GARTH BOOMER: AN EDUCATOR OF HIS TIME — AND FOR ALL TIME Address to the AATE/ALEA national conference, Darwin July, 2014 Helen Wildash, Executive Director, Teaching and Learning Services SA Department for Education and Child Development

Note: This is a written text version of a presentation containing audio, video and visual images.

Robert Garth Boomer: Educator —provocateur —thinker — visionary — bureaucrat —good human being — original. I was lucky. I met him in 1976, during my third year as a primary school teacher. It was Garth who convinced me to stay in teaching.

Garth Boomer had a habit of making people horribly uncomfortable while also inspiring them to think about their practice and to wonder about how to get better as a teacher. He challenged me to think hard on my theory of learning, how I applied it in my own teaching and to ask, ‘How then would I fare as a learner in my own class?’ This set me on a road I travel still — how to make learning meaningful, engaging and challenging for children and young people. I am not the only one. Consider Lola Brown’s tribute in the 1984 Editorial of the South Teachers Association (SAETA) Journal ‘Opinion’ on the occasion of Garth’s departure to take up the position as Director of the Curriculum Development Centre in Canberra. The first time I set eyes on Garth Boomer was when as an English consultant, he arrived at the door of a stiflingly hot wooden classroom at Elizabeth High School to teach a demonstration lesson to the assembled sweating company of year 10 students and every English teacher who could sneak away to watch him. Forty minutes later I staggered out into the yard, shell shocked, exhausted and convinced I ought to look for another job. The ‘model’ annihilated my fragile self‐confidence. I remember what he taught; I remember [to this day] the blackboard covered, smothered, with kids’ suggestions and comments, miraculously shaped by Garth into a cluster of meanings. ……that demonstration lesson was a long time ago. There’s not a year since in which Garth hasn’t been there encouraging us, confronting us, delighting us, challenging us and always inspiring us, perhaps mostly by compelling us to imagine doing things we’d hitherto not dreamt of…

Of course, when Garth died tragically in 1993 the tributes flowed. But his influence continues to be recognised. In his recent speech accepting the ACEL SA Chapter ‘Alby Jones Award’ my colleague Paul Kilvert, former SA Education Department executive and Chief Executive of the SACE Board reflected on Garth’s influence throughout his career.

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 1 I can recall him coming to one of our English faculty meetings in the late 1970s and talking persuasively about what he called ‘Negotiating the curriculum’. He described teaching as the partnership between student and teacher. He said that what we should be doing as teachers was to connect with students and to be prepared to negotiate with them about how they would be learning. I can remember feeling uncomfortable at the time because he was getting me to think outside what I then understood to be the process of teaching. Through the papers he wrote, through the talks he gave, through his personal presence, Garth challenged us to focus on the student as well as on ourselves as teachers, to focus on their learning as well as our teaching, to focus on student engagement and not just student management.

Preparing for this address, I re‐read many of Garth Boomer’s works — typed originals of his presentations; his own publications that, in true Garth style, resonated with the voices of the teachers with whom he worked and; Bill Green’s AATE and ACSA collections. It was a sad reminder of the educational genius that was lost to us. He had so many gripping ideas I found it very hard to select the themes to focus on in this address. I decided to pay tribute to the continuing legacy of Garth’s ideas that I think for him were four inseparable pieces of the education puzzle: curriculum, learning, teaching and schooling. But let me start with Garth’s own voice — recorded as he gave the closing address at the Australian Reading Association national conference in in July 1991.

Depressing as it often is to consider the world, the socio‐political ties that bind and global devastations, it’s important to inject a somewhat sombre note into the opening moments of this performance. Don’t be carried away by the euphoria and excitement you may feel, the buzz that this conference has given you; after the vacation, work awaits [audience laughs]. The institutions call and the struggle continues. We are in hard times, when money and imagination is short; patience must be long. In order to make struggle and survival possible, we need to make explicit to ourselves and others (in so far as we can) the way the world is wagging. It’s no good trying to seal hermetically the classroom lecture door, the society contaminates because we carry it with us. The un‐worldly literacy teacher is a sitting duck – a lamb to the slaughter, an impossible dreamer. On the other hand, don’t lose the energy, the new thoughts, the emerging imaginings that have been aroused. With nous and with support, with clear heads and cunning strategy, much is possible.

