach that we've had to take.

Dale Atkinson: Natalie, you've been involved in this journey. What have you observed the across the course of the last little while?

Natalie Gentle: So we were just speaking about this before we started, because we obviously, we come in and we do a two-hour workshop, and so you can change people a tiny bit with that, but you leave and you hope that someone like Leonie takes that work and runs with it. What we've really noticed, I think from our perspective has been like really strong leadership and courage to take a real no nonsense approach to this.

We're gonna do it and this is gonna be our kind of rules and our boundaries around it. We've seen like a lot of repetition, so again, Leonie's been able to really focus on what the needs of the site were and be like, this is what we want to eradicate first. So they focused on really clear priorities to work on to begin with.

And I think something that I've really loved is watching how the school has taken on those ideas of education, action, and change, and almost created a framework for what those mean within the site. So, things that they're working on that are immediate, urgent issues and then things that are more about cultural shift for the school.

We are really lucky as well – we've had an ongoing relationship with both shell and also the Aboriginal education team, so we kind of do pop in and out, see how things are going. We know a lot about what's going on with the Reconciliation Action Plan at the school. It's very much, I think, a multifaceted approach that anti-racism is part of this really big picture or tapestry of things that they're working on, and they're all deeply connected.

Dale Atkinson: Now we talk about, obviously Reconciliation SA has led out on producing this resource. And this might be an interplay between the two concepts, but what's the relationship between reconciliation and anti-racism and how do the two concepts kind of work together?

Natalie Gentle: So, anti-racism, honestly, is a foundation for all the reconciliation work that we do. Something that we've really talked about a lot is that we often start talking about reconciliation when anti-racism work should come first, because you can't really separate our history in Australia from racism.

We were, you know, colonised and, and founded on a lot of racist ideas. And so we need to understand that historical legacy and how that impacts how we engage and interact with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and families, and communities today. Reconciliation is about truth telling. It's about historical acceptance; it's about interrogating and investigating our systems and our institutions. It's about equity, and then it's about unity. And so really to achieve any of those, they're called the ‘five dimensions of reconciliation’, what I just listed.

But to achieve any one of those dimensions, I think it needs a foundation of anti-racism because you need to be able to look at our own positionality within how we interact with people. We need to be truthful and courageous. We need to look at our history. We also need to really review and interrogate our systems and how things like policy, process, culture, social contracts - all those things impact the lives of children and their families that we are working with as educators and teachers.

Dale Atkinson: So, these are quite big concepts in some respects and, and quite simple in others. How do we translate those things to young people and educate the young people? Leonie, what's been the experience there with work in a site that's birth to year 6? How do they engage with it as very young people?

Leonie Shelley: Well, we provided for, as a staff after Reconciliation SA came in, we looked at just some really short phrases that we could use with different age levels, so it was really age appropriate. So, I think that was really helpful as a starting point, and it just kept it simple. So with quite young kids interrupting, you know, racist comments and explaining to them those words hurt people – had a really big impact. And then as they get older, talking with middle primary kids, we've had the phrase changes more to, there's a lot of emotion behind that word – are you meaning to hurt someone like that? And maybe depending on the child, give them a bit of context around where that word has come from and what it actually means.

And then with our older kids, we were actually able to introduce them a bit more to that truth telling and some historical understanding about where that's actually come from. So that was a really useful step to kind of take these big concepts, but simplify it I suppose, in a way that made sense for everyone.

And it also gave our educators away to start addressing it. Whereas I think before there was a bit of, I don't really know what to do about this. And also, I think when we hear racist comments, and this happens as adults too, sometimes you're just a bit shocked that you've heard it and so you, you actually don't respond or you don't know – you say nothing. And that's possibly one of the worst things that we can do, is say nothing.

Dale Atkinson: And I think it sort of speaks to how you create a culture within an environment to create permission to challenge and empowerment. Have you seen that operate in other schools as well, Natalie? Have you seen how this has kind of taken hold?

Natalie Gentle: It's so different from school to school. So, one of the things that we really wanted to do in creating the workshop content and also the resource was create something that was not prescriptive and could be contextualised based on how sites are feeling and their own knowledge base. The biggest piece of feedback we've had about this has come from Aboriginal education teams and is just the permission – which was not our intention when we created this resource – but to bring racism to the table and start talking about racism really openly with students, with families, with their colleagues and staff and leaders.

So, people are bringing that book and saying, it says racism on it, so we can talk about this now which I think that empowering is a really good word. Because it is giving people the tools that they maybe were missing before to come and say this, we need to start kind of working on this as a team and focusing on this.

So, we've had a wide range of responses, I would say, to the workshop, but we definitely are seeing lots of unique things come as a result of that. So, student action groups, we've seen, a school bring together like a multicultural action group. So they're looking at, well, how can we take our learning and they are a high school? So they've got a different level of capacity.

Some really unique opportunities I think come from engaging in the workshop and, and even just looking at the book can help you uptake opportunities and do something brave and exciting and different with your site.

Dale Atkinson: So it sounds like it's a resource that can be, you know, really moulded to suit the strategy and the, priorities within the site. Has that been a deliberate kind of act on your part?

Natalie Gentle: Yeah, look, we, we definitely didn't want to tell teachers how to do anti-racism work in a prescriptive way. There's definitely things that I think Leonie's really spoken about, like naming racism, when it's racism that don't have a lot of negotiating. But the curriculum guide and the resource, it exists for people to like put their own stamp on it, bring their own personality, their own context into it.

Teachers know how to plan, they know how to do their curriculum and how to implement that. So, we just wanna give them a nudge and for them to then, you know, utilise that within their setting in ways that suit them and suit their students. Because Blair Athol was a very different site. We've worked all across suburbs, eastern suburbs, we've gone regional. We did our workshops in Port Augusta. So, each site is gonna have a unique take on how they do this.

Dale Atkinson: I bet they will. Now, Leonie, for your unique take. What's the key learning that your educators have taken away from this work and what would be your recommendation to other leaders?

I think the key learning has been that when it does come out in the open and we name it – it's a lot easier to then do something about it.

And that's been the big difference, I think, is that being able to name it. So, we have a cohort of kids now who can name it, and they're actually kind of calling it out themselves. As a leadership team, you need to be really fiercely anti-racist and you need to have a stance about it because when we are neutral, we can't actually do anything about what we want to do.

So, I think that's been a, a really big piece of learning for us and, and brings people along as well when they've got a stance and they know, have that clarity of, okay, this is what we are all kind of moving towards. I think their permission was really a key thing for us and the idea that we are all just, we are all striving to be anti-racist.

We are never going to be 100% anti-racist maybe, but we're all striving and we are learning together. Yeah, so I think been a key learning and for us it was just holding the line initially because we were seeing around 3 to 4 incidences that involved racism a week, and we've maybe had 2 this year.

So last year we had, you know, we were dealing with this continuously, but we all banded together, and we held the line and brought our families along with that. So, they understood that we had this strong stance and now we are in place where we can focus more on the education and the reconciliation side of it.

But kids know and families know what will be tolerated and what won't be.

Dale Atkinson: It's an incredible journey. Natalie, you mentioned earlier that the foundation for the reconciliation stuff sits around approaching anti-racism as the first step, and it's interesting Leonie that you talk about that is something that you can now move on to focus on.

What does it look like in terms of good approach to focusing on reconciliation as a practice, once you've got some of those foundations in place around anti-racism?

Natalie Gentle: When you focus on anti-racism as like your first step, it will just influence the way that you think about everything else. Because our work, it asks people to think about their positionality, who they are, what they bring into the classroom, what their values are, how they maybe have developed biases, how they've developed ideas about students, what they value, what they don't value. That's all related to the bodies that we're in. And so then every decision you make from that point on will be impacted by anti-racist practice. When you start to think about how our world is shaped by racism a lot of the time, it then builds your capacity to be able to make decisions in your school around what you're prioritising in your curriculum, how you’re engaging with students, with their families, what sorts of decisions you make, what policies you work on.

It filters into everything when it comes to reconciliation.

Dale Atkinson: I think that's a good point on which to leave it. Natalie Gentle, Education Program Manager at Reconciliation South Australia and Leonie Shelley, Blair Athol North School Principal. Thank you very much for your time.

Leonie Shelley: Thank you.

Natalie Gentle: No problem. Thanks for having us.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today we're talking numeracy on the back of the 2025 Numeracy Summit. We've got Professor Caroline Cohrssen and Dr. Danielle Harris. Professor Cohrssen is the professor and deputy head of the School of Education at the University of New England, and Danielle is a post-doctoral fellow at the STEM Education Research Center at the University of Canberra.

Thank you to both of you for joining us. Today we're talking about the development of conceptual mathematical understanding that supports the strategy for public education. And we're talking to Caroline because she gave a presentation called 'Purposeful talk to support early mathematical thinking', which targets preschool leaders and educators. Caroline, what is mathematics when it comes to those within the early years? What are we trying to go after?

Prof. Caroline Cohrssen: It's not always entirely clear to teachers and educators. The early years learning framework, and I'm going to use their definition, defines mathematics and numeracy as broadly including understandings about numbers, patterns, measurement, time, spatial awareness and chance and data, as well as mathematical thinking, reasoning and counting. So that's quite a lot, and we often find that early childhood teachers will be focusing primarily on numbering counting and shape identification. And there's actually a lot more to it that we can be doing than just those sorts of two strands.

Dale Atkinson: Now, when you talk about mathematical learning through purposeful talk, what does that mean? When the young people are actually learning how to talk themselves, how do we differentiate or how do we combine those two concepts?

Prof. Caroline Cohrssen: First of all, by the time they're in an early childhood classroom, typically they're quite articulate themselves. Rather than learning to talk, to be honest, but what we are talking about there in terms of intentionality on the part of the teacher or the educator. Would be being really purposeful in terms of what and how we communicate with children. So the term that we would use in a teaching environment would be responsive engagement.

So, we are wanting to be listening and watching and being attuned to the child, and then responding in a contingent way that consolidates what children know and extends their thinking a little bit. Part of that process is also being attuned to what children, sort of the skills and capabilities that they bring with them, which are obviously gonna be emphasised through the teacher talk, but reflecting in the child, reflecting in what they're bringing from the home environment. So, it's a wraparound focus. Which really demonstrates why it's really important to be working with families when you're teaching very young children.

Dale Atkinson: That seems to be a consistent theme, particularly well across all education, but particularly in those early years where the family dynamic is so important. You talk about being able to recognise when children are engaging in mathematical play, what does mathematical play look like in the early years?

Prof. Caroline Cohrssen: I would probably say that mathematical play is basically any kind of play, and that what makes it mathematical is that the lens that the teacher's bringing to it. So, if the teacher's looking to see children spontaneously organising or categorising things or putting rocks in a row according to their shape, or I'm setting the table in a play corner with a cup and a plate and a spoon at each seat. All of these types of behaviours that children are doing spontaneously, if we bring a mathematical lens to it, we may be seeing children categorising objects according to size or shape, or colour. You know, it depends on what we are looking for.

Dale Atkinson: What's the mindset that the educator should be using when working with young people and thinking about the mathematical concepts?

Prof. Caroline Cohrssen: You know, we talk in education about pedagogical content knowledge, and basically what that's talking about is knowing the subject that you're teaching and knowing how to teach it. Anticipating what may be difficult for children to understand, and so pre-empting that by providing them supports beforehand or alongside. I guess, but also understanding the longitudinal and latitudinal connections. So how does mathematical thinking within a play-based context align with other types of thinking children are doing?

If children are demonstrating a particular mathematical capability in the moment, what can we assume precedes that and what is likely to follow from it? And so a lot of the work that I do is focusing on learning progressions or learning trajectories, call them what you will, and this is also direction that South Australia is going as well with early childhood, is looking at those progressions in children's learning.

Dale Atkinson: What does a quality interaction look like between an educator and a young person?

Prof. Caroline Cohrssen: First of all, I would say quality interaction is one that is warm and responsive to the child. I think that's the threshold condition that we need, and that again, probably applies across any phase of the education process. I think a high-quality interaction also is one that, as I said earlier, is attuned to what the child is demonstrating in some way that they know and are interested in. It's one that provides feedback to the child, so it's going to be affirming what the child is demonstrating they know, and probably giving them that bit of stretch, which we might call scaffolding.

There's gonna be back and forth exchange between the teacher and the child with that contingent responding and elaboration of the ideas that children are sharing. An important part of this interaction involves teachers asking children to explain their thinking, because we are not just wanting to tap into what the child can do. We're interested in their thinking that got them to that point, that they may be describing or showing us. And I think also one of the things that's important to remember, particularly with very young children is that their responses may not be verbal. They may be pointing or showing, or you know from my own research, dancing or climbing with very young children, there's gonna be a lot of that embodied demonstration of understanding.

And I say very young children, I also mean their children that are learning to speak English. So, children who are speaking English as an additional language or dialect may not have the vocab to explain their thinking, but that doesn't mean that they don't have the conceptual understanding. So, part of a high-quality interaction between an educator and a child is one that is going to demonstrate that we can kind of look through the language to see what the child is demonstrating they understand, and then perhaps responding in a way that models the language that goes with that behaviour or that demonstration of thinking.

Dale Atkinson: So, you've gotta be so deeply observant and responsive in that setting. Now you also talk a little bit, and in your presentation, links are available in the show notes, about a purposeful pause. What does that look like in a play-based environment? And how does it support mathematical thinking?

Prof. Caroline Cohrssen: Purposeful pauses are based on the notion of wait time that has been researched quite a lot back in the seventies and more recently.

Basically, what it does is create space in an interaction, in a dialogue between an educator and a child, a teacher and a child. That provides an opportunity for the child to be thinking. Provides an opportunity for the teacher to be thinking so that the response that the teacher is providing to the child is perhaps more evidence-based in that it's attuned to what the child has demonstrated but also creates a space for the child to think and respond without there being pressure. So, it's just slowing the pace of the interaction down a little bit so that it doesn't feel like some kind of an interrogation. It's a more responsive and attuned way of engaging with the child, that takes the pressure off a little bit.

Dale Atkinson: I think taking the pressure off, particularly when it comes to mathematics, is such an important thing to do. We've had podcasts previously where we've spoken about math anxiety and the need to overcome that. I might bring Danielle Harris in at this point. The point at which I think math anxiety often kicks in is in the secondary years.

Danielle, you gave a presentation around visualisation strategies for students and spatial skills and how they can improve mathematical performance.

What are visualisation strategies, and how do they work in this context?

Dr. Danielle Harris: Visualisation, I believe, and a lot of the literature says is quite broad about the processes that we use when we're thinking mathematically, how do we visualise, how do we gesture, how do we draw, how do we represent what we're thinking? But it's also the product. You know, how do we write out our answers? Are we just putting in a number? Are we putting in a form or are we able to demonstrate a more broad kind of structural understanding of what we're working through? Visualisation is very, very big. It's part of everything that we do, and it offers some really unique opportunities to think about the processes in mathematics.

Dale Atkinson: So what are some of the practical ways that schools can embed some of those visualisation strategies in, in young people?

Dr. Danielle Harris: A big focus, I think as we move towards secondary school is, let's get to the answer, let's get to a solution. I love that we talk a lot more these days about show you're working out and that's part of the scoring. Because, you know, actually being able to demonstrate your thinking (illegible). I think the more we can, even these ideas that Professor Cohrssen is talking about reflective processes with students, what are you thinking, getting them to share their ideas. How are other people solving problems? How are they visualising, how are they representing on a paper or on a whiteboard?

So the more that schools and teachers can vote these kinds of processes and not just go straight to the solutions. And you know, we live in a world where there's so much available online to us and so many digital resources, but can we dial back a little bit and go back to the drawing on paper? We have a really great example of isometric drawing we did with year sevens and eights, and it's a really challenging task. But once the students were asked these ideas, they could actually start to understand the structure of shapes and the relations between shapes.

Dale Atkinson: Now, Professor Cohrssen, it strikes me that some of what Danielle speaking about there, and trying to activate within the kids are things that inherently they have within them when they're engaging in mathematical concepts in the early years, would that be fair to say?

Prof. Caroline Cohrssen: It definitely would. One of the things that struck me while Danielle was speaking as well, was that there's recent research that's come out of France that is showing that the gap between boys’ and girls’ achievement in math is starting as early as the first year of school. So that, that is really interesting to me because children are born with the same capacity for mathematical thinking. So what is it that's happening in the school space that we are seeing that shift coming so early? What can we do to prevent that or pre-empt that from happening? Think it is a really interesting question and that notion of visualisation as well, we know that spatial thinking is something that is malleable.

The metaphor I use when I'm working with early childhood teachers like Play-Doh, we can squash it and shape it in different ways. So, what does that mean then for us as early childhood teachers in terms of the way that we support children's mathematical thinking in their spatial skills, to equip them with this sort of broad capability that will support things like understanding how many there are just by looking at, at a set in it. The notion of quantity, the, you know, all types of mathematical thinking. What do we need to be doing better in the early years of school to prevent that gap emerging so early, and to support more children progressing sort of with confidence through the school system.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that intent, particularly around encouraging people leaning in to mathematics and the French study, which I've spoken about with our Chief Executive, had a look at that around particularly gendered language and the impact that has with educators is something we absolutely are just starting to understand and need to be really very, very conscious of and perhaps do a bit more work around. Danielle, back to you. What resources have you found most effective in developing students' spatial reasoning.

Dr. Danielle Harris: So, I think there's two strains there. There's the physical resources, you know, we, even in high schools, would bring back in the link blocks and the fraction bars, and drawing and getting students out walking around their school environment. So there's physical resources that can be embedded quite easily into the practices that are already happening. But there's also just the recognising that spatial skills are so critical for the development of mathematical knowledge and a recent meta-analysis suggests that the further along students go in their schooling, the more the spatial skills are important, and the more that developing these spatial skills have an impact on their mathematics. They're starting to recognise that, you know, spatial skills are developed in our highly spatial world, as my colleague likes to say, and then, we live in this world, so why can't we bring mathematics out into the world?

But everything we do when we're talking about resources starts by grounding the, learning progression in an experience that the students are very familiar with. So if we're gonna be talking about grids and maps, what maps are the students already using? What awareness do they have of their own environment that we can bring into the mathematics classroom? Even when it comes to number things like equivalence, when you've got an equal site, it's not the end of the operation, it's just part of the calculation. Both sides are the same. What can we substitute numbers with? So critically just bringing the real world into the maths classroom is a really good way to start.

Dale Atkinson: So I might just throw to one final question, which is for both of you, Danielle, what can secondary teachers learn from those in the early years? And Caroline, I'll ask you in reverse, but Danielle, what do you think secondary teachers could learn from educators in the early years?

Dr. Danielle Harris: If there's anything I can take apart from what I've seen with the students, it's just promoting that curiosity and that flexibility that we saw children have in the early years. So same kind of reflected practices, if students are willing to talk about how they solved a problem, or how they are visualising a problem, or where they're stuck on a problem, bring in the purposeful pauses. Give them a chance to actually articulate their thinking and communicate what's going on in their minds. And then maybe we can pick up those little threads and follow it through.

Prof. Caroline Cohrssen: It's really interesting, Dr. Cath Pearn and I analysed some children's drawings that, that were done in the kindergarten phase and found that there were drawings of the route from home to school. It was part of a spatial thinking project, and we found that children, some children in a group were demonstrating capabilities that were up to, I think year three or year four of the Australian curriculum, and they were demonstrating this already when they were four and five years old. So I guess for me, learning progressions is crucial. We need to understand where children are at, where they've come from, and so we know what to do next. But also the idea, I think, and this probably comes from early childhood teachers themselves who may not feel comfortable with teaching mathematics or mathematical ideas.

Children need to understand as well that maths language and maths processes are practical and fun, and relevant. So it's not that, that's the maths table where we do the, the counting and the shapes but we use mathematical thinking, a flexible way to solve everyday problems. And I think when it becomes just part of what we do and part of the way we think, and part of the vocab that we use, there is no special language because it's all happening on a continuum. And what we are doing in the prior to school space is part of what Danielle and her colleagues are doing further along in the education process. We have a paper coming out probably this week looking at engineering as part of STEM and how similar to mathematics engineering could be more visible, so you've got a clearer line of sight.

And I think that's the reason I'm saying this is really for that point. We need this line of sight so that we don't see early childhood, and then school as separate things, but they're both part of a continuum. And I think clearer articulation between the prior to school space, and the formal school education space will probably go a long way to strengthen children's confidence and capabilities.

Dr. Danielle Harris: The spatial skills offer this really great opportunity through the research that we've seen to show strengths and it's very non-verbal, so they're really great pathways across the whole education continuum, I think to give children access and some of our best examples from kids that go, this isn't maths, this is fun. And so they don't realise that while we're developing these critical skills and the teachers are working with them and building this passion, they're actually still doing mathematics.

Prof. Caroline Cohrssen: I loved what you said there Danielle, because one of the things we speak about quite a lot in early childhood as well is recognising that children have a linguistic repertoire that they bring with them, which may not be English, but it doesn't mean that they lack the understanding or the capability and so part of our role as teachers is to be supporting - recognising, and supporting children's strengths. And I think that probably applies as well, right the way through the education system where you may have children who speak English as an additional language and just providing the sort of parallel talk or the narration almost for what children are doing or showing us, regardless of how old they are, I think is an important part of what we do.

Dale Atkinson: I think we might leave it there with a challenge from Professor Caroline Cohrssen. Thank you very much for your time, and Dr. Danielle Harris, thank you for yours.

Prof. Caroline Cohrssen: Thank you.

Dale Atkinson: Thank you.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today we're joined by a man who many of you will know from various academic papers and the occasional visit and other things. Michael Fullen, who's the Professor Emeritus of the University of Toronto. He's a former Dean of the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Michael, thanks for joining us.

Michael Fullan: Thank you. You got me described at one level, so I'm happy to jump in with you.

Dale Atkinson: Well, we'll take it. Can we talk first a little bit about deep learning? What is deep learning? What's the philosophy behind it?

Michael Fullan: Well, I can say it two ways. One is that the history of the last, say 50 years of learning has been shallow learning. So, it got caught up in the NAPLAN and the testing and the, uh, that even though it potentially doesn't have to stay there, it was. It was seen increasingly, we have the data now, including from South Australia.

Students were more and more bored as they moved up the, by the time they got to high school, only about 20% of students were engaged. So, the negative story is that the normal education we inherited from the last 150 years got less and less relevant. Or students in, in the 21st century. So, and that, that includes negative from when PISA started in 2000.

It's ironic, I think that from PISA 2000 to PISA 2025, that learning has declined in almost every country. PISA measures, I'm talking. So this is pretty shocking and I think in some ways that people are going through the motions and not getting anywhere. So that's, that's one backdrop. So we switched in 2015 or so to the question is what kind of skills and competencies do students need in 2025 or any of this century actually?

And that's where the six Cs come in. That they are character, citizenship, critical thinking and collaboration. The six Cs, they're actually the skills that people in business communities say, this is what we want from our students. Actually, the parents will say, yeah, I want my student to be like this.

So, there was this obvious comparison. The problem with the six Cs when we started in 2015 was it wasn't operationalized. It sounded good and people, yeah, they got it, but what does it really mean? So, we set about to create the learning. That focused on the six Cs and I can tell you that summative districts that are working with us in Ottawa Catholic, you know about, they've got, 85 schools, thousands of students.

They have said, we'll take the six Cs, but we're finding that two of the Cs are especially high leverage, critical thinking and creativity. So, they built creativity. The other thing to remember about deep learning is that the pedagogy changes. It's no longer, like you don't study the six Cs by here, the six Cs memorise them and tell them what they mean back to us.

