Episode 1 transcript

Talking Teaching with Maxine McKew, Kerry Elliott and Sophie Murphy

Noel Creece

Because if you can change a person, you could change a class. If you could change a class, you could change a unit of classes, and that's what's we've got here. If you could change a unit of classes, you could change a school. If you could change a school, you could change a community. If you could change a community, you can change a city. Change a city, change a state. Change a state, you can change Australia. Change Australia, you change the world. Any teacher working here is influencing a child that's actually changing the world.

Maxine McKew

That's Mr. Noel, as he's known to his very young students at the very new South Melbourne Primary School. Noel Creece is principal of Victoria's first vertical public school. That's right, it goes up, not out. A real school of the future and one for the entire community. As you'll hear later in the podcast, there are both challenges and great opportunities when it comes to working in these smartly designed new learning spaces.

Welcome to Talking Teaching. My name is Maxine Mckew and I work at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. This is a first of a series of podcasts aimed at educators and school leaders across the country. People who want to be part of a lively conversation about [inaudible 00:01:30], whether it's classroom practice or the latest in educational thinking and research.

Like teaching these days, we take a team approach, so you'll be hearing contributions from my colleagues, Kerry Elliott ...

Kerry Elliott

That's me.

Maxine McKew

... and Sophie Murphy

Sophie Murphy

Hi there

Maxine McKew

Putting all this together is our sound engineer, Gavin Nebauer. He composed the signature music for this podcast. Thank you, Gavin. That's who we are. As for what we're about, well we all know that teachers cop it every which way. Everyone on the planet, just about, has a view and often a shrill view on “what those teachers should be doing,” and a lot of it is not very helpful. We want to do something different. We're not Pollyannas, but what you'll hear from the TT team will be positive. In each podcast, we'll aim to highlight the many thoughtful and successful approaches that are playing out every day in Australian schools. Yes, there are some red lights flashing and we can't ignore them, but the fact is Australian schooling is in pretty good shape. Expectations are higher and the training of our teachers is becoming much more demanding. Importantly, the expertise of teachers is now recognized through a set of nationally agreed standards that are defined and validated by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, AITSL for short.

Now this is a big shift, and we're right at the start. That's what we're going to zero in on now. At a recent conference in Canberra, AITSL brought together a group of teachers from across the states and territories who've all gone through the certification process and are now qualified to call themselves Highly Accomplished or Lead Teachers, HALTs for short or HALTers.

In a moment, we'll hear from AITSL's chair, Professor John Hattie and from his American counterpart, Peggy Brookins, who oversees the American teaching standards. But first, Sophie Murphy was at the conference for Talking Teaching and found herself in the middle of a pretty interesting conversation with a group of certified HALTers.

Tania Crawford

I'm the first certified HALT teacher ... sorry, Highly Accomplished Teacher in Adelaide. I was certified in 2014. I did it because I wanted to be the best I can for the students I teach, and I felt that it was validating my practice and it gave me a lot of confidence to then help other teachers and grow capacity of my teachers at my site and help them be the best they can for the students that they teach too.

Sophie Murphy

From the person and the teacher that you were and the there that you are after going through that process, have things changed for you?

Deana Cuconits

It's changed me as a teacher. I'm far more confident to talk about my practice and I'm far more confident in saying that I have an impact on my students. I'm also more happy to share my practice with other teachers and know that I can do a good job and I am a good teacher in my classroom and share it widely.

Adele Maughn

I felt I was looking for really good quality professional development, and I fell by taking this path, I was able to really reflect deeply on my practice, really look at how I was working with children, how I was communicating not only with the students in my class but my colleagues, the wider school community as well, and how through going through certification can have the best impact on the students that I work with and the wider school community as well.

Natalie Polak

I really didn't know what I was getting into when I decided to pursue national certification. I had never met a HALT. I had taken on the position of learning and teaching coordinator and it had been a natural development in my teaching career that I have come through as an early career teacher and going through the proficiency process, and it just seemed natural to me that I would then be the first in my school context to go forth with the voluntary level of Highly Accomplished.

We've made extraordinary bounds in the few short years that I have become certified because I think in some way, it just makes them trust that I say things on a wholistic level and now these networks and powerful connections that we're bringing to St. John's College in Dubbo is giving us access to things that we probably never would have been able to understand or have the support to achieve.

