Delight and Travel

Dialogues in teaching and learning

Wesley College St Kilda Rd

October 10 2009

The chase John Brack

http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/johnbrack/education/imagebank.html

We may well ask of any item of information that is taught or that we lead a child to discover for himself whether it is worth knowing. I can think of only two good criteria and one middling one for deciding such an issue: whether the knowledge gives a sense of delight and whether it bestows the gift of intellectual travel beyond the information given in the sense of containing within it the basis of generalization. The middling criterion is whether the knowledge is useful. It turns out, on the whole, as Charles Sanders Pierce commented, that useful knowledge looks after itself. So I would urge that we as schoolmen let it do so and concentrate on the first two criteria. Delight and travel, then.

Jerome Bruner (1979 ) Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press On Learning Mathematics in On Knowing: Essays for the left hand pp108- 109

Ithaka C. Cavafy (translated J. Mavrogordato)

Setting out on the voyage to Ithaka You must pray that the way be long, Full of adventures and experiences. The Laistrygonians, and the Kyklopes, Angry Poseidon,—don’t be afraid of them; You will never find such things on your way, If only your thoughts be high and a select Emotion touch your spirit and your body. The Laistrygonians, the Kyklopes, Poseidon raging—you will never meet them, Unless you carry them with you in your soul, If your soul does not raise them up before you.

You must pray that the way be long; Many be the summer mornings When with what pleasure, with what delight You enter harbours never seen before; At Phoenician trading stations you must stop, And must acquire good merchandise, Mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, And sensuous perfumes of every kind; As much as you can get of sensuous perfumes; You must go to many cities of Egypt, To learn and still to learn from those who know.

You must always have Ithaka in your mind, Arrival there is your predestination. But do not hurry the journey at all. Better that it should last many years; Be quite old when you anchor at the island, Rich with all you have gained on the way, Not expecting Ithaka to give you riches. Ithaka has given you your lovely journey.. Without Ithaka you would not have set out. Ithaka has no more to give you now.

Outline of the day

(details within the booklet)

8:30 – 8:55 Registration – Coffee Common Room

9:00 – 11:00 Session One: Library

Dr Julie Landvogt:

Bring me that horizon: Working in the spaces of story

11:00 – 11:30 Morning Tea Common Room

11:30 – 12:45 Session Two: Library

Readings and Discussion Groups

Part One 11:35 – 12:00

Presentation

Part Two 12:15 – 12:45

12:45 – 1:30 Lunch Common Room

1:30 – 3:00 School Presentations Allocated Rooms

For rooms and abstracts, see in booklet

3:00 – 3:15 Concluding remarks Library

Colleen Abbott 3:15 – 4:00 Drinks Common Room

Special thanks to Colin Dobson and Wesley College for hosting the Ithaka Conference

Bring me that horizon: Working in the spaces of story

Julie Landvogt

You may not believe me, but my title is not just an excuse to use an image of Johnny Depp. The film Pirates of the Caribbean finishes with yet another cunning escape from the worthy but boring careful rule-following military of Port Royal … and reunited with his ship and crew, our Johnny grabs the wheel and is off once more. “Bring me that horizon…” I’m happy to overlook a bit of skulduggery for the satisfaction of romance winning the day, and particularly for the sense that the closing of one adventure is simply the beginning of the next.

Aiming for the horizon seems not a bad goal for us in education. There are no simple answers in teaching and learning– only more questions, and partial stopping points. In a recent discussion on The Book Show between Ramona Koval and the literary critic James Wood about How fiction works, Wood argued that the books he found most appealing are those which don’t try to reveal everything about a character, as if you can know them completely. His view was that “unknowability and mysteriousness characterise most of our relations with other people” and it is when novels take this on that they are most illuminating. Perhaps that unknowability is also what keeps us in teaching - we solve one set of challenges, at least for now, and see that another is around the corner; if a solution seems impossible, experience teaches that time (and some effort!) are likely to tell…

I started getting ready for today in the usual way; clearing my desk, and then gradually, over several months, accumulating bits of paper with scraps of ideas, books and pictures seeming to promise inspiration or invite exploration, and old presentations to remind what I used to think so I can move onto now I think... Stuff piles on every available surface until the weight and disorder become oppressive and stressful and there is nothing to do but to start.

Of course the clearing of space, and the accumulation of “stuff” for exploration, are part of the process, the work of writing; they are the preparation, or at least the first stages of the preparation. It’s an orientation, a tuning in, just as we construct for students in the first moments of a lesson. I used to think, now I think - is part of deciding where to go next. So you won’t be surprised that I found myself back with the Ithaka poem, which has served us pretty well for six years now – reminding us that any journey tests us with obstacles, monsters and temptation, but that it is the trip itself, not the arrival, which matters. Setting out on the voyage to Ithaka You must pray that the way be long, Full of adventures and experiences…

The journey is in danger of becoming a pretty hackneyed metaphor for learning through experience; but like everything, it depends on the way we use it, on what we allow the image to offer. Someone – not even google has been able to tell me who – has said that there are really only two or three stories, and we tell them over and over again in slightly different ways. The first is the romance – boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again. The second is the journey – the path from innocence to experience, from ignorance to understanding. A third is good versus evil. They are interlinked, often, of course, and it is the variations on the core story, the surprises, the challenges, the deviations from the expected tale, which illuminate new meanings. The common tale invites us in; it’s where we start.

So when we began, it was with the journey story. The poem offered the idea that the experiences along the way are what matters, even if at the time they are not so pleasant. It echoed our knowledge of young people learning, and perhaps also ourselves; that it is not always simple, that the end is often not easy either to see or to be certain of. Most importantly, the poem stands revisiting; it offers different kinds of sustenance – images of the blue and white of island Greece, the romance and danger of trying tasks just beyond reach, the promise of understanding ... it calls to us in different ways at different times.

The Laistrygonians, and the Kyklopes, Angry Poseidon,—don’t be afraid of them; You will never find such things on your way, … Unless you carry them with you in your soul, If your soul does not raise them up before you.

The blind poet Homer, singing the story of the Trojan War and then of Odysseus’s travel home, little thought he would inspire films starring Brad Pitt, Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom three thousand years hence. He was spinning a yarn that was part news story, part romance, part hero macho adventure; beginning from competing royal suitors for the most beautiful woman in the world through stories of loyalty and betrayal, lust and love, pride, humility and cunning. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl – good versus evil – journey towards understanding (or not) – Homer had it all. No surprise, then, that people have taken elements and made new stories from it, filling in the gaps – he knew the power of big ideas to engage and stimulate; he knew that from them people would think and learn.

Today I am going to use the journey – elements of Odysseus’s journey, towards home after ten years at Troy - to think about and with what we have learned, over the last few years – and what all that means in going forward. Thus of course there are some ideas to revisit, some just for remembering and some to have a closer look at - four stages. o Setting off: Somewhere, over the rainbow… o Delight and travel: sustenance and challenge o Holding fast: the siren song o Arrival and onwards

To begin, then, two elements without which we do not set out: a dream, and some kind of preparation.

1. Setting off: somewhere, over the rainbow…

First: the dream. What does a dream need to have? It needs to connect at some level with what we know, so that we can believe in its possibility – but it needs also to promise something bigger – as writer Milan Kundera puts it, to imagine…

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication (or coded communication, if you like); it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself. Our dreams prove that to imagine – to dream about things that have not happened – is among mankind’s deepest needs. Herein lies the danger [...]

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

It’s not too much to say that that’s what Ron’s intellectual character thing offered, and what launched us off: a lure which called to us through a set of ideas which were almost comprehensible but not quite, almost familiar but not quite.

- We must educate students to act smart -not just to be smart. - Ability is only part of performance … o Choosing to do so…. o Dispositions explain how ability becomes action - We need: o General inclination o Specific inclination (motivation) o Sensitivity or awareness of opportunity o Skills, abilities or knowledge - Children grow into the intellectual life around them - For schools to be places of thinking for students, they must be places of thinking for adults.

The ideas acknowledged problems we know to be true: that ability is not enough, that motivation and inclination are hard to engender, that modelling, all the time, is influential. Acknowledging these elements, and then working with their implications, are part of what Kundera calls danger, and perhaps we would call risk taking – or adventure…

We wanted to know what the ideas meant for our classrooms – on Wednesday period 3, and also in informal interactions, in assemblies, on the sporting field, in curriculum documentation, and during professional learning sessions. Unconsciously we set ourselves a learning destination consistent with Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development – we were challenged by the distance between our grasp and the ideas. It seemed that if we could just work on it a bit harder, we could get it – we would know what those dispositions look like, and we would know how to get them. [We set off because we felt we could get there, even if - perhaps BECAUSE – we didn’t quite know what “where” was. Somehow the rainbow seemed within reach; the writings and teachings of Ron Ritchhart and David Perkins were sufficiently grounded, both practically and theoretically, that it seemed OK to place trust in them.

So what we need for initial engagement seems not so different from what students need: challenge, a sense of purpose (coming often but not always through connection to the questions posed by current experience), and a sense that it is achievable. What do we mean by achievable? It requires support and advice during tentative steps, even while we maintain a sense of control. More than that– for engagement, for continuing, we need a degree of difficulty – even of a kind of fear – because without that there is no satisfaction in the arrival. We need to recognise that understanding may not be immediate, and may not be uncomplicated. We need to truly accept all that goes with travel – the excitement of planning, full with possibility; and the discomfort of uncertainty and the unfamiliar …

I could spend all of today looking over what we have done over six years to explore these ideas, and the very impressive collection of papers to which many of you have contributed – proving our willingness to take on those challenges. I hope one day we will make time for this. But today is for past present and future, so we should examine the key suggestions that have influenced the Ithaka boat over the last six years, towards the intellectual character dream on the horizon.

For each one, I propose these three questions to guide our thinking:

- What dreams of life in schools are offered by these ideas? - Has your teaching been influenced by these ideas? In what ways? - What does this suggest for what we should do next?

1. UbD (drawing on the research of all the others) 2. John Hattie – feedback - Linking in to the evidence question – feedback, and teachers, as the most important elements 3. Dylan Wiliam – teachers make a difference, but what makes the difference between teachers? 4. Dylan Wiliam formative assessment 5. Dylan Wiliam 5 strategies and one key idea 6. Developing IC – the routines – feeding in to both evidence of learning and design of lessons

A pretty powerful collection, I think, but of course only as far as we are prepared to make the ideas real. Schools are notorious for taking on theme after theme, but to stay the course we need to clarify what we understand, and what we value.

So – time for you now to do some thinking, alone first and then with the person nearest you; we’ll think and pair.

2. Delight and travel…

So having set off, suitcase equipped with ways of making thinking and learning visible, what does the journey need to keep momentum? We’ll get to obstacles later, no doubt. What do we need from the harbours? What from the open sea?

Let’s begin with the open sea. Much is written now in education about the importance of flexible use of knowledge, of adaptability, of the capacity to work in teams. These are all important, but surely more essential are both a certain doggedness, a stickability – endurance, if you like, determination to get there at last; but also the judgement to know when enough is enough.

The importance of the capacity to cope with the disquiet of the unknown has research support, in an experiment done at Stanford in the 60s, worth revisiting. They put a single marshmallow in front of each of a group of four year olds, and told the children that they could eat it now, or – if they could wait 20 minutes – when the researchers came back they could have two. Predictably, some gobbled it up, while others devised all kinds of distraction strategies to enable them to wait the necessary time.

When they followed it up 14 years later, they found significant differences between the two groups on SAT tests, in friendship, in academic performance - in favour of those able to defer gratification. Perhaps that’s not surprising – it makes sense that the capacity to resist impulse, to pursue the longer term goal, would lead to better outcomes in social as well as academic spheres.

So how might this be encouraged? I wonder if it might even be a kind of audit question for curriculum review: Where is the opportunity to resist marshmallows in your curriculum?

In a few minutes we’ll have a first go at working with this question, but first (delaying gratification!) – let’s think about harbours.

What makes for safe harbour? Why do we need them? This is what Cavafy imagines, in our Ithaka poem. You must pray that the way be long; Many be the summer mornings When with what pleasure, with what delight You enter harbours never seen before;

At Phoenician trading stations you must stop, And must acquire good merchandise, Mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony…

What’s the coral and amber, the ebony, in your area and discipline? The shell that holds the pearl? What are the ideas which through shaping and polishing reveal elegance and grace? What ideas are at risk of extinction through some equivalent of the crown of thorns starfish, or of being taken over by some other predator through neglect? Probably I am overworking the metaphor. And yet.

Recently the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, made the news for something other than his singer wife, Carla Bruni. He dismissed the importance of a 17th century novel, La Princesse de Clèves, in school curricula, arguing that the novel – a love story in which the heroine must choose between duty and love - was not useful. In France there was outrage; there have been public readings on the streets, the novel has become a best seller, and people sport badges declaring, “I am reading La Princesse de Clèves”. Of course the idea of a society galvanised to support the reading of classic texts is one I want to be a part of – and more specifically, to support the idea that there is more to learning than what is useful in the moment. It looks as if the President of France might not have been able to wait for two marshmallows….

It reminds me of Jerome Bruner’s argument, penned in the 60s but relevant still today, and from which we have taken the theme of today’s conference:

We may ask of any item of information that is taught or that we lead a child to discover for himself whether it is worth knowing. I can think of only two good criteria and one middling one for deciding such an issue: whether the knowledge gives a sense of delight, and whether it bestows the gift of intellectual travel beyond the information given, in the sense of containing within it the basis of generalisation. The middling criterion is whether the knowledge is useful. It turns out, on the whole, … that useful knowledge looks after itself…. Delight and travel, then.

Let’s think about this in relation to what David Perkins and others have called “residuals”. One of the reasons content has acquired such a bad name is its sense of being somehow static – that it’s something to accumulate rather than to build with. Yet of course the pleasure is in the crafting, the making one’s own, and the truth is that some offers more than others. The challenge of teaching, as Ron Ritchhart has pointed out, is to make such complex ideas and matter accessible – not to make them simple; for in simplifying we strip away what is challenging and engaging and interesting.

Making ideas accessible is the key to Bruner’s suggestion of intellectual travel, because it suggests an opening, the beginning of a path, but one that yields more the longer we stay with it. I admit I have often quoted this piece from Bruner without fully understanding it. I liked the idea of intellectual travel, and the dismissal of useful knowledge, but I was a bit uncertain about the middle bit - in the sense of containing within it the basis of generalisation. Yet in fact this part is essential, and perhaps it will help us to examine it more closely.

This is what precedes it:

In content, positive knowledge is increasing at a rate that is alarming when considered in terms of what one man can know in a lifetime. But fortunately, as the bulk of knowledge increases, the organising structures that support it also grow. So that if there is ever more knowledge, it may indeed be the case that it is ever more related: the only possible way in which individual knowledge can keep proportional pace with the surge of available knowledge is through a grasp of the relatedness of knowledge.

The “organising structures” to which he refers are surely what we call the disciplines – the lenses through which we organise information, refine our questions, recognise that there are many valid ways of interpreting data. Far from being systems confined to schools or to the so- called ivory towers of universities, the conversations which arise from the intersections between disciplines – between history and science, between art and mathematics, as well as within – between biology and physics, chemistry and psychology – help us to ask more informed questions, help us towards insight by juxtaposing the familiar with the unfamiliar and thus enabling us to see differently. If we are willing. This is what interdisciplinary studies should be concerned with – using the method of the disciplines to help us see within an area, and across. That is, incidentally, what stories also do – the detours from the story we expected to hear illuminating new meanings.

You remember the details of the discovery of penicillin, the wonder drug of the 20th century and ongoing. Fleming noticed the growth of a fungus on a saucer left in his lab while on holiday. Instead of cleaning the mess, he observed what was happening around it; that the cultures of bacteria in the immediate vicinity had been destroyed, while others further away grew on. Fortune favours the prepared mind, indeed – if it has remained open, and curious. To notice what was before him, he had to see – which requires a knowledge base - and then to think and wonder. The leap to understand what that saucer of dead bacteria meant required knowledge that could transfer; it required the capacity and the choice to apply existing knowledge to a completely new setting. Ability, skills, and the disposition to use them appropriately. Inclination, motivation, and sensitivity to occasion.