You have to learn them, you have to be living them. So, uh, you may know that, we have a partnership with University of Melbourne with Sandra Milligan, where they, about four years ago partnered with us and said we wanna measure the six Cs in a disciplined way, like university style, scientific measurement.

They have developed measures of the six Cs that are highly robust. They've used about a hundred schools or so as their feedback network stuff. And those schools that they're named, you can find them on their website or from Sandra, they're using the six Cs and they're finding that learning has mushroomed for the students and the teachers that are doing that.

So that learning hasn't yet found its way necessarily into where, where do you start measuring them? Myself, I would say NAPLAN is okay. Why not? NAPLAN is okay. Those are the basics. That's keep that going, but don't make it dominant. It's not a driver. But the six Cs are a driver and therefore the measurement of that and the excitement and the link connection to students is well documented by, by Sandra and her group on the new measures they're called.

It's hard to get started. We're now recently working. With school districts in California, as it turns out in in a couple in Ontario where we fully developed it. In fact, we just finished two books that are going to be published in a few months describing this in real districts with 25 schools or 55 schools or 80 schools.

The whole school is doing this and they're producing students who are good for society and good for themselves because they've got these competency skills. We're actually linking them into occupations that parents want, students want, the business community wants. So, it's being, as we're integrating it now, and you can see it in our writing, it all comes from practice.

I'd be glad to tell you more about how to get it into practice, but the nature of it is, the new purpose of schooling is to have skills that are effective. In the 21st century, especially 2025 now onward. So new sets of skills, they call it the kind of North Star, as some people call it, but it doesn't matter what you call it.

It's the purpose of education operationalized by the six Cs. How do you make them come alive for the students and teachers that they're actually present and that they pay off because they do them every day. That's the question mark now, but the nature of them is becoming clearer.

Dale Atkinson: So you touched on a little bit there. I mean, education systems are incredibly complex beasts. What are you thinking about at a system, site and classroom level in terms of enabling and activating this kind of approach?

Michael Fullan: Yeah, I think it comes from the doing. So I wanna say that our team, since 2015 and increasingly in 2025, we have whole systems doing this work in partnership with us.

And so the content of this now is that these are places where they are developing the practices in a day-to-day sense of how to be effective in these, these skills and demonstrations. And they're taking over, I guess I'll say what a graduate from secondary school should be like, they should be capable of dealing with complex society.

We operationalize that, they should be capable of getting new jobs in the way that, well, they call, sometimes you call it career and technical education, but basically it's more tangible, it's more related to what people need to do in life. So, the best part is, there's lots of examples of it. The last thing I would say is that in my, explicit formulation, and I learned this from systems.

We have said that the old system, which is somewhat top down, you have policy, you have the clusters of schools or combinations at regions and whatever, and then you have the individual school communities. We have said that, that is unfolding in that top down description absolutely doesn't work.

I've got tons of evidence in my book, The New Meaning of Educational Change, number six, so that doesn't work. So what I've done, and it's a bit playful, but it's actually powerful, is I've turned the system on its head and said, you have to build the bottom, which is the schools and the community. Strengthen the middle, which are the community combinations of schools or the districts or the regions.

And then the third one, I didn't know what to do with it, so I said intrigue the top. So, it's a bit playful on purpose. They haven't been able to lead it. The history of this is terrible, US is terrible. England now when they've got their new, you know, new landslide, Labor government 12 months ago, they're absolutely flopping around doing nothing.

And I'm, I'm talking about actual data. So, the issue here now is that, and we've just finished two books on this, that will come out in February with actual districts in California and in Ontario, is that if you build the bottom, strengthen the middle, and intrigue the top, you're more in control of your own destiny of learning.

And therefore people, there has to be new roles for leaders, school principal leadership changes. I've written about that. The role of the principal now is how to develop the local system, which is the community in the school. It's not how to implement the hierarchical policy. You have to make the hierarchy less evident, make the action at the school and community level more explicit and prominent, and then spread sideways and upwards.

I don't know whether that makes sense. It does as an image, and we've now got proof that what that looks like. So, it's a transformation of learning and it's powerful and we're at the early stages of it. I would say 2022, 2023, we start to get out of COVID. We start to move in this new direction.

Now there's multiple new problems, around education. Trump is wrecking havoc across the world. Everybody is tired of COVID and doesn't know what to, what to do next, so people are tired out. I happen to think that we can talk about this, that South Australia. In Australia has the best, formulation of this.

We can elaborate on, I'll tell you why, but the formulation is the one I just described. Empower the local part and have the centre enable that empowerment in partnership and then build it deeper and wider into the system, and that's exactly how I see South Australia right now.

Dale Atkinson: Well, as you describe it, it sounds like purpose is absolutely central. Cause that's the thing that appears to be the, the kind of cohesive element to bringing a whole system together. Is that how you view it?

Michael Fullan:: Yeah, I think it's two concepts there. Purpose and belonging. So, purpose, the new purpose. Is to be effective in society and for society, and this is the six Cs, and you don't have to do all six all the time.

As I said, though, Ottawa is critical thinking and creativity as a centre piece of that. Their sense of purpose is to get good at those in relation to what role would they play in society as graduates from that current society? And how would they help transform society for the better? So that's the purpose.

The belonging is obviously connected. If you don't, if you just have a purpose and you haven't figured out how to enable people to belong to the effort to make it happen, you've got only a purpose on paper. So, what I like about South Australia is you have that purpose. I listened to Martin's, podcast and he's describing what I'm perhaps not fully yet, but pretty much essentially, he's describing what I just described, and he's inviting the middle, which are the county or the areas and the individual schools and the middle individual to play a bigger part in determining what's next.

So, this is a big challenge for people who haven't been able to do this yet, but it's pretty obvious that this is attractive for the day-to-day student and teacher and family and community.

Cause that's what they should want anyways. And once they get a taste of it, we think they will have more control over what it, the determination is. They'll be more influential, and they'll be more influence. By their peers, because that's how this works. But also, by the hierarchy,

Dale Atkinson: I guess, when you make any major shift in focus in an education setting, one of the things you're looking for is an understanding of how effective it's been.

What's the interplay between the six Cs and the approach to assessment? What's the new framework around that that needs to be considered?

Michael Fullan: Yeah. The assessment is, we're able to assess. The six Cs, we measure of it and Sandra Mulligan has deeply developed measures of it.

So, assessing it isn't the problem. So, we're able to do that. But I also think that the question is what's the attraction to those that causes students and families and communities? I wanna learn these. We think that the hardest part is getting people immersed in learning them. We can measure them, but I'm not a fan that you measure them.

If you take accountability, accountability has been miscast. It's been miscast in NAPLAN as the outcome. And therefore, by the time you get to the outcome and say, oh, it's not working, then all you have to do, I mean, the option you have, which is not very attractive, well, we've gotta tighten the screws to get those outcomes better.

It's ironic and it's paradoxical, but the less you focus on measurement in the short run and the more you focus on the evolution of what it looks like, paradoxically, you're more likely to get it. My good friend, who’s now passed away a couple of years ago. Richard Elmore, who was actually a big fan of Australia, was there many times and was working with us.

He said, no amount of accountability will be effective. No external accountability will be effective in the absence of internal accountability. So, he says you have all the external accountability you want, you'll never get it if it's coming from the outside only. It has to come from the inside, what he called internal accountability.

And the thing with internal accountability, and now we know some of the attributes of what it looks like. One is it has to be, I'll just mention the combination of three or four things that have to feed on each other. One is, it has to be fairly explicit. What is it? How do you measure this stuff? So that's explicit. One is it, and this is an odd way of putting it, but so true to change.

It can't be imposed, it can't be. Um, said you must, uh, we want you to be accountable and we're gonna look over your shoulder and make sure you're accountable, again, paradoxically, the less you focus on accountability as the driver. The more you focus on accountability as reflecting the progress and you measure it, non-judgmentalism we call it, but you take non judgmentalism plus transparency.

Transparency isn't working. Non judgmentalism is you're not jumping all over people that aren't making it work well because that's not a good lever for change. And then when you turn this thing upside down, as I've described a few minutes ago, you get people then who are doing this and they become masters of their own destiny, but they're sharing laterally and upward. So, it's not like they're keeping it to themselves. They become part of the solution. And that's, it is paradoxical. It's what I call nuanced. It doesn't sound like it should work, but the less you emphasize explicit hardcore accountability, the more you get results.

If you pave the way with the learning and purpose we're describing, and the people who are doing this become the ones that own it, and then they become more satisfied, more developed, and I think that's the pathway that South Australia's on. I looked in my book The New Meaning of Educational Change at the various countries.

And I would say in Australia, that the big states don't get anywhere, the smaller ones, Tasmania has sort of not quite moved that much. South Australia is moving, and I think it's the exemplar for me. It's the one, Northern Territories has, which is a much more different proposition. They're also moving in some direction.

So, I think size matters. The biggest ones, Victoria, New South Wales, they're just too big. They trip over themselves, so I don't know what the answer is there. I've worked in both places, and they sometimes pick up the lead and wanna do it, and then it falters you in the next political tranche that comes in.

So, I'd rather look at South Australia and say, okay, get it right. You're small, but you're not that small. You got like, it's not easy, but let's see what it looks like in South Australia. And that's why I really think it's working well. Posse Salberg is a very close friend of mine and he's been working to support this nature of this change exactly the way I'm describing it.

And if the middle and the bottom, bottom being in the global community and the teachers, if they can gain more and more confidence about this nature, more and more understanding of the specificity, they can actually be increasingly influential about the particulars of getting this to work and be an exemplar, for the rest of Australia,

Dale Atkinson: Michael Fullan, exemplar for the rest of Australia. We'll take that. Thank you very much for your time.

Michael Fullan: Okay, well I'm looking forward to participating in some of the outcomes that you're engaged in.

My best advice. Is that the local part, which are the schools and communities, that they take more chances to take advantage of the opportunity that the South Australia framework is inviting them to do.

So don't be shy about it. Make mistakes, take advantage of it. You're in good hands. Go for it and make it happen. It'll be happening because it happens in the local level. Reinforced by the middle, learning from each other and enabled by the state who is funding and encouraging and leading this direction in partnership with the other levels.

Dale Atkinson: Thank you very much.

Michael Fullan: Okay. I enjoyed it. Keep going.

Dale Atkinson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Teach a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today we are joined by a man who leads a school that has a fairly special place in the constellation of schools across great state.

Matthew McCurry, who's the principal of Hospital School SA. Matthew, thanks for joining us.

Matthew McCurry: Thanks for having me.

Dale Atkinson: What is the hospital school, let's say for those who don't know?

Matthew McCurry: We are the Department for Education site within the South Australian Paediatric hospitals, so our main campus is at the Women's and Children's. We have a southern campus down at Flinders Medical Centre and a northern campus at Lyell McEwin Hospital.

Dale Atkinson: That's a fairly broad geographic spread, but you've also got a fairly broad remit of activities and things that you need to, uh, provide education for right across the spectrum. Can you, can you explain a little bit about the, the students that you educate?

Matthew McCurry: So you are right. It is, it is statewide, but it doesn't just include South Australia because we also [00:01:00] have young people that come to us from the Northern Territory, from interstate and also internationally. We have about 4,680 students per year. That was last year, and that includes inpatients, so young people staying in hospital, outpatients who are still connected but not needing to stay. And then there is the family program, which are young people who aren't patients but connected.

Dale Atkinson: We’re gonna focus on something very specific in terms of, uh, what you do today, which is strategies for re-engagement and wellbeing broadly. What is the role that you play in terms of reengagement and wellbeing as a school?

Matthew McCurry: There's, there's a number of facets to it. So when it comes to mental health, we have our Supporting Improve Mental Health in Schools program, or the Sims program is what schools would, uh, most likely hear about and that is when a young person has presented for emergency mental health or has been admitted for [00:02:00] mental health and how we transition them back to school after that.

However, there's also young people who have lifelong illnesses, life limiting illnesses, who it doesn't necessarily sit within that mental health space, but it is about transitioning them through maybe some school anxieties and school refusal or school can't, and I wanna make sure we say both. When we talk about school can't and school refusal, because people will choose what language they have in that space.

Dale Atkinson: And it seems like our understanding of school refusal, school can't, is expanding. We we're getting better at understanding what this thing is and, and being a bit more responsive to the needs of the young person. You recently presented to the Wellbeing Conference on, um, some of the thinking around the Sims program and the activities that hospital school SA.

Can you explain sort of broadly what school refusal is and what the contributing factors are?

Matthew McCurry: I think we, we've gotta look at it from the point of view that there's [00:03:00] something within a young person's thinking that is layered or impacted or triggered, or is really thought through in their mind about what is stopping them from attending school.

Is it from getting up in the morning, that point of their day? Is it after they've put on their uniform and, and refusing? Is it leaving the house? Is it not getting out of the car? Is it not walking into school from the car park and so on? So there's a whole lot of layers, but it is, what is it about the school environment or attached to the school environment that is sitting within a young person's thinking to make them feel like that is an impossible step or choice to make.

Dale Atkinson: What's the entry point to starting that understanding journey?

Matthew McCurry: It's really individual because it is really looking at that specific young person and and trying to find out what it [00:04:00] is that sits with them, because then we are looking at those concentric circles, so their own thinking, where family are involved and then where school is involved and where would you start to, to address that.

Connection. Connection. Connection. You know, that relational aspect is really important, but the relational aspect can be the reasoning, or it can be what is affecting that young person. So, you know, we could take into mind things like rejection sensitivity disorder with some of our neurodivergent young people.

So then that's another layer. So you can see that it is very individualised and as schools, the department schools are seeing that more and more, which is a really good vantage point to sit in and less about some of the old school thinking we, which we used to have, which was, this is the student, or this is [00:05:00] our expectation of a high school student because we know that was just, um, who is that?

Who is that ideal student? And so now we are looking at the individual and that's, that's a start.

Dale Atkinson: So as a site, you have recognised that there are individuals or groups of students that are at that point of school refusal school, school can't. What are the strategies that you can employ to start that engagement process with the student and their family.

Matthew McCurry: I think, um, one of the important things is for schools to sort of start off with some questions for themselves and if I give sort of three provocations, my first would be what are the unconscious biases that we might hold about students who sit within that school refusal or school can't? How do we challenge those perceptions or the bias?

So is it our own? Is it other staff? Is it you know, young people or families? So looking at whether that bias sits, if a [00:06:00] student is already disengaged, how will we reengaging or repairing? What's the approach we're going to take? And student centred or student agency, what would it look like? What would school look like?

But also, what would support in this space look like if it was designed by the young person, the young person who is the most excluded, disengaged, or unsupported. So I think schools have to sit in that space first. Because what is the message they're sending out as a school so that any of their young people can say, this is what I see, hear, and feel from my school. And then we make it more individualised.

Dale Atkinson: So I guess the, the starting point really is a projected empathy and, and, and coming at it from the point of view of understanding the perspective of the, the young person and their experience. We spoke with some parent representatives of young people who have experienced a school refusal, school can't.

They spoke about the guilt that is associated from, from the parent perspective, the expectations that they put on themselves, or they feel that society or the school puts on them. What's the engagement that a site should be having with the young person's adults in their lives and how, how does that work well?

Matthew McCurry: I think that parents are, as much in the position as schools are in wondering where this has come from or what to do next. They're also looking to seek support, so that that support partnership is vital because as you said, parental guilt is a, is a big thing. The, the parents have those after hours and those before hours.

So, uh, probably, or we know they're inheriting or, or having to manage, deal with, cope with the, the emotional dysregulation or the communication or the disrepair in their own relationship. And so. If they feel pressured by school or judged by school, [00:08:00] that just adds to that. And then they won't necessarily feel that they've got a partner, an active partner in the process of repair or support.

So checking in with families is as vital as it is to check in with, with young people trying to match up so that there's consistency is really, really important because we know young people, whether they're seeking them or pushing against them. They do want those boundaries. That's what they're yearning for.

So, you know, connection, consistency, that's really reliable and so it also needs to be reliable for the parents as well.

Dale Atkinson: Now, the experience for young people that they have with all the educators across the site is really important, isn't it? And so it's gotta be a real team effort from all your educators if you're trying to reengage a young person.

Matthew McCurry: Yeah. That that's true. And, and I think one of the really important aspects is language and the power of language and how that can make someone feel. What we have is young people making their [00:09:00] own attempt without any sort of guidance, because kids will one day go, well, if this is all happening to me, I'm gonna go back to school.

They walk into school and then a comment from a staff member might be a little bit sort of guilting or shaming without maybe them necessarily thinking that's the language they've, you know, tried to use or were using. And that young person takes that on because it is guilt and shame. And then, you know, the absence they had for two weeks.

They go, well, this is how I felt trying, so I'm, I don't wanna go again. And it becomes, next time, four weeks, and it seems to build. And young people really stick to those things of where they'll say, I attempted and it didn't work, so why would I attempt again?

Dale Atkinson: Now you'd have 4,000 students a year you said earlier you must have a number of examples of when things have gone really well.

Is there one story that you have in your mind about where there's been a success and can you tell us about [00:10:00] that and, and what it was that that triggered the positive outcome?

Matthew McCurry: You know, a number that I sort of put together, but one in in particular, I think about a school's understanding about the idea of being flexible.

Because many schools will think flexible means you can attend every day up until recess time. When that's not flexible, that's a part-time timetable. What I feel happens when we do part-time timetables is we build resilience routines in kids. So they're only having to live within, survive within that time, and it's not giving anyone, including that child, an accurate representation of what they're having to, to face to deal with, to consider, to try. And so when, when a particular school said, look what is flexible to you, and we said it is looking at, well, what does Monday morning look like [00:11:00] to Thursday afternoon? What does it look like uf we could offer them number one. A subject that they love, that they, you know, they feel connected to the teacher, they're happy with the, the peers in that class. Let's start with that. Let's build from there. So not expecting a young person to go, I'll work within a part-time timetable. I'll work within the subjects that are compulsory or you’re saying are the greatest needs.

When that young person saw that they got a choice to start with and it was just enjoying themselves. That's what worked for them and we built from there. So the school wasn't after them being instantly reengaged. It was, you know, saying to them, let's take the time and you know, we do have the time and we automatically fall into that gap of saying, well, we don't, because that's how rigid thinking around frameworks and timetables and, you know, lesson times,

But as a department, we're [00:12:00] saying, you know, know your cohort. Be brave, be bold, and so do that within not just the timetable of the overall school because yes, there's gonna be constraints and, and you know, aspects there, but be flexible for a young person because that is what's gonna be the key for them to feel they can step in and step out.

Dale Atkinson: If you could share one practical tip with educators, with parents in this space, what would that be?

Matthew McCurry: I think it is about giving concrete low pressure choices 'cause they're easier to respond to from a wellbeing point of view. And it means that young people aren't feeling overwhelmed. So instead of saying What's five things that would work, that would help you, you know, going concrete and low pressure, you're more saying, would it help if we put in a shorter time, like, and I know I used this as an example before, like on Mondays you come until recess time [00:13:00] because then the choice is still the young persons, but they're being given some parameters, some safety and if they say yes, that's great. If they say no, what that does is it allows us to then say, well, talk to me about why that won't work.

And I always start my sentences off with young people about talk to me because then, you know, they feel like they've got that voice that many of them feel isn't listened to. That's something that young people tell us all the time, whether that's accurate or not, that's their perception. So talk to me is less confrontational.

You know, tell me can be seen confrontational or why not, can be confrontational. I know it's all about the tone and things like that, but just looking at it from that low pressure is really important.

Dale Atkinson: That's an incredibly useful skill and one that I think we could learn from in lots of areas of our life. Matthew McCurry, [00:14:00] thank you very much for joining us.

Matthew McCurry: Thank you.

Dale Atkinson: Hello, and welcome to Teach a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today we are joined by the two directors of School Can't Australia, Tiffany Westphal and Louise Rogers. Welcome to you both.

Tiffany Westphal: Good morning.

Louise Rogers: Thank you.

Dale Atkinson: Now, we're at Stronger Connections 2025, which is a peer connection development and collaboration event for wellbeing leaders in South Australian schools, and you are talking to educators and support staff about attendance and the reasons and influences behind a young person's ability to attend and their motivations behind attendance. Can you tell us a little bit about why you started School Can't Australia?

Tiffany Westphal: School in Australia was started by parents for support of parents about 10 years ago. Back 10 years ago, the environment was fairly hostile towards families who were experiencing difficulties with children who were quite distressed about attending school. Lots of parents felt quite judged and lots of the advice that people were given was rather unhelpful and resumed that children were misbehaving, or parents were weak parents and enabling anxiety or not using rewards and consequences adequately.

So it was in that context that the group was formed, and we really created a safe bubble for our community of parents and carers to navigate this really challenging situation that they found themselves in and to try and learn about what, we really began to co-create knowledge by sharing with each other what our experiences had been and what worked and what didn't work in this space. So there's been a lot of knowledge co-creation over the past 10 years, yeah.

Dale Atkinson: So what do we know about what influences a young person's anxiety around attendance. What are the factors that feed into that?

Tiffany Westphal: So we see it as a stress response to things that are happening either in the context of the community, the family or the school. And so there are lots and lots of reasons why a young person might be finding it difficult to come to school. And so we talk about capacity and how their nervous systems have been impacted by those experiences of stress.

Dale Atkinson: What influences a young person's attitude towards schooling? What are the stresses that are impacting them when they're making these decisions?

Tiffany Westphal: I think all kids want to attend school, but something happens along the way in their experience of school that's caused them to feel unsafe there or to feel incompetent or to feel that they don't belong or that they're just exhausted from the effort. About seventy to eighty percent of our community are caring for young people who are students with disability – so autistic, ADHD, neurodivergent kiddos and people and teens who are finding school quite stressful.

Louise Rogers: I think it's also important to recognise that the stresses – they're accumulating. They're coming from multiple places and they're stacking. So students are going to have more than one difficulty that they're experiencing across all the different contexts of their life. But I mean, in school, there are a number of different things which can stress the student out.

They might be having difficulty with their mathematics, or they may be experiencing bullying in the playground, or they may find it difficult to go to the toilet or to eat lunch at school. There's so many different stresses and we need to take a very individualised approach to working with children and young people about what makes it hard for them to go to school.

Dale Atkinson: So what's the role of the school within trying to address some of these inhibitors that young people have?

Tiffany Westphal: I think we need to be really curious, and we need to listen very carefully to the things that students are telling us about their lived experience of school. It's tempting for us to presume that school is safe, that we are taking care of everybody's needs at school. But for lots of our kids, their needs are not perceived – there are barriers to us being able to identify what's going on for them that's causing them distress.

Like Louise said, often when we look at the data from our survey of families and we look at school-based stressors on average, you know, of the 57 school-based stressors that we asked our community about, people indicated that about 8 of those were factors that had contributed to their child's experience of distress in relation to school.

I use a resource called Student Stress Investigation and it’s a box of cards with 96 different school-based stressors and on average the students I work with as a social worker are choosing between thirty and fifty of these cards and saying these are things that are causing me distress. And there's a range of things from the sensory experience of the space. So it's a mismatch between what I have capacity for and what the demands are, what the expectations are.

Louise Rogers: Around 30% of our parents and carers indicated that stresses in the context of family were impacting their child's attendance difficulties, and those were things like relationship breakdowns, or losses, like the loss of a loved one, or having to care for an ill parent or relative. So, I think in terms of how schools can respond to that is I think to be cognisant to those things that are going on when they’re of what's going on and to give that young person some space to have those hard feelings and to be going through those experiences.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, it seems like there's a couple of elements to this, one of which is an understanding of the context of the individual child and then creating space and time to listen and respond. What are the practical tools that individual teachers and whole schools should be deploying in this space?