Andrew Cornwall

Becoming a HALT is outward looking. It's very easy for many of our teachers and I certainly was that for the first few years of my career, to be in my classroom and see that as my area of impact, and whilst still doing a good job there was more than I should or could have been doing in that space, I think we are better together, that's one of the secret recipes to the success of the HALT network, we are better together. As a HALT, it's incumbent on me to go back to schools and to build that culture that says we are better together. I can't accept mediocrity again. It's no good just to go back to my class and just be okay because I know what highly accomplished and leader looks like.

Sophie Murphy

You're in a community or a school that has many HALTs then, more than one. Is it a different picture, I guess, that you've got this collaboration with other HALTs and that your principal then is able to really understand what to do with you and how to maximize the impact that you're having as opposed to perhaps doing it in isolation?

Meghan Smith

Prior to having these standards, we had this feeling about what an expert teacher looked like, and we kind of knew that some there's were having a greater impact than others. But with the introduction of those standards, you could pinpoint it, and that could then be articulated to everyone. This is why I am an expert teacher, because I am doing X, Y, and Z. It just gives this common platform for everyone to be able to say, right, this is what expert teachers look like and this is what expert teachers do.

Natalie Polak

We have now joined an era where are not wanting this to be an elite group, that this is to become the norm, and that will only ever have a positive impact on all of our students in all of our care. I think I am going to bring my HALT voice back and make it loud, but I finally feel like I have the right points of arguments to perhaps sway some of the incredible educators in my room to take on this journey.

Maxine McKew

That's what the flavor of the discussion among the group of highly accomplished teachers at the Canberra summit. As I said, it was organized by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, and the summit heard from a range of local and international guests. Among them, Peggy Brookins, the head of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in the United States, and from AITSL chair, Professor John Hattie. Both of them joined me now in the studio. Welcome.

Peggy Brookins

Thank you.

John Hattie

Thank you.

Maxine McKew

Now John, it sounds as if there was really quite a buzz at the summit from those teachers we just heard from.

John Hattie

It was, and one sense, it was a bit of a love inn, in that it was very, very positive and very reinforcing, and to get a group of excellence in one room, the mood was incredibly positive, remarkably high. They have so many ambitions and quite frankly, we just need to get out of their way.

Maxine McKew

I gather a strong point of feedback from the teachers was that being certified as highly accomplished teachers has made many feel that much more confident, as if their practice has really been affirmed.

John Hattie

I think it's a fascinating observation, that in the teaching profession, there is no reliable way of making that as a station, that you are amongst the top ranks of our teachers. A lot of testimonials from principals, a lot of comments, but just to do it in a way that looks at the impact on students, and that's what the highly accomplished and lead teachers have gone through, a massive process to demonstrate that impact. It really is a statement about excellence and for many, that is really an incredible feeling and an accomplishment in their profession.

Maxine McKew

Well just explain that process for us. What does a teacher have to do to get certification?

John Hattie

It varies a bit by state, but certainly there is a major component in putting in a portfolio of evidence of your impact on students. This isn't writing how great a teacher you are and what kind of things you do in the staff room.

Maxine McKew

You're not looking for motherhood statements.

John Hattie

No, not at all, and whilst those things are in there and because we do care about being involved in the community of the staff room and across the sector, it is primarily about the impact on the students. This is where we've learned here in Australia a tremendous amount of what the national award been doing for close to 30 years, where they have refined their instruments to do this, and a lot of that mimics that kind of work. It's quite intensive, it takes quite amount of time, it can take up to one or two years to put the portfolio together, it's then judged at each state in terms of does it meet the standard ...

Maxine McKew

Who does that judging?

John Hattie

Within each state, the states have their own assessors trained. Our role in AITSL is the moderation, because as you know, Maxine, there are four levels in the teaching standards — graduate, proficient, highly accomplished and lead — and this is the big jump from proficient to the highly accomplished and lead. Obviously there is another set of standards related to the lead part of the highly accomplished and lead but we decided to form those two groups together and the acronym is interesting, they call themselves HALTers and have really created an incredible momentum. The standards are quite high, they're quite rigorous, but clearly, we have a number of these in Australia who meet those standards, and that's exciting.

Maxine McKew

Peggy, can I bring you in at this stage because you'd have been down this path in the United States. How do the professional standards operate across the 50-odd states?

Peggy Brookins

Much like John talked about, we're national standards and the board, we're in 50 states so we're not governed by states essentially. All of our assessment is a little bit different than what HALTs would go through because we're a national assessment. We're assessed in one place. We go through a series of rigorous what we call four components of content knowledge. The second component would be around differentiation and instruction. The third would be around the teaching and learning environment where there is video cases that are upload with commentary. Then the fourth would be the effective or reflective practitioner. Throughout, no matter where you are, you are still assessed nationally for going through this rigorous progress to obtain your certification.