That’s not the end of the story. He published his findings, but no one took much notice, and because of the difficulties of isolating the relevant elements he abandoned the research. It was other scientists – Howard Florey among them – who pursued the quest. So while the dream of a wonder solution set them forth, it was the prepared mind that moved them forward. And one was not enough; it took different people, and different questions, to push the search onwards. That’s the core of the method of the hyphenating discipline units at MGS and at Wesley SKR, building on the ideas of Howard Gardner and Veronica Boix-Mansilla. Sally Godinho’s research at Melbourne University is revealing important language and conceptual leaps in students involved in this, and I hope it is something that both research and practice will move further with. It ain’t easy, but then surely we are amongst those who could resist that first marshmallow….

That’s why the thinking routines appeal, where many other sets of strategies have not; they have to be applied TO SOMETHING, and that important choice is left to the teacher, and later to the student. They force us to clarify what we want students to understand; and for good thinking, the content chosen must have intricacy. Meanings need not be immediately obvious; feelings of frustration where previous experience has shown the possibility of success, leads to tolerance of ambiguity, acceptance of delayed gratification, and willingness to slow down. That’s Bruner’s something to travel with them – content that reveals more the closer you look. The more lenses you have. And the wider the understanding and knowledge you bring to your seeing … With time, awareness of the interrelatedness of knowledge will grow. This is another marshmallow case because of course it takes time to acquire enough knowledge for there to BE connections….

So there’s mother of pearl and ebony - complex content, ready to be refined by the questions and method of the discipline. What makes it worth the wait? What kind of marshmallow, if you like, are you offering? And how will you offer it in a way that entices enough to make the wait worth choosing? This is where those enduring, essential questions (depending on your choice of UbD or TfU or whatever) come in: questions like:

- Where can we find art? - How do you study the unobservable? - What is a pattern? - Is a “good read” always a great book? - How do we know what happened in the past? - What does it mean to “make a living”? - Why isn’t a dictionary enough?

These invite travel, invite unravelling, promise a direction – they can be approached within a single unit, and even within a single lesson, but they will never be fully answered, so they will sustain.

In this room we represent many different teaching levels and areas, and I know that many of you are using the UbD frame, or one similar to it, to distil what is most important for you. So take a moment to think about your most recent set of lessons, or the ones you are about to begin. Where are the marshmallows being offered, what shape are they taking, and how are you encouraging the harder choice?

3. Holding fast: the siren song

When Odysseus is nearly home, the ship must pass the island of the sirens – perhaps Capri, if you would like to have an image. The sirens are birdwomen who sing with such seduction that men forget all else and hurl themselves into the sea to join them. If you have been to this part of the world it is not difficult to understand how the blueness of the water and the beauty of the landscape call to you, making the demands of the daily world seem unimportant. Odysseus, cunning beyond measure (it was his idea to build the Trojan horse that wins the war for the Greeks and spawned the phrase “beware Greeks bearing gifts”)… - Odysseus decides that the way to pass the island and live is to plug the sailors’ ears with wax so that they cannot hear the siren song. But he – greedy for experience – determines to live and to hear. He has himself tied to the mast, and forbids his sailors to take note of him or to obey his cries. Thus he becomes the only person to have heard the call of distraction and yet to hold his course.

It’s not hard to find parallels to the siren song in teaching. Each year brings new issues, new “must dos” – variations on a theme, many of them, but promising through new resources, new PD and new jargon to solve the daily dilemmas of learning. There is rarely enough time to think through them fully enough to build them into existing frameworks –to connect and extend what we already believe and do, so that we can keep the elements which are effective and improve those which are not. So we add and add, instead of reshaping and refining…

At different times Ron Ritchhart, David Perkins and others have challenged us to think about the story of learning we were told ourselves, and that which we are telling our students. They ask us to become more precise about what it is we want students to understand, and how we will know they have understood it. They ask what we hope will remain with students five years after they have left us – ten years – in the lifetime… These are questions worth regular revisiting, and they are implicit in what we have been thinking about so far today, particularly through the writings of Jerome Bruner. But now I want to think about them slightly differently.

Let’s start here.

When Ron Ritchhart and others ask that question about classrooms, it always strikes me that in the room are two generations, and yet their memories of schooling are similar. When one generation in the room must have taught the other, why is that so?

Let’s ask the question a different way, and be honest.

What do you SEE in this classroom?

What do we want to HOLD ON TO from this classroom?

What do we want to move away from? Why?

Thinking about these issues, I started writing a letter to J.K. Rowling. I’ll read you a bit…

Dear J.K.

I would like to think that if the sorting hat landed on my head, it would not hesitate to call out “Gryffindor!” No doubt most of us feel the same – while secretly fearing that instead it will choose the nonentity destiny as a member of Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, or recognise all the nasty bits of our personalities and make them public by allocating us to Slytherin.

I’m pretty sure that my nerd factor, study wise, would land me not far from Hermione. But (just between us) I admit that when I was their age, and perhaps even now, I doubt I am sufficiently a risk taker to make the choices Harry, Hermione and Ron do when in a crisis. And I can’t be sure either that I would make the right judgements when faced with the regular challenge of the teacher of the Dark Arts. I’ve been tested by plenty of bullies, variations of Malfoy, and I haven’t always come up smiling.

Of course I am far from alone in feeling like this – as testified by the humongous success of your books, films and tshirts. Neither adults nor children have difficulty identifying with the characters and the situation of your novels. Why is that? Of course the fight between good and evil is as old as story – in fact it IS story – so this is little surprise; and you’ve managed to throw in the boy meets girl and hero’s journey towards self discovery, so you’ve covered all bases. But what I’m wondering is why the idea of life in what looks like a 19th century school is so familiar in the 21st century.

As many people have pointed out, classrooms at Hogwarts are pretty recognizable; students sit at desks in rows, the teacher is at the front, they conduct experiments and write essays and do (or don’t do) homework; they get on with their teachers or they do not, their teachers judge them and their work fairly or otherwise, kids cheat or help one another or shield their work from others. And probably we should sadly note that while your novels are seen as school novels, most of what is interesting takes place OUT of class.

You may not know, J.K., that when we talk about learning, we use comparisons with classrooms that look like Hogwarts as an obvious example of how things should NOT be, and ask why things are so slow to change. We note, for instance, that your wizards make no use of mobile phones or computers or ipods for learning and research, even though there are plenty of times – especially during their “practical” work - when such devices would surely be handy.

So I’m wondering, J.K., what you were thinking of schools when you wrote it that way. I can see that your view of learning is of a series of tests and challenges, becoming increasingly difficult. I can see that you think kids are more likely to solve problems if they work together. I can also see – and I think I am not reading too much into this – that Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and other unusual teachers are also good at putting the children into situations that are within their power to overcome, if they act wisely, even if the young people themselves fear such challenges are beyond them. And these teachers know when to step in, and when to stay out. But good lesson planning is not enough – necessary, but not sufficient. Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, even Snape, are influential partly because of their eccentricity, rather than despite it. Personality matters. You’ve made me think about the idea of apprenticeship, and of the role of demonstration. When I think of Dumbledore, Gandalf or Merlin, or even Cinderella’s fairy godmother, I see a wise person who has seen a bit more of the world, and who can see more in YOU than you thought was possible. The thing about them is that they have a fair idea what you are going to turn out like, but they also know that along the way there are going to be distractions and dangers and challenges, and that they have to leave you to make your own decisions and mistakes about those things. What they offer is possibility, and some assistance – appropriate companions, a beautiful dress, some useful scaffolding experiences … but they rarely offer the complete solution, and they are often not there when you think you need them most. In a way they are stage managers – they make sure the props are there, but in the end it’s up to you to choose the right ones, and to use them productively..

I think they know a bit about Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development– give them tasks just out of reach, a bit beyond what they think they can manage but not so far that it’s impossible. They know a bit about complexity, too; that it’s the moral challenge, the problems that don’t come clearly labelled telling you to put the apostrophe here or paint this blue or plug these numbers on the calculator, that challenge and engage. They understand about the team thing – that maybe some of the time we are smarter if we work together, but that this does not come without conflict, internal and external.

So what I’m wondering, J.K., is how they came to know those things, at Hogwarts, or fairy godmother training school, or whatever school for wizards that Gandalf attended. At Hogwarts at least I know there are staff meetings, and obviously there is both curriculum and performance assessment. I reckon their pastoral program, within the house structure, is working OK, even if I have a few concerns about the morality taught in Slytherin, and the fact that most of the teachers seem prepared to bend the rules a bit during house sport…. But certainly they get quite a few things right, in terms of preparing students for what is ahead of them while giving them engaging experiences in the present, many of which would pass the marshmallow audit. While I am not advocating the Harry Potter novels as a guide to teaching, perhaps one of the things they get right, J.K., is something about the head and the heart. .

That’s as far as I’ve got with my letter. The core for me is the idea that rather than thinking always about what we want to change, and even what we want to improve, in our 19th, 20th or 21st century schools, let’s spend a bit of time thinking about what we want to keep, and why what we want to keep matters.

So now to you, to build on that thinking with a partner….

What do you SEE in this classroom?

What do we want to HOLD ON TO from this classroom?

How does it connect with what’s in the suitcase?

What do we want to move away from? Why?

So where I’m hoping we are now, is that it is we who are the resistors. I don’t mean that we become the arms-folded-feet-on-chairs-marking-in-hand-people-in-the-lefthand-corner-of-the-staffroom (who for some reason we tolerate and do not make accountable in the way we would students. That is an aside, but an important one if we are trying to build a culture of learning among adults). I mean that as we become clearer about the principles of teaching and learning that constitute our core beliefs, it is obvious that we need conditions under which these beliefs can be realised, and we need to find ways to make this happen. I’m thinking here of Ron’s reference I think to Peter Senge, arguing that you can read the real values of any organisation by looking at how they spend their time, and how they spend their money. That seems true in schools – and perhaps we should take responsibility for accepting that it is also true for us, both as individuals and as members of organisations. Perhaps we should move away from blaming the people above us, and look for what we can manage ourselves, and what we need to fight for.

The craft of teaching is about seeing opportunities, and knowing what to do with them. Being alert to possibility, and able to make judgments – in action, and also long term. It’s about seeing what might be there, not just what appears first. Some of that sensitivity is perhaps a gift, and given to some more than to others – but in all it can be improved. The suite of strategies, the repertoire of practice, defines what accompanies us as we journey; but it is the selection and use which separates the expert teacher from the merely experienced.

Much has been written, particularly lately, about the lack of quality control after teachers qualify – about how little observation happens, how little opportunity to give and be given meaningful feedback in the context of classrooms. There is also very little examination of the effectiveness of inservice professional learning, beyond meaningless questionnaires about the food and whether you enjoyed the presentation. Rarely is there follow up to ask whether you have made use of what you learned, and what happened as a result.

Partly this suits the nature of many people attracted to teaching – the desire for autonomy, and to be the single teacher mattering for students, influencing choices – and this is not a bad thing. But another outcome is that learning for teaching, and learning in teaching, have come to be seen as “give me something” – and more – “give me something that is immediately useful” – which is directly in conflict, of course, with what we hope students will expect from their learning experiences and is definitely only at the level of first marshmallow. Improvement requires deliberate and thoughtful practice, not just repetition and imitation; it requires feedback, reflection, breaking up of the whole into parts for examination, and working on particular aspects before putting it back to the whole. It requires regular review of purpose; revisiting and reshaping of understanding. It requires the time to gain distance, without which we cannot see.

In fact this is how most of us have worked with the thinking routines. There is no doubt that the thinking routines have helped us to think more clearly, and given us something concrete to work with – important when ideas are slippery. And we’ve continued to work with them because they don’t yield solutions too easily either – it’s not a matter of “grab a routine” but always the need to decide which routines for what purpose, and what happened as a result. The magic of the routines is that they must be applied to content (Ron Ritchhart, September 2009) – and so very important decisions and responsibilities remain in the hands of the teachers. They are GUIDELINES, not a recipe. This is the heart of professional judgement. When you have tried a new strategy, or had a light bulb moment about learning or teaching, what is it that has made that experience move from just that – experience – to having the meaning – that renders it useful – from an activity to what Ron and others might call a leverage point. I’m not sure that Confucius or whoever was right in fact with “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.” Not necessarily. The doing must have a transfer factor, an application – as Howard Gardner says, it is in the application of knowledge – or experience – to a new and unfamiliar situation that understanding is demonstrated.

So what kinds of doing serve that end in teaching? Many of you here have presented papers at previous Ithaka conferences, or are presenting today. You have spoken at Joint Schools meetings or written pieces for the newsletters. You have presented ideas as work in progress for discussion, you have shared what you have done, but more importantly you have been prepared to spend the time formulating the ideas into a different shape – writing them down, to be examined and discussed by your colleagues at school, within the Ithaka community, at other conferences. Mike Schmoker (2006) argues that it is through writing that we find out what we think; that the practice and improvement of careful reading and writing must be at the heart of what we do. Ted Sizer argues “writing is the litmus paper of thought”. (see Schmoker, 2006, p. 63). For teachers, for students.

How do we maximise the chances that the decisions we make – so many of them, every lesson – are constructive ones? How can we ensure that on a regular basis we have the opportunity to stop the clock and look at what is happening as a result of the experiences we provide in classrooms? What do we need to know – about our subjects, about learning, about the individuals – to be able to understand what we see? What do you mean by deliberate practice, and when do you have the opportunity for it? What have you improved at, in the last year or two, and what has assisted that improvement- in terms of content, in terms of method? What therefore do you need, as a regular part of your week, to continue to improve in your vocation?

Perhaps you are with me on the power of structured professional dialogue, focussed on student learning, embedded in our settings but informed by the outside. It might take the form of the LAST protocol looking at specific work, or a See think wonder on a video clip of a classroom. But maybe you don’t find these effective – or possibly you have not experienced them and have no idea what I am talking about…. So just for a moment let’s take Ron’s 8 wants and do an audit of your school now, using Hattie’s feedback model: Where am I going? How are you going? Where to next? And the suitcase questions from today: What do you need to know more about? What are the things you can change? What are the things you can dream about? What are the things you need to resist?

Think about your experience of professional learning in relation to these wants and wishes. Are they familiar? Do you know what they mean? Do you agree that sustained and structured dialogue is the way to go, or do you think there are other elements? And more importantly – what should we be learning about? Perhaps this is the crux of the matter. Breadth or depth? Skills or something more? Immediate relevance or sustenance and challenge? Does Bruner’s “delight and travel” have a place in professional learning also?

Arrival: Stop, look, listen…

From the beginning The Ithaka Project has had at heart an elusively simple goal - to see more clearly what is in front of us. I’m not going to trace the history, but perhaps for many of you these images will evoke some memories, or provoke new ideas:

- The experiment on the bird with an airpump, which spoke to us of the complexities of any learning situation – of the many frames of mind and motives that influence each person in the room; - The little prince, asking the narrator to draw a sheep, getting a hat, and seeing instead an elephant being eaten by a boa constrictor – reminding us that things are not always what they seem, that perspectives change everything… - Alice’s red queen, running faster and faster and yet staying in the same place ; - The fall of Icarus, who dreams of being able to fly, but when his father crafts him wings of wax he chooses not to heed the warnings to stay away from the sun. His wings melt and he falls into the sea. The original legend is about the dangers of pride, a worthy message of course – but the painting, and Auden’s wonderful poem about it (which I have included in the handout) remind us how much else is going on behind the main story, here and always; that we get on with the dailyness of our lives – here, the ploughman, the ship, continuing on their tasks - while within our sight, but too often unnoticed, the miraculous or the terrible passes us by.

So in all of them, a common message, indeed a slogan for teachers – to heed, to be alert for, the extraordinary in the ordinary. Have we got better at that, over the last few years? What else might we do to improve?