Tiffany Westphal: Look, I think we need to have resources that help students tell what's happening for them. I think when you just ask a student, "What's up?" It's often difficult for them to tell you, and there's lots of reasons why that might be the case. You know, they might not have the words to explain what's going on inside them. They may not have the language to make sense of it as a nervous system response.

That may have internalised lots of really sorts of messages about themselves, you know, “I’m a bad kid because I’m not going to school. I’m failing to meet everybody’s expectations that I attend school. I’m not comfortable at school, but I don’t understand why I’m not comfortable at school”. And so, when using resources like card sorts enables kids to consider a prompt and say, "Oh, yes, that thing, that bothers me. You know, the lights in the classroom bother me or I can't eat at school and so I'm having trouble managing my blood sugar levels during the day when I feel cranky in the afternoons and have trouble concentrating, or I'm not feeling comfortable using the toilet, so I avoid drinking so I don't have to go to the toilet at school. I'm not comfortable being called on by the teacher to answer things when I haven't volunteered information”.

So there's lots of little things that often reduce the student's capacity to feel okay and safe in that space. And we really need to be curious about all of those things and explore lots of things. And sometimes it's quite a process and it takes some time. So as students' distress levels start to drop, we might discover more things that they weren't able to tell us before because I start to feel safe, but I think the biggest barrier is having them feel safe enough to explore those things with us.

Dale Atkinson: Now you both advocate for approaching school attendance distress through a neurological lens rather than as a misbehaviour or psychopathology. Can you explain the distinction between those approaches and what that means for how a school or an educator should be thinking about attendance?

Tiffany Westphal: So when we're thinking about it as a misbehaviour, we're responding to behaviour and trying to shape behaviour through use of rewards and consequences or threats. This is often the first port of call that lots of families resort to, my kids resisting going to school. So I'm going to try and incentivise them to go to school.

But when the students experiencing lots of stress, they're asking them to just try harder, doesn't provide them with the support that they need. When we look at it through the mental ill health lens, School Can’t Australia has come to understand that anxiety and depression do co-occur with difficulties attending school, but the mental health issues are often like smoke is to the fire and we need to understand why the house is on fire and respond to that – and that's often because of stresses.

When we experience chronic stress for long enough, it impacts our mental health and our capacity to be able to manage ourselves and make use of coping skills and strategies that we have. When you try and self-advocate for your support needs and your support needs aren't understood or you don't understand what to ask for that you need, there's a barrier there, and so things don't get resolved and problems persist.

Louise Rogers: When we treat it as a stress lens, it gives us different strategies that we can use to respond. It helps us get to the root cause of what's going on for that child or young person. Changing behaviour is just changing what the distress looks like. It's not getting to the underlying reason.

So we really do need to problem solve that. And we need to understand that the things that we're seeing, if a child's hiding in the toilet, if a child's running down the street, if we treat this like a behaviour, we're going to have a very different response to that than if we understand it to be a protective response of the nervous system.

Dale Atkinson: So Louise, it strikes me that the response at a school-based level is fundamentally different if we approach it from the perspective of misbehaviour or even as a psychopathology. We have behaviour structures, we have allied health supports that we've been put in place, but if we step back and we think about this through the neurological lens, essentially what we're saying is we need to seek first to understand what's influencing that young person.

Tiffany Westphal: I think we need to tune in to what the nervous system state is of that student and recognise that fight/flight looks like that behaviour that you see, you know? It looks like somebody not getting dressed in the mornings. It looks like somebody not able to get out of the car when they get to school. It looks like somebody yelling at a parent or being oppositional. It looks like somebody who's having a meltdown at school because they're distressed by something that's happened, avoiding seeking to get away from something that's a fight/flight response.

What's hard for us to see though is that some of these students end up in a shutdown response and that's almost invisible often to the people who are trying to support that student. You don't see behaviour often when somebody is shut down, you'll see somebody who is sometimes dissociated, sometimes just waiting for it to end, trying to go unnoticed in a state of distress that they're not able to communicate that they're distressed. Often parents get told, "Well, they're fine at school because I've seen them and they don't show any signs of distress." But we need to be curious about whether they are in fact a distressed student.

Dale Atkinson: Now Louise and Tiffany, the relationship that the school has with the parents, really critical right across the board, but particularly when it comes to difficulties that any young person's having in any aspect of their education. What is the stance and attitude that educators should have in discussing these issues with the parents and how do we support parents in this space?

Tiffany Westphal: I think we need to remember that parents and carers are often very stressed by this experience. There's a lot of messaging out there in the world about the importance of attending school, and so they can feel quite anxious for their child, that their child's missing school, but they're also juggling lots and lots of things at home. Difficulties getting to work if, they can't drop a kid off at the gate and get to work, or if there's difficulties leaving the house so it can be hard, it can impact your employment.

When you have a child who can't leave the house, it means that you become housebound when they're young or if they're older and they're old enough to be left at home. If they're mentally unwell, you can't leave a child who's self-harming or in distress at home by themselves. So it can really change your life and change your connections to the community. It means that you are seeking supports that sometimes aren't there and sometimes those supports you get on a waitlist to see someone and they give you advice that's just take them to school, you know, and that's not helpful.

It's advice that's misunderstanding the nature of the distress and as something that a student should just be able to push through. But these are kids usually who have pushed through until they can no longer push through. So we're not just talking ordinary everyday anxiety, we're talking severe chronic stress situations. So it's quite stressful and our research shows huge impacts on parents and carers, mental health and physical health and wellbeing, as well as their finances and their personal resources and their connections within the community.

Lots of conflict often between family members about how best to respond, how best to support a student between coparents but also between extended family too. So it can become a topic that a parent can't speak about in their circle of support because people are just not understanding the nature of school attendance difficulties as a stress response and think it's a behavioural response, you know, they're manipulating you or they're just pushing boundaries, and you need to push back harder.

Louise Rogers: I think it's also really important for schools to recognise that when parents haven't had a lot of advice that hasn't been helpful to them or their experience hasn't been recognised and validated in conjunction with the stress of all those things Tiffany just spoke about, we can end up being quite traumatised by this experience and lose trust in the systems that we are meant to go to to find support.

Tiffany Westphal: It's important that we remember that parents have nervous systems too. And so the parent that you say that you're dealing with is also experiencing nervous system distress, you know, fight, flight or shutdown and has a lived experience of this as well that has impacted their nervous system.

Dale Atkinson: So where can educators and families go for more information?

Tiffany Westphal: So School Can’t Australia offers PD and training for educators and professionals, but we also provide support for parents and carers. So we have some resources on our website, schoolcantaustralia.com.au and we run a Facebook page as a closed peer support group for parents and carers. So some downloadable resources as well that you can share with parents and carers.

Dale Atkinson: And we'll include some of those links in the show notes. Louise, Tiffany, thank you very much for your time.

Louise Rogers: All right, thank you.

Tiffany Westphal: Thank you, thanks for your interest.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name's Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today we're joined by Jared Daley, who's assistant Principal, Equity and Inclusion at Murray Bridge High School. Jared, welcome to you.

Jared Daly: Howdy, Thanks for having me.

Dale Atkinson: So today we're talking about Tailored Learning, which is replaced Flexible Learning Options, tale of Learning is designed to support young people through a wraparound and support them to address their personal barriers. They may be having some struggles with attendance for all sorts of reasons anxiety, depression, unstable accommodation, family complexities, pregnancy, parenting, a whole variety of things. And so, we're talking to Jared about that today. Jared, tell us a little bit, first of all, about your site. What does it look like?

Jared Daly: Yeah, cool. Okay, so I suppose, moving from FLO over to Tailored Learning we’ve changed what we've got on offer, which has been a real benefit for our students. So previously we had a building called the Independent Learning Centre, which is offsite down the main street in Murray Bridge, and it had around 120 students that were engaging in the centre each year since moving to Tailored Learning the Independent Learning Centre has expanded to about 160 students offsite, and then we've been able to add a reach out program and an ILP program, which are on onsite for students in the middle years.

So yeah, it's really, I suppose, allowed us to capture the students in the middle years, and we probably found that that was a bit of a gap we had before. We were capturing sort of 16, 17, 18-year-olds in years 10, 11, and 12. But there wasn't sort of that program or opportunities for students that are in year 8 and 9 that maybe mainstream schooling wasn't working for them.

Dale Atkinson: And how have the tailored programs changed for that student cohort?

Jared Daly: Previously we actually kind of ran our own reach out program we funded it ourselves. We decided that we had a need for it one of the problems we found was we had students sort of with those anxiety around high school, or coming to schooling backgrounds in the class.

But we also had students with disengagement in the class. And when you put students that are disengaged with maybe ADHD or high levels of energy in the classroom with students with a high level of anxiety that didn't necessarily work out quite as planned. But I suppose the real benefit of tailored learning was we were able to learn from that and saw the need, that there was a need for both classes and then we were able to start up both programs and sort of now we're sort of seeing the benefits of that in students in both spaces having their own space that they can engage in.

Dale Atkinson: What are the mechanics of arranging that structurally for your staff and for your site physically look like?

Jared Daly: So obviously the Independent Learning Centre’s offsite, we rent that building. In terms of at the high school, we did a bit of reshaping of our library, I suppose, as seems to be going the way these days, school libraries and libraries aren't as used. So we shortened the space in our library and built a new wellbeing hub at the back of our library, which it used to have a quite a large conference room in there. So we turned that conference room into a classroom for the reach out space and then in terms of the, the ILP program, we were quite lucky. We had a bit of space in the modular and so we've sort of transformed one of those or two of those classrooms into a learning space for the ILP program. So I suppose fairly fortunate that we had most of the space available where I speak to quite a few other schools and hear what they've got to say and their biggest hurdle is the space where we were fortunate enough to sort of already have existing spaces available.

Dale Atkinson: That's a huge benefit. Now, in terms of, you were selected as a sample school for the Tailored Learning Program and work pretty closely with the program redesign team. What's the support there look like from the redesign team?

Jared Daly: Yeah, so they're a team of ever changing number, but I'll say half a dozen to a dozen, and they've been really supportive, whether that's, you know, from Pam up the top, Pam Kent or Sam McCaffery and then we've also, every school has their own sort of support which works alongside them as well.

So at the moment we've got Angie and Sonya and that's changed a little bit over the years, but they've been really supportive. So, whether that's from a policy and procedures or funding point of view or whatever, Tailored Learning tool or all sorts of different things that they're able to offer that support and I suppose like you said, we're fairly lucky there hasn't been huge changes for us, but I suppose for those schools venturing into the Tailored Learning space for the first time, they're able to support with all of those different, um, perspectives.

Dale Atkinson: So what kind of tailored programs have you been able to create for the students through the program.

Jared Daly: Yeah, so our Independent Learning Centre is a space for year 10 to 12 students. We just focus on SACE down there, one of the really key things that I always bang on about, and I've banged on about this morning at the Tailored Learning Leaders Day was. Each site needs to have and know their why, I suppose, our why’s for learning or re-engaging students in learning.

So the students know they're coming in to do learning. But yeah, so the independent learning centre’s a real big focus on supporting students to complete their safe or whatever their future pathway is. So, there is some young people that school's not for them, SACE isn't for them, maybe an apprenticeship, maybe moving into the workforce or supporting them to have the necessary skills and documentation to move into the workforce or future study or education or whatever it might be. With the ILP program and the reach out program back on the mainstream site I suppose it's putting those wraparounds as you said in place before. So, I suppose sometimes the curriculum takes a backseat to start with because it's about, you know, reengaging the students, making them feel safe to come back to school or onto school grounds and just feeling safe with the staff members as well.

So sometimes, you know, you can all sorts of different programs to support them with that and then when the individual's ready, then we sort of get back into that learning program and hopefully they either reengage with mainstream schooling or worst-case scenario, that sounds bad, not worst case scenario, but at least they've got the option to move on to the ILP and complete their education there.

Dale Atkinson: Now, are there any stories that stick out for you over the last couple of years since the transition in terms of how the kids have been able to interact and, and the outcomes for them?

Jared Daly: I could pick one of a number, but I suppose one really positive story is we've had a young man who was in a metropolitan high school that wasn't going so well, sort of suspension and excluded quite often in the year before he joined us I don't think he really did more than sort of 5 to 10 days at school because he was just constantly excluded. He moved up to Murray Bridge with another family member and since then he's sort of reengaged with school. He's there every day without fail loves to chat, he spent all of last year with us at the Independent Learning Centre. Chipped away at his year 11, you know, there was times during the year where I can remember he'd come up and he'd be banging on my door, and he'd be like “I've got an A” or whatever it might be. And just, yeah, to see him it sort of reengaged successfully in schooling and it's, you know, turned into this year he's moved back, not full-time to the high school, but he has been able to reengage at the high school when he is doing a certificate VET course at the high school and he is also doing a choice subject back at the high school. So it's been really cool to see him going from pretty much, not being able to attend mainstream schooling to return to education and hopefully later this year or early next year he'll achieve his SACE and you know, I can see a positive future for him he'll move into the workforce and find the thing that's right for him and yeah, that's just one of the many, many sort of positive stories.

Dale Atkinson: It's a huge outcome, very personally and professionally rewarding, I would imagine.

Jared Daly: Yeah. Yeah.

Dale Atkinson: In terms of the role of the case managers in the new settings, what does that look like and what's the relationship between you guys and the case management now?

Jared Daly: Yeah, so we're maybe a little bit different from some other schools. We employ all our own youth workers or case managers at Murray Bridge High School. One reason for that is obviously being, whether you want to call us remote or not, obviously we're a little bit further out, so services aren't as readily available in Murray Bridge. So we've always chosen employ our own youth workers where some sites do use externals which is absolutely fine, that's their prerogative. But yeah, so for us I suppose in 2023, we had four case workers at the high school providing wraparound just at the Independent Learning Centre.

Since then, at the moment we've got six at the Independent Learning Centre and four on site at the high school. So we've sort of gone from four youth workers to roughly ten or eleven. So yeah, they've been able to provide those or that wraparound support, but also create really beneficial relationships with the students and normally they're the go-to person for the students. So making the, the student feel comfortable and safe, having that safe person to go to at school, 'cause we all know sometimes the teachers all have great intentions and create really great relationships, but sometimes the students still sees that person as a teacher, where the youth worker, that case manager sort of has that more softly approach and more approachable person. So yeah.

Dale Atkinson: It’s a different relationship.

Jared Daly: Yeah, for sure.

Dale Atkinson: What are your key takeaways? What would you tell other schools about engaging with this program, with the Tailored Learning provision?

Jared Daly: Yeah, it was interesting, earlier today I was at the Tailored Learning Leaders Day and presented there, but interesting first thing this morning, Pam sort of, Pam Kent, who runs Tailored Learning or oversees Tailored Learning. She spoke about some stats of like FLO to Tailored Learning and I think it was something like 74 schools were using FLO and now it's like 113 using Tailored Learning or something like that.

And this year alone in the department, schools have hired 94 youth workers and I think without knowing all the stats, those stats show that there's been this massive need for something else. Whether COVID had a bit of an impact on that, who really knows, but I'm sure it contributed. But yeah, I think it's really benefited a lot of schools that were finding they've got a whole lot of different students with varying needs and their mainstream setting wasn't able to provide or meet the needs of a what was becoming too many young people. And Tailored Learning’s really benefited a lot of schools and been able to reengage young people anywhere from year 8 to year 12 with their learning, which is only, you know, I suppose in terms of us as a, a state and a country, it's only going to benefit us longer term if our young people are staying engaged in their education and having success. So, yeah I couldn't speak highly enough of it.

Dale Atkinson: Thank you very much Jared. The show notes will have some more information about Tailored Learning in them, so if you'd like to check out or find out more, please check out the show notes. Jared Daley, thank you very much for your time.

Jared Daly: Thanks for having me.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today we are still with the 2025 Literacy Summit topics and we are talking with Professor Louise Paatsch, who is the Deputy Director of Deakin University's Strategic Research Centre in Education.

Louise, thank you for joining us.

Louise Paatsch: Thanks very much for having me.

Dale Atkinson: So supporting preschool children's oral language development through play. How do we do it?

Louise Paatsch: Well, I think the first thing for all of us is really to think about setting up the learning environment for the children. I think, you know, for preschool educators, it's well known that play is a central tenet of all the early childhood practices. And educators are great at developing a child-centred curriculum, but it's important for us to be thinking about that environment as far as setting up activities, experiences, their interactions with others and events that occur in the environment to support that language.

Dale Atkinson: Why is play so important for developing very young children's language and communication skills?

Louise Paatsch: There's a large body of research that clearly shows that there is a strong link between young children's language acquisition and their pretend play abilities. Partly the reason for this is both play and language. They share many conceptual similarities because both are symbolic and both rely on communication within social context.

So when we look at pretend play, for example, we know that that requires an ability for the child to represent objects and actions. It's carried out through telling stories and narrative. It's about social conversation, but it's also about negotiation between peers. So what play does actually do is place high linguistic demands on children to use language within various social contexts, with a range of partners. So that's not just with peers, it's with other adults in their life, it's with educators. So what we see in play is that during that time, children have to talk about what's happening in the play. They start to identify and elaborate in their play themes.

They have to negotiate, they have to take turns with their partners. Sometimes they don't particularly want to do that, so they have to negotiate problem solving and taking the perspective of another person. So there's again, also about providing these opportunities also in play to use what we call meta-communications.

So that's when children talk about their roles, how they're gonna plan the play, and how they're gonna build the story. So, you know, for example, you know, a child might say, I'd like to be a shopkeeper, and you can be the customer and then they have to set the plot. Saying that we're in a cafe. So they have to really think about who they are in the, in the story, but also who others are and they have to talk about that as well.

Dale Atkinson: Such an important part of developing their social skills as well as many other things. Now, there are kind of three interrelated components within language. Can you tell us about what those three components are and how this is kind of unlocked through the play space.

Louise Paatsch: Yeah, absolutely. So we would say that there are three major components that are interrelated within language. And those three components are the form of language, so that takes in what we call syntax, which is around the structure of phrases and sentences. It takes in morphology, which is around the organization and the internal structure of words so that's when we might add something to a word, either at the beginning of the word or at the end of the word. So if we think about the word comfort, it might be discomfort, might be uncomfortable, for example. And then it also takes in phenology, which is basically our sound system. So the distribution and structure of sounds.

So the second component is what we call content, and that involves semantics, which is basically vocabulary or the meaning of words and how words are combined. And the third one of these major components is use, which we would call that pragmatic language, which is all about that social use of language.

So in any exchange that children have with each other, they're using all those subsystems of language to communicate their ideas and needs because they have to formulate their words into sentences, you know, if they want something like two cakes, for example then they'll have to add an S to show that it's more than one.

They'll have to put their sounds in both the sequencing and distribution of those sounds, which is phonology. Then they'll use a whole lot of different word types. So for example, they might use pronouns like I and you, they might use nouns like, dog, lady, cake, coffee. They might use conjunctions like, and, and of course lots of verbs to make them much more complex sentences.

But as children do converse with each other, they are using a really important part of that language. Which is pragmatics, which is related to the form of use. And that's all about social, so that's how children interact, how they use eye contact, how they engage with the partner, how they take on roles and turns, how they might pause, how they might greet people, how they end, how they might extend a topic.

All of those skills that are really important, but altogether these verbal and nonverbal language across all those major components are critical because it supports children to develop their sense of self. It's about building dialogue, it's about social competencies and critically it's about how they build friendships.

Dale Atkinson: So as a preschool educator standing among a swarm of very tiny people, what are the intentional teaching practices they can use to support the language and communication development?

Louise Paatsch: There are many, many strategies that educators can use, but I think one of the important things is to provide these rich, authentic and abundant opportunities for children to actually talk, and talk not just with an adult, but with a wide range of partners.

We know that it is important for educators to provide children to engage in role play, where they're able to take on the role of another person or character. It's important that educators talk with children about different words, about the language they're using. Perhaps things like intonation and other nonverbal cues, talking about stories and characters, how we communicate in different ways.

The other important thing that's come from our research is for educators to think about their own language use too. So thinking about how they model language, how they include opportunities for the social use of language with young children. They might use self-talk or parallel talk as they engage with the children.

It's important to talk about feelings and building up vocabulary around those feelings. But for some children they might need visuals to show some of these skills, particularly in pragmatics where there's turn taking. So, you know, using some of those cues of pausing and eye contact. But it's also for educators to be aware of children's communicative attempts and what they're trying to say and acknowledging that.

Again, coming back to the adult's own talk. Think about using open questions, so that enables children then to respond in a more lengthy way, in a more detailed way. Sometimes as educators, we probably talk too much and don't pause enough, so thinking about pausing and letting children just talk.

So for example, they can just ask them what's another word for something? Or what's the opposite for something? Perhaps using the sensors to describe some events, you know, how does it smell, how does it feel? And of course the talk around picture story reading, what we call this dialogic talk around the book that extends really beyond just checking for comprehension, but actually enables children to connect to their own world experiences as they read these picture story books.

Dale Atkinson: That's a really comprehensive rundown of strategies there. Now, I'm assuming all of those apply in various degrees to working with children with perhaps diverse language needs or whose speech and language comes as a difficulty to them. Are there specific approaches that educators should be considering with those cohorts of students?

Louise Paatsch: Yeah, absolutely. I think you've mentioned it, but like all children educators need to understand the needs of every child, irrespective of whether they have, a diagnosed speech or language difficulty, whether their children where English is not their first language, it's important that they find out what the child knows, what the difficulties are, and how to set up an environment to support that.

So that might mean, for example, working with some allied health professionals to understand what the difficulties the child does experience and finding from them common goals that you can support that child together rather than in contrast to the goals of what perhaps allied health professionals may set as objectives, as well as what the educators set as the objectives.

For some children, they may need visuals. So they may need lots of pictures, they may need a series of pictures to show a sequence, for example, in an event they might need a visual to show turn taking. So they hold something, for example, then it's your turn to talk, pass it over to another person, and it's their turn to talk.

So when we think of other children, say for example, children with hearing loss who use spoken language. Then it's important for educators to think about the acoustic conditions in which these children act in the classroom. So that might be ensuring that, you know, on tops of tables you might pot felt, or something that actually starts to absorb some of the echoey sounds.

I think when we are thinking about children where English is not their first language, this doesn't mean that they don't have language, it's just that they don't understand English. So I think again, it's important to support these children to go known to the unknown. So for example, in play for educators to think about what the objects are that they would put in the play scenes, for example, as they plan their environment. Being very respective of the children's culture and their background and try to perhaps put some of those things within the environment as well,

Dale Atkinson: So much to consider and apply in that space. If there was one key takeaway for, for educators to remember in their work what do you think that would be?

Louise Paatsch: I think my big one is that supporting young children's communication and language through play just continues to be of paramount importance for all children.

Dale Atkinson: Professor Louise Patch, thank you very much for your time. Now, if you want to engage a bit more with Louise's presentation from the 2025 Literacy Summit. You can go to the link below in the show notes, she's talked about presentation on Let's Play and Talk. It's a focus on the importance of intentionally supporting preschool children's oral language development through play.

Professor Louise, thank you very much for your time.

Louise Paatsch: Thanks for having me and having a discussion.

Dale Atkinson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education and today we are at the 2025 Literacy Summit, and I'm joined by Dr. Yael Leibovitch who's the lecturer and director of research with the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project and Professor Ian Wilkinson who's a professor with the Department of Teaching and Learning at the Ohio State University. Welcome to you both.