Maxine McKew

In fact, how have these standards would you say helped to change, well perhaps even transform teaching?

Peggy Brookins

Oh, much like what AITSL has done with highly accomplished teaching is our focus too is on how do we affect student outcomes. In order to do that, we have a set of standards that students have to maintain and reach. We also have that rigorous set of standards that teachers have to maintain and reach. Our focus is how do we have an effect on student achievement and how is that clear, consistent and concise with evidence that supports it, there's a performance assessment that supports that, and research that backs that up. We're looking at, over the last 15 years, research that says if you are board-certified, then you are having an effect within the classroom.

Maxine McKew

The important words you used there, clarity and consistency. What would you say is the stage you're at, and I know this would be variable across the states, but in terms of achieving that so that you can say that you're really boosting students' achievement, where would you say you're at?

Peggy Brookins

I think anybody who has become board-certified is there. You're actually teaching to a set of standards and you're reaching a set of standards, you're measured against a set of standards. I always say to other people, I was not measuring myself against someone else, I was measuring myself against a set of standards to make me better than me. When we do that, it takes kind of the bias out of that to say, you know, just because you're not certified doesn't mean you're not a good teacher. It's that you haven't measured yourself against a set of standards to kind of say, "All right, now I've sealed the deal here."

Maxine McKew

John, bring us back to Australia. I guess we've got a way to go, haven't we? We're in the third your now of applying certification. The biggest take up would be in what, New South Wales and the ACT, would I be right?

John Hattie

New South Wales, ACT and South Australia. Queensland's just come in line with a pilot this year and then going to four next year, Tasmania's coming on, Northern Territory's been in it from the beginning, West Australia are not in it at this stage anymore, they've got highly accomplished and lead teachers there, and Victoria's yet to come on board.

Maxine McKew

Victoria, I gather, is saying, or the official certainly at the department of education is saying it's on the agenda, but they lag as of the moment, aren't they?

John Hattie

Oh come on, we're always ahead of the rest of the nation. But yes, I sincerely hope that is the case and each state has the right to do what it wants, but certainly they have started this year with their leading learning teachers which are very similar to HALTs but it's not part of the national scheme, and it's kind of as Peggy was saying, that when you get that robust, independent assessment of highly accomplished, you really do create a profession that can esteem itself by recognizing that excellence.

Maxine McKew

Let's be more specific. Where you have nationally certified, highly accomplished teachers, what would I notice about that kind of teacher in a particular school? What would they be doing?

John Hattie

Well it's not necessarily so much what they would be doing, it's what is their impact they're having on their students. Sometimes, that's harder to see, particularly if you talk to teachers in a staff room. It is looking at the evidence and how they think. Like how do they think about their impact? Is it just narrow and student test scores, or is it the whole development of the child? Is the nature of how they run their classrooms? Certainly looking at the evidence that came from the national board work is their work that they do with these students have the right proportions of surface and deep understanding. Those are the kind of things that they're assessed on.

Certainly we know from the work, particularly from the national board, that the nature of what they do in their classrooms is quite different. Yes, we do want them to have, particularly at the highly accomplished and more so the lead level, we want them to have more involvement in working with other teachers not only in their school but across their school.

I point to the wonderful example that the HALTs themselves generated in their first year, where we pointed out the problem we have with venturing in the first two years. They said, "How can we help?" What they do now is that any teacher in the first two years can get on this app, ask how do I do this, what do we do here, what's going on, and by that afternoon, 10 to 12 highly accomplished and lead teachers get on an answer them. They've created a community outside their own classrooms to work with other teachers, and that's one of the defining attributes of what we want in the leadership amongst teachers. These are the very best teachers staying in the classroom.

Maxine McKew

That's an important point, because I noticed if you go through the seven standards, at any point, there's this emphasis on helping and working with other colleagues and helping them to boost their learning. That's absolutely embedded in those standards, isn't it?

John Hattie

That's absolutely critical, Maxine, but one of the problems that discovering is that in some schools, principals struggle to use this expertise. In many cases, it's the principal's role to be the instructional leader, and so what these HALTs are doing themselves now is creating their own pathways, creating their own opportunities. Sometimes they do work outside the school, sometimes they're working stunningly within the schools. But we have this incredible expertise that's kind of been under the radar a bit, but they are there, and so how do we actually can grow them and make them a critical part of the teaching profession is what we're working on and what they're working on now.