The image on the cover of this year’s booklet is John Brack’s, recently in a wonderful exhibition at the NGV. He was once art master at MGS, as it happens. I like it because at first glance it looks so simple – girls in fresh print dresses, pony tails flying, long limbs, looking ahead. They’re running towards something, I think, rather than away – their faces and their bodies’ forward tilt tells me that. But - is it just me? - something about their shadows jars, is not quite right. I wonder if that’s a suggestion of the possibilities, the choices ahead of them, the unknown around the corner …

Whether you picture your role as fairy godmother or Dumbledore or something else entirely, probably we would all agree with Dewey that school is not preparation for life – it IS life. Into those thirteen or fourteen years are packed variations on all three eternal stories – good versus evil, boy meets girl, and the hero’s journey through the enticements of the forest towards understanding. In constructing opportunities for learning that are both engaging for the now and serve the travelling forward, there’s little doubt that our work requires at least a bit of the quick wit of my friend Johnny. There are rule books of all kinds about how to work as teachers, for the development of young people, and plenty of promises of how to make it work. But the art of teaching requires both a repertoire of practice, a suitcase of ideas (content and effective ways to teach it) – and the willingness to make decisions, in planning and in the split seconds of action – to adjust classroom events and interaction for maximum learning. Expertise requires the suitcase, but that alone is not enough; it is the capacity to draw from it appropriately, use its contents flexibly, and be constantly alert to new possibilities, that makes the expert teacher. It takes depth of understanding, to use a code of instructions as guidelines. It takes the capacity to put oneself regularly into the other person’s shoes. Knowledge and skills inform understanding and imagination.

So I am back with Homer, and what is perhaps the first written story, some two thousand seven hundred years old. In The Iliad and The Odyssey he produced an adventure story, a love story (from men for women, from men for men, from father to son), and a journey story, a story of death and triumph, loyalty and betrayal. Those core stories stood him well. But structure alone is not enough to sustain a tale through almost three millennia. They have lasted because they leave us still with questions; they make us wonder. Why did the beautiful Helen leave the wise Menelaus for the good looking but empty Paris? Can we forgive Achilles withdrawing his men from battle, calling on the gods to punish armies on his own side, all in fury over losing his slave girl? Can we understand his choice to die young and be remembered forever rather than to live a long and settled life, but to be forgotten by history? Why does Priam, king of Troy, support his son Paris in the theft of the Greek queen, and thus invite the destruction of his city? It is the spaces in the story which ensure the tale lives on – in films like Troy, in poems like our Ithaka, in David Malouf’s latest masterpiece Ransom…

When The Book Show’s Ramona Koval spoke with Malouf about this novel, she quotes Alberto Manguel arguing that for Homer, stories were woven from their conclusion backwards. Malouf extrapolates, says that “you look at a phenomenon and then you try to create a story that would explain it.” He argues, with Umberto Eco, that story telling is absolutely essential to us, and what we get from it is something we can’t do without.

As teachers our job is to become involved with the story both backwards and forwards. Imagining into the spaces, deciding how to work with what we see and what is as yet only possibility. For us the responsibility of the set up - the fairy godmother, Gandalf or Dumbledore, putting things in place but then leaving decisions for action, appropriate for age and stage, to the students. One of the things I have struggled with from Ron’s teaching – although I know he’s right – is that many of the things we set up – for students, for teachers – are too structured. Pushed for time, pushed for measurable outcomes, we fail to give space for the discomfort of thinking, precursor to learning. So perhaps a better comparison is with Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant - blowing good dreams into the rooms of sleeping children, for them to make of what they will. We try to shape those dreams and the developing stories by the opportunities we offer in curriculum, in classrooms. And to do that to best effect, we need, in the daily, and as a mandated, and visible part of the job of teaching, the requirement to stop, to look and to listen; to think and to talk.

So simple, and so difficult.

Worth fighting for.

Epilogue

Spring is a good time for looking back and forward.

When we listen to the “big names” on the education circuit - John Hattie on the kinds of pedagogy and practices that enhance learning; Dylan Wiliam on (in)formative assessment; UbD and curriculum centering thinking around understanding and exploration of big ideas, and linking curriculum, pedagogy and assessment; Ron Ritchhart, David Perkins, Project Zero and the importance of developing thinking cultures – we can feel with justification that over the last six years of The Ithaka Project we have tussled with ideas and findings at the edge of education research. We can feel, and should feel, very proud of the way we have continued to nibble away at ideas which matter, testing what seems intuitively sound in the daily-ness of the classroom, making adjustments and refinements, posing further questions, and deepening the research in the light of our experience of the ways in which students and teachers learn.

Some of the biggest challenges come from the competing layers in schools – from the many things that, taken singly, are (mostly) worth the doing, but taken together fracture the lives of teachers and students. It becomes difficult to pursue anything to that depth that slightly discomfits but ultimately leads to the delight of breakthrough - the real satisfaction of learning. At times we wonder whether the clamour of competing voices might lead to forgetting that the core of our business is student learning.

Over the last few years we have experienced the power of sustained professional dialogue - that focussed analysis of student work that makes us explore, define and improve the manner in which we teach, the way we assess. This has led us, more and more, to wonder about how lives in schools should be organised; how we should conceptualise the profession of teaching, the act of learning, and the implications for how our days and weeks should be spent.

So as far as this concerns me, and my own voyage towards Ithaka ...

I have had the privilege of being an inside-outside person for six years now with Ithaka, and for quite a few years more than that in some of your schools. I have had the privilege of learning from your openness and risk taking, and from being alongside when you have taken steps to put our reading and thinking into practice. Such a ride it has been, and will continue to be. But when I started Ithaka with Colleen, and later joined by Dee, it was intended to be a 3-5 year project; and here we are, in the sixth year. It is wonderful to see how many of the things we have discussed are now common practice, and how many sustained, detailed, learning based conversations are taking place regularly in your schools. Of course there’s more to do, and we never quite get there. I’m going to talk more about these things at the October Conference, but I just wanted you to know that from next year I’m stepping back completely from the managing of Ithaka things.

Representatives of the schools have set up the conference very well, and it is time that if you want to still operate as a network, that initiative should come from you. It is also time – and this is significant, I think and hope – that if schools really want to have the practices of reflection and constant learning and review built into the teachers’ day, then they need to appoint people to roles with time to think about how best to do that within the context of the schools. I’m very happy to be involved in discussions of how that might happen; research, experience, and intuition, tell us this is what should happen.

As for me, I’ll still be available for those who want to have the occasional “critical friend” discussion, and if anyone wants to build on the hyphenating discipline work I am certainly open to discussion! I’ll be doing some work with Ron in his ongoing connections with Australia, with an emphasis on examining the effects of the practices we have been exploring; there may be some opportunities there for people who would like to continue with some writing. But while my son has opted against a GAP year, I’m going to take a bit of space myself, to read more deeply and more widely, write a little, and try to live more of what to me has been the dream of an examined life. A few things in the last year or so have told me not to wait. …

So thank you all for friendship and true collegiality over quite a few years now; we have built, together, a pretty amazing ship within which to take on the hazards as well as the joys of improving student and teacher learning, and of trying to make schools intellectually stimulating places for teachers as well as for students. I think it is not too much to say that we have learned that the tussles of intellectual engagement and a degree of rigour, when mixed with a splash of humour and a more than a pinch of perseverance, can make a soup that nourishes the emotions as well as the mind. Surely that is some small step towards that civilised life.

I look forward to the remaining months of 2009, and what the future holds.

Reading for thinking

Session Two 11:30 – 12:45

This session reflects the shape of the Ithaka Breakfast Group which has been meeting twice a term this year. The goal is to support people leading constructive dialogue in schools, through opportunities to:

• engage with key issues current in education • share what is happening in different schools for constructive feedback • read, think and talk about ideas current in wider society.

This session will involve two parts. Groups and locations have been circulated separately with this booklet and are available at registration.

Part A In Conversation

Two articles have been selected for this part:

Nature? Nurture? What Makes Us Human? Matt Ridley

That old chestnut - what defines human nature? Genes or experience? Are we free agents or genetically determined souls? These questions have fuelled a fierce fight - polarizing a battleground of social scientists, biologists, parents and politicians. World renowned science writer Matt Ridley is calling a truce, and arguing the case for Nature via Nurture. Genes aren't Gods, he argues, they're cogs. As agents of nurture, genes get switched on and off by our experiences

Presented at the Alfred Deakin Innovation Deakin Lectures, Melbourne, Australia 10 July 2007

When Good People Turn Bad Phillip Zimbardo in Conversation with Natasha Mitchell

In 1971, 23 American college students' lives were changed by the now notorious Stanford Prison Experiment. For the eminent psychologist responsible, Philip Zimbardo, the parallels to the atrocities at Abu Ghraib are palpable. In an exclusive Australian interview, he joins Natasha Mitchell, to reflect on the capacity in all of us to commit evil. It's a case of good apples put in bad barrels. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2007/1986435.htm

Part B

In my school we...

First we will have a presentation from Mark Coleman (MGS) to stimulate thinking about powerful opportunities for learning.

Then the focus article for this part is:

What Money Can't Buy: Powerful, Overlooked Opportunities for Learning

Mike Schmoker, Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 90, No. 07, March 2009, pp. 524-527.

Phillip Zimbardo in Conversation with Natasha Mitchell: When Good People Turn Bad

Natasha Mitchell:

And welcome to All in the Mind on ABC Radio National, Natasha Mitchell joining you. Today, when good people commit horrifying acts, the hidden capacity in each and every one of us -- you too, to conform, to abuse power and to harm others in appalling ways.

[Excerpt from Lord of the Flies...]

The chaos that unfolded for the children in William Golding's dark tale, Lord of the Flies. Stranded on an island, innocence turns to terror. [Excerpt from Lord of the Flies...]

Philip Zimbardo: Any of us could be seduced to cross that line between good and evil. Most people are good people most of the time and we'd like to believe that we always are, and we never could cross that line. What my research with the Stanford Prison study, and my investigative reporting of Abu Ghraib, and other situations I've been...I studied tortures in Brazil first hand...leads me to conclude that most people under specified conditions where there's dehumanisation at work, anonymity, diffusion of responsibility -- can be drawn across that line and do things they could never imagine themselves usually doing.

So the big question is how well do you know yourself? How well do you know...how certain can you be when you say I would never do that, if I were a guard in a prison like Abu Ghraib I would never abuse prisoners, I would never do those terrible things?

Natasha Mitchell: The man behind one of history's most notorious psychological experiments, Professor Emeritus Philip Zimbardo from Stanford University is my guest today and he says the Stanford Prison experiment of 1971 must never be repeated.

[Lateline excerpt: (Tony Jones)...Well 30 years ago an American scientist conducted one of the most notorious experiments and within the six days the guards had become so brutal the prisoners started showing signs of mental disturbance and the study had to be stopped.]

Philip Zimbardo, in the documentary - Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment: This is where it all happened in the summer of 1971, right down this corridor in the basement of the psychology department is where we converted these offices and storage rooms to prison cells and we had students like yourself, college students from all over the country, play the roles of either prisoners or guards. Here in this closet was solitary confinement, the infamous hole where the guards put prisoners for punishment...

[Excerpt from The Milgram Obedience Song, composed by Dan Wegner: Have a seat, step right in here, have a seat, have a seat, have a seat...]

Natasha Mitchell: A huge figure in psychology and former president of the American Psychological Association, Philip Zimbardo's new book is called The Lucifer Effect: How good people turn evil and recently he was an expert witness in the case of one of the US soldiers convicted of committing atrocities in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Philip Zimbardo: It's great to be here with you Natasha.

Natasha Mitchell: Look Lucifer was God's favourite angel, tell me about the title of your new book, The Lucifer Effect.

Philip Zimbardo: Well I've always been fascinated with that story or myth that the angel who was apparently God's favourite -- and we don't know why, what made him the favourite --one day was cast out of heaven and put into hell. Paradoxically it was God who created hell. And the reason he was cast out along with some other angels is that when God made Adam he wanted all the angels to honour him as his perfect creature. And Lucifer and some of the other angels refused because they said we were prior to Lucifer and we are angels and he is a mere mortal. Well, that was two sins in one: pride and disobedience. And apparently he was a God who was unforgiving and instead of sending him to a different cloud, he sent him to hell. And the reason I call my book The Lucifer Effect is that in a sense that is the most extreme transformation of good into evil that's imaginable, that God's favourite angel, not just any angel, becomes the Devil, not just any bad guy.

And so in a way it sets the context for the research I've been doing and my colleagues have been doing which investigates how ordinary people, not angels, first begin to cross that line between good and evil. Most people under certain circumstances can be seduced, initiated, recruited into doing bad things. And by bad things I don't necessarily mean end-of-the-line torture, but evil starts often with teasing and bullying and cheating and lying and spreading rumours and ruining someone's reputation.

Natasha Mitchell: Let's head back to the Stanford Prison experiment of 1971 and the chilling situation, Phil, that you yourself generated in the corridors of your own university. Set the scene.

Philip Zimbardo: At that time I was interested in the basic question -- what happens when you put good people in a bad place? Does the goodness of people, does humanity win over the qualities of a prison-like environment? And we know throughout the world prisons are places that breed contempt, hostility, aggression, violence -- almost all the worse aspects of human nature. However bad people are when they go in to the prison they almost always come out, at least many of them do, worse. And so we created a mock prison because we wanted to be able to control the kinds of young men who went in as prisoners and guards. We wanted to be sure there was no pre-existing difference between the boys who were going to be selected to be guards or prisoners.

Philip Zimbardo, excerpt from the documentary, Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment : Here's one of the rooms that was a cell, here's a box with old memorabilia from our study, this is one of the prisoner's uniforms, prisoner 819, you can see it's really a dress. Here are the chains that the guards made the prisoners wear.

Natasha Mitchell: It was a simulation that was really planned down to the last detail, wasn't it, I mean the city police did the arrests for you, you had a recent ex inmate as a head of your phoney parole board.

Philip Zimbardo: You might say I'm a drama queen or I should have been a movie director rather than a psychologist. But I tried to make it very realistic, we had a Catholic prison chaplain come down to interview and counsel the boys, we had an ex convict head of the parole board, we had visitors' nights with parents and girlfriends and boyfriends; a public defender.

Natasha Mitchell: The experiment now has cult status of course in undergraduate psychology curricula. In a matter of days -- what terrible things transpired?

Philip Zimbardo: The worse thing that happens to guards in a prison is they get bored. And the guards, especially on the night shift -- and this is true, both at Stanford (and we can talk later about Abu Ghraib), the worst abuses happen in both on the night shift. The students or the prisoners are sleeping, and the guards would wake them up and use them as their playthings to entertain them. And the entertainment got more and more extreme. The entertainment is always...with men on men always drifts towards sexual humiliation or sexual degradation. Lynndie England, one of the army reserve women who did some of the terrible things at Abu Ghraib, she said it was just fun and games, we didn't think anything was wrong with it. And our guards were playing games.

So for example you'd say, you see the hole in the floor, get down and 'eff' it...because they were bored with having the prisoners doing push-ups. And they'd say OK now you're Frankenstein, you're Mrs Frankenstein; walk like them, hug them, say you love them...the thing is beginning to be homophobic. And then they have them do leapfrog, except the prisoners were wearing smocks with no underpants and when they played leapfrog their testicles would bang on each others heads and the guards would get hysterical.

Natasha Mitchell: Got nasty.

Philip Zimbardo: It got nastier and nastier. The guards were abusing prisoners in every way they could. I was the prison superintendent, I'd limited physical aggression, but that opened the door for psychological abuse.

Natasha Mitchell: Well interestingly, Phil, you actually started out more interested in what the prisoners were going to do, but the guards became a focus of interest, didn't they?

Philip Zimbardo: Yes, well see it's 1971. In 1971 it was the hippie revolution, sex, drugs and rock and roll but also anti war and anti prisons. And so students and myself we were interested in the plight of prisoners because none of us could ever imagine being prison guards. But over time what was fascinating was how dramatically transformed the guards were and these were boys we chose as normal, as healthy -- and they're intelligent college students -- as imaginable.