So today we're talking a little bit about the role of oracy as being integral to literacy and numeracy improvement and central to developing knowledge across the curriculum. Professor Ian, can I ask you first, what is the role of dialogic pedagogy and how does that capitalise on the power of talking to promote critical and creative thinking?

Ian Wilkinson: I think we can think of language, of talk, as the tool of tools for fostering learning, problem-solving, and understanding. And it's through talk socially that we engage with others, with other’s ideas, [00:01:00] and over time we internalise those ideas. So, I'm using Vygotsky as one way of answering your question.  So, I think this notion of using talk as a social mode of thinking, and then that there serves as a basis for internalising that way of thinking to make it our own. I think therein lies the power of talk for learning. Talk serves other functions, good functions, but as far as learning is concerned, I think that's one way of thinking about it.

The other way I like to think about it is in talking with others, I'm invoking Bakhtin who's been talked about a lot at the conference, in talking to others, I think we make meaning by juxtaposing our ideas, and it's when ideas clash, when ideas come together, something magic comes out after some time. I'm sort of doing ‘air quotes’, but in that magic that comes out of those ‘interanimations’, ‘interilluminations’, as Nystrand and Wegerif would call them, I think something magic can come out of that that goes beyond the capabilities of individual students.

Dale Atkinson: [00:02:00] So through conversations that I guess we're trying to deepen students' comprehension and reasoning. How do you create a classroom culture that supports that kind of dialogue?

Ian Wilkinson: That's a really interesting question because – let me sort of preface this – so it's culture, it's the classroom culture that makes talk function in a way we would like it to. And without that culture, you know, it doesn't matter what we say, it's not going to have any major influence. But at the same time, it's talk that fosters the culture. So, there's a reciprocity there.

But where do you begin as a teacher and try to foster that culture? And I've wondered about this a lot. I would probably take a leaf out of Philosophy for Children. And in Philosophy for Children, one of the major tenets, principles, foundations is this notion of a community of inquiry. And a community of inquiry can be talked about in many, many ways. But in establishing a community of inquiry, teachers can develop ground rules for the way they'd like talk to proceed in their classroom, [00:03:00] the way they'd like students to interact with each other, for the way they'd like students to work together.

Teachers can also move beyond those ground rules when we have a discussion, we can say what we'd like to achieve in our discussion. We can talk about ourselves as a collective. I see teachers talking about "we", "we", "we" all the time, deliberately using that language to establish community, to establish a collective identity in moving forward. And I see, you know, some certain tricks that philosophy of children use, like there's a checklist where you have students fill out the checklist and look at sort of characteristics that either epitomise a community of inquiry or do not.

So, I don't have a great answer to your question, but I do know that there are certain ways we can do that, that fosters this so-called community of inquiry. And that's really what we want in creating a classroom culture that fosters learning through talk.

Dale Atkinson: And it's such a powerful thing, that issue of comprehension within the context of sort of citizenship and democratic involvement in some respects, that being able to kind of expand out in this space allows for critical thinking. [00:04:00]

Dr. Leibovitch, using classroom discussion to help students engage with writings and interesting concepts, what's the most powerful element of introducing talk to the writing process do you think?

Yael Leibovitch: I think there's a number of powerful things that talk brings to the writing process but maybe one of the more obvious ones is that for writing to be effective it needs to be understood by the reader, right?

So, there's that social component, there's that dialogic component and so by giving students the opportunity to talk about their writing to talk through their writing and engage with others they become more aware of the experience of the audience and how the reader might understand what they're trying to convey.

And as a result they can reflect on how they're communicating or what they're trying to communicate and refine it in a way that makes it easier for us to understand for the reader, and then makes it easier for the writer to accomplish what they're trying to achieve.

Dale Atkinson: Now talk to us a little bit about what it means within context with students who’re disengaged. How does it help to foster engagement in learning?

Yael Leibovitch: Oh, I mean, dialogue's a game changer. [00:05:00] I mean, we're all human beings. We're social. We love talking. We love thinking. Even when it's cognitively demanding, we just need to be given the opportunity to talk and think and have a space where we feel comfortable to do that and comfortable to challenge ourselves and each other.

So often when students are disengaged, it's because they can't see themselves in the curriculum or they're having a hard time following along. For example, and by, you know, foregrounding or spotlighting dialogue and creating dialogue spaces, students really feel like they belong. They're part of the learning process. Their voice matters. Their thoughts matter. They have something to contribute. So, it can be quite transformative for disengaged classrooms.

Dale Atkinson: And what are some of the practical tools and practical ways that teachers can bring in more of the dialogic tools into their lessons?

Yael Leibovitch: Well, where to begin? I think one of the things is to explicitly convey to students that they have something to offer to the classroom and to their peers and [00:06:00] to the world and to help instil that belief in students to build up that confidence. I think another practical tool is by scaffolding conversations in the classroom, so being really intentional as an educator with how you're responding to the contributions that students have made and kind of encouraging the building on of each other's comments and respectful challenge and not shutting down the conversation but inviting and opening and necessitating student contribution.

Dale Atkinson: Professor Wilkinson, how is this area evolving in terms of what we understand about the importance of dialogic activities within education? What are we learning now and where do you think this is headed for us?

Ian Wilkinson: I think there have been a couple of major developments and a new one on the horizon. As far as where we are now and where things are going, engaging students in dialogue in a way that furthers their knowledge, building, understanding and problem solving can be very difficult for teachers. It sounds easy, it's not. [00:07:00]

Having a discussion about a book in a way that gives students agency. It's very difficult indeed as a teacher, and so professional development has been a key concern and continues to be a key concern in all parts of the world interested in this view of pedagogy. Another movement that's progressing very nicely is how do we assess, evaluate, monitor, talk that's going on in a classroom in a way that will further teachers' facilitation practices. And so there are various schemes, coding schemes, that are being developed in various parts of the world to help teachers reflect on the discourse, to help students reflect on the discourse and move things forward.

What's on the horizon? Well, it's very close to the horizon. AI is shaping this field so quickly. I mentioned having teachers reflect on their discourse, using AI and speech recognition and all the rest of it to record, annotate, code discourse is moving at such a pace, [00:08:00] much faster than I anticipated. And that's gonna be a game changer for this field, whether we like it or not.

There are some disadvantages, but that's the way the field is heading, and I can see that in so many areas. In my own work, some colleagues of mine and I have been thinking about how can we use AI to create an intelligent tutoring system so teachers can practice facilitation with avatars and do that in a way that's safe and easily accessible for teachers, but in a way that will really help them engage students in rich rigorous argumentation. So, it's changing the field dramatically at a pace that I didn't think was possible.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, it's an incredibly rapid evolution in that space – still a little way away perhaps for professional development now for some of our educators. What should they be thinking about? What should they be engaging with now in terms of developing their own practice in this area?

Ian Wilkinson: There have been a number of instances of very effective professional development in dialogic pedagogy and a number of instances of some very ineffective attempts at dialogic pedagogy [00:09:00] and we don't yet have an understanding of what – to be blunt – what works and what doesn't work, and I think there are quite a few attempts going on to understand what might be effective and I think we're getting there and what I think we're learning is that there are certain principles of good professional development for teachers period, in terms of engaging students, teachers collectively, co-planning, co-inquiry.

But at the same time when we're talking about dialogic pedagogy there's a whole order of complexity additional to that and things like reflection on discourse, things like understanding the role of talk moves that are contingent on what students say, and co-planning, co-inquiry and reflection are all important.

Dale Atkinson: Now you've both worked across Australia and internationally as well. I want to start with you, Dr. Leibovitch. What are the practices that you've seen that have really blown you away in terms of outstanding performance and things that teachers are doing well?

Yael Leibovitch: And not to keep on coming back to the role of culture, but I think that's crucial to [00:10:00] the creation of dialogic spaces in the classroom. So, I think when teachers have the ability to make students feel like they belong, like they're a part of the learning experience and they have something to contribute, it goes a long ways to actually then having those students contribute and engage in their learning and as students become more habituated and accustomed to doing that, it has a snowball effect where they're really able to refine their understanding, improve the contributions that they're making and build their confidence in that domain.

So, I think, I mean, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what that looks like because teachers do it in different ways, but I think conveying to students that we're all part of a team, that this is a collective endeavour, that we're gonna collaboratively work our way through that. Once students believe that their teacher's on their side and they're there to support that and scaffold that, they're willing to take intellectual risks and to engage in a more rigorous way with their learning.

Dale Atkinson: And what's the role of internet? Well, you talk about taking intellectual risks there. [00:11:00] Obviously, it's critical when you're in any group of people, the confidence to be able to kind of contribute is absolutely essential. How do we foster that within the classroom space for our students and learners?

Yael Leibovitch: I mean a simple example would be instead of asking students “What's the correct answer?”, you change that to “What do you think, and why do you think that?”. And what that does – it’s such a simple phrase – like that signals to students that what the teacher is interested in is their thoughts.

They're not interested in what's right or wrong. And so slowly as the thinking becomes kind of like the aim, the purpose, the focus, students become accustomed to sharing their thinking, they feel like it's safe, they feel like their thoughts are valued, and it lowers the stakes, it lowers the pressure. And so all of a sudden it becomes normal to go, "I used to think this, and now I think that. Wait, I'm not sure what I think."

And that's not actually a sign of weakness, that's a sign of intelligence, of thinking, of engagement, and it's something to be celebrated and something that becomes normalised. [00:12:00] So I think that's a really, really powerful way of fostering a space that people feel safe to take intellectual risks in.

Ian Wilkinson: Paulo Freire, the well-known Brazilian educator, had a move that he would routinely use when interacting with students in the classroom. And the move was very simple. So, a student might ask Freire or a teacher a question. And before answering the question, Freire would say, “Wow, that was a really nice question you asked. Before I talk to you about that, I'd love to know what others think. Let's ask Mary what she thinks. What do you think about that Mary? Would you like to talk about that?” So that move is very nice and again it gives students a sense of agency that they have something to offer and what they have to say is of value.

Yael Leibovitch: Yeah and actually I also love that move. I think that's a game changer in the classroom and like when a student asks a teacher a question instead of giving an answer you open it up for broader dialogue and it changes who kind of holds the knowledge and what they have to contribute. [00:13:00] I guess is what is exciting about dialogic teaching, but also challenging is, yes, it removes the hierarchy in the sense that we're all contributing to this dialogue.

But the teacher still has such an important role to play because they're helping to orchestrate that dialogue. They're trying to scaffold the comments that students have made. So they're still very much involved in moving that dialogue forward, but they're no longer viewed as the arbiter of knowledge. The outcome of the dialogue is a product of everyone's thinking, but the role of the teacher is not to be underestimated in then, scaffolding and orchestrating that.

Ian Wilkinson: It's an incredibly different role for the teacher to be a facilitator or to be procedurally heavy but substantively light is a phrase that you'll often hear. That's really hard to do. So much harder than you might think, but so important and that's where we need to go in changing the nature of education.

Dale Atkinson: Professor Wilkinson, what do you observe when, you know, this is in practice in schools? [00:14:00] Like, if you're a teacher out the front of the classroom, what are you looking for when you can see that this thing has kind of taken hold and students are engaging in this way?

Ian Wilkinson: Going back to this notion of the community of inquiry. I'm seeing that being played out in the way students interact with each other and as children, adult conversations where they give space for others to speak, where they go into a situation with a predisposition that they may need to change their mind, that they might want to change their mind if there's an appropriate amount of evidence that warrants doing that.

Children changing their minds on a position is a key indicator of something very powerful happening and so that's something I look for. And I also look for invitations for others to speak. I look for drawing on evidence, be it, you know, from principles, from examples, from texts that they've read. Those are the things I look for.

Dale Atkinson: [00:15:00] There's a degree of courage and bravery I think for educators sometimes in leaning into this space where if you have a syllabus in front of you or if there's a kind of clear to find text that you get to kind of step through in a kind of progressive way with the students that can be an easier entry point for a teacher. How do you – as a leader in a school – how do you free people up to really lean into this space?

Yael Leibovitch: I mean, this sounds really basic but I think it's about having conversations around what's the purpose of education and why are we in schools and why are students in classrooms and why are teachers teaching. Because as much as there’s a syllabus and a curriculum to get there, what we're doing is we're trying to prepare students to navigate life. And the successful or exciting navigation of life involves critical thinking and collaboration and communication.

And that fundamental skillset is something that comes through our guides or is engaged with when we are creating dialogic spaces. So, while it might feel scary to, you know, not follow a strict lesson plan in terms of how we're communicating content, what we're actually doing is acknowledging the humanity of everyone that's in that classroom [00:16:00] and trying to develop young people into human beings that are complex and can navigate the complexities of our world and can be empathetic and can be respectful and collaboratively reason to come to effective decisions.

And a theme that came out today is that, you know, arguably we need this now more than ever. And so if we can just sit down and reflect and take the time to go, you know, what is the purpose of education and why are we here, I think we'll be able to find a justification for leaning into a dialogic stance to education.

Dale Atkinson: Ultimately always comes back to purpose. Professor Wilkinson, Dr. Leibovitch, thank you very much for your time.

Ian Wilkinson: Thank you.

Yael Leibovitch: Thank you.

Dale Atkinson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Teach a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today we are at the 2025 Literacy Summit and we're with Professor Rupert Wegerif and Professor Debra Myhill. Welcome to you both.

Rupert Wegerif: Welcome.

Debra Myhill: Welcome. Yeah. Thank you.

Dale Atkinson: Now Debra, we've just brought you off the stage for the closing address, uh, where you were talking about a presentation. I'm gonna give the title here a ‘Sea of Talk, why Oracy Matters in Literacy Learning. Why does oracy matter?

Debra Myhill: Well, because it's foundational to all learning. It's no accident that we learn to talk before we learn to read and write, uh, and when we are learning to talk as young children, we're making sense, not just of language, but of ourselves and our world, and then everything that follows reading and writing is linked to that notion of making sense of ourselves and our world.

Dale Atkinson: And what's the role of the teacher in this?

Debra Myhill: Fundamental, I mean the, the, you can learn through talk in all sorts of different settings, informal settings, [00:01:00] family settings.

So it's not that the only place that you learn through talk is schools or educational settings, but the role of the teacher is, important because there are goals in mind. I suppose what's different about education is that you are there for a purpose. And so the teacher is needed to lead that talk, to facilitate the talk, but also I think to teach children about how to do that kind of talk.

It may not be a natural way of talking, and that they have to learn how to do that, how to manage disagreement, how to manage uncertainty, how to recognise that actually the teacher isn't after a right answer. But Rupert could say a lot more about that than,

Rupert Wegerif: Oh, no, no, that's excellent times. Yes.

Dale Atkinson: Now, in terms of the teacher, not like searching for the right answers as it were.

Um, what does the classroom practice look like from an educator in this when they're trying to activate the oracy in this space?

Rupert Wegerif: Well the teacher could be a model. It's in a way, as [00:02:00] Debra was saying earlier, it's about the dialogic stance, so you can see that very clearly, just how you respond to a question.

Some teachers feel very uncomfortable when they don't know the answer and they're trying to give the authoritative answer. But other teachers who genuine thinkers themselves, it is something you can't just imitate. You actually have to, unfortunately, I think you have to think, and when someone asks you a question, you can say, well, I don't know.

What do other people think? How would we find out any ideas? You know, and you can model that process of shared inquiry, which ultimately I think is something we want to induct them into. It's more scientific than a sort of idea that you have this authoritative knowledge you're transmitting.

Dale Atkinson: So what's being activated socially and mentally for the kids when you're approaching it in this kind of dialogic way.

Rupert Wegerif: You know, you're transferring authority, you're encouraging them to think, well, yes, actually I am the agent of my own thinking. I can think things [00:03:00] through. And at the end of the educational process, you want, uh, kids, children, students who are able to think for themselves and have their own motivations and projects, and it's kind of important in this day and age that we instil that confidence in them. I think it was Debra who told me that, uh, it's a bit of a slightly different issue, but the main difference between, I worked with Debra for many years in Exeter and she taught me everything I know, head of the faculty, uh, she was pointing out that what you're getting with private education and the independent schools in England are, are very influential.

It isn't a different kind of knowledge, it's a different kind of confidence. It's the sense that you can do it and that you have a right to think for yourself. And we should give that to all children. And that's what dialogic education does. Takes them seriously, listens to them.

Dale Atkinson: Interesting point there around building confidence within the learners. Within the South Australian public schools, there's obviously an incredibly [00:04:00] diverse student body. Lots of different language backgrounds, lots of different cultures, and those with varying degrees of speech and language difficulties. Is this still applicable? To all, or is this just going to work within spaces where they already have that confidence?

Debra Myhill: I think it's particularly important for groups who aren't part of what you might call the, the, the standard or the norm because it is a way of giving them a voice. It's a way of being more genuinely inclusive rather than expecting students simply to integrate into the normal ways of working in the classroom.

I think with um, things like children who've got English is an additional language or Indigenous languages that they've got at home. You don't want them to think they've got to leave those languages at the door when they come into school and can only talk in English and the dialogic talk, you can have dialogue.

There was one of the examples in one of the sessions I went, was in today where someone was talking about the different proverbs that occur in different languages that often [00:05:00] mean the same, have the same message, but they're expressed in different ways in different languages and children were talking about the ways different languages, express those things, and that's enabling for children who bring a different language into the classroom. So for me, part of being, making classroom and learning classrooms and learning more equitable and inclusive is recognising that there is a place for the dialogic for everybody and obviously wherever, whoever you've got as your learners.

Where you’re starting from is different. Now, obviously, if you've got a different language at home, you may not be able to think in English in the same way that you can think in your home language. And teachers can facilitate that in the classroom by, you know, having opportunities for them to think in their home language first before they say it in English.

There's all sorts of strategies that can be used to help that, but yes, it's not, dialogic talk is not only for the standard groups.

Dale Atkinson: What are the skills that we are [00:06:00] looking to develop in educators or that they should be looking to develop in themselves to activate this?

Debra Myhill: I think for me it's been critically reflective about what learning's happening in your classroom.

And for me that's partly because education, probably not so much in Australia, I don’t know, but in England has become very mandated, narrowed, scripted, and people have forgot to question. What learning's really going on here? And I think that teachers who can reflect on, well, we've done this, we've talked about that, they all gave me the right answers.

Have they really understood? One of the things about dialogic talk that I don't think any of us have talked about today is that if you do create a dialogic classroom where you are really getting children to express what they think for a teacher, you can often assess where their learning is more effectively than any other tests that you do 'cause you actually hear where they are so you can build their learning from that.

Dale Atkinson: It's interesting that you talk about the interface between the kids in that space and hearing them [00:07:00] learning and using teacher judgment technology and particularly the eyes of AI, is something that's very much in the minds of educators and how this might apply and work. What are the risks and opportunities that exist with technology in terms of activating dialogic interactions in classrooms?

Rupert Wegerif: Well, the risks that many teachers are mentioning are mainly concerned that the students aren't thinking for themselves. They're just asking their Chat GPT or or other AIs are available, uh, for the answer and just thinking, oh, that's enough. And they're putting, putting that down. And there's quite good evidence that they're learning far less from homework than they used to with this approach.

And surveys are suggesting that that fear is entirely well grounded. That there’s been surveys suggesting that as the use of AI increases, the development of critical thinking decreases so that that's, uh, a problem. But that's exactly why we need a dialogic education approach [00:08:00] 'cause what are these students doing?

They're in a system that incentivises just giving the pat answers and getting a tick, and that's their only motive. If their motive was actual curiosity and learning, then the AI is an incredible tool. So, we need to teach them how to use it as a learning assistant, how to interrogate it, ask it questions, get it to expand the range of perspectives and take their projects forward.

So I think for me it's an opportunity, but clearly many people see it as very dangerous.

Dale Atkinson: I think there's always an opportunity, but there's always a risk as well. There's a, an element of comfort, I think for parents and education systems as well, and sometimes schools around having a standard by which you can judge where a student is at in this space and ability to have a correct or incorrect answer is very useful in that space to understand exactly where these kids are at.

How do we communicate and prioritise this as an approach within the education system when sometimes there are some perverse [00:09:00] incentives to go after the score?

Debra Myhill: You change your assessment system. I mean, I think one you, you said that sense that every teacher wants to know what grade their children's at.

For me, one of the problems with systems that are heavily orientated around high stakes assessments mandated nationally is that that isn't what the teachers are doing the assessments for. They're doing it for that instrumental purpose of we've got to get those grades 'cause we'll be judged by them, if not, but nine times out of 10, the teacher knows where the child's at, so in fact, they don't need the assessments to know where the child is at. I would like to see teachers become even more proficient at assessment that doesn't require you to do a test that's got a number attached to it but is much more focused on student learning.

What is it they can do? What is it they can't do, and what do they need to do next would be the fundamental assessment questions, and really it should be a live activity and it should be happening all the time in your interactions with children, and that's where I think [00:10:00] the dialogic stuff is important because through those interactions, the teacher does see where children are at and misconceptions can often come out that way.

So I've got very little faith in formalised written assessments as a tool for learning. They're largely just a tool for accountability, which is a different function.

Dale Atkinson: Certainly is. In both of your travels, what are the things that you observe in a classroom environment where this is really humming, like this is going really well, the teacher's got complete mastery of the classroom using some of these techniques, what are you seeing? What should you know, leaders and educators been looking out for?

Debra Myhill: Well, I, I think I would say there, you'd see it in the relationships and interactions that occur reflect a sense that learning isn't fixed.  That knowledge isn't fixed, but it is developing and growing.

Well, you'd see it in the nature of the interactions of teachers with children [00:11:00] because you'd, you'd see that they aren't just searching for one right answer. In particular, you'd see that the teacher is capable of really listening to what children say, um, and builds on what the child says for the next question. And it doesn’t have to be a question? It could just be a prompt or a statement. It's not all about questioning. So you see people working together to learn. And one of the things I would say is it isn't necessarily easy to do that any teacher, you know, with a real classroom, with some naughty kids in the corner or whatever. The pressures to revert back to very teacher controlled, management oriented ways of learning, I think is very powerful. But if you are in a classroom like that over time, what you see is those naughty children do often change because suddenly they feel they actually have a voice, a real voice, not a fake voice. And I think that really matters.

Dale Atkinson: Seems like a lot of roads lead back to student agency in all of this [00:12:00] control and some sort of input and feeling of, uh, involvement in their own learning. It's such a powerful thing for, for a young person. Rupert your keynote presentation was titled Dialogue as an Aim of Education as well as a means of education.

What's the difference between those two things and how are they the same?

Rupert Wegerif: We have shown that through dialogic education approaches, you can achieve better results on the sort of standardised tests that Debra was just a bit uncomfortable about. So you can use it as a tool to, to achieve results. But I actually think it's important for everybody involved, parents, teachers, and students to have a vision of what education is, is for, and that vision makes a big difference so that when you are deciding as a policy maker or, or as a teacher, just when you're deciding on your activities and your response, when a child asks you your question. I think if you realise that your aim is to expand dialogue as to say, to [00:13:00] initiate thinking, to explore multiple perspectives and widening the dialogue, to deepen it, to question your assumptions and to understand that that is your goal.

Your goal isn't to get lots of right answers on a test. Your goal is to develop the sort of wise people who are able to see multiple perspectives and able to listen to alternative points of view without just rejecting them with a possibility of learning from them. And that's kind of what we're trying to do, both wise individuals, but also collectively for well, the future of the planet is actually, we should be thinking about promoting the possibility of dialogue, collaboration, and collective intelligence to solve the kind of challenges that we face. So it's important. An example. I, I'll give though. 'cause you know, I, I, I'm sorry carrying on I talk too much, but I mentioned, uh, in, in the talk, uh, the OECD. They've been promoting a human capital vision of education, which is [00:14:00] something to do with GDP and economies and so on, and they're getting a lot of kickback from people who aren't too happy at the suicide rates. And, and so they are, they're actively exploring, and already committed to a human flourishing model.