Peggy Brookins

Oh, absolutely.

Maxine McKew

This question of widening and building expertise across teachers, across among the highly accomplished teachers.

Peggy Brookins

We've had 30 years of experience of doing this, where the HALTs are early in the process, and the things that we've learned over the years is we have 64 networks around the country and those networks of board-certified teachers are the mentors for new teachers who are coming in. They're also the mentors for teachers who are going through this rigorous process. They also are advocates for students, if there's policy, they have a voice to say, "Here's what standard be part of policy" versus having a policy maker not fully understand the connection to the classroom and the implications of policy that they may put in place that may be detrimental. They can do that as advocates as well.

They were looking at the transformational nature of going through the process within a school environment to change culture and climate within schools. They have a big role in talking about what it is to go through the process, what it is to go very deep within a classroom, and I often got asked the question, what was it like before you were board-certified and what was it like after you're board-certified? I'm saying it's worlds apart, and I take them through what a lesson would look like prior to becoming board-certified and what a lesson would look like after.

John, when you said yes, the deepness and the richness of that lesson, for me, it was more about application. It's not so much what you know, it's what you do with what you know. If you cannot apply knowledge, there's no sense in having any knowledge because there's nothing you can ever do with it. The fact that we started our students off thinking about why am I learning this, how am I going to use this, how do I apply this, how do I connect it to other knowledge, how do I connect it to other subjects, and in what ways it is valuable to understand and build other knowledge on what I'm learning? Because our focus is on children and it's not about the I, it's about the we, and the we is what moves student achievement forward.

Maxine McKew

That's nicely put, isn't it, John.

John Hattie

Beautifully put, absolutely.

Maxine McKew

I can just see a teacher saying, "Yes, that's absolutely right."

John Hattie

I was listening to one of the HALTs in the summit, Glenda Stuart from the ACT. She gave a dinner presentation, always a tough gig to have, and she started by saying, "I'm not a very good teacher." Her final line was, "Now I know, I'm a great teacher." The transformation in Glenda's, as she portrayed it to us, was dramatic as a consequence of going through this. She's close to retirement, she could have easily spent the last 10 years coasting, she didn't.

Maxine McKew

Why, what was central to that transformation about how she saw her own practice?

John Hattie

When you have to put together a portfolio, you deeply have to reflect on what you do and the impact you have. In doing that, I think not only did she realize, "Oh my goodness, I can actually do this. I do have this kind of impact. Look at it." But when she got affirmed that that in fact was the case, it's a double whammy. For Glenda, it was a major statement, and then she said it rejuvenated and revolutionized her last years of teaching. But to leave the profession knowing you're at the top of your game is a really pretty exciting moment.

Maxine McKew

John Hattie and Peggy Brookins there. I'm joined in the studio by Kerry and by Sophie. Sophie, first with you, of course you're at that HALTs conference where they ... it seemed to bring together so many energized HALTers. What's your sense though of how this is all traveling? I mean what do you see as the power, if you like, of the AITSL standards?

Sophie Murphy

Maxine, it was a really interesting two days. When I think of myself as a practitioner, I was teaching for 20 years, I didn't have these standards to really reflect on my own classroom practice. I thought that I was doing a great job in some way and perhaps not in others, but I didn't know why. I couldn't articulate when things felt good and things didn't feel so good. So it was really great to see teachers be able to connect a common language to say, "I know I'm doing really well." Now whether it's at the end of your teaching like Glenda  the beginning of a teaching career, the standards are there so that teachers can evaluate their impact, evaluate their practice and say, "I'm doing a great job because," or "I need to work on this because," so for those people that are not HALT, so they're not in that space of accreditation as yet, then the standards give them the ability to look at what works and what does great teaching actually look like.

Kerry Elliott

Sophie, I think you're right. The professional standards really pick up this common language about what good teaching is about, and we know from the evaluation of the initial uptake of the standards that it's being used in varying ways across Australia. We know that it's used for registration, for accreditation, and for certification processes, but we know that the real power and the importance lies in that developmental means. How do we go about using it developmentally to help guide our practice.

Maxine McKew

Well, now to quite a different subject, and along with Kerry, I was out on the road recently, looking at a brand new and very different primary school in South Melbourne. The first I noticed was there was no car park. If you want to work at South Melbourne as a teacher, you walk or catch the tram or the light rail. There's no front fence or any fence for that matter. Kerry, that's only the start, isn't it?

Kerry Elliott

Absolutely. What's interesting is the way they're going about using these amazing spaces.