Natasha Mitchell: You describe what unfolded as 'an ecology of dehumanisation'.

Philip Zimbardo: Dehumanisation is really maybe the most basic psychological process that pushes, propels good people to do really bad things. And in a particular situation the humanity of other people is taken away, is deprived. You think of them as less than human; as animals; you think of them as insects, you think of them as vermin. And once inferior, then you can do whatever either gives you pleasure or whatever the top-down command tells you is necessary to do. The surprising thing was how quickly and how extremely this environment got to people. And essentially we talk about it as the power of the situation to undercut the goodness that most of these boys brought in to that situation.

Within 36 hours Prisoner 861 -- I still remember his number vividly after all these years -- had an emotional breakdown; screaming, uncontrollable crying, hysterical. We had to release him, he was ringleader of the student rebellion. On the second day he organised a rebellion of the prisoners against the guards because they didn't want to be dehumanised, they didn't want to be reduced in numbers. And because he was the ringleader the guards then focused on him as somebody whose spirit they had to crush. So you suddenly got personal revenge, personal sentiment of the guards to get even with the prisoners. And so by the end of the fifth day five students had emotional breakdowns -- or one young man he developed a full body rash and we had to release him. And so we had to end the study because it was literally out of control.

Natasha Mitchell: So let's hear from one of the students who became a particularly sadistic guard, Guard Helman, in conversation with a fellow student he tormented, Prisoner 416 or Clay, in the Stanford Prison Experiment Revisited. Guard: When you put a uniform on, saying your job is to keep these people in line, you really become that person once you put on that khaki uniform, you put on the glasses, you put on ‐ you take the night stick and, you know, you act the part.

Prisoner 416: It still is a prison and I don't look on it as an experiment or a simulation because it was a prison that was run by psychologists instead of run by the state. I began to feel that that identity, the person that I was that had decided to go to prison was distant from me, until finally I was 416; I was really my number and 416 was going to have to decide what to do. I've read a lot about it but I've never experienced it first hand, I've never seen someone turn that way. And I know you're a nice guy. Do you understand? I do, I do know you're a nice guy.

Guard: Then why do you hate me?

Prisoner 416: I don't get that... because I know what you can turn into, I know what you're willing to do if you say oh well, I'm not going to hurt anybody, oh well, it's a limited situation, or it's over in two weeks.

Guard: Well if you were in the position, what would you have done?

Prisoner 416: I don't know.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing things for me was that in the end the prisoners didn't go out of their way to defend each other or support each other -- and nor did visitors from outside really indicate to you that they had a problem with what was going on. In fact everyone almost became complicit in the experiment didn't they?

Philip Zimbardo: Absolutely. And Natasha you picked up something that most people who know about the study miss. If I told you, imagine you're a prisoner, who would you like to have come down on your behalf? You say well, how about a Catholic priest, how about a public defender, how about your mother. I brought all of those people down to that prison, many...several times. The point is what they saw is a scene that we staged, and this is true in virtually every prison when there is a congressional hearing or where there's a prison task force comes down. So the parents, then being good middle class parents, they too fall into conforming to the power of the situation.

Natasha Mitchell: And this is where your role comes into play here because you've been apologising in a sense for this experiment ever since.

Philip Zimbardo: All those years.

Natasha Mitchell: You played the role of the Stanford Prison's superintendent but you were also cast necessarily as a dispassionate, objective research scientist -- a conflict of interest surely?

Philip Zimbardo: You hit it right on the head again. It was a huge mistake, you cannot play those two roles the experimenter has to be objective and essentially in a way above the mundane reality of what's happening. Because your job is to collect data, to be sure that everything is being handled as ethically as possible and as scientifically sound as possible. As the prison superintendent your main job is maintaining the integrity of the prison. Natasha Mitchell: Wouldn't pass an ethics committee today though would it?

Philip Zimbardo: Wouldn't pass an ethics committee...but it did pass an ethics committee in those days.

Natasha Mitchell: Indeed. This is ABC Radio National, Natasha Mitchell with you for All in the Mind going global on Radio Australia and as podcast, my guest today is acclaimed psychologist Philip Zimbardo, the man behind the notorious Stanford Prison experiment in 1971 and author of the new book The Lucifer Effect. Look, it was someone very close to you, a fellow psychologist, in fact now your wife of more than three decades I gather, who prompted you to end it early. Who, in a sense, woke you up to the reality of what you'd created.

Philip Zimbardo: Being in a situation where I helped create a hell in paradise. Stanford University is one of the most beautiful universities in the world and in that basement in the psychology department I created a mini-hell for all those students. This young woman, Christina Maslach, had just gotten a job as a psychology professor at Berkeley and we had just started dating. I looked up and in front of my door was the usual 10 o'clock toilet run, prisoners with paper bags over their heads, legs chained together and one arm on each other's shoulder, marching blindly down the hall with guards yelling at them obscenely...and I looked up from whatever I was doing and said hey Chris, look at that. I said something like, 'the crucible of human behaviour'. And she said, 'I don't want to see any more of this!' And she ran out, and I ran after her and we had a big argument: what's wrong with you, what sort of psychologist are you?

And she says to me, 'I don't want to hear about simulation, I don't want to hear about the power of the situation. 'It's terrible what you are doing to those boys, they are not students, they are not prisoners, they are not guards, they are young men, what's happening to them is terrible and you are responsible for it.' That was the left hook, the right hook was, 'You know, I'm not sure I want to continue dating you if this is the real you, this person is like a monster.' There was like a cataract over my eyes, I was not seeing this most obvious thing that she coming down fresh in ten minutes looks at this and says it's terrible.

Natasha Mitchell: Well you talk about cognitive dissonance; I think that's a very interesting point when people's personal values or morality really is at odds with their behaviour.

Philip Zimbardo: Yes, it's a very common phenomenon that's been widely studied by psychologists, I know, in Australia as well as in the United States. You know, when your behaviour does not mesh with your values and attitudes, typically what happens is your attitudes and values change to fit the behaviour rather than the other way around. Talmudic scholars would say get people to pray before you try to get them to believe, once they start praying they'll come to believe what they are doing. So a lot of evil done by good people is really more from the evil of inaction.

Natasha Mitchell: Yes, we tend to pathologise evil acts don't we? In psychology circles, your own profession, there's a tendency to say that the people who do evil things, it's an abhorrent mind or it's an abhorrent set of genes. In a sense this really democratised evil, this work. Philip Zimbardo: I let everybody in on it. The problem that I as a social psychologist have is that there's such a movement toward explaining everything in terms of genetics, brain process, personality traits. Our research is really a counter-reaction which says yes, behaviour is always a product of what people bring into any situation. But what we have all under- estimated is how powerful and subtle situational forces can be to reshape our behaviour. And this is forces in classrooms, in business, in our families -- just being aware that you have that vulnerability is the single best protection against it happening.

Natasha Mitchell: There were some unexpected personal gains for the students and staff who participated in that experiment.

Philip Zimbardo: Well the usual formula for evaluating whether an experiment that's questionably ethical, is does the gain to society and to science outweigh the cost and pain to the participants? Well in this experiment people suffered and that makes it unethical and there's no question, they suffered day after day, night after night. However there was more gain from this experiment than probably any other that I know of. For example that young man Doug prison 8612, the first one to break down -- it had such a powerful impact on him, he got a degree in clinical psychology at Berkeley and for the past 25 years he has been a prison psychologist in the San Francisco county goal. My students made a film called Quiet Rage: the Stanford Prison experiment, and what he says when the students interviewed him, he says that his whole life has been trying to raise the dignity of prisoners who are put in this abusive situation and to reduce the potential for sadism of the guards.

[Montage of archived news excerpts: The Red Cross has revealed it repeatedly raised concerns about the conditions at the Abu Ghraib prison with American authorities ... It's a desolate and severe place on the outskirts of Baghdad, Abu Ghraib prison is surrounded by razor wire, guard towers and dust. There are few trees here...Many Iraqis want to know what happened at Abu Ghraib prison. The pictures of the alleged abuse have deepened the divisons ... The female soldier who has become the face of the Iraq prison abuse scandal ... Last time we saw Lynndie England she was at Abu Ghraib prison holding a leash wrapped about the neck of a native Iraqi prisoner who was writhing on the ground ... (Lynndie England): I was instructed by a person of higher rank to stand there, hold this leash, and to us we were doing our job, which meant to do what we were told and the outcome was what they wanted ... Democrats are leading the calls for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation ... (Lynndie England): They'd come back and they'd look at the pictures and they'd state, well, that's a good tactic, keep it up.

Natasha Mitchell: Philip Zimbardo, let's fast forward to 2003 and to another prison, Abu Ghraib in Iraq. It struck me that in English Abu Ghraib means house of strange fathers, and it was indeed a strange and awful house, wasn't it?

Philip Zimbardo: It always was, it was Saddam Hussein's torture centre, and execution centre and what happened to the Americans was they were simply not prepared for the aftermath, they were not prepared for the insurgency, for the resistance. And so they started arresting you know these insurgents and they had no place to put them so they started dumping them in Abu Ghraib and the prison started filling up more and more. And then it got out of hand because they started arresting whole families, they were doing sweeps of neighbourhoods. In September 2003 Tier 1A, which is where the abuses took place and Tier 1B next to it, had about 200 prisoners. In a few months they had 1,000, and they only had eight guards to deal with all of those. And the guards were not regular soldiers, they were military police army reservists. And the media has not picked that up, and that's critical. That means they have no training at all, none, in dealing with issues in a war zone. In addition Tier 1A was the soft torture centre; you don't use physical abuse, you use various forms of psychological interrogation.

Natasha Mitchell: We all remember the photos that came out of Abu Ghraib. What was your instant reaction to those, because you in fact went on to represent one of the soldiers charged with atrocities; you were there as an expert witness at least.

Philip Zimbardo: My book The Lucifer Effect would not have been written...you know it was 35 years since the Stanford Prison study, I had never written a book about it, but wrote articles...for me it was over and ended, I'm doing other things. But when I saw those pictures that were flashed around the world...they were shocking, they were abominable but they were not at all surprising because I'd seen those exact images in the Stanford Prison study: prisoners with bags over their heads, prisoners stripped naked, prisoners forced to engage in sexually degrading activities. And so you take young soldiers, the military intelligence, the CIA, all these people are now telling these soldiers winning the war, saving the lives of your buddies outside depends on your helping to soften them up. So that was their seduction to evil. My argument is that these are good young men and women, pulled across that line as surely as Lynndie England pulled a young Iraqi prisoner by his neck with a dog leash.

Natasha Mitchell: Is that excusing their behaviour, is this a case of what you call excusiology?

Philip Zimbardo: Oh no, not at all, but what we're saying is we can demonstrate in my analysis...Chip Frederick, he was the staff sergeant in charge of Tier 1A.

Natasha Mitchell: And he's the man who...he clipped the wires to...it's that terrible image of that man with the wires hanging off his fingers and a pointed Ku Klux Klan-like hood over his face.

Philip Zimbardo: It's the iconic image of torture now around the world. Artists are using it. I got to know this man intimately. He was an outstanding soldier, he had nine medals and awards, he was an excellent prison guard before that in a small prison in I think Pennsylvania or Virginia, a great family man. And within a month he's doing these terrible things and so were the others. And thinking about writing a book -- and then I chose to help defend him because the Bush administration and the military obviously dealt with the leak of these pictures by saying it's a few bad apples, a few rogue soldiers. And I'm saying let's entertain the other hypothesis that they are good soldiers, like my good guards on day one, and that they were corrupted by being put in a bad barrel.

Why did the bad things happen only at night shift at Abu Ghraib? In three months there was never a senior officer ever went down to that dungeon. Why? Because it was filthy, rats running around, there were electricity blackouts, there was no water, there were a thousand prisoners and many naked, the place stunk and it was dangerous. Prisoners and guards were being killed by these mortar attacks. And so you have on the one hand military intelligence, CIA, telling these eight young men and women do whatever you have to do to prepare them for interrogation. On the other hand you have nobody higher up saying we shall do no harm, we shall honour the Geneva Convention, we want to maintain the dignity of the American military. So the push they got was -- do bad, nobody's looking, the cat's away and we will let the mice play.

Natasha Mitchell: And yet the prosecutor Major Michael Holly just did not buy your argument or evidence for what we now know as situational social dynamics, your analysis of the system or the situation influencing the soldier's behaviour.

Philip Zimbardo: Chip Frederick admitted guilt, there's no question he was guilty, I was simply saying that when we sentence somebody to prison then we have to take into account what were the surrounding situational and systemic forces that made a really good guy do really bad things. You no longer can focus only on individual freedom of will, individual rationality. People are always behaving in a context, in a situation, and those situations are always created and maintained by powerful systems, political systems, cultural, religious ones. And so we have to take a more complex view of human nature because human beings are complex.

Natasha Mitchell: Philip Zimbardo, Hannah Arendt of course wrote about the banality of evil, the everyday actors as she was writing about the horrors of the Holocaust and its perpetrators. You on the other hand are now talking about the banality of heroism.

Philip Zimbardo: Well you said earlier I was democratising evil, I'm also democratising heroism that Hannah Arendt in her brilliant analysis of Adolf Eichmann, who was the Nazi henchman responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews at Auschwitz, said that before he went to Auschwitz he was normal. When you see him on trial at Nuremberg -- normal, absolutely normal. She said what's terrible is he's terrifyingly normal. It was the situation at Auschwitz that transformed this good guy into this monster. But I'm saying you know the same is true about heroes; heroes are ordinary people who do extraordinary deeds. We point to Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King -- people who have organised their whole life around sacrifice. They are the rare exception. Most heroes are heroes of the moment, these are people like -- the guy who exposed the Abu Ghraib abuses is a guy named Joe Darby, the most ordinary person in the world.

Natasha Mitchell: Who's now living under constant security.

Philip Zimbardo: Well he and his wife and mother had to be put in protective custody because everybody wanted to kill them. Instead of being a hero he was the enemy of the people because he made apparent to the world the terrible things that soldiers were allowed to do. So I end the book with a call for encouraging, fostering the heroic imagination in our children as the best antidote to evil. So to be a hero doesn't involve as far as my analysis special attributes, it's not you're more conscientious, you're more altruistic, you are more unselfish --you are an ordinary person who in a particular situation, at a particular time in your life, sees the world the way it really is. Like Christina Maslach saw it at the Stanford Prison study, where 50 other people who came down didn't see what she saw. And what I want to argue is all of us have the potential for evil. But more importantly all of us have the potential to be heroes.

Natasha Mitchell: Philip Zimbardo it's been a real pleasure to have you on the program this week, thank you very much for joining me as a guest. Philip Zimbardo: Natasha, I love the program, thank you.

Natasha Mitchell: And Philip Zimbardo is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University and former president of the American Psychological Society. His new book The Lucifer Effect: why good people turn evil, is published by Random House, and I've linked to his website for more on the prison experiment and The Lucifer Effect, some excellent reading there; especially his tips on how to resist influences and avoid crossing that line between good and truly awful. You can catch the downloadable podcast and streaming audio of the show, and later in the week a transcript at abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind and my thanks today to studio engineer Alex Stinsen, I'm Natasha Mitchell with more grist to your mental mill next week. Bye for now.

Guests

Professor Philip Zimbardo Professor Emeritus of Psychology Stanford University Former President, American Psychological Society Cofounder, National Center on the Psychology of Terrorism (USA) http://www.zimbardo.com

Pictures of Practice

Session Three

1:30 – 3:00

In this session, we will have short presentations from schools to stimulate discussions about classroom practices. Facilitators will lead discussion of issues arising.

Location Facilitator Presentation Presentation Two One 2:00 – 2:45 1:15 - 2:00

Library Gary Thomas Geelong Loreto College

Reading Emma Hall Mentone MGS Centre

M6 Sally Godinho Wesley College Trinity

M7 Linda Shardlow MLC Westbourne

To guide discussion, facilitators may wish to use a modified form of the Ladder of Feedback protocol (Project Zero) or perhaps the thinking routine 4Cs (see final section in this booklet).