And that immediately made me realise that's why they're cutting all the arts and the theatre and they're just going for STEM and they're going for the results because of their vision of what education is. And if we just switch it from the top down to human flourishing, it would bring back the arts. Because you'd have to, for wellbeing, you have this chance through drama, through literature to understand yourself and the meaning of your own life and to, uh, work in communities so you'd have more, you know, music festival. My point is that the vision of education from the top makes a difference. And I'm proposing, I mean, I like flourishing, it's a bit vague, but I think expanding dialogue is a good one and we should go with that as well.

Dale Atkinson: I think expanding dialogue and you said earlier, developing wise people is a mission [00:15:00] statement, is a, is a fairly good summary. Dr. Wegerif, Dr. Myhill, thank you very much for your time. O

Rupert Wegerif: Oh, thank you.

Debra Myhill: Brilliant. Thank you.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education. And today we're talking about gender and sexual diversity in SA schools. There are many students in our schools who identify as LGBTQIA+. They have unique perspectives and experiences that educators need to be aware of and to consider in their day-to-day practice. Today we're going to explore the in-school experiences of students who identify as gender diverse.

We're going to discuss a little bit about how schools in SA are and can provide safe and inclusive environments for those students and provide a bit of an overview of the frameworks that can help schools better serve those communities. Before we start, I just want to acknowledge that the LGBTQIA+ acronym is evolving and used differently across groups in the community and it doesn't recognise Aboriginal cultural diversity. So we want to assure all our listeners that we value and recognise all identities, and that we know the acronym doesn't include everyone.

Topics in the episode may be of a sensitive nature today for some listeners and may bring up issues or experiences that have been or are currently distressing. If you need support, please seek assistance from one of the services listed in our show notes.

Today, we're lucky to be joined by Willow, who's a Year 11 student at Charles Campbell College, Taylor Goodwin, who's the wellbeing leader at Charles Campbell College, and by Yvonne Kranixfeld, who's the Senior Policy Officer for Diversity and Inclusion within the Department for Education in the wellbeing team. Welcome to all of you.

Willow: Thank you for having us.

Taylor Goodwin: Pleasure to be here.

Yvonne Kranixfeld: Yes, thank you.

Dale Atkinson: First of all, Willow, maybe to you, can you describe yourself until the listeners a little bit about who you are?

Willow: Yeah, I'm Willow. I am 17 years old, transfeminine, so you know, male to female. And I've been almost three months on HRT, which is hormone replacement therapy. I like playing Warhammer, especially a lot of just like painting the figures I find is very fun. In general, I just really like doing art, just whatever comes to mind, scribble it. I like playing video games like most Gen Z folks currently doing a second play through a Baldur's Gate 3 and just the other typical – engage in media – like watch movies, read books. I've been reading House of Leaves recently.

Dale Atkinson:

Can you talk a little bit about how you describe your schooling experience as someone who is gender diverse?

Willow:

Well, among teachers I am treated very much the same as the other students, which is good most of the time when it comes to stuff like pronouns. If they're not sure, they will just refer to me as they, which I do not mind. Among students, things can be pretty different. Most students are alright, but of course there are a fair few out there who take issue with trans people, but I suppose that is something that will be discussed today.

Dale Atkinson:

Yeah, I think it will be Willow. So thank you very much for coming on. We really appreciate your time. You just spoke a bit about how, you know, the experience with the teachers has been quite good, but a little bit different or variable with your student colleagues You talk about what that's done to your sense of belonging and connection with the school community?

Willow:

Yeah, I mean like I mostly feel belonging among my friendship circle because they're the ones I talk to of course and are very understanding and accepting of me, and I just, it's almost kind of, I wouldn't say it's more alienating when there are students I know or, like, people who have made comments, and to me can feel alienating because, you know, I'm different.

Dale Atkinson:

Now you've taken quite a proactive approach, I think, within the school community to finding a home and also kind of reaching out and making connections. Can you tell us a little bit about what that experience has been like and the actions that you're involved with and you've taken in that space?

Willow:

Yeah me and, like, when it comes to stuff like making friends I struggled quite a bit for a while but I just found myself with those circles and when it comes to other things like the school's pride club I do occasionally attend and have met some people in there. Being one of the older students I have a bit of a role model kind of role to them.

Dale Atkinson:

And I might throw it to Taylor now, the wellbeing leader, Charles Campbell College. Can you talk about how the staff at your school, like, confidence is always an issue within these areas, there can sometimes be some anxiety about, you know, not doing the right thing or being perceived to behave in a way that isn't inclusive. Can you talk about how you've helped teachers to gain confidence and understanding in their own capacity in this area?

Taylor Goodwin:

Absolutely. I think staff sometimes feel like language is evolving quite quickly, but there are some quite deep roots in where this language is evolving from. So it's not something that has just appeared, it actually has a lot of historic basis. We've done training and development to upskill teachers, and we had a really good speaker, Aud Mason Hyde, actually have a in a really non-confronting way, just to upskill teachers about how to approach issues and how they can develop comfort in making mistakes, specifically around language and terminology and how to quickly move past where a mistake is made. And that is maybe misidentifying gender as an example of that. Students can feel anxious, Willow mentioned, having that they/them pronouns used, maybe because of an uncertainty.

So still a teacher trying to relate, but still not knowing the full complexity of that narrative. So we've done training and development. We've also had leaders attend training and development and bring that learning back within the school. And I feel like we do have a pretty consistent staff that have a stronger knowledge about how to handle the issues when they arise. I think it might be good just to make note that even one affirming person can have a significant change. And so sometimes that change takes time, but whenever a student does come to actually express themselves to you, it's a really vital moment and making sure you're following those gender affirmation plans to really support a young person in that vulnerable stance, because I think that's a huge part of change as well.

So even if you are at a site where that progress is slow, still making sure that you are someone who weighs the flag because we see statistically how much an impact that even one trusted adult can make on a young person going through gender identity or a part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Dale Atkinson:

Taylor, that's such a strong message. Thank you very much. Now, this is a difficult question considering that you're sitting next to one of your educators there, Willow. But what do you perceive is working well within the school space for you and what might be different or made different and better for you?

Willow:

Yeah, well, I see that a lot of effort has been made among teachers to just, Like, educate and inform them about, like, the queer students and not necessarily peer-to-peer but just active engagement with the other teachers. And there are and set up like Wear It Purple Day, for example, or IDAHOBIT, which is a good effort. There is like a real difference between the teachers and the students because of course, as I mentioned previously students and kids can be mean, you know, that's just how it is sometimes. For the longest time bullying has been a problem in schools anyway that hasn't properly been solved.

Dale Atkinson:

Willow, is there something that a teacher has done that's made a big difference for you through your student career?

Willow:

Well, mostly I found it in the little things, like the other day an English teacher referring to me as ‘she’. That’s really just like, wow, it's cool to be recognised like that and not so much in just, like, what identity I have done – integrated that in some of my work before like in year 10 health and this year psychology, writing about gender dysphoria and how that can impact wellbeing. I have got support from teachers of course, but yeah it's mostly just ‘hey you're safe around me’ – that's cool.

Dale Atkinson:

Is there a message that you'd give to teachers and principals at other schools about being gender diverse within a school and how that can be accommodated and recognised and incorporated into the school life.

Willow:

Yeah, well, my journey at the school, I have done things like getting my gender changed on the role and for others to trans students, there'd be things like name change and that sort of stuff. Like, I think Charles Campbell is pretty progressive because as I mentioned before, events like Wear It Purple Day are really affirming of being recognised and supported. You could definitely take the more active kind of role in a way of just having talked with students and making sure that they're okay, but it's kind of weird of me to say that, like, someone will show up for help and I'm like ‘no I'm fine’, and then, yeah, like you find that with a lot of students, they’re just not really wanting it, it's not that they don't want help, it's just that they don't really want confrontation.

Dale Atkinson:

Yeah, that's always a challenge. I might throw it to Taylor now, listening to that, what does that make you think about in terms of if the journey of your school is undertaken and where you are now, but where you want to go?

Taylor Goodwin:

Yeah, look, I've seen, I guess, significant shift in our school and how we've handled issues surrounding this topic. I guess our overarching principles are belonging and student agency. So I guess for our part we have a priority focus on our pride group because we know the data sees that as a risk category group who can be more prone to experiencing bullying and that having a strong effect on them.

But bigger picture than that as well is building belonging for all. And we speak to the Pride Club and actually congratulate the Pride Club students about how their output such as IDAHOBIT and Wear It Purple actually provided templates for other students to develop their own sense of identity and belonging. One can be seen as more nonconformist, but their efforts really empower other students within our site to move forward in their own journey too, and actually find their own voices, which is pretty powerful.

Dale Atkinson:

Both you and Willow have kind of identified and talked a little bit about how this is a cohort of kids and students who typically have experienced bullying at a higher rate, have psychological issues sometimes as a result of some of those activities. Can you talk about how your school has addressed homophobic and transphobic student behaviour?

Taylor Goodwin:

We had essentially 2 years ago a Pride Club event which had almost an oppositional reaction from some students within the school. And I guess the part that is driving that force is equally and ironically those individual students own sense of self and their own sense of belonging. And when we look at bullying there are certainly individual factors that can impact on a young person's position to bully, but there are also a lot of evidences that show it is mainly developed through poor social connection.

So it's actually bringing those students aside and having restorative conversations. When we initiate Pride Club events, they're student driven. So we can clearly identify that this is student agency that has pushed us to the point. If a student brings forward an idea that is opposite of what we're trying to achieve. It's simply to bring that student aside and reassure them that our school is a safe site and an inclusive site, and the belonging of pride students is belonging for all.

So I think those restorative conversations, of course, we follow behaviour policies and sometimes you do need to activate a more serious sequence in a punitive type form, but normally I found by actually connecting students, having conversations, giving them education around what we're trying to do as a site, normally is the biggest impact for us and we've seen huge growth from that initial origin of having those oppositional reactions. We've held 4 events since we've re-energised our Pride Club and had those conversations – we haven't had one behaviour response at any of those events since we started to take the more restorative approach.

Dale Atkinson:

Yeah that's an incredible outcome. Now any wellbeing program, the individual components never act in isolation from each other and part of it is about creating a culture across a site that you know is the culture that you want to build as a school. How have you brought the entire cohort of students, teachers, families along on this journey, what's been the process of engagement in that space?

Taylor Goodwin:

The starting point for us is certainly student agency. So I guess when I walked into the Pride Club and I took my role, it was simply there to be a facilitator and my first step was to listen. We elected a student president who then at the forefront advised us really on what they needed to see at the school, the community level, what they wanted to achieve.

And that's really important because when driving that Pride Club, those students don’t have to be the advocates, and there’s lots of students who can take up that pathway, and we can simply setup a safe space for students. It doesn’t have to be an action group. We were fortunate in that our Pride Club was heavily focused on the actions, and wanted to achieve different outcomes in our school. And so by letting them drive – I was a strong facilitator but I actually got to step back a lot and let them lead the way and that's been fantastic for us and like I said that justifies very heavily to the community when it is coming from the young person at the coalface because they are identifying their needs and wants, how they can see their identity within the school and how we can make it a safer space.

So my stepping stone would be student agency as the first step and that will naturally, with natural momentum, bring other people along. And then that's also giving them some empowerment to actually network and talk to other teachers in the school, attend meetings, have conversations, follow through and know they'll be supported in those conversations because behind the scenes, we've also engaged in some training and development around those motives as well.

Dale Atkinson:

Yeah, that baseline of student agency. It's a theme that kind of keeps coming up again and again in this podcast. Yvonne, we know as a department that a sense of belonging for all students is really important, but that some of our students face more challenges and more head winded issues as a result of societal issues and other issues. And prioritising their mental and emotional wellbeing has got to be one of our things that we go after in order to support their academic achievements. For the LGBTQIA+ group of students, why has that been defined as a priority cohort?

Yvonne Kranixfeld:

We know that gender diverse intersex and sexually diverse children and young people are a priority or a marginalised cohort or group of people because they are more vulnerable than the general population for various reasons. So they've got limitations or they're compromised in terms of their access to opportunities or rights, they're more likely to experience harassment, discrimination within school and outside of school. This group of children and young people experience much higher rates of harassment, discrimination and violence and those negative experiences really have a compounding impact on their wellbeing.

So when that's happening outside of school in their families, in their communities and at school it really minimises the ability for those young people to learn because their internal resources are really spent on being on watch, responding to those microaggressions and responding to misgendering and those sorts of things that are happening every day, maybe sometimes before they've even gotten through the front gates.

Dale Atkinson:

So what resources are available from the Department to schools to help them support this group of students?

Yvonne Kranixfeld:

So the Department has quite a range of resources and support available to staff. Starting from the very top, we've got a minister, we've got a chief executive, we've got senior executives that are and throughout the whole Department of Education that are really highly committed to addressing that imbalance in wellbeing that LGBTQIA+ children and young people experience in schools. So to start we've got a mandatory policy and procedure that all schools, all children's centres, preschools everywhere needs to comply with.

We've got policy advice, so phone calls, emails, absolutely any reason big or small, we respond to those. We've got an expert consultant who we can bring on board for when there are those particular issues or situations that might require some more ongoing levels of support for some more complex issues. And then we've got two professional learning options that are designed to improve understanding of the basic terminology, obligations of staff and that whole school inclusive approach.

And so we've got an average of about 200 staff a month that register for the online module and that's available to all department staff. And we've had over 2000 staff complete the whole of school face-to-face training option as well. And that receives really positive feedback for how that's improved staff, understanding and confidence in responding to gender-diverse, intersex and sexually diverse students and understanding their obligations. Beyond that we've got multiple department policies, approaches, guidelines, action plans etc that specifically highlight LGBTQIA+ children and young people as a priority group like the bullying prevention, camps and excursions, policy, suicide prevention action plan, things like that.

So the Department really recognises that they are a priority cohort. The Department's Strategy for Education, areas of impact, equity and excellence, wellbeing, that again recognising that the potential of every student really lies in that individual understanding of wellbeing and what it means to be themselves at school. I'd encourage anyone to go and have a look at the EDi page, so the Gender and Sexual Diversity EDi page. We've just added some new information and resources there, so that's a great source of information to support staff.

Dale Atkinson:

And of course the links and information are available in the show notes, so please you know feel free to access those and explore as much as possible and Yvonne and her team are also available when required to provide advice, should you seek it. My throwback to you, Willow, to have the final word, I think. So the listeners of this podcast are predominantly educators from across the state. Is there a message that you'd like to give to teachers and principals and leaders about how they can improve the life of students like yourself?

Willow:

Well, the best thing I could say is, just recognise their identity because recognition is very important even for someone like myself. It is kind of a surprise when someone actually uses the correct pronouns and my brain kind of goes off like ‘whoa, that's that's really cool’. Yeah, and it's just good to be nice to other people because that in itself is kind of rewarding I know that there are a lot of people out there who just don't really understand that but among teachers, principals, general authority figures, because you know the students that you teach are like the next generation of adults in society. It's best to recognise and accept them for who they are and support them, much like how Mr. Goodwin went on about student agency.

Dale Atkinson:

Thank you very much. I think that's a really good sentiment, Willow. Again, as we said at the top of this episode if you do need support please seek assistance from one of the services listed below on our show notes. Willow, Taylor, Yvonne, thank you very very much for your time.

Yvonne Kranixfeld:

Thank you.

Willow:

Thank you for having me.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach Podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today's episode has a bit of an international flavour. We are joined by Ron Berger, who's the acclaimed senior advisor for EL (Expeditionary Learning) Education, a bestselling author and Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor, and also Gwyn ap Harri, who's the Chief Executive Officer of the XP Schools Trust, which is in the UK, Ron joins us from the US. Welcome to you both.

Gwyn ap Harri: Thank you.

Ron Berger: Thanks. Thanks for having us.

Dale Atkinson: Now you are both spending quite a bit of time in South Australia lately, and the reason you are here is that you are working with some of our schools to explain the philosophy of education that you have developed through Gwyn you opening a school and Ron through your many, many years of working with schools and school systems to help to drive improvement.

My first question, Gwyn, as somebody who started a school. What would possess somebody to do such a thing?

Gwyn ap Harri: It's, it's funny people say that, like who starts a school? But when we decided, when me and Andy, my colleague, decided to open a school, it was like we didn't have a choice. So we went over to America and we saw these amazing schools, high tech, high being one in San Diego, but we saw King Middle in Portland, Maine, Springfield, Renaissance, in Massachusetts.

And we couldn't unsee what we saw, we couldn't, we knew that we could replicate elements of those schools in England, and if we were to go back and just carry on doing what we were doing, we would be charlatans and we, me and Andy both felt that we had no choice but to do something. We first tried to do it in Andy's existing school 'cause he was a head teacher of an existing school.

But that it had no mandate for change, it was a strong school and we wanted to change a lot of things. So then we ended up going down the route of opening a new school and there was a strategy from the government of the time to open a new school and, and that's what we did. So, when people say like, why do you do it, or who does that? It was really like, we didn't have a choice.

Dale Atkinson: What was it about the philosophy and approach of the schools that you visited in the US that was particularly appealing, that gave you that compulsion to follow on?

Gwyn ap Harri: Yeah, very, very clear. Uh, so personally myself, I was always asking myself this question when I thought about schools, is that.

I'd have done okay in any school I can remember things, so I can do well in tests, but when I went to the schools in Expeditionary Learning schools. I felt that if I went to those schools, I would be a better person. And that really fundamentally hit me and I knew that we wanted to do that for the kids in Doncaster.

Dale Atkinson: And it's that kind of connection, I think, with being a better person. So the education and development of the individual, of the child as a whole being, which I think Ron, you focused on in your work fairly substantially over the last 50 years. What brought you to that approach as the meaning and purpose of education?

Ron Berger: Well, I don't think it's possible to separate academics and character. Schools often think, well, we're here to teach academic skills. And character growth happens at home or at church, or at some other, on the football pitch, whatever. But schools have no choice to teach character because we are all doing it all day long anyway.

The very experience of going to school shapes who a person is, and it makes them more respectful and responsible and courageous or less so. Our schools are already shaping kids deeply for 6, 7, 8 hours a day, and we have to do it intentionally and positively rather than haphazardly. And so, the focus of EL education and of Gwyn's XP schools is, we never say, this part of the day is academics, and this part of the day is character. In your maths class, in your history class, in the service work, you are working on your character all day long and the faculty and staff are modelling that character. I come from America, this is a tough time in America, just to be candid.

And it is a tough time in the world because there are people right now whose character is not great. Who have a lot of power in the world, and we need to be leaning into creating the kind of human beings that we want to be running our world. Like they, we can't separate, we want. Smart people who are also good people.

Dale Atkinson: You started your journey in a small school in Massachusetts, in a poor rural area. Yes. What was it about working in that environment that has informed your approach over the last many decades?

Ron Berger: Well, it's true. I still live in a very small rural town, and my town is so small that I was the only upper primary teacher in this town for a long long time. So I was teaching there for 28 years. What it means is that basically everyone in my town is my former student, and when your nurse is your former student and the policeman is your former student and the all the volunteer fire department, are your former students and your plumber is your former student, and your electrician is your former student, you realize, I just don't care only about test scores.

Like I need these people to be good human beings who are really good at what they do. I need them to have a really strong work ethic and high standards for the work that they do, because my life is in their hands, really, and I mean, literally, my life is in their hands.

My wife had a, a serious accident at home, I was not home and she called emergency services, and everyone who showed up to save her life was my former student. And so it's an easy reminder every day for me that we need to care about people who are good, courageous, kind, respectful human beings that are also really good at what they do, that they have the highest standards for their work.

And you know, my wife was saved because my former students had that. So it helps me not be reductionist that the whole point of school is to get kids ready for exams because I live among all my former students. And I think the point of school is to create the kind of citizens and human beings that we wanna live around and live with who take care of our lives.

Dale Atkinson: Now Gwyn, part of the philosophy of XP schools is a kind of relentless focus on the quality of work, but combined with character growth, how do those two things work together to make for a great education experience for the kids, and how do you enact both those elements?

Gwyn ap Harri: So I think one of the keys to enable both of those things to happen is for our work, for the work, the students' work to not just exist in the classroom.

Our kids learn things in order to create a product that often exists outside of the classroom, outside of the school and in our communities. So it gives our children, a purpose beyond themselves, beyond their personal individual test scores and they are learning for a purpose to create a product. And that product could be physical or digital, it could be scientific, it could be artistic.

So examples are, if you go to Waterstones, the bookshop in Doncaster. There's a whole shelf of books that our kids have published on the history of and legacy of the coal mining industry and Doncaster, the rail industry, the National Health Service. If you get off the train at Doncaster and you're lucky enough to be in the first class lounge, you'll see the legacy of the railway industry in terms of steam engines that were created, such as the Flying Scotsman and the Mallard, and you can walk through any of our towns with the XP schools that are in there, and you can see the legacy of our kids' work. So when our kids are creating work that's important to them, not only just to them but the community, and if you walk in the woods, it says, what can you find in the woods today?

It not only creates a sense of purpose, but like Ron said, you can't separate character and work. So in order to create the best work that they can, because it's public, they've got to activate their courage and their craftsmanship and quality, their integrity to the subject. They've got to work hard, they've got to invite critique.

They've got to do more than one iteration of the work, like we do. You know, our first draft, is never normally our best yet in most schools. That's the piece of work that you get judged on. So I think that's a key, really a key difference is that our kids get smart to do good in the world and to do it through creating products and giving them a legacy by placing them in the community

Dale Atkinson: and placing it in the community is really the key point here, isn't it? That for these students, and Ron I might to throw to you, for students grounding the work within the broader community, the broader place they live. Is a really powerful tool for engaging them in their learning, but also making meaning of that learning for them.

Ron Berger: Exactly, yeah and we try to do this all over America, but I don't know any example better than what Gwyn and the XP schools are doing in England, but it's so often the case that kids go to school because they're supposed to, and they do their lessons because they're supposed to, but they don't actually see the importance of it in their lives or in the world. That's very different in the schools that we're privileged to work with. These kids feel like they're on a mission to do something important, and the work that they do ends up.

In a public product that helps the world or a performance or something that, an action in the world that helps the world. So they take it really seriously because it has meaning not in their future, not like someday you will be using the maths or the language work you're doing, the history. Someday when you're an adult, you might find this useful. No, it's like right now you need to know this stuff because you're going to be interviewing these people and they're local heroes and no one knows their story and you have to know the history behind this, and you need your interview skills, and you need your note taking skills, and you need then to learn to edit that work to make a book honouring their service.

And so it's like you need to get smart right now. You need to build your skills right now because your work matters in the world. I.

Dale Atkinson: Well, it's an incredible link between learning and active citizenship. Which goes back to exactly what you're talking about in terms of how we prepare these kids for a world of increasing complexity and the kinds of changes and influences that we're seeing to democracy in in recent years.

Ron Berger: Exactly right. And I think we can teach a civics class and hope that that will make kids active in the democracy. But if the civics class is only content, if it's only, this is the structure of government in Australia, this is the structure of government in the UK, or that's just content for them. But if kids get active in the democratic process of, oh, how do we make things better? What are the steps to improving our community? That creates a connection with their heart, which is, I need to connect my life to making good through our democracy, which is a very different approach.