Female student

Hi, Mr. Noel.

Students

Hi, Mr. Noel.

Noel Creese

Hello beautiful people.

This is basically a prototype to engage the community so that that sense of community from a child from zero onwards is engaged, and this parent community can be recreated in quasi or an old and industrial estate. That was the embryonic stage of thinking let's make it a whole of service. Because I've seen many co-locations with a fence between the two, so you can see over at the kindergarten, but there's no marriage between those two. We still got work to do in that, but part of our values we've sort of driven is around character, community, and learning, so the community part is really examining what is it that we've done to connect the community wider than the school community.

That is where I was talking about here where the community congregate in the morning and that little window, just want to connect them especially if the weather gets a little inclement. Lots of kids now are just playing at the front and then they're coming in at 8:45, and almost every parent that comes goes upstairs, delivers their kids, to have a look and see what's going on.

Kerry Elliott

Do you call them tiers, floors, spaces?

Noel Creese

Well I've said to my teachers at the moment, we haven't formalized the names of the spaces, but we want to so that as we move through the areas ... I mentioned before, when you're planning, that one of the circles is the spaces, because when we have a staff meeting, I want to be able to say to a staff member, what did you do with the communal space? How did you use that effectively? If we don't label them as communal spaces or floors, people are using different languages and they're going to be saying, "Or you mean the space which has got the thing with the window?" I don't want to do that.

Have a look at this, I'm fascinated with this. There's two little kids playing there and there is literally a tram within 50 meters that potentially we see as a threat, which I understand, I understand the threat. But those two kids are not going off that grass.

[inaudible 00:25:35] the parents this morning, their mind questions and the parents were of children of four years old that hadn't been engaged in what we're seeing here now, they're number one-

Kerry Elliott

These were the parents coming through on tours?

Noel Creese

Yeah. Their number one question at the end was security. Why don't you have more fences, why don't you ... we can keep the kids in here, we can keep the kids in there, it was all around. Their own anxieties around how we're going to contain the children inside the building because of the evil threat of I don't know where. Some of the threats are real, I mean I'm not going to let kids out there just willy nilly, go everywhere without supervision.

Kerry Elliott

It is early days, but what do you want in terms of the teaching and learning spaces?

Noel Creese

I think the need determines the use. We're actually responding to the needs of the child rather than saying this sounds like a good idea for my teaching today. The teachers have got to be in constant dialogue and ask the question, a reflective question, is the use of space reflecting what the needs of the students are? I've got visions of kids being in front of thousands of people and the Planetshakers, that's the next door, which has got an auditorium that can hold 2,000, and if I can't use the local community to engage, I'm on a train within two seconds that gets me to St. Kilda Beach for an ecological study or into the CET Aquarium or to the Arts Center or kids busking and performing what they've learned in class, all those things are open to us as being part of an urban environment. We've got local businesses that are saying, "Come in," where they are going to be our mentors, so if they've got to create an industry to do with marketing, why can't we use the marketing as part of a STEAM project and have the kids go into the space? Why can't we get creative and get parents of multi-cultural families coming into our library to read to the kids when they're three-year-old, to connect with the community that is multi-cultural, why can't we do that? Why can't we embrace all these opportunities?

Kerry Elliott

Noel Creece says the enthusiasm for the way new design opens up a whole set of new learning opportunities, which just happens to be the subject or a very substantial Australian Research Council grant headed by Associate Professor Wes Imms at the University of Melbourne. Wes joins me know, and Wes, I know your interest in this area goes way back.

Wes Imms

Yeah, looking back on it, Grade 2, my teacher turned our classroom into a ship and sailed us around the world. Every day we went into classroom, it was totally reconfigured. Some days, if we're in one particular country, the desks would be in particular place and things would be hanging here and there and artifacts will be around. Looking back on it now, I realized that actually was a really conscious manipulation of space by the teacher to enhance our learning.

Kerry Elliott

Some of that has probably contributed to some of your interest now. Do you want to tell us a little bit about some of the projects that you're running and some of the ... I guess the research and evidence base behind this great use of learning spaces?

Wes Imms

Yeah, I'm lucky to be part of a research group at the University of Melbourne which is a collaboration between architecture and education and medicine. We have the mandate to try to improve the quality of use of learning spaces across the broad gamut of those, from hospitals through the schools, tertiary institutions, even corporate workplaces, because what we're interested in is the design for certain, but how the design is used and how to make it effective. Part of our research is around how do you actually evaluate that? How do you work out when teachers are actually in a space and children are in a space and they are being part of the space and using it, how do you work out if that's actually better than another configuration, another type of design? It's been a real challenge.