Abstracts

LIBRARY Geelong College

The wonderland of art elements & principles: How do students interpret art elements and principles to communicate ideas, opinions and artworks?

Angela Grace

Purpose of the project

Recently we have been exploring in the year 7 classrooms how to support students in the learning process of being able to confidently discuss, communicate and understand art elements and art principles in the context of their artwork, an artist link and their external environment. The aim was to allow students to take risks, make informed decisions about the directions of their artwork, use different artworks to appreciate and critically interpret, understand problem solving, when creating an artwork and to make ‘thinking visible’ by utilizing the art elements and principles to communicate ideas, opinions and feelings.

The lesson plan and questioning techniques devised in this unit take into consideration Ron Ritchhart’s Teaching for Understanding strategies and provide the basis for creating the documentation to create the unit. The desired outcome was to give students a deeper understanding and appreciation of thinking and communicating art elements and principles while developing their visual arts skills and knowledge.

Loreto Mandeville Hall

Standards for Excellence: How the Mathematics Standards present a framework for reflection and identification of good teaching practices.

Catherine Crowhurst, Loreto Mandeville Hall

In 2006 the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers (AAMT) produced the Standards for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics in Australian Schools. These Standards have three main functions as a guiding framework for Professional Learning, as a process for awarding suitably credentialed teachers who successfully demonstrate their professional work against the Standards and thirdly as a foundation for the AAMT’s efforts to influence decision making on the profession.

As a recent participant in the AAMT and Catholic Education Office Melbourne’s project entitled Recognising Excellence: Highly Accomplished Teachers of Mathematics (HAToM) I will explore how this process of assessment has enhanced and deepened my professional practice and passion for teaching. Its strong embodiment of reflective practice provides an excellent tool for analysing what is done in the classroom, leadership roles and within the profession. The paper will also examine how the Standards, whilst developed in the domain of Mathematics, can have a positive impact on education across the curriculum. Can we use ICT to make thinking visible?

(Jessica Lindeman and Tiffany Stephens – Loreto Junior School)

Social networking technologies have become a popular method of communication amongst this generation of students. As teachers we can easily explore the use of these technologies to encourage positive learning experiences, such as peer evaluation, collaborative content creation, and individual and group reflection on a piece of literature or a learning experience. Using carefully designed Collaborative Site tasks as a tool for learning, teachers can encourage students to make their thinking visible to themselves, their peers and to their teachers. This presentation explores examples of the use of blogs, wikis and discussion boards with Yr 5 and 6 students as a means of making thinking visible.

READING CENTRE

Mentone Grammar School

Taking the number line from Arithmetic to Algebra

Mana Barden & Jo Kamp A case based study on developing algebra concepts in the Middle Years.

Learning on the road

Wayne Essing and Stuart Bainbridge The development of a SOSE program in years 5 & 6.

Melbourne Grammar School

Thinking Geography: Don’t worry about the breadth, feel the quality

Iain Meyer

Whilst evidence suggests that thinking routines can lead to greater student understanding, applying them to existing sequences of learning is not always easy to achieve. In this presentation, Iain will describe the changes he has made to his Year 8 Geography unit “Coasts.” By adding thinking routines not only to the coursework but more importantly to the accompanying fieldwork, students gain a greater depth in the key understandings of the unit.

M6

Wesley College Pictures of Practice at Wesley - developing thinking cultures in classrooms. Maths, English and LOTE.

Nathan Armstrong

Dude, where’s my handout? Project Zero Visible Thinking routines have helped extend student learning in my Senior English classes beyond comprehension questions, trustworthy handouts, or summary books. The onus for student learning has shifted from a teacher focussed, chalk and talk classroom, to a student centred environment. Moreover, students feel that their thoughts, opinions and ‘wonders’ are important and, most significantly, a valid tool in their coming to an understanding of a topic, idea or character. The routines have developed a deeper understanding of content in my Senior English classes and a greater motivation for learning in students. The range of routines helps promote a classroom culture of thinking and endeavour. Now the students, when they teach lessons, are using the routines!

Fiona Miriston

Ron Ritchhart’s Thinking Routines have served to deepen the thinking and maximise the value of learning opportunities in my English and LOTE classes. In this workshop I look forward to sharing and discussing some of the responses my Year 11 Indonesian students produced in response to completing a Colour Symbol Image Thinking Routine on the topic of Poverty in Indonesia.

Elisa Bowe

Creating a Culture of Thinking in the Maths Classroom. Many people see Maths as skills based subject in which memorizing the formulas and performing the correct process achieves the "goal" of getting the correct answer. In my Year 8 Maths class, I have tried to shift the goal posts and raise the importance of thinking and understanding in Mathematics, rather than manual repetitive labour intensive 'work' where the solution is the only goal. Identifying important thinking skills in Mathematics, using thinking routines and changing the way I manage assessment have been three key areas I have focussed on, in an effort shift student thinking about what is valuable and important in Mathematics as well as to get students thinking mathematically. In this session I will outline some of the strategies I employed, learning experiences the students have had, and the responses which have indicated the shift is occurring.

Trinity Grammar School

Changing the Culture of Junior School Classrooms

Rick Jacobs This year Ron Ritchhart spent about two days with the Junior School staff. The main thrust of the two days was looking at the benefits of using Thinking Routines and also how to put them in place in our classrooms. This was a whole school approach which began with great enthusiasm.

M7

Methodist Ladies College

How do thinking routines promote questioning which produces the deepest thinking?

Michelle Maglitto

Apart from revealing student thinking and making the student do the thinking in a lesson the Thinking Routines promote questioning. Questioning is essential for thinking to be articulated and vocalised. If thinking remains internalised then extension of thinking is not enabled. Through didactic exchanges with the teacher or with each other, students are encouraged to extend their thinking, challenge their thoughts and create connections and links to move their thinking into new directions. Questions can enable this to happen but there are different forms and types of questions and without some scaffolding and support students will resort to asking mundane, function based questions. The Thinking Routines are varied and some are directed to encourage students to ask deep and generative questions to extend their thinking as well as expose it. Thus, they are wonderful teaching and learning tools and can be used effectively to generate questions which promote deep thinking and eventually more understanding.

Westbourne Grammar School

Sharing classrooms A journey towards reflective teaching practice at Westbourne Grammar School

Rob Marshall, Rachel Merrigan, Kate Rice

In 2008 Westbourne Grammar School introduced an initiative ‘Sharing classrooms’. All teachers were required to participate in classroom observations with a colleague and then engage in reflective discussions with a view to altering teaching practice in order to improve student learning. This initiative emerged though the school’s involvement in ITHAKA and significantly the work of Colleen Abbot within the school over the last couple of years. At the end of 2008 an interesting variation with ‘Sharing Classrooms’ occurred. Growing interest from a number of enthusiastic teachers and increased collegiality drew Junior and Senior School staff together. Serendipitous discussions took place between two sectors of the school which historically had little connection except for whole school staff meeting a couple of times throughout the year. What emerged was an acknowledgement of the lack communication between these two parts of the school and given the large number of Year 6 students who move into the Senior School each year, it was obvious an opportunity to share more information was needed. At the end of 2008 year 7 teachers observed Year 6 classes. In Term 1 2009, the Year 6 teachers observed the same students now they are in Year 7. This is promoting cross-school interaction by teachers, enhancement of transition issues for students from the junior to the senior school and the tracking and examination of student learning issues as a whole school process. From a collegiate perspective, it has also seen increased communication, development of friendships and a greater understanding by the Year 6 and 7 teachers of what actually takes place in a different part of the school.

Presentations

The wonderland of art elements & art principles.

How do students interpret art elements and principles to communicate ideas, opinions and artworks?

Angela Grace

The Geelong College Preparatory School

Purpose of the project

Recently we have been exploring in the year 7 classrooms how to support students in the learning process of being able to confidently discuss, communicate and understand art elements and art principles in the context of their artwork, an artist link and their external environment. The aim was to allow students to take risks, make informed decisions about the directions of their artwork, use different artworks to appreciate and critically interpret, understand problem solving, when creating an artwork and to make ‘thinking visible’ by utilizing the art elements and principles to communicate ideas, opinions and feelings.

The lesson plan and questioning techniques devised in this unit take into consideration Ron Ritchharts Teaching for Understanding strategies and provide the basis for creating the documentation to create the unit. The desired outcome was to give students a deeper understanding and appreciation of thinking and communicating art elements and principles while developing their visual arts skills and knowledge.

Stage One -Pot of Gold

Students come to class with a wealth of untapped prior knowledge. We were very aware not to dismiss this knowledge and started our unit of work with a brief, yet engaging discussion on what students know about art elements and principles, where they had got this information from and what made them remember it. A variety of objects and artworks were then displayed on a table and students were asked…………’What can you tell me about the visuals on the table’?

The thinking routine used was: See-Think-Wonder

Stage two - Experimental art exploration

Students organized themselves into groups of three or four. The aim of this process was for students to understand how art elements can be organized to create a simple composition that displayed art principles. The students were given a time frame to complete a variety of tasks within 40 minutes. Students explored what is line, how to use lines descriptively with pen and pencil, how to create texture through line, how to create pattern through line, how to create a variety of marks with different media to create movement, how to create different effects using different types of media, how to create effective colour combinations and so on.

Stage three - Artist link

Once teachers had established student’s prior knowledge and explored by making and creating small experimental artworks displaying art elements and principles, students were given an opportunity to explore and respond to a variety of pre-selected artworks. The artist we explored was Charles Blackman. Students and teachers referenced Blackman’s ‘Mad Hatters tea party’ series. This particular body of work linked in with the drawing theme which was ‘A storm in a tea cup’.

One of the objectives was for students to have a clear understanding of art elements and principles. We wanted students to know and remember that art elements are the raw materials of an artist or the building blocks of art. It was important for students to understand and think about line, shape, colour, texture, form and spatial qualities to talk about art in its various forms. Teachers also wanted students to grasp an understanding of art principles to allow students to explore and communicate on how art principles reflect the way the art elements are used and arranged in artworks to create meaning.

Stage four - Let’s respond

The aim of the unit at this point was to create a scenario to allow students an opportunity to feel confident enough to stand up in front of the class, discuss and communicate a Charles Blackman artwork using specific art language and expand their art vocabulary. To make this process fun and engaging we created a set off a TV show ’Thank God you’re here’.

Each student became an art reviewer. There was no specified time frame given, it was purely based on however long a student felt comfortable standing in front of the class interpreting an art work yet, they did have to use at least 4 or 5 art terms. On completion of their short review they would then tap someone on the shoulder and say something along the lines of ‘Wow is that the time, I really need to feed the dog” choose a person, tap them on the shoulder & say “Thank God you’re here” indicating the next students turn. This was a quick, fun, relevant, skilful way of interpreting artworks with the main focus communicating art elements and principals.

Stage five - Feed back.

After the discussion of the Blackman artworks, students were given the opportunity to reflect together as a group & with the teacher.

. Students discussed and described how they felt during this process.

Response: Nervous (who was going to be picked, standing up in front of peers, using the ‘right words) funny, positive experience

. Students considered what they learnt.

New ways of talking about art, some stated it was a better way to remember art words, fun and not boring, happy to participate

Students rated how much they enjoyed this activity on a scale of 1-10

The average rating out of 24 students was 8 out of 10

Stage six -Drawing/Theme: ‘Storm in a tea Cup’

Student’s task: The students task was to create a ‘Storm in a tea cup’ drawing combining as many imaginary visuals as they like. Their artwork started as a pencil outline, focusing upon texture made up by different types of lines and ellipses. Once students had drawn a teapot pouring out images of their choice and a tea cup, they were required to use aquarelle pencils tonally to create a variation of soft colour that would help to emphasise the various textures they had created. They experimented with different wash techniques, scale and tonal gradation. Part of the criteria’s was for student’s artwork to be original and display individual and unique character.

Constant link back to Blackman’s work was discussed as they produced their own work in relation to the colour, tonal gradation, placement of images in the composition, line, texture and the importance of imagination he used in ‘The mad hatters tea party series’.

Stage seven - Mid point art work discussion.

Half way through creating the ‘Storm in a tea cup’ composition students were given a selection of questions to answer. This allowed students to reflect on the quality of their work, look at the criteria and revise their working processes so far.

Students identified strengths and weaknesses in their own art work and identified areas fellow students students could improve,(This was done in relation to looking at the Charles Blackman work and how he had used colour, texture , line and tone.) Students discussed using the questions as a basis, how they could find ways to improve their performance. This created a heightened sense of motivation towards finishing their art work well. It reinvigorated students who were struggling and definitely created a sense of engendering pride in their final artwork.

Stage eight - Assessment

Students were assessed on how well they each incorporated art elements and principles into their final composition. They also showed evidence of this process in the different stages of preliminary drawings. Each student completed a self and peer evaluation of this project.

Stage nine- What we found out.

-Students were able to demonstrate ability in the drawing process to recognize a variety of shapes, line, and tone and articulate these observations to their peers and teacher.

- Students were able to demonstrate the ability to render and draw ellipses

- Students were able to create imaginative scenes in their own composition

- Students were able to articulate to their peers and teachers how to place objects in a composition and why they put them there.

- Students were able to use the art language in their summative assessments of their work.

- Students were able to create a great sense of movement in their final composition and recognize this as an art principle.

-Students were able to create a sense of mood manipulating a variety of tones.

-Students were to problem solve independent of a teacher during the creating and making process.

- As the weeks progressed students were able to discuss a variety of artworks and offer their own opinion using art language.

-Students were able to stop and offer one another constructive feed back in regards to their work.

-Students developed a mutual respect for other student’s artworks.

Taking the number line from arithmetic to algebra

Manuela Barden and Joanne Kamp

Mentone Grammar School

Today Jo and I would like to share with you some of the conversations taking place in our

Middle School Mathematics classrooms. These conversations arise out of our efforts to provide opportunities within the curriculum for students to deepen their understandings of key concepts in mathematics and from our continuing aim to make a culture of thinking within our classrooms a reality.

These conversations have in turn come about, as a result of the constructive dialogues taking place amongst us as teachers, within our professional learning team at Mentone Grammar, and between colleagues from other schools and researchers in Education, within the forum of the

Ithaka project. We have used these conversations as a spring board to reflect on and change our practice within the classroom. The change that is occurring is powerful, self-directed, arising from our questions as teachers, and is constructed by us based on the research of outside experts and shared experiences with colleagues. We are developing and deepening our understanding of learning to better be able to develop and deepen the understanding of students in our classrooms.

So how did Jo and I get to this point? In 2008 Jo and I designed a Yr 7 statistics unit using the ideas of Understanding by Design (by McTighe and Wiggins) an exercise that helped us clarify the specific skills and concepts we felt were critical to the topic. An illuminating moment for us in this process was the realization that the students were still trying to “guess the right answer” in the formative assessment tasks, which were being perceived very much as mini tests, and therefore, despite our best efforts, the students were still engaged predominantly in surface understanding. We felt the natural next step for us was to focus on developing our understanding of effective rubrics and good feedback in Term 3 and in Term 1 of this year we focused on how we were using Thinking Routines in our classrooms, specifically going deeper into the different thinking processes each routine supported. During this time we read the article Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart and David Perkins, published in Educational

Leadership, and heard Ron Ritchhart speak on Embedding Cultures. This struck a chord with the conversations that had been taking place in our professional learning team and so for the next step in our journey, we decided to focus on Discourse in the classroom, defined by Ron

Ritchhart as the three cultural forces: Language, Interactions and Time, and Thinking

Routines as the means by which we would refocus on developing a Thinking Culture in our classrooms.