Dale Atkinson: We're seeing a trend in Australia and, and I think internationally as well, towards increasing standardization within education and certainly an appetite toward direct explicit instruction within schools. The motivation being lifting kind of standards of literacy and numeracy as drivers. Now, sometimes there's kind of references and inherent tension between direct instruction and perhaps giving students more control and agency over their learning. Gwyn, have you had to reconcile that and if so, how have you done that?

Gwyn ap Harri: Well, we use direct instruction too in our schools and classrooms, but that's not the only mode of instruction that we use. We have many different protocols that we use, and direct instruction is one. So we don't limit our teachers to just one mode, I don't see the advantage of that.

We've got to be really careful around our positionality as teachers, because most teachers only see, might just view themselves and how they were good students and how they could turn up and attend and engage and listen for an hour. And most of our kids, you know in England we talk about the forgotten third. That a third of our kids don't do that. So we've, we've got to be really careful as a profession and as practitioners around our professionality where there's a lot of work that we have to do in order to get kids to school, lower the barriers to learning of our kids. I'm sure there are tensions around that in Australia as well, where we have to do a lot of work to get those kids into school. And it's the same with engaging in the different protocols around teaching. So direct instruction is one protocol that we employ. So I don't see it as being one or the other, I just see it as being a rich repertoire as to what we can do and if there are kids that can just sit there and listen and take in everything that they're being told, that's not the majority of kids, that there are kids that respond differently to different people and to different teachers depending on who they are.

I don't know what your experience is, but I know I used to work harder for the teachers that I respected more. Kids aren't just a blank canvas so I think it's quite dangerous to reduce practice just to one mode. That's one aspect of that argument. Do you want to chip in there, Ron?

Ron Berger: I agree with everything. I mean, this false binary that you are one or the other is crazy. Like we, we all need a full repertoire of different approaches. Direct instruction being one of them. I think it's important to remember that how do we learn things, ee as adults, everyone listening to this podcast, how do we learn things?

If you wanted to learn something new right now in your life, let's say your daughter's getting married and you'd like to dance at her wedding or play guitar at her wedding, but you don't know how to do that yet. You would not sit in a class and just listen to someone talk about it for a year. You would want somebody telling you some things, but you'd need a lot of practice and critique.

And you'd have a motivation because you think, I'm gonna perform at my daughter's wedding. I need to play the guitar well, I need to watch videos and be with a teacher. But I also need to practice a lot on my own and I need to try things and try performing, and I need to get critique on my performing.

And if I'm getting ready for something real I've gotta like take this seriously in my life. That's the way we learn, why would it be different for kids? Like why would they learn by just sitting passively in a classroom and having things told at them without having the chance to practice to try to get critique to get better at it, to have models of what a good version looks like.

Like the way we learn is the way kids learn. We need a variety of things and they need a variety of things.

Gwyn ap Harri: Yeah. And everybody wants kids to be, that are in front of them, to work hard, to ask questions, to show courage, to show craftsmanship and quality. So how do we get kids to do that? Do we just expect them to turn up and be like that? Because I dunno about you, but I wasn't like that all the time. Right? So how, how do we do that? Do we shout at 'em? Do we expect 'em? Do we put 'em in detention or do we teach them? I prefer to teach kids how to do that.

Dale Atkinson: Now Ron, you sort of were talking there about the concept of critique and Gwyn, you mentioned in one of your earlier responses the idea of, you know, first draft not being the, the final draft.

And connected with that is the concept I think that, XP schools, kind of go after, which is this idea of beauty, beautiful work. Can you explain a little bit about how that emphasis on beauty kind of intersects with the idea of a kind of iterative processes of working and, and why beauty is the aspiration that you're going after.

Gwyn ap Harri: Yeah. So, I dunno if you know, but I used to be in a band, not a famous one. That's why I work in schools. I can't make it pay enough. You know, one of the phrases that we used was that like, effortlessness takes a lot of effort, you know, when you're watching your favourite band and they look effortless and they're jumping around and they're jumping up and down and they're hitting the right notes all the time. Effortlessness takes a lot of effort, a lot of practice, a lot of critique, a lot of feedback from your friends. You know, what's working, what's not working. So that is what we honour the kids', work with time, to critique and iterate and reiterate.

Much like we do in our professional careers. So the first draft, think of the last piece of work that, that you worked on. Probably your first draft was not your best and that you looked at it. You ask your colleagues, what do you think to this? You pass it around and you get advice, and then you make it better and better and better.

The biggest impact that we've found on critique and iterations is that kids end up creating a quality of work. That is much higher than they ever thought that they could. And if you do that and you do that once, a lot of the time, you expect more from yourself in the future.

Dale Atkinson: One of the things both of you talk about a lot is the concept of belonging in the way that that contributes to students' engagement, but also how that is so powerful within their learning.

The thing that you talk about quite a lot Gwyn is the concept of crew. Can you tell us a little bit about what crew is and, and how that plays an important role in the XP school experience?

Gwyn ap Harri: Yeah, so it's really interesting about the history of crew because we picked up crew from Expeditionary Learning (EL), in America, and then we found out that like a lot of things in America, that we started it first in England or in Wales, to be precise. So crew obviously comes from the Navy and a guy called Kurt Hahn, who was a German educator who'd, come across before World War II to England and started a school called Gordonstoun.

Ended up creating with another guy called Lawrence Holt the organization called Outward Bound, which I believe you have in Australia too and Outward Bound originally was to do with Navy and teaching character to the Navy. In Aberdyfi Wales was the original Outward Bound centre, and that's where our kids go for the first week, the first day of school in XP our kids go to the Outward Bound centre in Aberdyfi to learn about character.

Dale Atkinson: And you make them moderately uncomfortable. Would it be fair to say in that experience?

Gwyn ap Harri: Yeah. So crew starts for our kids, they get on a bus and they spend four and a half hours on a bus with probably 49 strangers, because we don't just have two or three primary schools that come into the secondary school and they get to Aberdyfi Wales.

They get off the bus, they drop their bags, they jog, it's called jog and dip. So they jog down to the beach, get into the sea. Some of our kids have never been in the sea and they dip their heads under the sea as a crew of 12 or 13 kids and they get out, they get dry.

They get given a massive ruck sack, they go halfway up a mountain and they spend the night in a log cabin. They get up in the morning and they summit the mountain as a crew. They don't leave anyone behind and they reflect on, we are crew, not passengers, so we don't leave people behind. So crew is our teamwork approach to school culture and it doesn't start with the students, it starts with the staff as well.

Dale Atkinson: We'll get to the staff in a little bit because I think that's an interesting addition in that space. But Ron, what was it about the idea of crew that appealed to you initially and, and what does the evidence tell us about why this is kind of critical for students?

Ron Berger: Well, let me use an example from my youth. So I grew up in the US I went to public school. I did well, but my job was to get myself to graduation, myself into university, and it was a competitive game, right? So if my peers did poorly, it would help me, my class rank would be better. Like there was nothing about school where the charge for me was to help anyone.

My job was to get myself to graduation and into a good university, and so I did, but many of the students in my high school didn't make it to graduation or didn't make it to university and it wasn't my concern. In contrast, in the schools that I'm privileged to work with and that Gwyn has founded and worked with students see their job entirely differently.

They see their charge at school is, I need to get myself to graduation and all of my crew mates and all of my classmates and get them all to a good post-secondary life like we are in this together. No one gets left behind. It's not me getting to the top of the mountain, it's us getting to the top of the mountain.

So I work with a number of high schools in America. Where every single student every year is accepted into university, and these kids come from families where their parents didn't go to university where no one would assume they could make it to university. And people say, how is that possible? How is that possible that they get a hundred percent of kids accepted in university every year?

And I say, be because they view their life in school differently than we did, which is they're on a team getting there. They're not trying to fight their way against their teammates to get there. It's like we're in this together. And so the reason it's spreading in America is the results are good.

It's not spreading because people think, what a clever idea, it's spreading because they think, how is it possible that these schools are having such success? And when they visit the school and they ask the kids, the kids will say, because we're part of a crew, because our whole school is crew, because we are in this, our job is to help each other.

And that's very different than just thinking. The adults are the only people who can help you in the school. Your crew mates will hold you accountable to work hard and be your best person.

Dale Atkinson: And Gwyn you've extended that to staff, as you mentioned, that you make them, put them in a, should we say a moderately, mildly, potentially uncomfortable position very early on in their careers with XP schools. What does that look like?

Gwyn ap Harri: Yeah, we've put them outside their comfort zones, that's what we call it. And my wife Kate, she frames it really well. She said, you know, we want our teachers to remember our experience, what it might be like for students every day turning up to maths or to art or history or PE, which, you know, they're subjects that they're not comfortable with.

So we need our staff to understand what our students may be experiencing before they start the lesson. So yeah, we take them on an outward bound experience. It may include rock climbing, it may include abseiling, caving at times.

It may include a long trek in the rain, if we're lucky enough to have rain, and camping out. For adults it's not a thing that they're used to. And what we do is it's not just doing the activity. We unpack that activity and we ask them how will they feel? We do exactly what we do with students and we talk about their character traits, habits of work and learning. Where has someone shown courage? Where has someone shown compassion? And we surface those character traits. We circle up as a crew 'cause in order to teach crew, you've got to be crew.

Dale Atkinson: And that's really just the start of, I guess, the professional development for teachers and educators when they join your school, how else do you help build those capacities among your teachers and educators? To kind of focus education in a slightly different way, which is sort of broader than perhaps conventionally defined.

Gwyn ap Harri: Yeah so most people are sort of pigeonholed, especially at secondary school. They're pigeonholed into subjects and if you ask a secondary teacher what they teach, they'll often just say, I teach science, or I teach computers.

Whereas if you ask primary teachers what they teach, they'll say, I teach year three kids and really we've got to do both. We've got to teach kids a subject, so it's all relational, so it's the relationship that the teacher has with the child and the relationship that the teacher fosters between each child and the subject that they’re teaching.

So that's part of our staff induction, you know, most staff in England have a day if they're lucky, you know, if they turn up to a new school that they might have one staff day, and then there's your class, teach it. We have a few weeks to do this, we invest in our staff to do this as you would hope in other professions like, you wouldn't want a surgeon to turn up for the first day and, and do a heart bypass, you know? Right. But we let people teach our kids after after one day.

Dale Atkinson: We do let 'em loose, there's no doubt about that. It must be intimidating for the educators as well. On that flip side. Ron and Gwyn you've both been here in South Australia a couple of times now and you've been working across the system. Ron, what do you observe that's going well within South Australia's public education system, and where does the opportunity lie for us?

Ron Berger: I think this is an incredibly exciting time for South Australia education. I work across America and I also work internationally, I was working in Japan this year, I was working in Catalonia this year, I work in England with Gwyn. I don't know anywhere in the world right now where the openness to trying new things and being innovative in education is happening at the scale that it is in South Australia. I know individual schools in countries that are doing innovative, exciting work. I know even some districts in America and other countries, but I don't know an entire state, anywhere, that is really open to cutting edge new things that can make sure every kid is motivated to do well, that every kid could succeed, like that's taken seriously here.

So there's a great moment of promise in South Australia, that's why I'm here. That's why Gwyn and Kate are here. Is that this is something unique, that there's a willingness to say, let's, let's really take this seriously. That every kid has the potential to do great work and not do things in the same way they've always been done, which worked for some kids, but it didn't work for all kids.

Dale Atkinson: Now, Gwyn, from the schools that you've worked with and seen within South Australia, where do you see the greatest opportunity for some of our schools?

Gwyn ap Harri: Well, I spent this Monday in Port Lincoln and just to sort of mirror that there's some things that Ron has said, like, we spent time with 200 teachers and leaders in Port Lincoln talking about the concept of crew, and they don't have to do this, they don't have to do it. I was talking to Martin Westwell and he was talking about moving from a system of accountability to a system of responsibility where we trust our professionals to have a sense of responsibility to do the right thing.

And in Port Lincoln I saw that manifest, I saw teachers say, we want to do this because this is the right thing to do, not because they need to do it or because they're measured by it, but that it's the right thing to do. They believe that ensuring kids are more courageous and more respectful, have more integrity, show more compassion is the right thing to do and won't change. And won't change over a political landscape or in a thousand years time, and I saw those teachers step up and go, we want to take on this work. That was a privilege to see.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, that sounds pretty exciting. It was also a privilege, I think, for them to see your new Cold Chisel t-shirt. Now can you explain why you, out of penance, had to turn up in Port Lincoln with a brand-new cold chisel t-shirt.

Gwyn ap Harri: So I have this little skit with Ron, so obviously Ron is like the Jedi master, in fact Ron has a nickname, Obi Ron Kenobi. So when Ron goes on first and then I come on afterwards, I've done that a few times and that I've sort of in the past I've said, have you ever been to a gig where the support band's better than the headline band? So I have a friend in Australia whose favourite band is Cold Chisel, and I'd never heard of them, I didn't know who they were at all.

So I turned to Ron and I said, I'm gonna make a cultural joke here. I'm gonna go, there's a bit of jeopardy so I'm gonna do it. So we basically made this skit and I said, so can you imagine going to a gig in like AC DC are the support band and then the headline band comes on and it's cold chisel and there was silence in the room and this lady went, “I like cold chisel” and everyone went “yeah, AC CDC sold out years ago.” I was like, oh my god.

Dale Atkinson: So you're in very dangerous areas, but I like that you've redeemed yourself on this visit Gwyn, so thank you very much.

Gwyn ap Harri: Yeah. I have my Cold Chisel t-shirts.

Dale Atkinson: Excellent, and have you engaged with the music at all since buying the T-shirt?

Gwyn ap Harri: Well, you know, if you were to ask me my favourite song. I think it’d have to be off the album East, and you know that one with the piano, the four walls, I think that would've been my favourite.

Dale Atkinson: Not bad, not bad. I feel like the punk in you is naturally gonna bridle against the garage rock mainstream.

Gwyn ap Harri: No comments!

Dale Atkinson: Yes, but we are very pleased to have you here, we're very pleased to have you both here. Now leaders Day is tomorrow in the podcast timeline I’m on, for the listeners it'll be in the past. So I do want to say thank you very much for coming out and spending time with the Leaders at Leaders Day. Thanks for your time to come and speak to us and explain a bit more about it, Expeditionary Learning, and we're looking forward to working with you into the future.

Thank you.

Gwyn ap Harri: Great. Thank you very much.

Ron Berger: Thank you. We feel very lucky to be here.

Acknowledgement: Teach is produced on the traditional land of the Kaurna people. The South Australian Department for Education would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and pay our respects to all Elders, past, present and emerging.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education. And today we have some international visitors, we have Dr. Linda Kaser, who's the co leader of Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education and also a faculty member at the University of British Columbia. Also Dr. Judy Halbert, who is co leader of the Networks group and also the faculty member of the University of British Columbia. Thank you very much for joining us.

Judy Halbert: Well, thank you for having us.

Dale Atkinson: Tell us a little bit about British Columbia. Tell us about what you've learned there and how this might apply in other places.

Judy Halbert: So we were both teachers in public schools, secondary English teachers, and then principals and district leaders, and have worked for the government, and now at the university and run a network. So we've kind of done just about every job in the system. And British Columbia, we have 60 school districts. We have about 5 million people. We have a growing Indigenous population and we have about 88 percent of our students attend public school and then 12 percent are in independent band or religious schools.

We love our province, we love the direction and when we look around the world at smart places to learn from, we look to South Australia because we think we have a lot in common here with your focus on innovative curriculum, on leadership, and on Indigenous reconciliation. So it feels like a great fit between South Australia and British Columbia.

Linda Kaser: Yeah, I think one of the things that we've had the chance to do is to look at how other countries of our size, I'm saying in Canada, our system is federal, which means each province acts as a country in terms of our educational system.

So we've looked at We've looked at New Zealand, and we've looked at Finland, and we've looked at Singapore, and now we're going to look closely at your system as well. And one of the things that we've noticed is that the countries that seem to do the best job overall, the curiosity has been developed in their faculty.

In Finland, it's developed by every teacher having a master's degree, where they do an independent research. In Singapore, it's done in a different way. And so, we got very interested in inquiry and working with New Zealand educators at the University of Auckland on how curiosity, adult curiosity, done collaboratively to make a powerful system change.

Dale Atkinson: So one of the things I know that you've been focused on a lot within your system is the noticings and the work around inclusion and transition, specifically for Indigenous students in the Canadian setting. Can you tell us about what you noticed in that space and how that might apply in Australia to our own situation?

Judy Halbert: Well, it was interesting when we were first encouraged to take a look at improving transitions for Indigenous learners. It was a very narrow definition of transition. It was looking at supporting Indigenous, uh, young people from secondary school to post secondary. And when we really got into it, we realized that transitions was much more than that.

It was really any point where there's a change in a child's life or a learner's life. So we started to look from kindergarten to elementary school, from middle school to secondary school, but also from home to foster care. From band school to, state school, so really at any point where there's a change in a child's life, how do we support them?

So that's, we've got a much broader definition of transition now. One of the things that, that we ask the schools that are involved in that work, we're currently with working with our third cohort of schools, and there's a couple of reports on our website, but it's the importance of being, belonging, and becoming.

Regardless of what age or stage the young people are at. So ‘being’, do they have a strong sense of identity as an individual and identity with their community and identity with their nation? And is that identity reflected and respected within the school? So that’s the first one.

‘Belonging’, we have a key question that we ask all of our schools to ask, and that is, can every young person in the school name at least two adults in the school who believe they will be a success in life?

And success in life needs to be interpreted really broadly and contextually and culturally appropriate. But once we have the discussion around what success in life means, we think it's absolutely essential that every young person knows that there's at least two adults who have their back within the school. And then we have a strategy, if they can't name it, then what we're going to do about that. So that's kind of fundamental.

The third is ‘becoming’, and that is, can every young person see in the school, the connection with life outside school? So that notion of being, belonging and becoming is absolutely foundational to our work with transitions.

The other big learning that we've found is that if the school principal and the district team supporting that school isn't committed to that work, it's not going to happen. It's too hard for a single teacher or a single Indigenous support worker to create that setting. It has to be a whole team. So that's why we've been working really hard on kind of a network strategy surrounding kids with, with support at every level.

Linda Kaser: I think something else that might be useful. Is learning from indigenous perspectives about the importance of things like land and place and community and taking that really seriously and also the value it. I don't think in the Western literature about leadership, the word generosity comes up very much, but it's a powerful part of the indigenous cultures in, in our province and in our country. And the saying is “you show your leadership by what you give away” which is a very different way of looking at success in life. Indigenous people live in that way and whole schools now are trying to take those ideas very seriously, and I think listening carefully, because listening is an Indigenous value too. Our cultures have been on these territories for a long time, and not our cultures, their cultures. I think we've reached a time in the history of both of our countries where us listening more, to learn, and then, trying to live in a good way is a powerful change and overdue reform.

Dale Atkinson: The idea of giving your leadership away in the context of education, which is so highly hierarchical in many respects, it's how we structure the setup, and also, I guess, the concept of networking in that space can be challenging. In some settings. So how do you enact the networking strategy, what does that look like structurally? How do you bring that into being for a group of schools or within the school?

Linda Kaser: I think a piece of advice that we would have is trying to get groups of nine to work together. If it's nine schools, but within that three groups of three, because there seems to be a power and a teamwork of three people that's manageable and I know that we explain in the book we wrote during COVID.

One of the things that we ask our leaders to do is to be able to tell a very powerful story about why it's worthwhile to be in their school community. But it's, we also believe that if the three of us are principals together, that we can tell a story as a good a story about your school as we can tell about our own.

So that we visited your school, we understand it, we care about it, and we can say if a family comes, you know what, they've got a fantastic arts program. At your place, I think that's going to be a great fit and do it sincerely so that we work against that hierarchy and that competition, that negative competition that's in us. Like, we love hockey, you love rugby, whatever.

There's a role for that kind of competition, but it needs to be sportsmanlike, and we need to be able to use story to connect. So, those smaller structures within bigger networks are powerful.

Judy Halbert: One of the things that we did with our network has been in place for 25 years, and it started with, you know, a small group, 34 schools initially, and now we've got lots of schools involved.

But one of the norms is that you leave your role at the door. So when you enter a network meeting, you know, metaphorically, you hang up your role and you come in and you say, you know, I'm Dale, I'm Linda, I'm Judy, I'm Bella, not I'm Bella, the assistant superintendent of, you know, whatever, and that has been immensely freeing, particularly for school principals who can then just be alongside their teachers or their support workers or whatever, just as themselves.

So that's been huge and we didn't actually realize how important that was until we've had the feedback around it. In the leadership program that we run at UBC, again, it's open it's not just specifically for principals or district leaders. It's for anybody who wants to learn more. And again, people are not identified by their role, they just come in as a learner. The other thing is that we developed in collaboration with Helen Timperley from the University of Auckland. In observation about what great teams of teachers and principals do in the Spiral of Inquiry. And having that common framework for schools, regardless of what the focus of their inquiry is, has been really important, especially because it starts with listening to learners.

So from our perspective, that's where we start. And the key question is what's going on for our learners and how do we know? We as adults can have all kinds of assumptions about what the experiences of the young people in our schools are. And quite often we miss the boat. Because we think we know what's going on, but until we really listen, uh, we can't be sure. So I think those, those two things, leaving your role at the door and starting with listening has really helped.

Linda Kaser: And I think just connected with that, we used to have four key questions. The belonging question is critical because we know every young person needs to have a strong sense of having a couple of people who have their back and if they don't, we need to move on that immediately. But also it's just amazing to walk into schools and say, what are you learning and why is it important? And you know, some kids say, I'm doing page 10, which is a very disappointing answer. And lots and lots of young people don't know what it is they're learning, and they don't know why it's important either and that needs to be addressed. So I think networks are a good place to have honest conversations about that, and the places in Australia that have taken that seriously, a year, two, three, four years later, they are very different and much better places.

Dale Atkinson: So one of the key tools that you have around innovation and system change is the concept of the Spiral of Inquiry. What does that look like for a school and how does it work in a setting?

Judy Halbert: The derivation of the spiral was from our work in British Columbia, really taking a look at observations of what great teams did. And then also in collaboration with Helen Timperley at the University of Auckland, her work around the differences that could be made in literacy and numeracy when schools used an inquiry cycle.

So, we got together and over a couple of years of hashing out our ideas and trying to get it into as clear language as possible, came up with a six stage process. So very briefly. It starts with scanning, which is what's going on for our learners and how do we know. So it's collecting all of the evidence that we have, but it's also listening deeply to what the young people have to say.

The second thing is from that information, identifying one clear focus area. Often schools are trying to do a zillion things and it's just too much. And we say, if you're working on more than two areas, you're not working on anything. So start with one. So, what's one thing that if we worked on as a group is going to make the biggest impact for our young people?

The third is to pause a little bit. And this is the hunch stage and it's where we say, how are we contributing to this situation for our learners? So whether it's an issue of wellbeing, of anxiety, of poor problem solving in mathematics, of low literacy scores, whatever it is, how is it that as the educators, we're contributing to that situation?

Then we move to, we've got to learn something new. So we're going to dive in and immerse ourselves in some new learning. Then we're going to take some action, and then we're going to check to see whether we're making a difference. And that becomes a continuous spiral. It's not a, there's no beginning and end. We see it as a professional way of life rather than a thing to do. And we're seeing some remarkable results when, when schools are able to embrace that and take it seriously.

Dale Atkinson: There's a degree of vulnerability that comes in all of that from a leadership perspective. What's your recommendation about how you maybe pack the ego away and approach these things in a really open way?