That was one of the projects we've worked on, and that's informed the second, the one that we're working on at the moment which is called Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change. That's a very big project that's running across Australia and New Zealand across four years, and it's focused on trying to work out ways that we can give teachers the information they need so they can use space as yet another part of their teaching tools.

Kerry Elliott

Thinking about our audience, what are some examples that maybe you could share with us in terms of some of your findings or some examples that you've gathered along the way through your research projects?

Wes Imms

Good teachers are always wanting to change. They're always wanting to improve their practice. We realized that teachers, to improve their practice, don't need people telling them how they should teach better, they want evidence about what they're doing so they can then themselves decide on how they should adjust and change. Fairly early part of what we did was to start looking at the actual outcomes from teaching these particular places, and we're able, through one of our PhD students, to come up with findings that shows that students' learning outcomes in Mathematics and English are increased up to 17% when they are taught by the same teacher with the same content but in an innovative space, as compared to a traditional classroom.

Kerry Elliott

17%, that's quite a spike. What was happening in those spaces, do you think, that might be attributing to that?

Wes Imms

We rotated the students between three different classrooms across a period of a year, and they spent a term in a very traditional classroom, a mid-level one, and then an innovative learning environment. It was the innovative learning environment that had that spike. Clearly then, what we've done is isolated the space to some degree, and in terms of having that impact. We also took measures on the student engagement and a sense of what their perceptions of the quality of teaching and those spiked in that space as well. You had that combination of an innovative environment, which arguably cause teachers to teach differently in a more engaging way if the students to engage more in the learning.

Kerry Elliott

Can you explain that innovative environment to us? What did that look like?

Wes Imms

We only spent about $4,000 on renovating the room. It was nothing to do with the physical environment. We didn't move walls, put in any fancy windows, we spent the money on furniture. The innovative environment had American diner type seating as well as bean bags, tables and chairs of different chairs, that had white boards and computers on wheels. The teacher lost the front of the room, there was no space where the teacher actually owned. The student felt like they owned the room, the students were able to move around and form groups as they wished. The technology was improved through improved wireless, so the students literally could even move out of the space to work and the teacher could still monitor through the kind of programs they could do.

Probably watching and observing the students in the room, the critical thing you saw was flexibility of kids moving around doing things, and that happy hum you hear when kids are talking about the learning as it's happening.

Kerry Elliott

What about groups of teachers? So you've got groups of teachers probably learning from each other and observing each other as well and calling on each other for advice in those places as well?

Wes Imms

The whole concept of collaborative teaching is high on the agenda. We have just finished hearing half of doing a quite extensive review of everything that's known about these types of spaces. Collaborative teaching is one of the critical themes that comes from that. The way we view that is that it is collaborative teaching but it's collaborative teaching by choice. Sometimes it's between groups of teachers, sometimes only two, sometimes it's teachers working independently on agreement with the others. Again, it comes back, that concept of being flexible, of having spaces where that can actually happen quickly.

Kerry Elliott

Thinking about your legacy or what you want to take away from your work, your core interest, what do you want to leave?

Wes Imms

For the first time ever, in our field internationally, we have been able to show that when you teach students in the innovative learning environments, the degree of their deep learning increases, which is one of the factors that has been driving 21st century learning and teaching. That's being heightened phenomenally. Also interestingly is how these mind frames which are the sort of ideal sort of ways of teaching, that increases, and conversely that in traditional classrooms, there's a very light level of deep learning, it's nearly all surface learning, and it's a very low level of teachers using those mind frames that had these research proves has the highest effect.

The legacy that my team will leave behind will be more evidence to show that we don't need to argue about whether their spaces are smart. They are smart, but the legacy has to be that they're only smart if actually teachers and students use them the way that they're capable of being used. So a set notion of not telling teachers they're teaching badly; they're not, most teachers are teaching beautifully. But you know what, if you become aware of what spaces can do, think how well you can teach and teach how well we want students to learn. That one piece of survey outcome is enough to drive me forward in my team.

Maxine McKew

That's it for Talking Teaching this time. We're aiming for monthly podcasts, so tune in again at the end of May. In the meantime, dearly friends, send us your comments and check out the many references on this website. Talking Teaching is produced by myself, Maxine McKew, Sophie Murphy, and Kerry Elliott and is recorded and mixed by Gavin Nebauer at the Horwood Recording Studios at the University of Melbourne. Bye for now.

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