Algebra is one of those topics that can haunt mathematics teachers, with often many students in every class, year on year, unable to grasp the ideas and skills expressed in the syllabus. Even if you are not a teacher of mathematics I am sure you will have memories of your own experiences, good or bad, grappling with the topic of algebra and more specifically the concept of The Variable. An article in the April edition of Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, an

American periodical published by The National council of Teachers of Mathematics, looked at how a number line could be a useful visual tool to help students progress from arithmetic to algebra and develop their understanding of a variable. We decided that we could use this article as the content for a Formative Assessment task, which we would have as part of our topic of Algebra. We had taken the decision not to write a ‘Backwards Design’ algebra unit - but at the same time we didn’t just want to revert back to the ‘old’ ways. We were finding was that our language as teachers was changing and that we were more frequently inviting students to display their thinking in class - so a rich assessment task helped us to keep on track!

The culmination of the activity was a problem solving sheet in which students had to use the concept of a variable integrated with their understanding of fractions, another area that frightens some students, and arrive at a conclusion. We selected the Thinking Routine “What

Makes You Say That?” an interpretation with justification routine, as this was the type of thinking we would be looking for, and that we were expecting the students to ‘make visible’.

We spent a couple of sessions at the start of Term 3 reading the article in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School and working through the exercises together. Through discussing our outcomes and questions we gained familiarity with the activity. We also took time to discuss the key ideas raised: transferring understanding from the arithmetic number line to an algebraic one, and identifying the unit of reference in a ‘real life’ situation. In the next meeting we discussed the Thinking Routine we would be using, looking back at how we had used it previously and even practised using it in this context amongst ourselves. I certainly find acting it through helps me clarify my understanding, perhaps just like the students do! We also looked at resources we might need and how we wanted the students to work - originally we thought it would be a class activity. We also spent some time focusing on how we were using

DISCOURSE: interactions/language and time in our classes to promote thinking!

The activity was to take place in the middle of the unit as a Formative Assessment piece and naturally this meant that we would all be delivering the task at different times. Despite our best efforts we were unable to plan it so that we could sit in on each other’s lessons, so we decided to video the classes and use the video for reflection in the following meeting after school. This allowed us to modify the activity with two out of the four classes involved, changing from a classroom to group activity, and we decided to ask them to complete a problem solving sheet both before and after the discussion session.

Ron Ritchhart’s “Behaviours to look for in a ‘Culture of thinking classroom’” expands on the 8

Cultural Forces and can be used to objectively evaluate the discourse in a classroom as they are the leverage points into a culture of thinking. Specific elements that we focused on in our reflections from the three that make up Discourse: Language/Interactions/Time, are shown here and are listed fully in your handbook.

So we’d like to show you a clip from our classrooms and invite you, if you will with a partner, to choose one of these three cultural forces , watch this clip and see to what degree do you think the aspect that you have chosen is present.

In the clip you are about to see the class have been studying Algebra for six lessons on average and are familiar with the terminology and have had discussions on the Language of Algebra and why we ‘need’ it. The group of boys were specifically selected as the ones that that generally asked questions in class....

Thank you for coming into our classrooms with us today and taking the time to share with us your thoughts about creating a culture of thinking in the classroom.

Appendix:

• The 8 Cultural Forces that define our classrooms – Ritchhart, R. Intellectual Character

(2002)

THE 8 CULTURAL FORCES THAT DEFINE OUR CLASSROOMS DIRECTED TOWARD THINKING BY Cultural Force

Time Allocating time for thinking by providing time for exploring topics more in depth as well as time to formulate thoughtful responses.

Opportunities Providing purposeful activities that require students to engage in thinking and the development of understanding as part of their ongoing experience of the classroom.

Routines & Structures Scaffolding students’ thinking in the moment as well as providing tools and patterns of thinking that can be used independently.

Language Using a language of thinking that provides students with the vocabulary for describing and reflecting on thinking.

Modeling Modeling of who we are as thinkers and learners so that the process of our thinking is discussed, shared, and made visible.

Interactions & Showing a respect for and valuing of one another’s Relationships contributions of ideas and thinking in a spirit of ongoing collaborative inquiry.

Physical Environment Making thinking visible by displaying the process of thinking and development of ideas. Arranging the space to facilitate thoughtful interactions.

Expectations Setting an agenda of understanding and conveying clear expectations. Focusing on the value for thinking and learning as outcomes as opposed to mere completion of “work.”

Nathan Armstrong

Wesley College St Kilda Rd

While studying ‘The Crucible’ with my Yr12 VCE English class, I tried a new Visible Thinking routine. The following is an example of a ‘Step Inside’ from the perspective of a teacher who is using Project Zero’s Visible Thinking routines.

One thing the routines force a teacher to do is break away from the board and sit TOUCH various chairs amongst groups of students

Being able to display the routines the students have completed over the year SIGHT colourful learning validates their learning and act as great revision tools.

silence, debating, Something that takes getting used to is the laughing and silence of thinking. What is wonderful to SOUND talking. observe is the debating and laughing that silence, debating, Something that takes getting used to is the laughing and silence of thinking. What is wonderful to SOUND talking. observe is the debating and laughing that takes place during the lessons.

When ever I try a new routine, have a bad or a great lesson using the routines, I TASTE coffee always make a point of sharing my thoughts with other staff usually over a

coffee.

The routines encourage teachers to be versatile in their use of resources. SMELL cardboard/texta pens

As a teacher using the Visible Thinking routines in Senior English classes, I know

• student centered lessons place the onus for learning on the part of the students. • students appreciate a change in teaching practice from traditional ‘chalk and talk’ methods. • if students see me being a lover of learning (trying new techniques, being innovative and taking risks) then those qualities will be valued and expected as a given within the classroom. • sometimes it doesn’t go as planned (but who hasn’t failed at something?) • team teaching/observations and much more time for preparation/reflection must be undertaken to develop lessons/units and change cultures within faculties.

As a teacher using the Visible Thinking Routines, I care about • helping students develop thinking dispositions that cross subject divides. • placing a consideration and valuing of ‘thinking’ at the forefront of curriculum • using thinking routines in senior school classes help empower the students • about regularly reflecting on my teaching practice and being open to new ideas and techniques

Nathan Armstrong

Wesley College – St Kilda Road Campus

Colour Symbol Image Thinking Routine on the topic of Poverty in Indonesia

Fiona Miriston Wesley College St Kilda Road

Language and culture are inextricably linked and in order to help my class appreciate this understanding, I have recently trialled some of the thinking routines presented by Dr. Ron Ritchhart using Indonesian as a target language. This short essay will discuss the inspiration and application of a Colour, Symbol, Image (CSI) routine in my class.

My experiments with this approach were inspired by my reflections on our treatment of a unit of study earlier in the year. The unit was entitled Buruh or in English: Workers / Labourers. This unit began with the usual learning activities the students were well accustomed to: reading articles, memorising vocabulary, learning and consolidating grammatical seemingly well, and the class’ lexical and syntactical understandings were showing development.

In one of our lessons, the students read an article about the lives of the Pemulung in Indonesia. The Pemulung are itinerant garbage collectors in Jakarta who make their living fossicking through tips and rubbish sites, in an attempt to find discarded items of value.

The following is a translation of an excerpt from the article:

“Where ever there is garbage they are there. Because of this, they can be found in almost every corner of Jakarta. With their baskets or carts in hand, their appearance looks apprehensive. They are not beggars or vagrants! They are itinerant workers who have become a normal part of life in Indonesia’s mother city…”

(Translation from article Kehidupan Para Pemulung di Jakarta p.43 in Kay & Rachmat.

Bersama-Sama Senior (2003) Thomson: Victoria)

Whilst the article contained some very emotive language and a confronting photograph, I began to notice that the students seemed preoccupied with the meaning of unknown words and syntax. As they engaged themselves in class, the questions they asked each other were superficial and were focused predominantly at language level. At the conclusion of the article, the students asked; “do we need to answer questions on this?” and “do our answers need to be in Indonesian?” At this moment, I realised that my students had not appreciated the deeper meaning of the article. They did not grasp the intense danger these workers faced every day, and the fact that many of them were children who were never allowed the opportunity to receive an education.

It was at this point in the unit I decided to pull our attention away from the surface level language of the article and engage with the bigger ideas at play. As a class, we discussed the article in regards to its subject matter, not its linguistic composition. The ebb and flow of the discussion led us to think about the rights workers have in Indonesia as opposed to the rights workers enjoy here in Australia. Within the space of one lesson, I felt that the subject had taken on a life of its own. We found a video on YouTube where various workers in Indonesia were interviewed (in the target language) and through discussion we engaged with some of the deeper issues branching from Indonesia’s workforce such as poverty, education and social security.

In the following lesson, students completed a Colour Symbol Image thinking routine in the target language under the topic of Poverty in Indonesia. Through this routine, they were able to generate their own responses using their Indonesian interlanguage. Their responses showed their great empathy, originality and creativity; qualities which they would not have had opportunity to activate in standard, text book style comprehension questions. From this experience I am now motivated to trial other thinking routines in my Indonesian classes.

Developing a culture of thinking in the Maths classroom

Elisa Bowe Wesley College St Kilda Road

In seeking to develop a culture of thinking in the maths classroom, the first challenge was to break down student ideas of the nature of mathematics and make a distinction between school mathematics and mathematics outside and beyond school. The challenge was to open students’ minds to consider areas of mathematics that the normal school curriculum does not cover. To many students maths seems to be a given process: teacher gives me the rule, gives me 20 questions which use that rule or idea, and then I am done. Maths is seen to be a subject that can be ‘finished’ and has definite boundaries. Unfortunately, for many students, maths is a subject in which you only ask questions if you don’t understand, rather than an area in which you can ask probing questions. For many students, mathematics is stuck in concrete, able to be memorized and if worse comes to worse, and little thinking is taking place, success can be achieved if the method or formula is followed.

In developing a culture of thinking the importance of the development of curiosity, enthusiasm, wonder, excitement, uncovering and discovering in students are vital in planning lessons and the learning experiences of students.

Below are some practical strategies to help create and nurture a culture of thinking.

Pre-assessment To raise the importance of students making connections in mathematics with knowledge they already have, it is important to find out what students already know about a topic. Conventional testing can reveal this, however, in looking at tests, it is easy as a teacher to make inferences about what students understand rather than really knowing what they understood.

Instead of a test, for each new topic in maths, students are presented with a 1 page sheet with 3 questions: Question 1 What do you think you know about (given topic)? Question 2 Why do you think it is important for us to learn (given topic)? Question 3 From what you know about (given topic) give examples of the types of questions you might be given. Once you have written them down (showing your working steps), break them in to categories. (Students work on this individually).

Question 1 allows students the opportunity to express what they think they know allowing the teacher to see the exposure to language and concepts students have come across. If students think they do not know anything, a discussion about prior knowledge can be had or a short explanation at the beginning of the topic to be studied. It is important that connections can be identified by the students.

Question 2 allows the teacher to see how students see application which can usually be easily challenged and extended as we explore the topic. The standard answer to this is ‘we use it in everyday life’ but examples of use in ‘everyday life’ are often difficult for students to name. This gives a valuable opportunity to challenge ideas and introduce debate, justification and argument in the mathematics classroom.

Question 3 allows the teacher to see the depth and extent of the understanding and knowledge – especially the ability to categorise their examples. Many students say they know the whole topic in Question 1 but have difficulty writing even one example. When students write examples, they are often the same concept with different numbers. This opens the opportunity for conversation about the development of different ways of thinking within a topic.

Another method is to ask students to write down everything they know about the given topic. This could be in the form of words, pictures, examples. This is completed individually, then as a class, we share these ideas and write down the ideas on the board. As they are written up the students identify and justify how ideas are connected, why they are the same or different and to what degree. Another factor in writing them on the board is to separate the words/pictures etc. into two categories: ‘conceptual ideas’ and ‘examples.’ Usually much of what the students write down are examples and the contrast shows the importance of understanding a concept rather than being able to cite examples only.

It is important to note that there is always a starting point from which to work in Mathematics. This pre-assessment allows the teacher and the student to identify their starting point (what they do understand). In doing this it is much easier for both teacher and students to make connections to new content and build on previous knowledge.

Questioning The nature of the questions asked is changing. Increasing wait time and ensuring students ask questions to clarify as well as extend their understanding are vital. The willingness to go off on a tangent from a lesson plan and capitalise on the curiosity of the students is invaluable. It breaks down the idea of maths as restricted to what the teacher has planned. This year my Year 8 maths class have discussed 3 dimensional graphing, calculus concepts, imaginary numbers, permutation and combinations, trigonometry and limits.

Waiting for students to be able to think is vital. The uncomfortable silence has had to become a friend in the classroom. To give this wait time and listen to a variety of responses to questions values thinking and models to students the importance of their ideas.

Posing question about limitations and identifying special cases has become a regular occurrence in the classroom. It forces the thinking of students beyond the concept and allows them once again to connect to other mathematical knowledge.

Giving Examples In presenting concepts to students the focus has turned more toward the students. This is an area still needing more balance but it has shifted significantly. Examples are no longer just given and solved by the teacher. Traditionally, example questions have whole number solutions to help in the conceptual development of students. It is important however to give examples for which the answer is not immediately obvious nor ‘falls out’ nicely. As a class, it is important to critically look at a question and analyse the method and solution. It is made clear to my students that in the past they may have been give examples/questions where the answer is neat, but this is not always the case. Questions which pose difficulties are purposefully given to students and analysed as a class. The nature of the question and which mathematically sound techniques/methods can be used is discussed and explored. If the method is mathematically sound and works toward the solution, there should not be a problem, as messy as it looks.

Often concepts are discussed and then an example question is presented without the solution. Students work on the problem alone and are able to ask questions. They then discuss their solution with a partner, making a comparison and amending if necessary, before the teacher brings the group together to get their ideas on how to solve the problem. Students often come up with different methods which is valued as long as they are mathematically sound. As a group we work through the logic and reasoning, making clear the thinking the students have done to get the solution.

Thinking Routines The thinking routines that have been very useful in the Maths classroom are:

. See think wonder . 3 -2 -1 bridge (with very interesting programs on Origami and fractals) . What do you see? What do you know about what you see? . What makes you say that? . I used to think but now I think… . Generate – Sort – Connect - Elaborate The importance of mathematically sound thinking/working One thing that is stressed is the importance of mathematically sound working to problems. Students are reminded frequently that clearly ordered working is good communication of thinking in mathematics. If others can read your work and know how you think you have communicated effectively. If they have to guess how you think, then you need to work on your communication.

Classroom discussion often revolves around the validity of a solution, and the merits of a solution are discussed and critically analysed first as a group, then as pairs and then encouraged as individuals.

Memorization vs thinking It is stressed to students that they should not simply memorise the formulas, but they should be able to derive them. We also discussed the idea that the more familiar they are with deriving the formula the easier it will be to remember.

This idea was used recently in studying area formulae. In uncovering the formulas for trapeziums, parallelograms, kites, rhombus’ and triangles, students were encouraged not to memorize the formulae, rather to show that they could derive the formulae. This was done with the use of shapes and a pair of scissors. In this uncovering process, students were shown how to find the area of a triangle using paper and scissors and then the area of a parallelogram. Students then had to work on their own to derive the formulae for trapezium and kites. Homework was to show at least one person in their family how the formulas were developed.

Homework At times, to encourage students to reflect on the lesson and to give further insight in to what they understand, students have been asked to write down at least 5 questions they have from the day’s lesson. Students are encouraged to write down as many questions as they have, which may take the concept further or clarify what has been learned and this forms the basis of their homework

At the beginning of the next lesson, students share their questions with each other, and in pairs raise 3 of the most important questions in the group. These are then written on the board and while visible, are ‘set aside’. At this time the lesson can be remoulded to address some of these, without simply working through the questions one by one. Interestingly the students often ask questions which pre-empt the next concept in the teaching plan. The students take great pleasure in revisiting the questions and answering their own questions at the end of the lesson. If there are questions left unanswered, together we try to make connections between questions and address them over the course of the topic. It is important that this process of answering questions falls naturally in to the topic and teaching course, and a model of how we make connections with the concepts we have learned and the questions we have is established. At the end of a unit At the end of a unit we have used the Generate – Sort - Connect - Elaborate to create a topic summary. Students are encouraged to write example questions, and the focus of the exercise is the connections between concepts. When complete, students compare with a partner and have the opportunity to discuss and justify their choices and amend if necessary. Then a whole class discussion revolves around differences and similarities between maps. This highlights to students that their ideas matter, their justifications are important and that there is no one correct solution.