Linda Kaser: I think it really helps open mindedness, you're quite right, is an important feature and being prepared to live with vulnerability is, again, the University of Auckland has done some fantastic research on, on teachers and risk taking and has found that teachers are not afraid of risks. What they don't like is bad professional learning sessions, and failed initiatives, and too many things that are being asked of them.

And so I think we found a lot of success in using a systematic process of curiosity, because that's what the spiral is, adult curiosity. Which the Harvard person who's the biggest expert on that says, If we want young people to be critical thinkers, then we need to be critical thinkers as adults. So it, it calls it symmetry, that there's a parallel between the two processes.

And I think we have found that with time and patience and strong leadership, every teacher is prepared to take small moves. However, we are big fans now of micro moves. Because we've found that our strongest leaders are able to say, “well Dale, how about I come in and just try this learning intention thing?

I need a group to try it. Would you mind if I tried it with you?” Spend two minutes with you trying something, and then have a conversation later, as opposed to a long full day workshop. And once people get started, they are willing to move on it's getting that little micro moment at the and motion at the beginning that's powerful with vulnerability. So you're not too vulnerable all I'm asking you to do is, you know, watch me for a minute in your classroom. That's not too hard.

Judy Halbert: Just to add to that, we know that a trust between principals and teachers and parents is paramount to improving the outcomes for learners in the schools. And there's some wonderful work from Tony Brick, a longitudinal study in Chicago. And one of the aspects was around vulnerability and the point here is that the person with the most power, real or perceived, needs to make themselves vulnerable first. So, in the case of the spiral of inquiry, if it's a teacher leading the process or the principal leading the process, when we get to the hunch stage, it's how does that person put their own vulnerability out.

So, a very quick example, a school was working on improving inferential reading, and this was their focus, and they'd been doing, you know, quite a bit of work at it, but it was at the point where one of the experienced teachers in the school, a respected teacher, said, you know what? I really don't know how to do inferencing in reading. I don't know how to do it myself, let alone teach it. And there was this sigh of relief amongst the group and then they were able to step back and say, okay, what is it that we really need to know? And what is it that we're doing here? So there's a point in the spiral at which somebody takes that step to be honest and vulnerable that can shift things on a dime and we have loads of examples of that.

Dale Atkinson: It's really about that permission for curiosity, isn't it? Like, as soon as you admit that vulnerability, you can then really start to look at things differently.

Linda Kaser: That's right, and it doesn't have to be a big deal. In that micro example, it might be just my honestly saying, I've never tried this before. I've heard about it. I want to give it a go. I want you to watch your kids as I do it and just give me some quick feedback as I'm going out the door. And most teachers will say, sure. And that begins a dialogue and so we've seen strong, thoughtful leaders help people move forward on that, on that trust continuum.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, it's a really powerful thing. We're focusing a lot in South Australia on the idea of student voice and agency and you've spoken a little bit about how that's absolutely critical to this entire journey. How do you make sure it's authentically captured and followed through with?

Judy Halbert: I'll give two examples. One is connected to the vulnerability and then, then the second one around student agency. And this is a school in England, it was a primary school. And the year five and six teachers were going, “Oh my God, the class from hell is coming”. And I think that, you know, teachers understand what that means. Right from kindergarten, this group has been difficult, and now they're going to get them.

“Oh my God, what are we going to do?” 28 kids in the class. I think there were 24 boys, and they said, we need to, we need to change things here. So they asked the children at the beginning of the year, how would you describe yourselves as a learner? And they got things like, we're no good, we're rotten, we're shit.

And they just listed all of the things that the kids said about themselves, how they described themselves. And then they took all of their wording, and they put it up on the staff room wall. And when the rest of the staff came in, they said, “Oh my God, that's how we've been talking about them.” And there was that moment of realization that things had to change.

So then they went through a number of things, but they asked the kids again, How would you like to be seen? And they wanted to be seen as leaders, and then they were able to decide on two areas that they were going to work on. It was a magical change in that school, and it was from listening. And so that was real student voice, right?

It was taking what the kids said, and then turning it around and turning it into action. The, the second example would be from a secondary school in one of our suburban areas. And the teachers in the school had been working on the spiral of inquiry. And the language was quite familiar to the kids, at least in an abstract way.

And then there was an incident of racism where the students thought that the disciplinary actions of the school principal had been racially motivated. And they raised that and they decided to, you know, instead of becoming defensive or pushing back against the kids, they said, let's explore this.

So they started with the young people, a spiral of inquiry around what's going on for our kids in this school around racism, and they learned a lot. Out of that, they developed a strategy and an approach, and they work through, the young people work through both a decision making process and the spiral.

We thought it was so powerful that we encouraged them to write it up. So we now have a handbook on decision making for young people that's being used broadly. So it's way more than just, what do you think about lunch? Or, you know, do you like the colours of the lockers? It's around. Using students embedded in the spiral to make better decisions about what's, what's going on.

Linda Kaser: Yeah and I'll give an even maybe simpler answer, a smaller thing, because we learned it from an Australian secondary school in Wollongong. And that is, young people didn't seem to be very interested in what was going on, and they invented a very simple strategy. Think recipe cards, every class on Friday afternoon, a kid got a recipe card, and they wrote two things.

Something they'd enjoy during the week, and something that if the learning had been more hands on, or standing up, or outdoors, or whatever, a suggestion that they had for improvement. The teachers all agreed that on Friday afternoon, before they went to the pub, they would read these cards and choose one to introduce on Monday as something they would do.

So, on Monday, they would say, Dale has suggested that, you know, if we had less time sitting and more time occasionally standing and moving about, that that would make his learning better. For the week, we're going to try that. That was the most improved secondary school in the region by the end of the year, because that small change and that commitment was simple enough that people could do.

It didn't require hours and hours of thinking and work and taking an individual voice and trying it out, because it doesn't matter what country it is. Most young people in secondary say, we sit too much, we don't get outdoors, there's not enough hands on, there's not enough humour. It's a simple set of ideas, and the more we do that, and the more we appear genuinely to be listening and trying things out, the better.

Judy Halbert: And I could make a final comment on that, clearly we could go on and on, but it's the use of surveys in our province, there's a satisfaction survey that's done, it's got 40 questions on it, it goes out every year, schools get their results back, and we've found, in our experience, that we should never ask a question of young people if we're not prepared to act on what they have to say.

So we say if there's more than five questions on a survey, it's not going to be very useful. So we say be really intentional about what questions you're going to ask, and then make sure you report back on what you're going to do. Otherwise, we can get, you know, survey fatigue, and kids just won't bother and Tony Brick actually told us at one point, we'd love to have this confirmed, but if you ask more than five questions, you're wasting your time.

Dale Atkinson: I think the powerful message there is simplicity and sincerity. As a combination of things.

Linda Kaser: That’s exactly right. I think also using whatever evidence you get. This is what is happening in the Northern Territories, I think there are up to 60 schools now, I call it the Student Commission. Young people are working, you know, if we did that survey, then we would be sitting down as an adult student group, looking at the survey results together. Because in the racism example, what young people said is, adults never hear these racist remarks. We're doing it in the cloak rooms, in the hallways, and we're passing it off as humour.

I say something racialized to you, Dale, and then I say, “ah, no sense of humour” and that kind of thing is eroding for people and the young people put a stop to it and it was fantastic.

Dale Atkinson: One of the things, Judy, that you said in the space where you were giving some examples around student voice and agencies is the question that was asked there about how do you want to be seen?

What an incredible question that is, I think, not just for the kids, but for the schools that would engage in this process to ask themselves, so I just want to say thank you. Maybe leave on that note to Dr. Linda Kaser and Dr. Judy Halbert. Thank you very much for your time.

Judy & Linda: Thank you.

Judy Halbert: It's been a pleasure.

Linda Kaser: Yeah, we're going to take lots back.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach a Podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name's Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education and today we're talking about literacy without barriers. We're breaking down those barriers to literacy and we've got a community driven success story at Kingston Community School and I'm joined by Kirsten Barich, who's the teacher librarian there and Katie Hines, who's a parent.

Welcome to you both.

Kirsten Barich: Thanks for having us.

Katie Hines: Thank you.

Dale Atkinson: The Literacy Without Barriers Project at Kingston Community School. Kirsten, what is it?

Kirsten Barich: We established this project back in 2003 and it's been about the creation of book packs for families to borrow from our library. We are lucky to be a joint use library so we serve both our school community and our wider community and so these book packs are available to every family in our region.

So we've selected 35 different picture books and we've got six copies of each book. The main part is that each book comes with quite a detailed but very user friendly guide [00:01:00] of some hints of how to read the book, the learning intention behind the story, some ideas of how to talk about it, sing with it, ask questions about it to help the children build meaning from their stories.

Within each pack we also have key themes and key ideas of how to play with it and we've included lots of materials in the pack to run an activity based on the story. So, for example, one story encourages families to make and excavate frozen dinosaur eggs. Another one's about measuring water displacement. There's a pack about engaging with First Nations perspectives and so each activity that's in the pack is designed to be hands on, easy to do at home. All of the materials are included within the pack because we just want to really encourage families to be able to engage with reading and all the activities without spending any money or having to find resources.

Dale Atkinson: They sound like fantastic resources. Now, you've deliberately gone after children from zero to five, why that cohort of [00:02:00] kids in particular?

Kirsten Barich: We had a few intentions here. Number one being that we were noticing a downward trend in school readiness data. And I think that's common in many areas throughout the state, but in particular ours, and it's something that the Words Grow Minds campaign is seeking to eradicate. And we thought that as a library that was already quite a trusted hub within our community, as well as our school, we were perfectly placed to support families in changing that trend. You know, a conduit between preschool and school so again, perfectly placed.

We also know that 90 percent of a child's brain is developed between naught to five and so those early learning years are the optimum time to be reading and engaging with stories. Secondly, because we run preschool programs from the library and we work with our early learning centre once a fortnight, we noticed that there were actually a lot of adult barriers to early childhood literacy.

It might be their adult literacy skills, adult confidence, financial barriers, access barriers. And so we just wanted to [00:03:00] remove any that we could, any possible thing in a really supportive and non-judgmental way.

And thirdly, and probably most importantly, we just wanted to remind families that reading is fun and should be fun. Any reading that you do at home is good reading. You know we teach and we learn about the mechanics of reading in the classroom and in schools. But as a library, we can support the love of reading and the development of dispositions like curiosity and questioning through reading so, yeah, lots of intentions.

Dale Atkinson: How important has it been to engage with the parent community around this?

Kirsten Barich: It's huge. As we know, as teachers it takes a community to raise a child. And so we're noticing that when you have the parents on board, when the parents are confident, when they are engaged and they see that the school and the library is trying to engage with them, I think they're much more likely to have a positive attitude toward the school and just education in general.

Dale Atkinson: What have you seen in terms of impact that this program's had on the teaching in those early years for your colleagues.

Kirsten Barich: I think for colleagues it's just enabled them to connect with the library a little bit more. I think prior to this, we, we mainly saw reading in the early years of learning as how to read.

And so we really tried to bring back the idea in quite a big way. Um, that yes, obviously learning how to read, learning the mechanics of reading is super important and without those building blocks. It is impossible to read, but a love of reading is just as important.

So we need to balance our reading and our readers that we use in the classrooms with just any sort of texts that kids love and they want to read, because I think the more excitement, the more fun you can create about reading, the more likely you are going to be able to develop lifelong readers.

Dale Atkinson: It's really impressive listening to you talk about, you know, how this process has kind of worked through and assisted the broader school activities. How have the resources from the Literacy Packs been integrated into classroom activities?

Kirsten Barich: Well, I actually get to work with all of the primary classes. Um, I teach reception German and I also work with R-6 through the library. And so I incorporate lots of the themes and the activities of Literacy Without Barriers through all of that.

Whether it's developing questioning, whether it's using actual activities or whether it's just developing the dispositions. For example, we've done lots of colour experiments using the packs, we've made garden stews, we've gone on hippopotamus hunts, um. We've made magic hats to practice fine motor skills.

There are lots of dispositions that we can develop through using these packs. And interestingly too, we've had an uptake of the packs with our SACE child studies students. So they've been engaging with the packs to design activities for younger students. They've workshopped the packs with some of our receptions and year ones.

And they've also used them to help develop their own knowledge around early childhood literacy. Which is great. It was really unexpected benefit that we hadn't foreseen.

Dale Atkinson: That's an incredible sort of self-sustaining collaboration there, that's incredible. You mentioned earlier the data around the kid’s preparedness and literacy in the early years was one of the things that kind of drew your attention to this as an area of focus. What has been the result in terms of those numbers? What have you seen as a result of this program?

Kirsten Barich: Well, I think that. We've seen a lot more parental engagement with the library from a much earlier age. So, we've always run preschool programs here at the library, but we've seen more families borrowing, particularly borrowing the packs.

And it's been especially noticeable among families who didn't use to engage with the library at all, or perhaps where people who hadn't had the best schooling experiences and so weren't what you would call, readers themselves. I think that's probably been one of the main things. We're also noticing that families are staying longer at the library, and they're bringing in a whole range of children, whether they're really young or even, you know, mid primary, which has been really good.

And we've also noticed that there's just much more of a happy, positive atmosphere around reading at the moment. There are big groups of children that'll come in really excited to tell us. What they've read at home or what they've been creating and, and asking, can we help them choose their next book and that as a librarian, that's just the most special thing that you can have when you're, you're getting children in your space that are really engaged, really wanting to read. Yeah. It's amazing!

Dale Atkinson: That sounds incredibly rewarding. Now, Katie Hines, parent of two children, I believe. Tell us a bit about your family, Katie.

Katie Hines: So I have two young children. I have an almost two-year-old young boy named James, and I have a five-year-old, Emma, who was in this new mid-year intake. Who’s just started school.

Dale Atkinson: An exciting and busy time for you. How are the reading packs and, and the literacy without barriers project? What's, what's been your interaction with it and how has that helped you in your journey with your kids?

Katie Hines: So, um, I've been really lucky that I've been able to come in and go to say baby bounce, for example, with both of my kids and coming into the library and having something other than just say the books and having the book packs has been great. My five-year-old absolutely loves them. She loves coming back in and sharing her creations with whoever's working in the library. They're really great for the sense that we start them when we're still in the library, you know, they borrow them, both of my children are very confident when it comes to the library and they go up to Cherie and one of the other librarians and they literally get the scanner and scan their own book in and out, but that's facilitated based on what the library creates and the atmosphere that they create here that you kind of feel like you're part of the furniture when you come in and part of the family and yeah, you can get your book pack and go off and do it when you're at home.

Dale Atkinson: Have you noticed the confidence in your kids growing as a result of interacting with the with the books and the packs?

Katie Hines: Absolutely. Um, particularly my five-year-old, she loves the book pack. She loves borrowing them. She'd borrow a book pack every day if I let her. And I have to, you know, kind of be like, Oh, we've still got this one, let's finish this one off before we get too many. But we often have two or three book packs on the go at one time. She loves getting the book out. She loves reading it. We can't go to bed at night without her reading a book. Or two or three or four. We have to negotiate. She's at that stage where we're in negotiation on how many books we can read at night, depending on time, but she is confident in the sense that she can get it out.

She understands on the card that's in there, whether what the activity might, she can't read it at the moment, but you know, she knows that one section's about reading, one section's about singing, one section's about making and playing, and there's just lots of different activities just within a singular book pack that she's confident enough to get it out and lots of kids like repetition. So, you know, she borrows the same one over and over again, which is great because she knows the story. She can tell you the story. So you kind of see that confidence develop just through that repetition, she might not be able to read the words, but she has learnt lots of books, which is great for her development. So, we're really happy as a family that the library provides opportunities for us to really enrich our kids’ lives.

Dale Atkinson: And does it help build connections with the school and the wider community for you?

Katie Hines: Absolutely. I think that as a mum living in the country, it can be really isolating once you've had a kid. When you've been working full time and then you go to not working and being at home with your kids, sometimes you can get a little bit lost. The library has provided multiple opportunities for people to engage with our library. But, you know, you can come in, the book packs are starting to like, they're so popular that as a mum, I'm talking to other mums at baby bounce about what packs have they used that are good and the kids are talking amongst themselves. I think it's just a great opportunity to kind of like, “Oh what are we going to do today?” Or like you know, you look at the four walls in your house and you're like, “I've got to get out of this house.” Like my two-year-old is becoming a tornado. The library provides that place where you can pop out of the house, go for a walk, go to the library, grab a book pack, go home. My toddler's now asleep. Now I can sit down with my five-year-old and give her all the attention that she's wanting. We can do the pack. And then when my two-year-old wakes up. We can, like, do other activities with him. So, I think that the packs really provide great opportunities for families to engage in literacy.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, that's great and Kirsten being a teacher librarian, not everywhere has a teacher librarian, not everywhere has a library. What's your recommendation in terms of schools that perhaps don't have that specialist resource in terms of how they might apply some of the thinking that you've, you've put into practice here for perhaps kids who are a bit older, somewhere, you know, that 5 to 10 range, what sort of things should they be doing?

Kirsten Barich: I think that the way that we've created these, there's a lot of scope for differentiation. You know, we focused a lot on the naught to five age bracket, but the basic premise behind it is that you are encouraging kids to read, talk, play, sing. Which is good for all children, regardless of how old they are.

And so any school, whether they've got a library or not, we have specialist teachers within them. Specialist teachers of literacy, specialist teachers of numeracy, specialist teachers of science. We've all got pedagogy behind us. We all know how important it is to create varied learning experiences for kids.

And so, any school could take the idea that we've got here and make it their own. A lot of our packs focus on things, for example, that we can do and find in our local region. So some of them, for example, encourage kids to explore the lighthouse. Some of them, um, encourage kids to go to the beach or have a look at the sundial. But, you know, if you're up in the Barossa, for example, you might have something around visiting some of the vineyards or something like that. And so I think whatever resources they have, they've got the expertise within their teachers to create something like this for the children that are in front of them.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, I think that's, that's a really great message Kirsten. Thank you very much. Now, I know the weather down there is very good. Your middle school is having their swimming carnival today, so we won't keep you any longer but thank you, Kirsten. Thank you, Katie, for your time.

Kirsten Barich: Thanks so much for having us.

Katie Hines: No worries. Thank you.

Dale Atkinson: Hello, and welcome to Teach a Podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name's Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and in this episode, we meet Cathy Cook, the autism inclusion teacher at Marryatville Primary School. Hello, Cathy.

Cathy Cook: Hello.

Dale Atkinson: And also, we have Sue Shywolup, who is a year three teacher at Marryatville Primary School. Hi, Sue.

Sue Shywolup: Hi.

Dale Atkinson: It’s an absolute pleasure to have you. Now, we've brought Cathy along for a couple of reasons, because she's the autism inclusion teacher and also because she's the 2024 Public Education Award finalist, or one of them, and she's making a real difference in fostering inclusivity for neurodiverse students. Cathy, What does that look like? How do you foster inclusivity for neurodiverse students?

Cathy Cook: Well, in many ways and evolving and always progressive. So at the school, what I've been able to implement throughout the last two years as the autism inclusion teacher. I've been able to upskill staff, so I ensure that they've got the pinnacle training to immerse their students in what best suits their individual needs. Also working alongside students, I might be looking at a whole range of things, whether it's incorporating peer to peer connections, building and developing some social connections, working in the classrooms for some students, or taking them out working together. But also just really being an advocate for ensuring that neurodiversity and autism's on the forefront for parents, in newsletters and also across the whole school of just being inclusive, I suppose, making sure that everyone's voice is heard.

Dale Atkinson: So how does the experience differ for a student in your class?

Cathy Cook: Well, it's not only a student in my class, it's across the whole school. So I think we need to be really making sure that that's where it evolves and that's where it's about making sure every voice and every child is heard in what they need.

So in our whole school, it's ensuring that we've got individual support that can be adjusted in supporting where those students need to access the curriculum or access breaks, maybe more so, or having different sensory tools or also looking at what's going to best engage those students in their own learning so that's, yeah, across the whole site.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, that's an incredible thing to implement. Can you tell us a little bit about the sensory boxes in the regulation space that you've put in place in your site?

Cathy Cook: Sure, so the sensory boxes was probably one of the first initiatives that I was able to implement at the school and that was making sure that each classroom had a toolbox of focus tools, I call them, also little regulation cards, just a whole range of different materials that children could access because we're all different in what we want to use.

So some might like stretchy tools, some might like the hard Rubik's cubes, others might like something which is like a squish ball, but also the regulation cards so they can look at their emotions, where they're feeling and then upskilling the children during this time to look at what they could use. in their own toolbox.

So each class has one of those and every three or four weeks it actually gets moved on to a different classroom because each box has different tools in it. So then it's sort of invigorating and new for, you know, every few weeks we're moving it forward. So that's the first point of call of [00:03:00] what, yeah, we started doing.

Dale Atkinson: Starting is a good point. Like, how do you start this journey with the kids, with your families, with your educators?

Cathy Cook: I think, you know, a lot of it is around my passion and drive, and I have a lot of foresight in looking at what can be best for the students and how we can move that. So starting the journey really starts with me, but also starts with my Autism Action Team, who I'll talk a little bit more about later on.

And Then just implementing it. So upskilling the staff so then they can take it back to their students to learn how to use the tools, how to implement them in the classroom and just navigating the space. So, and then also sharing that with families by providing photos in the newsletter and things like that.

So, It's just, yeah, giving it, giving it a voice, putting it out there, making it be seen and making it be heard that, you know, we've got all these tools, this is what we're going to use them for. This is, you know, the, the purpose behind it and then let's just see how it goes.

Also then reviewing it. Is it working? What's working? What's the tools and focus tools that are best for you. So adapting along the way is also really crucial.

Dale Atkinson: Obviously the professional development time is precious in any school. It's incredibly well protected. How is it that this is being prioritised within Marryatville Primary School?

Cathy Cook: Probably because I've been really fortunate in my leadership that I have last year and this year have both really embraced the opportunity for me to ensure that staff have professional development in a whole range of things around autism. And so I am very fortunate that at pupil free days, I've had sessions where I've been able to upskill staff in what is autism, how can we best support children with autism, but also once a term, I also have an opportunity at staff meetings to present, share data, share survey responses and also upskill again with different professional development.

Once I've actually collected data from surveys from staff, I then know where to pinpoint target it and move forward from there. So, leadership at my side have been incredibly supportive and also quite free of letting me drive my own initiatives to where I want to go and what I think is best for the staff. So that's been really positive. I'm very fortunate to have that.

Dale Atkinson: Sounds like it's been an incredibly deliberate learning process with that group of people. Can you talk about the makeup of the Autism Action Team and how it's developed over the years?

Cathy Cook: Sure. So last year I put out a call. I asked for people to nominate if they'd like to be part of the Autism Action Team and that went out to SSO’s as well as staff. So we started with about five people last year who nominated, at the beginning of this year I also said, look we'd love staff to be involved who'd like to be part of the autism action team and we had another four teaching staff that chose to be part of it. And we had about nine SSO’s that also jumped on board this year, which has really been great to strengthen their understanding because a lot of time they're working with autistic students so it's great to have their voice.

That initiative sort of came about by looking at wanting to have a focus group that I could bounce ideas off, share ideas, also hear from their voice as well at different points. So we've got junior primary teachers and middle primary and as I said, SSO’s involved so that we can sort of have a stronger understanding of what all our students are needing.

But like minded people, people who are passionate and driven around autism will have a really good understanding or are still wanting to be part of the journey and learn along the way. That's where it sort of started, and so I meet with the Autism Action Team probably twice a term at minimum, depending on what the high focus is, it could be more, but I also email them things throughout the term so they're aware of what's happening or they can share ideas and contribute along the way.