Assessment The approach to assessment has changed significantly. One major change is that students are not notified when a ‘test’ or ‘quiz’ is coming up. It is simply presented to them. It is made clear to students that the expectation is that they think through and understand the work, rather than simply memorize and cram. It is also made clear that we should be able to have a conversation about the mathematics we are studying as we pass in the corridor, rather than just in maths classroom. Initially this made students very uncomfortable, but after explanation, it also made sense that if we understand and can make connections we should be able to show our understanding at any time, not just after studying for an hour.

In handing back assessment, no marks are given. The written feedback for students comes in the form of comments and ticks and crosses. Increasingly, comments are taking the form of questions rather than instruction e.g. you need to… no solutions are corrected. This is the job of the student. When work is handed back it gives the students a framework for critically analysing their work and identifying and fixing errors.

More recently students have been given a 1 page sheet with a table as follows: Explain why. Which of my answers were incorrect?

Students have time when they get the task back to analyse their work. Conversation shifts from ‘what did I get right’ to ‘which mistakes did I make’. It give students who made minor calculation errors a boost in confidence and a warning to take care, and also identifies areas in which students are yet to understand the concepts in the topic. They have self identified these and are encouraged to ask questions if they do not know why their answer was incorrect.

Another strategy is to get students to mark each others work. The teacher collects the papers and strategically redistributes, giving weaker students models of stronger students work to mark, and spreading the others evenly. Students are not allowed to reveal whose work they have. In going through the solutions as a group, a number of questions are asked: . Did the person get the correct solution? . Did the person show enough working so you know what they are thinking? . If they did not get the correct answer, why? Was their thinking incorrect? What should they have thought? Identify for your person if the issue was conceptual or a calculation issue. Asking students to identify each others thinking and the discussion of alternative ways of completing a question promote thinking in the classroom, and open up the idea of different methods to gain the same solution for a problem.

Above all, in creating learning opportunities for students, it is important as a teacher to model to students how to identify the thinking in their own and in each others work. This training and revisiting of identification of thinking allows students access to critically analyse their own work and self correct if necessary. It also allows rich conversation about the nature of thinking in Mathematics and moves the perception of Mathematics away from a mundane set of rules to follow, to the idea that Mathematics is an interpretation of the world in which we live and within this interpretation new ‘discoveries’ can be uncovered.

Some interesting questions my students have raised…

. Why does a negative number multiplied by a negative number have a positive solution? . Why are there 360 degrees in a circle? What is a degree? Who made up this measurement? . How can graphs be represented in 3 dimensions? . Is there a connection between gradient of a line and distance? . Can the gradient of a line be represented as an equation? . How did mathematicians find the formula for the surface area of a sphere?

Can we use I.C.T. to make thinking visible?

Tiffany Stephens and Jessica Lindeman

ITC Coordinators, Junior School

Loreto Mandeville Hall

Introduction

Social networking technologies have become a popular method of communication amongst this generation of students. As teachers we can easily explore the use of these technologies to encourage positive learning experiences, such as peer evaluation, collaborative content creation, and individual and group reflection on a piece of literature or a learning experience. Using carefully designed tasks on collaborative sites as a tool for learning, teachers can encourage students to make their thinking visible to themselves, their peers and to their teachers.

Loreto Mandeville Hall Toorak introduced a new online portal system in 2008 and our goal in the Junior School for staff was to create more online learning experiences for students via the portal. This year, we have extended this goal to included the use of the portal for collaborative tasks through the use of the social networking technologies of discussion boards, wikis and blogs. Our Year 5 and 6 students have been given the opportunity to trial collaboration through the use of these technologies. This presentation explores examples of the use of collaborative sites as a means of making thinking visible.

DISCUSSION BOARDS

What is a Discussion Board? Online discussion boards are like any general message board whereby you post a message on the board and wait to see how people respond to it. Students don't have to be online at the same time, making discussion boards a handy tool to support the curriculum. There are two ways to organise messages in a discussion board: threaded and linear. The threaded system keeps the topics organised, whereas the linear system is more like a conversation. Each post in a given topic arrives in chronological order.

What are the Advantages of a Discussion Board?

Discussion boards are a great tool for allowing students to freely express their ideas and opinions on a topic at their own pace and in their own time. A great advantage of discussion boards is these give students, particularly reluctant students, time to think before having to respond to a topic, taking the fast pace of a classroom discussion out of the picture for them. Students can scroll forwards and backwards through a conversation and revisit an idea, encouraging more analysis of a topic. They can also get a sense of belonging to a group and depending on the topic, they can be involved in the establishment of a virtual community based on a common interest. When time is an issue in the classroom, an interesting discussion can continue online on a discussion board outside the classroom (eg. at home) enabling the discussion to continue as long as is required. Similarly, a potential discussion can be initiated as a discussion board task and develop online, and possibly end up an interesting classroom discussion. Discussion boards can be monitored by the teacher to ensure all students are involved.

Discussion threads can become complicated and at times can venture off the original topic. This is where, as teachers, we need to monitor discussions and be sure to keep the students focused on the main idea. New ideas that surface and are less relevant to the topic can be placed into new discussions by the teacher for students to develop further.

Year 6 Literature Circles and Discussion boards.

Literature Circles are student centred book discussion groups whereby students are placed in a group to read and analyse a common book. Literature Circles are differentiated so that students are working with likeminded peers, enabling the group to be challenged by a book at their level. Sections of the book are read independently at home throughout the week, followed by a group collaboration session where students discuss and analyse what has been read, enhancing their understanding and appreciation of the book.

When the group meets on a weekly basis, each member of the group is given a role and tasks to complete. These roles are rotated each week so that specific skills are developed over the course of the book. For examples, the role of Discussion Director involves a student designing challenging questions for the group based on the section of the book which has been read that week. These questions are then answered and discussed when the group meets. Literature Circles raises the level of student participation in reading a book. Not only does this increase their comprehension skills, but it also encourages good time management skills due to the nature of the tasks to be completed by the time the group meets next. When students are involved in Literature Circles for the first time, they often respond in simple terms, which requires the teacher to perhaps model good questions or good responses which encourage a deeper analyse the storyline. However, as students become accustomed to the group and the need for good discussion, the conversation generally moves to higher order thinking.

Discussion boards can be successfully used to enhance Literature Circles. As previously mentioned, the Discussion Director’s role is to formulate challenging questions for the group to discuss when the group meets. Literature Circles can be developed further by requiring the Discussion Director to post a question for analysis on the online discussion board. Students in the group read the posted question in their own time and are encouraged to take part in an online discussion throughout the week prior to the group's next meeting. It is our hope that over time, the use of the discussion board will encourage students to think more deeply about a book as they are reading it. It is also hoped that students will want to become a valuable contributor to a book discussion for their information and opinions provided, hence challenging them to develop their higher order thinking. The teacher, who may not be a part of the group discussions in the classroom, can access the discussion board and, if necessary, add a comment or a question which may be crucial to encouraging students to move from lower to higher order thinking. The discussion board can give teachers a good insight into their students' understanding of a book, making assessment easier.

WIKIS

What is a Wiki?

The word 'wiki' comes from Hawaiian language, meaning 'quick' or 'fast'. A wiki is a website that lets students become collaborators in developing content. Students can create or edit the content of a wiki with basic technical skills. The purpose of a wiki is to share information, create content and collaborate in this process with others. A wiki is continuously changing.

What are the Advantages of Wikis?

There are many advantages to using a wiki. Students are able to work collaboratively on a task in one shared space, rather than jumping from one website to another and copying and pasting at the end. They can upload documents to link to for research purposes, also encouraging the sharing of information within the group.

Wikis encourage students to build greater connections between new and old knowledge. Students are required to develop their higher order thinking processes of synthesis and evaluation constantly when they work on a wiki. Wikis also increase the engagement of all students. Rather than being passive consumers of their classmates' presentations, students are required to respond, review, change, improve and evaluate information constructed by the group. Wikis encourage the development of interpersonal and communication skills, with team work and compromise being a vital part of the editing process of wikis.

Year 5 Inquiry Unit and Wikis.

The use of Wiki’s in the Year 5 Inquiry Unit on Space provided a valuable learning experience for the students. It provided them with the opportunity to collaborate with one another on the culmination of researched information and offer suggestions of improvement for each other’s work, thus allowing them to reflect and rethink their ideas.

The students in Year 5 investigated, researched and wrote an explanation of a planet or space phenomenon. As wikis were a new technology to the students, the wiki site was built for the students and they were then given the freedom to add and update information. In the future, it is anticipated that students will have more input into creating their wiki site.

Whilst building the Solar System wiki, if a number of students had the same information, one student would add new information and the others would then build on the topic with any other information they could contribute. At this stage in their use of wikis, students are encourgaed not to delete what other students have written, but to discuss possible changes and negotiate these with the students involved.

As a result of the students’ collaboration, we ended up with a class wiki page, consisting of all of the students’ investigations into the Solar System.The wiki gave students the opportunity to share their work with others and also see what others had undertaken in their research. It enhanced peer interaction, required negotiation skills and group work, and facilitated indepth sharing of knowledge amongst the students.

BLOGS

What is a Blog?

A 'Blog' is a term that refers to a log of the web or a weblog. A blog is a website with journal-like entries, presented in reverse chronological order and then published to the internet. A blog is not unlike an online journal with entries by one or many people. In its simplest form it includes text but can also include images, audio, video clips and links to other documents and websites.

A blog is a new content management technology that enables interactive engagement amongst and between students and teachers. The essential difference between a blog and other online tools is that it is intended to be an individual publication. Blog posts can be edited by the creator at any time. Others can comment on posts; however, the original post is unable to be edited by others. Blogs can be seen as a means of facilitating discussion through ongoing commentary. Blogging allows for clarification of ideas and further discussion, where a physical journal may not.

What are the Advantages of Blogs?

Using blogs in the classroom is a great way to engage students through a different medium. Students of today relate to technology and welcome the use of blogs to enhance their learning. Blogs allow for the exchange of ideas in an online environment. When using blogs to encourage students to articulate their thoughts, students can become empowered and feel that they are developing their own voice within their learning.

Blogs provide students with the ability to form learning communities. They enable students to have a personal writing space that is easy to use, sharable and automatically archived on the internet. Blogs can provide the opportunity to serve as a digital portfolio of students’ assignments and achievements. They can enable practices such as formative evaluation of student work and individual or group reflection on learning experiences. A blog is user friendly and can be accessed from any internet connection point. Blogs break down the walls of the classroom as children can learn and share anytime, anywhere.

Literature Reviews and Blogs

The use of blogs as a site for sharing book reviews has become a valuable resource for the students in Year 5 and 6. The literature blogs are used to help promote reading material available in our library. These blogs also provide information to teachers and parents on which titles and authors are being recommended by girls within particular age groups. This could also help teachers with decisions about which collection of books to purchase for literature circle programs.

Once students have completed a book, they are encouraged to honestly review the book, enabling others who have also read the book to agree or disagree with the review and justify their opinions. This process of review encourages the development of their higher order thinking, for example, justification and evaluation. This online review has become a valuable resource for students because they are able to use this blog at any time to aid in the choice of books from the library.

Thinking Routines and Blogs

The Year 5s have been using the technology of blogging in the classroom to improve critical thinking and analysis skills. The students are given specific reflective tasks to complete on their blog. As with any instructional tool, it is vital the students are given a clear context and purpose for their task, in order to truly benefit from the experience. Students should be fully aware of what the expectations are and how the tool is being used in their learning process. Once students understand this, they are more likely to participate to a greater degree of critical awareness. Blogging can often be misconstrued as just an extra task, or simply a different way of presenting the same thinking. When used creatively, it can be an effective thinking tool.

Blogging has been used with higher order thinking such as synthesis of information. The students worked on the thinking routine 'Circle of Viewpoints' on their blog. The question was posed, 'Should we have space exploration?' and each student was given a viewpoint. Some of these viewpoints included an astronaut, a charity worker, a Local Government member, a family member of a space explorer or a teacher. In groups of like viewpoints (eg. all astronauts), the girls brainstormed their ideas and opinions. Students were then placed in mixed viewpoint groups and had the chance to share and debate their thoughts. The students wrote on their blog about the experience, sharing their opinions, how they have changed, and any questions that resulted, whilst thinking through the eyes of their character. This allowed the students to express their thinking and how it might have changed after meeting others with opposing views. The girls were given the opportunity to read each of the blogs from within their mixed viewpoint group and commented on each person's viewpoint. It was a highly constructive process as it allowed their original thinking, as well as the changes in their thinking, to be visibly recorded on a blog, with the option for others to comment. Using the blog in this way allowed for much more sharing of thoughts and opinions than would normally be possible during a lesson.

Blogs are also used for thinking routines based upon literature activities. Most recently, the students in Year 5 completed a 'Colour, Symbol, Image' on their blog. The girls chose one character from the book 'Little Women' by Louisa May Alcott and responded creatively and thoughtfully, generating a visual representation and an explanation for each of the three categories, colour, symbol and image. By using the computer (eg. the internet, downloaded images into a folder, clip art etc), the students were not only able to access a wide variety of symbols and images, they had the opportunity to view classmates thinking virtually via their blog. The girls viewed the work of students who had explored the same character as they had, as well as other characters. The students evaluated a peer’s work using the 'sandwich method' which includes a positives comment, one critical/constructive comment and another positive comment. The use of blogs in this way lends itself to further comments and discussion, as opposed to a possible gallery walk where students simply view each others work and may not provide opportunity for ongoing discussion.

Blogs have been used as a way to analyze information through the thinking routine 'Headlines'. A blog can help students process their thoughts and ideas by articulating their own information for others to read and possibly comment on. Students watched 'Behind the News' and then created a post outlining their thoughts on their chosen segment. They used the thinking routine 'Headlines' to express their views by writing the headline of a front page newspaper article. The students wrote the first paragraph of their article and described how their thinking on the subject has changed since viewing Behind the News. The teacher, as well as students, can access blogs and can challenge a post by raising a different viewpoint. Through utilising blogs to explore thinking it is possible for teachers to access the thoughts of a student who sometimes gets lost in the dynamics of the classroom. Reluctant students, who may not offer comments in the classroom, may find a blog a safe place to impart their ideas. Through blogging, the entire thinking process of each student can be captured and made accessible for teachers and other students to explore.

Reflective Thinking and Blogs

Another use of blogs is as an online reflective journal. The students in Year 5 have been working on a project using the software Kahootz. The project is to essentially create an online 3D ‘world’ that represents a planet or phenomenon in the solar system. Each student had to choose images that visually represent their planet and include a character that moves around the world. Each student recorded their voice onto the computer as the character so that it narrates the information the student has researched. As this software was new to the students, it yielded some frustration at times and therefore required the use of problem solving strategies to overcome these problems.

Throughout the Kahootz project, students were asked write on their blog, reflecting on their journey with Kahootz. The students wrote about their successes and struggles, and how they persevered through these challenges. This self-reflection helped students build upon their learning process, as well as helping teachers understand student progress. The most important difference between a regular journal and a reflective blog is that when using a blog as a tool for reflection, others can read what a student has written and comment on this. On some occasions during the Kahootz task, students had posted about a challenge with the software and how they felt and other students commented on how to overcome these issue. As mentioned previously, blogs give the reluctant student an opportunity to express themselves and possibly any frustrations with the task or software when they might not have done this in a classroom discussion. The use of blogs in this way has enhanced the learning process through online reflection and discussion.

CONCLUSION

We are at the beginning stage of our use of online collaborative sites in our Junior School, however our observations at present include noticing the enthusiasm of students when they are told they will be working on a discussion board, wiki or blog. They are keen to get started and enjoy collaborating with others. Students have become more aware of the need to add meaning information due to their audience and the ability of their audience to comment on the information they contributed.

School portals are excellent resources because they can be a single point of contact where students are able to work on discussion boards, wikis or blogs with administrators or teachers being able to set permissions to limit access to these sites, therefore keeping these technologies secure. Alternatively, teachers can set up discussions boards, wikis or blogs on websites such as Edublog or Wikipedia.

From our observations so far, we believe that the use of ICT can encourage visible thinking. It has given students the opportunity to view the thought processes of others and it has encouraged them to further reflect on their own thinking. We look forward to seeing this develop even further with regular and ongoing use of these social networking technologies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Reynard, Ruth (2008) Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students, Campus Technology

Williams, Jeremy B and Jacobs, Joanne J (2004) Exploring the Use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector, AJET

Duffy, Peter & Dr Burns, Axel (2006) The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities

Chugh, Ritesh (2009) Foray into the Blogosphere, Education Technology Solutions http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/ (2008)

Standards for Excellence: How the Mathematics Standards present a framework for reflection and identification of good teaching practices.

Catherine Crowhurst, Loreto Mandeville Hall What is good teaching of Mathematics? What do effective teachers do? Can good teaching be measured?

The Recognising Excellence project is a joint initiative between the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers and the Catholic Education Office Melbourne to award suitably credentialed candidates with the accreditation of “Highly Accomplished Teacher of Mathematics”. It aims at identifying a good teacher of Mathematics.

The process of accreditation has three distinct components that include a Written Assessment, a Portfolio of Work and an Interview. All aspects of this assessment are matched against the Standards for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics in Australian Schools 1which were developed by the AAMT Council over several years and published in 2006. These Standards were developed to provide ‘ a common language for talking about the teaching of mathematics.’2There are 10 professional teaching standards arranged in three domains - Professional Knowledge, Professional Attributes and Professional Practice.

This paper reflects on one candidate’s experiences during this accreditation process and highlights the key benefits of participating in such a project and its impact on the profession.

Participation in this project brought with it much work, some anxiety and yet its focus on reflective practice provided many rewards. The assessment tasks required detailed evidence that centred around the candidate’s curriculum knowledge and practices. Emphasis was placed on what the teacher knew, observed and did in teaching that made a measureable improvement in student understanding. Further evidence was required to show how the teacher shared this expertise with colleagues, parents and the wider community.

The process was rigorous yet provided many benefits. One benefit was a rich synergy of professional discussion with fellow candidates and project staff. Another benefit was the opportunity to reflect on professional practices and how these have adapted and changed over the years often based on the findings of research. One major benefit is how the Standards framework could be used to measure teachers’ professional practices against those deemed necessary for Excellence in Teaching. Whilst these Standards were designed by Mathematics teachers, one may argue the elements presented are essentially good teaching practices for any curriculum area.

The Written assessment measured professional and curriculum knowledge. The Portfolio of Work consisted of five components- a Professional Journey (reflection of profession life), Current Teaching and Learning Practices (Unit of work/work program), a Case Study (evidence of candidates work with a student/students over time), Validation (fellow professional observing lessons) and Documentation (evidence of professional achievements). It was within this body of work that I was able to showcase some important elements of my teaching. These included planning documents, classroom routines, teaching techniques and assessment procedures. Through the Case Study the effectiveness of my teaching was observed, documented and measured. The third aspect of the assessment was the Interview that allowed the assessors the opportunity to question and clarify aspects of the portfolio.

Whilst the Recognising Excellence project puts individual teachers under the microscope it also provides the opportunity for effective teaching practices to be observed, identified and analysed . This evidence, along with the Standards for Teaching Excellence does not only provide valuable information for those teaching Mathematics but presents fundamental effective teaching practices to all those striving for professional excellence.

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1Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers Inc. 2006, Standards for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics in Australian Schools (2006 edition), AAMT, Adelaide, Accessed 17 April 2008, www.aamt.edu.au/, under Standards/Standards-document.

2 Morony, Will, 2009, ‘Recognising Excellence. Enhancing professionalism in the teaching of mathematics’, Learning Matters ,Vol 14Number 1, p.42

Sharing classrooms A journey towards reflective teaching practice at Westbourne Grammar School

(or...”Across the void, communication and collaboration between Junior and Senior School teachers.”)

Rob Marshall, Rachel Merrigan, Kate Rice

“The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.” MckInsey Report 2007

In his excellent book Results Now, Mike Schmoker challenges us to reconsider what it will take to improve student learning. He argues that if student achievement is to improve, instruction will necessarily have to change and improve simultaneously. Schmoker also reminds us that schools waste a great deal of money, time and energy on professional learning programs for teachers: ‘Many teachers including those in senior leadership roles spend precious days attending conferences, seminars and workshops year after year, without ever implementing what they learn at conferences they have already attended.’ (Schmoker 2007)

At Westbourne Grammar School we are endeavouring to respond to the challenge set by Schmoker. In 2008 our school commenced a program called ‘Sharing Classrooms’. This is a collaborative inquiry-based project where all teaching staff are required to observe a colleague at work in their classroom and in turn, the colleague reciprocates by also observing their classroom.

The intent of this process is that teachers engage in action research projects which require reflective practice. The focus of the classroom observations is for the observer to have a predetermined purpose centred on student learning. The outcome of this process is for teachers to reflect on the observations made and then, where appropriate, modify their teaching so that student learning is enhanced.

If only it were this simple. The program has taken three years to develop and implement. At times, the path has been akin to walking up a sand dune: three steps up, only to slide two steps back. None the less, incremental gains, some small and some large, have occurred term by term.

Development of Westbourne Grammar’s program emerged from our involvement, commencing in 2006, with Ithaka. Our initial focus in 2006 was for a trusted consultant (Colleen Abbott) to visit classes and make observations that focused on an issue considered important by the class teacher. This was done purely on a voluntary basis. Over time, the teachers whose classes were being observed shared their experiences with other staff at in house school seminars, workshops and at staff meetings. One by one more teachers became involved.

It became evident fairly quickly that the teachers participating in this program improved the quality of their teaching, particularly with regard to their questioning techniques, capacity to engage students and generally develop a classroom dynamic that enabled better learning.

The teachers who were the pioneers in allowing observation in their classes soon passed on the skills and knowledge required for meaningful observation to others. Small cells of teachers instructing other teachers began to emerge.

While this initial observation process was happening, a whole school professional learning strategy was taking shape along with whole school curriculum change and refinement. A significant shift in our approach to professional learning placed less emphasis on outside experts and attendance at endless seminars.

In January 2009 at our whole school professional learning conference, all sessions were conducted entirely by teachers from both the senior and junior schools. The format for these sessions consisted of a pair of teachers talking about what they learned in their ‘Sharing Classrooms’ experience to a small group of other teachers. In all, over 40 teachers presented to their colleagues, including classroom teachers from all subject areas, Directors of Faculty and other senior staff including the Principal.

The impact on the staff from these sessions was significant and feedback from the vast majority teachers was that this was one of the best professional learning days they had participated in. This is largely attributed to our teachers being regarded as the ‘experts’ and this in turn gave licence for the other teachers to be the ‘learners’. When a colleague gives a presentation there is an air of authenticity and validity about the exercise. Teachers enjoy hearing from their peers about the trials and tribulations of the classroom, the successes with their students and the solutions to the challenges of student learning. Most importantly, the supportive nature of the seminars enabled teachers to expose the issues they have in a classroom to a supportive and friendly audience. Unfortunately, the only opportunities some teachers have to share their shortcomings in the classroom are in the potentially intimidating environment of teacher appraisal meetings.

Critical to the success of these seminars was the tight structure of the workshops. In each session another staff member was designated to facilitate discussion so that presenting staff felt supported and able to disclose their findings without fear of recrimination. The flow of the discussion was guided by the use of a ‘thinking routine’. In our case we used ‘Connect, Extend, Challenge’.

There were a number of steps involved in reaching the point where we were able to require all staff to participate in the ‘Sharing Classrooms’ program. The first step was to engage the Directors of Faculty at length and over time in a discussion of what is important for effective classroom learning to occur. Data was compiled and presented as evidence and the teachers who initially participated in the classroom observation (which included a couple of Faculty Heads) spoke at Head of Faculty meetings. Many, many discussions occurred at individual, subject faculty meetings and whole staff meetings. The importance of regular and honest communication has been critical to the success of the program to date. A key feature essential to staff committing to the program, was developing a strategy and pursuing it relentlessly. An essential task was to create and strengthen engagement of Directors of Faculty which I saw as the vital lynch-pin in the process of developing whole school staff acceptance for Sharing Classrooms. This team plays a central and influential role in the school’s organisational and academic structure. Any change involving teaching and learning must have the support of this group otherwise; the initiative would have failed at the outset.

The support of the Principal and other senior staff on the school’s leadership team has also been critical in enabling the program to achieve its current stage of implementation. Not only was the Principal supportive of this professional learning direction but he approved resources, time, personally attended conferences and above all, provided his public backing. In particular the Principal, who teaches a class, was himself a participant in the ‘Sharing Classrooms’ program. The Principal’s willingness to open his own teaching practice up to observation and to be a presenter at the whole school professional learning days was a very powerful message that said, ‘This is important!’ The public support and involvement of the most senior member of staff cannot be underestimated in generating the critical mass required for such a program to be embraced by the vast majority of teaching staff.

The ‘Sharing Classrooms’ program has expanded to include junior school staff and, in an interesting development at the end of 2008, a number of Year 7 teachers observed Year 6 classes. Serendipitous discussions took place between two sectors of the school which historically had little connection except for whole school staff meeting a couple of times throughout the year. What emerged was an acknowledgement of the lack communication between these two parts of the school and given the large number of Year 6 students who move into the Senior School each year, it was an obvious opportunity to share more information.

At the end of 2008 year 7 teachers observed Year 6 classes. In Term 1 2009, the Year 6 teachers observed the same students now they are in Year 7. This project is promoting cross- school interaction by teachers, enhancement of transition issues for students from the junior to the senior school and the tracking and examination of student learning issues as a whole school process. From a collegiate perspective, it has also seen increased communication, development of friendships and a greater understanding by the Year 6 and 7 teachers of what actually takes place in a different part of the school. A common statement from senior school teachers has been their acknowledgement of the excellent teaching practices that junior school staff employs in conducting their classes. Similarly, junior school staff have seen another ‘reality’ of the single discipline subject that is the secondary classroom. The end result is a greater understanding of the learning needs of our students as they proceed from the junior to the senior school.

The real beauty of the reciprocal observations by junior and senior school teachers is that through the strict protocol of the observation process, which requires teachers to focus on student learning, this provides a safe way for teachers to critique each other’s practice. This enables both parties have a window of observation into another’s classroom. Through knowledge comes understanding and with understanding will come improved quality of teaching which focuses on learning.

Additional information is being gathered by the school regarding every student. Our Director of Academic and Learning Support, Sophie Murphy, has now tested every child in the school from year 10 and below in a range of literacy and numeracy tests. These tests will be conducted every year, and in association with other school assessment regimes will provide ongoing accurate data which informs the work of teachers in their supervision of student learning. The Year 6, Year 7 reciprocal observations which occurred at the end of 2008 and during 2009 have provided a model for the whole school to consider.

The obvious task for any school is to continually ask itself; how do we improve the quality of teaching for our students? ‘Sharing Classrooms’ requires all teaching staff to observe other teachers classes and engage in a process of reflective teaching. While this has no doubt been challenging for many teachers, and pushes them out of their comfort zone, the net result of ‘Sharing Classrooms’ is for many staff to re examine what it means to be a good teacher and adjust their practices accordingly.

In the future, we are planning for the ‘Sharing Classrooms’ observations to take place more often for staff and the program will be incorporated into the staff appraisal process. A key focus for 2010 will be for all Sharing Classroom activities to be formally organised into academic research projects. These projects will require staff to target one of the key influences identified by John Hattie in his most recent book, Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta- analyses relating to achievement 2009, which improve learning. It is hoped that, over time, we will have developed a learning culture amongst all staff where participation in reflective practice will be considered an essential aspect in de-privatising the classroom and enhancing student achievement.

References and recommended reading 1. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (2009) Educational Leadership. Vol 66, No 5.

2. Brookhart, S. (2008). How to give effective feedback to your students, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

3. Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York, Routledge

4. Ritchhart, R. (2002) Intellectual Character: What it is, Why it Matters and How to get it. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

5. Schmoker, M. (2004). ‘Tipping Point: From feckless reform to substantive instruction improvement’ in Phi Delta Kappan, 85(6), 424-432.

6. Schmoker, M. (2006). Results Now: How we can achieve unprecedented improvements in teaching and learning. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

7. Stronge, J. (2002). Qualities of Effective Teachers. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

8. Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thinking Routines. At http://www.pz.harvard.edu/vt/VisibleThinking_html_files/03_ThinkingRoutines/03a _ThinkingRoutines.html

9. Calnin, G. (2006) Principles of Effective Professional Learning. Association of Independent Schools of Victoria (AISV). At http://www.ais.vic.edu.au/schools/research/index.htm

10. Weinbaum, A. et al (2004) Teaching as inquiry: Asking hard questions to improve practice and student achievement. New York: Teachers College Press. 11. Wiggins, G. and McTighe, J. (2005) Understanding by Design. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Participants

Colleen Abbott Ithaka Julie Arcadiou Westbourne Nathan Armstrong Wesley SKR Stuart Bainbridge Mentone Mana Barden Mentone Liz Blackie Loreto Jeremy Blackman MLC Alan Bliss MGS Joanna Boer Loreto Elisa Bowe Wesley SKR Tim Box Wesley GW Sharon Boxer Westbourne Greg Caldwell MGS Chris Carne Loreto Leigh Chislett Mentone Katrina Cleary Loreto Jacqui Coker Wesley SKR Mark Coleman MGS Clare Cooper Wesley SKR Masel Cotsopoulos MLC Catherine Crowhurst Loreto Tanya Davies Wesley SKR Sabeena DeBono Wesley SKR Jan Dixon Carey Colin Dobson Wesley Nick Dorrer Wesley SKR Anne Dupont MLC Andrea Elliot Westbourne Wayne Essing Mentone Leanne Forbes MGS Peter French Wesley SKR Kate Galati Westbourne Anne Gallagher WesleyElstern Sally Godinho Univ. Of Melbourne Angela Grace Geelong Fiona Green MLC Emma Hall Mentone Jenni Harrison Mentone Nick Harrison Westbourne Sophie Hunter Loreto Tim Inglefinger MGS Rick Jacobs Trinity Mira Jakopanetz MGS Jo Kamp Mentone Wilma Kurvink Wesley SKR Julie Landvogt Ithaka Peta Langford Loreto Jessica Lindeman Loreto Jane Lowe Loreto Amanda Lucas MLC Michelle Maglitto MLC Rob Marshall Westbourne Robyn Marshall St Leonards Lesley McLeod MLC Rachel Merrigan Westbourne Iain Meyer MGS Jeanette Milburn MLC Marie-Laure Mimounsorel Loreto Amanda Minns MGS Fiona Miriston Wesley SKR Tess Monda Loreto Diana Morris MLC Michael Moses Loreto Sophie Murphy Westbourne Eleanor O’Donnell MGS Carolyn Ogston Geelong Felicity Pearson Wesley SKR Louise Peyton Loreto Jennifer Pratten MGS Leonie Redfern Mentone Tracey Ricchini MLC Kate Rice Westbourne Libby Russell Carey Geoff Ryan Westbourne Sonia Sammut Loreto Linda Shardlow MLC Louis Schmidt MLC Nicole Schutt MLC Ruth Shulman Mentone Catherine Sim Loreto Bev Steer Carey Tiffany Stephens Loreto Anne-Louise Szujda Wesley GW Gary Thomas Loreto Marg Thomas Carey Alma Tooke MLC Kerry Whelan Westbourne Tracey Willman Westbourne Geraldine Woods Loreto Warrick Wynne MLC