Autism Action Teams have also helped support at presenting at pupil free days or helped support during staff meetings as well and share. So, it's been really powerful for me to have that group, core people who are really interested in autism to then build a stronger foundation for where we're going.

Dale Atkinson: What's the difference that you've noticed in student behaviour, but also educator behaviour across the last year or two?

Cathy Cook: I think, I'm not going to focus so much on the word behaviour, I'm going to focus more so on the positivity around it and how students have embraced a stronger awareness and also with staff.

So, you know, having the professional development, having the understanding that all brains are different and that's okay, has definitely been a really positive way in which the students have embraced having neurodiversity brought to the forefront of our daily learning and also ongoing. So, equally with staff, there's been lots of positive comments from staff where they've been able to say, look, you know, really loved the way that was being able to be embraced or, you know, could we do more on this?

So it's been able to, it's been an open platform for everyone to contribute, which has been really positive.

Dale Atkinson: So, Sue, how's the experience been for you?

Sue Shywolup: It's been great. Our school has had, for many years, a very strong wellbeing focus, and this is closely linked to that, and really has further developed that side of it.

I've always had a really big interest in helping those children who have anxiety and other neurodiverse conditions, autism being one of those. It's really been good to see how the children have taken that on board and really have more of an understanding of different learning styles. That's been a really big positive in the classroom to see that.

They’re more aware, they're more accepting, for most part. I mean, I've got year threes, eight and nine year olds, so things change from day to day, but they're, yeah, they're very positive and really understanding all of the different learning styles has been a really positive thing.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, that sounds great. I mean, before we, um, came on air, you revealed that you're an educator of 40 years standing. You've been 18 years at Marryatville Primary School, which is an incredible innings. How has the teaching practice changed in that time to accommodate some of these, the understanding neurodiversity now?

Sue Shywolup: I think it's just that we've had to be a bit more fluid in how we present things. Certainly, when I think back to when I first started, it was a lot more structured, and not so much structured, but there was a set way of doing it. Whereas now, you, on some occasions, you have to change how you're presenting a lesson. Sometimes partway through the lesson, it's not always a set, it's going to follow this path, but it can divert the path quite quickly on occasions when you need to do that.

Dale Atkinson: And how has it been engaging in this type of professional learning, where you are looking at your own practice quite closely?

Sue Shywolup: Yeah, it's been really good. It's really consolidated and strengthened how I already felt and Cathy's different experiences that she's offered staff have really helped to build on that.

It's been great to have Kathy there as a sounding board when you're looking at individual children and, and their needs. So we talk to each other and other staff as well. And yeah, just to know that it's not an isolated one person managing one child. It's yeah, that's been good.

Dale Atkinson: Is there a strength in a community of practice that includes, you know, a handful of educators plus the SSOs all working together? Is that a strength for you?

Sue Shywolup: Definitely. Yeah. That's really in, in anything in education. If you've got a community around you to help support that, that's a really positive way of doing it, making those connections with parents, with all different staff, SSOs and leadership and teaching staff as well.

Dale Atkinson: And you mentioned parents there, I think they're always a critical partner in any activity, and particularly an activity where you're approaching something in a different way or thinking about something differently. Cathy. How has that experience been with the parents at Marryatville Primary School?

Cathy Cook: Well, the Marryatville Primary School parents have been engaged in a whole range of ways, and it really depends on the families and also what supports they need. So I've had some parents come and meet with me to discuss their specific child learning. I've also had other parents, you know, have come in a group setting and said, how about, you know, we look at options of what we could do, starting up a parental support group, for example.

I've also run professional development for parents. So we organized for Mark Le Messurier to come and do a parent afternoon or evening, which was an hour and a half session to sort of make them feel connected. And also they're not alone and also give them an opportunity to hear different strategies that can be provided for them.

So having a really strong family link and connection, something that I really think is pinnacle. In making a really successful relationship between teachers and peers and students. So it's a whole approach, isn't it, to make sure everyone's embraced.

Dale Atkinson: And it does take extra effort. And I think that's obviously recognized in you being put up for a finalist as the public education awards. What's been the effort to reward here for you?

Cathy Cook: Just love it. I love what I do, you know, and that's as simple as that. And I feel really fortunate that I've been able to do the autism inclusion teacher role and, you know, to see students thrive and flourish and also to see that parents feel heard and valued in what, what they're trying to do, but also seeing the growth in the staff.

The whole thing's been amazing. I just, I love the role. I'm very passionate and dedicated about building an understanding around neurodiversity and autism. And whilst I feel that I have a really good understanding, I'm driven to continuing and going further with it. with this and finding out more. So I'm continually learning myself about how I can best support through the whole process as well.

So autism inclusion teacher role has definitely been a positive impact at our site and the way in which our staff have embraced it, taken things on board. I just really risk takers in trying new things or asking questions. Hats off to them. They've done a great job and I'm really fortunate that, um, it's been a whole community approach, so that's been great.

Dale Atkinson: And what's next?

Cathy Cook: What's next? Well, watch this space. So, look, you know, lots of things I'd like to try and do next year. And, I've already started to plan, you know, I've got Nell Harris coming to our site. So Nell Harris is an autistic and ADHD author and has written, you know, my brain is a race car and a whole series of things.

So she's coming to do a session with the whole school, so that'll be great. Also looking at strengthening more around the self regulation services that are coming out to work and link up with our school as well. Going to do not only the autism action team, but we're going to look at change champions as well, which will be another approach to that.

I'd also like to look at [00:13:00] possibilities of strengthening autistic students in getting together, whether we have an afternoon, once a term, with families connected to that. I'd like to look at that as an opportunity. Currently, I've got Lego club happening. I'd like to broaden that as well and let students have more passion and interest groups happen so we can sort of listen to different points of views.

You know, we're lucky at the moment. We've got knitting club and beads club and French club and, um, STEM club, but, you know, where else could we go? And so giving a bit of student voice and advocacy from all of our students, not only our autistic students, I'd like to sort of draw that in further, but, you know, the world's your oyster.

Let's see where this can go.

Dale Atkinson: An incredibly positive message, and given all those clubs, it sounds like a fun place to hang out. Thank you both for coming in and talking about the autism inclusion work that you're doing out at Marryatville Primary School. It's very exciting, it's excellent work, and it's wonderful to hear how you're bringing the students and the teachers and SSOs and the families together and bringing them along the journey.

It's incredibly exciting. So, well done and thank you to you both.

Sue Shywolup: Thank you.

Cathy Cook: Thanks for having us.

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach a Podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today we are doing what we do at the start of every year, which is invite Professor Martin Westwell our Chief Executive, to come and join us. Martin, thanks for joining us.

Martin Westwell: Happy New Year, Dale.

Dale Atkinson: Happy New Year to you as well. Always good at the start of the year to reflect on the previous and look ahead. Touch on perhaps a few of the key achievements from 2024, lessons learned perhaps, and how that's going to shape the department's direction in 2025.

Martin Westwell: When you think about the achievements, when you actually stop and think about the achievements. It is pretty amazing what we've achieved over the last year or two. And the first thing I think to say is that just like the everyday work that goes on in our classrooms, in our preschool sites, that's the achievement, right. That's the work, and whatever other things go on, that's the main game. So another great year doing the main game. Let's not lose sight of that. Just doing a great job in our schools and preschools. When you think about some of the challenges that we've got, you know, perhaps we'll talk about these a bit more. Clearly things like, you know, vacancies that we've got, but what I've seen is in South Australia, we've not got nearly the kind of teacher vacancies that we've got in other states and territories yet.

We're starting the year and there are a few schools that have got some vacancies, but I think actually getting to a position and, you know, with some special authorities to teach and some of those things where we're starting really well, I think is a great achievement as well. Some policy things, Technical colleges going gangbusters, we've got mid year reception, the introduction, that shift from FLO to Tailored Learning Provision, that shift, I think is really important. Enormous amount of work there, not just work from, you know, kind of within Flinders Street but with sites, with leaders, with teachers. Some of the other policy stuff that kind of every school a great school work that we've done really focusing on well, where are we gonna make investments? What's the capital investment look like? How do we support schools perhaps that don't have the best reputation? How do we support to make sure that those schools can be as brilliant as other schools and so people are not driving past them to go to another school down the road but actually they're attracting students to them.

Talk about the country strategy, OSHC, you know, those kinds of things. One of the things that I'm really proud of, and it's just the beginning, is the agreement that we signed with the Anangu people in the APY lands around a partnership with them about what education is going to look like. One of the Anangu talked to me about it and said, we used to be like this and they made a gesture where there's kind of two fists hitting each other. We used to be like this with the department and now we’re like this and showed the two hands next to each other, pushing in the same direction. I really felt proud of all the work that's gone into that and getting us to that place and as I say, that's just the beginning now we've got to honour that.

That's us making a promise with the Anangu about how we're going to do this thing, how we're going to work together. There are some non-negotiables in that, with a lot of ways in which we can work in partnership and now actually getting on and doing some of that work. That's a great achievement from last year that of course will shape some of the work going forwards.

I think some of the other things as well have been, you know, with the strategy. It's the strategy and the structures around it and how people have responded to that. I think some of it is the culture shift, you know, the vibe. I think that's changing. I'm asking leaders and education directors to provide more of that kind of coaching, working alongside, providing support for improvement, that shift has even been in Flinders Street..

The senior executive group working more effectively across divisions. Each division has got a massive amount of work and of course the danger is that we fall into our silos. So us getting out of that, you know, all of that is working towards giving school leaders more autonomy and that notion of the tight and flexible. Tight on what we're going for, but flexible on how it's achieved and just make sure the whole system's getting behind that.

I also think the protecting democracy work that looks like civics and civics professional learning and developing people in terms of their ability and the innovation around teaching civics in secondary. I think, you know, the bigger picture is how are we getting kids to stop and think, not get pushed around by social media? How are we helping students and young people to disagree agreeably? To not fall into, ‘well, if you don't agree with me, you're against me and I hate you.’ And we're seeing so much of that around the world and how it erodes democracy, how it erodes society.

When you look at education, think about the purpose of education and you see one of those challenges, and it's a challenge to childhood, but it's also a challenge to society. If we're not addressing that what's the point? What are we doing? So, I think that work again will be really important for the coming year.

Dale Atkinson: The big process of kind of development and growth. This is a third of the conversations that you and I have had at the start of a calendar year over the last couple of years has been, the development of the strategy, the purpose statement and allowing sites, site leaders and central office to kind of really live with the strategy and try to reflect on it, what does it mean? And put it into practice. What have you seen over the last year has indicated how this has been put into practice and are there some standard examples of success?

Martin Westwell: Some of the things that I've seen, when I do site visits and I talk with leaders and, you know, often the story is, you know, we started with the areas of impact, we started getting into them and we thought, what's the template, what are we supposed to do, what does accountability look like in this? and we'll meet that requirement and then you didn't put one out where we thought you were a bit crazy doing that. So we started to have a conversation, we started to dig in and think about what we were already doing and lots of schools, of course, already doing lots around those areas of impact anyway, and thinking about where they would build on and some were saying, well, we just got going on this thing, you know, maybe something around wellbeing or student agency or the site saying, well we were really great, I remember Andamooka primary school, Bronte the principal saying ‘we'd put so much into wellbeing, we really want to keep that going but when we look at the strategy, instead of just carrying on doing wellbeing and saying, well we're doing this pretty well, building on that and shifting that wellbeing to support student agency’ because you know how important that is for students.

So there's a bit of, yeah, we're already doing some of this but look what we can do now. I think the other great things that I heard quite a lot was, we thought we were going to do wellbeing or student agency and then we got into it and we realised that we couldn't do that until we'd worked on this, whatever it might be, and so people change their minds.

I think when people start thinking about something and they set off in a direction with their planning and then they change their minds because they've got good evidence for it, that's incredible, right? And you don't get that from a top-down pushing at compliance saying everybody's got to do this thing. So when you see people changing the minds saying, we think this is going to have a bigger impact on our kids so we've shifted and we're doing that. I think that's amazing!

I think the other thing that we've seen that I see is when people have literally said ‘so we did this thing and we put our school, we've got a journey map, you know, where we started we used to think this, and now we're thinking that, look at where we've been, look at where we're going to’. Schools that expressed their improvement plan as kind of a one pager graphic so they can talk to parents, students, internal conversations, other stakeholders around their school. We can talk to this plan, there's lots more behind it, but they've got this kind of graphical representation.

One of the things that people have said is because we've had these conversations in the school, people have got much more ownership of it and so it's activating people rather than kind of, you know, the danger of the top down stuff is people do it, but it's not necessarily activating them in the system, in their site, in the way that you would hope.

So I think, you know, when you see that kind of aspiration, people do talk a little bit more about kind of joy in the work about creativity. I think that's been really positive. I think the danger is we can fall into an either/or, you know, it's such a focus on literacy and numeracy and we're not doing that anymore we're doing wellbeing and agency. And of course it's not that at all. We're trying to get these things to work together in service of each other.

Dale Atkinson: One of the things you've spoken about a little bit in the past is like the difference between accountability to ourselves, the account to which we hold ourselves and the ways in which we're held accountable externally. Can you talk about how that concept is going to play out through how we measure success of the strategy's implementation in 2025?

Martin Westwell: Yeah, I think this is going to be a big one for us this year. You know, you look at systems around the world and what they do is they have kind of a system measure. We want to increase literacy and numeracy. And what happens is that measure then gets pushed down onto schools and it becomes this kind of compliance.

And that definition of accountability is almost kind of being held to account. You know, it's a high stakes, it's a punishment if you don't improve, if you don't get the thing rather than accountability being saying, well, we agreed we were going to take responsibility for this together, this is what we were going for in our site. Even kind of knowing that might look different with different cohorts of kids, you know, some sites have got kids who might have transient population, so kids who come and go, and other kids who are quite stable and have been there for a period of time and you would expect different things, perhaps for those two different groups. At a site level you've got to be able to think about your accountability in terms of what you're taking responsibility for, how you're making a difference to these two different cohorts of kids. So I've been kind of constantly grappling with this notion of, as soon as you get a system measure, how do we stop it from being a high stakes measure that then drives behaviour in a way that you just don't want it to?

So yeah, you know, as a system, what are we going to report on, we have to report on NAPLAN so that’s done. What else would we see if this strategy, you know, if this thing was working, what else would we see? And I do think we'd see increases in attendance, we'd see increases in retention in schools, some of the kind of big picture things. I think in the longer term as well, we'd start to see some of those equity measures, you know, and the first way in which you'd measure equity would have some of those standard things like NAPLAN results and attendance and retention. For some of those, you know, what people call low equity groups, low SES kids, some of our aboriginal communities, some kids with disability, making sure that the kids are engaging with school and are achieving and are getting what they need out of school.

So you'd have some of those measures as well. But again, even if you look at something like attendance, the danger is that attendance strategies start to create behaviours that you don't want, you know, it's driving kids to come to school and they might be attending in person but they're not attending in heart and mind. And so that's not actually what we want. We want them to attend and we want them to be present as well. Attendance strategies, you know, the strategy. Should be driving attendance rather than looking for ways in which we kind of push on attendance, that balance is a really tricky one. So making schools accountable in that responsibility way and then saying, okay, so how do we all work together to achieve this.

Dale Atkinson: Now we focus a little bit as a system now under the new kind of way that we're approaching things and certainly under the what we're going after is, the purpose of public education on the human paradigm of, how we're interacting with these kids and the environment in which we're preparing them, AI and other influences, and what we're going to need them in terms of capabilities to have when they reach maturity in the workforce. So in terms of that focus on the human paradigm, how's that shifting the way we want to lead and learn within our system?

Martin Westwell: Yeah, that human paradigm stuff comes from that Michael Fullan work, doesn't it? About what actually are system drivers, and he's kind of, he's shifted his thinking a little bit and he contrasts the human paradigm to what he calls the bloodless paradigm. You know, there's just no heart or humanity in it. And so bringing the heart and humanity back to it, I think is clearly what Fullan's getting at. And that’s the core of the strategy, that notion of the choice that we made was to be purpose driven around learning and thriving and not being data driven. It drives you crazy when people talk about data driven. I'm such a data nerd and data is really important. It gives us great insight into how we might achieve our purpose, how we're going, where we might put our efforts, resources as a system or as a school level. So the data is crucially important, but we're not driven by it, we're driven by our purpose and the data can give us insights.

I think there's a recognition that we're a people business and this people business runs on relationships. And you can see that from students, you know, that notion of particularly when students get to high school, how important that relationship is with an adult in a school in order for students to attend and to be present. So we know it's about relationships. It's very much about kind of teachers learning from each other. You know, so a lot of that is about us as people working together. Now then that means, I think as a system, truly being a learning system, you know, what does it mean to be, a learning system, to be able to try out things together, to be able to learn from each other, for the system to provide opportunities for us to do that?

One of the great strengths that we have as a public education system is that we're a system and we've got amazing people all over this system and we should be connecting them to each other. Sometimes those will be connections that persist, and sometimes it might be connections getting people together because you want to address a particular thing, or you either solve a problem, or move forward and innovate and find new ways of doing things, getting people together to do that.

And I think the AI work is a good example of that. Right? So we set out, you know, most people know this story. We didn't ban chat GPT when it came out and that was an interesting thing when everybody else was banning it. Because we said we're going to learn and then we put it into the hands of teachers and students and said, well, we're, we just want to learn from this. We're going to provide the guardrails, provide some protection, but we just want to learn from our teachers. Let's really listen to our teachers. Let's really listen to our students, kind of explicitly, what are they actually telling us? But also using some of the data around how people are using AI to have a positive impact and how do we amplify that within our systems.

Then rolling out our own AI EDchat to all of our staff, all of our site staff, to give them the opportunity to have a play with it, just learn to have conversations together and to think about then, well, what are the resources, what's professional learning, how do we support that? I think that's a really good example of the kind of thing that we want to be doing as a learning system, really making the most of the expertise that we've got in the system and the relationships between people.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah. Relationships between people is such a critical piece of work. You spoke a bit earlier about the civics and citizenship, kind of program that's pulled together. We're also doing quite a lot of work in terms of student agency and involvement and a critical part of the civics and citizenship is we're actually going to ask kids, what do they think about it? What role is that kind of approach going to start playing within the system for us?

Martin Westwell: One of the things, again, kind of a big pitch thing that you're going to grapple with is the relevance of education. We've got our purpose, but that could be expressed in lots of different ways in terms of the kind of curriculum and what kids are learning and how you go about that.

And one of the things that we learned from putting the strategy together in the first instance was just what you learn from students. And you're only learning if you're surprised by something. So there was a lot in that original work with the students that we weren't surprised by, but there was a lot that we were.

And of course that's the stuff that changes your thinking, that's the stuff that helps you do a better job. And so I think it's the same when we're thinking about What students want to learn, how they want to learn it, how we make the biggest difference to them, you know, students really being partners in that learning with us, that's going to be more and more of what we do at a school level and a system level as well.

It's been really interesting hearing about schools that have invited students into some of the pupil free days and students are turning up on a day off from school and actually reporting how much they get out of it and are enjoying it. And again, the thing that really stands out is when the teachers are surprised because the students are saying things and there's conversations going on that are not necessarily going on in the classrooms. And, you know, there's not necessarily space being created to have these conversations. And when we do that and we have those surprises, it's always an opportunity for us to do a better job. And, you know, again, it's this notion of ‘better job’. Who defines what a ‘better job’ is? And of course, serving the students, that helps us, I think that's the better job, making the biggest difference for the students. And you've got to temper that a little bit, right? Because first thing when you say to students, how could school be better? They'll say, longer recess, more sport, you know, you get those kinds of things from students. But it's kind of getting underneath that and actually really grappling together with students on about how this thing could be better.

Dale Atkinson: You've emphasized over the last two years about the importance of a learning system. You've created your own personal learning system in the off season. Talk to me about welding.

Martin Westwell: Welding for me is kind of one of those skills that I think, you know everybody should have. It seems like such a great thing to be able to do. So I kind of set off with that, with a few mates and again, it was that importance of people. If you want to do a transactional thing I learned a lot from, I think lots of us do, you know, YouTube. You know, how do I fix that particular thing in the car, look at a couple of videos, find that thing out and that particular kind of almost like, it's not a micro connection, but it's kind of micro skill that you then develop a tiny little thing, that's great.

But when you're doing a kind of bigger, broader skill or bigger kind of learning and development. I think it's hard to do it as an individual. You kind of, you got to do it with people. It makes more meaning, you connect it more, from a neuroscience background, you make more connections in your brain because it's not just kind of this self contained little bit of knowledge.

It's connected to the experiences that you have together. The questions that other people have that I wouldn't think of, you think, ‘Oh, Amazing’. And so what it does is it kind of reminds you of how hard learning is, but it reminds you about how uncomfortable it can be sometimes. It also reminds you about how important it is to get a bit of fun in it as well, you know, I don't think I've had many real lasting learning experiences that haven't involved some laughter in some way or another.

Laughter often is a part of it because of those relationships and so it gives that kind of emotion that, that you did learn in that emotional sense as well. So it's a bit meta, you know, kind of learning this skill, but also just applying that, I'm thinking, ‘yeah, this is what learning looks like’.

Dale Atkinson: And what have you welded, what have you made?

Martin Westwell: Not much yet, I've got to say. By my shed, there's lots of bits of, bits of old metal.

Dale Atkinson: Incredibly well connected.

Martin Westwell: Yeah, that's good.

Dale Atkinson: Finally, what message would you like to share with educators and leaders and staff at the start of 2025?

Martin Westwell: Yeah. Look, I think obviously there's a keep going message. What we've got in South Australia. With the strategy and with the work is a great ambition. And I think that ambition has been recognized nationally and, and increasingly internationally.

You know, the AI work was really ambitious. I think the work that we're doing around the strategy and what that means for school improvement or for curriculum, what it means for the ramp up and the work on inclusion are Aboriginal learners is really ambitious. And I'm really keen for everybody to kind of be in on that ambition, especially in a period of time when I look around some of the parts of South Australia, particularly Australia, look around Australia and I don't feel like education has got ambition.

I feel like it's got the danger of this mediocrity, that it's focusing kind of too much on itself, and not on the kids that it, you know, standardized test results, all of that stuff. And, you know, it's okay. We've got good education systems, but I'm not sure that education is really doing it for our kids.

And I think in South Australia, we've got that ambition. So I think something about being proud to be. South Australian, you know, I get that opportunity to go out and talk, say, like, nationally and internationally. And the feedback I get about what we're doing is incredibly positive. And, and I do hope that people feel that as well, you know.

I know it's hard work too but I think the ambition, the focus on, you know, that educators always have on making the biggest difference we can for our kids and using the opportunity of the strategy with that notion of the kind of tight and flexible, with that notion of us being a learning system.

And so I want everyone, including our educators, to be great learners within that system, recognizing some of the pragmatic challenges that teachers have, you know, day on day. That's how I want us to shift. So our students and our teachers are feeling more joy in the everyday experience of school.

Teachers have got that agency, that wellbeing. Teachers are effective learners and then all that that means for the flow through to our students. We had some visitors last year from, well, Ron Berger from the States and Gwyn App Harry from the XP schools in the UK. And one of the things that they talked about was how student culture never exceeds the staff culture.

So for us to work on us, for us to focus on us for a bit and think about how we are developing with agency and with our wellbeing, with being effective learners, I think that's something really important for this coming year.

Dale Atkinson: There you go - Be proud, be ambitious. Professor Martin Westwell, thanks for your time.

Martin Westwell: Thanks Dale.