Hard times? Money and imagination short? If only he knew what lay ahead… but perhaps he did…

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 2 A LEGACY OF IDEAS Garth could easily have moved into an academic career in a university here or overseas but I suspect that, as a self described ‘pragmatic radical’ who wanted to make things happen and make a difference, he chose to combine his intellectual work with systemic educational leadership and administration. He used this as the pathway to realising in schools his deeply held theories of learning and his beliefs about what makes great curriculum, great teaching, great schools and powerful learning that makes a difference to each and every student’s life. He believed that ‘with nous and with support, with clear heads and cunning strategy, much is possible’.

Educational bureaucracies are, however, difficult places within which to work and to achieve change. But as Bill Green noted, he became an ‘administrative intellectual’ and ‘curriculum worker for the nation’ (Green, 1999).

Garth gouged out spaces between politics, bureaucracy and societal pressure creating spheres of influence by inspiring others to work with him, within those spaces. As a result, he had an enduring influence on enormous numbers of children, teachers, schools and education in Australia and internationally.

A NATIONALLY AGREED AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM We have, at last, an (almost) nationally agreed Australian Curriculum being implemented, albeit in some locally unique ways and not yet completely, across Australia’s government, Catholic and independent schools. Nevertheless, in one way or another, every school educator in Australia is involved in a long term change initiative that offers unique opportunities for improving learning outcomes for our children and young people. Most are well aware of the process through which the Australian Curriculum has come into being but it is important to recognise that this framing of the curriculum has deep historical roots in which Garth Boomer (and of course others such as Victoria’s Bill Hannan) played a significant role.

CURRICULUM: MUCH MORE TO BE LEARNED THAN SUBJECTS Boomer had long been envisioning versions of what we now call 21st century skills and capabilities. His intellectual fingerprints were all over a 1980 Education Department of (1980) policy document, ‘Our schools and their purposes: Into the 80s’. Because our world is changing rapidly, schools should emphasise skills and processes which are transferable, develop the skills of learning to learn and encourage flexibility… In particular, the document espoused cross curriculum skills and capabilities:  Literacy and numeracy  Communication in all forms  Skills for social living  Research and problem solving.

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 3 There were also 11 ‘Expectations’ and considerable text on learning, teaching, curriculum content, accountability and parent engagement.

By the end of the 1980s Garth had returned to SA from his national roles and was heading up South Australia’s curriculum development. In 1990 ‘Educating for the 21st Century: A charter for public schooling in SA’ was released. It contained the more sophisticated ‘Essential Skills and Understandings’ as a key element across all areas of study.  Communication skills  Social skills  Planning and design skills  Information skills  Environmental skills  Mathematical skills  Health and safety skills  Technological skills  Work skills

In the 2000s cross curriculum skills and capabilities of this type appeared in pockets across the nation and, although differently conceived, were referred to as ‘Essential Learnings’ in, for example, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria. The General Capabilities now made explicit in the Australian Curriculum reflect research around the world that these kinds of transferable capabilities are critical for every person throughout their life and for occupations of the future. Academic results alone are coming to be viewed as insufficient outcomes of schooling ‐ what’s needed are ‘results plus…’ learners who simultaneously develop lifelong learning capabilities as well as discipline knowledge and skills. Internationally there is little debate regarding the fundamental need for schooling to support learners develop the skills such as those identified in 2012 by OECD’s Dirk Van Damme. Of particular interest is the Literacy Continuum which makes explicit the role of language in learning across the curriculum and reflects seminal ideas Garth Boomer brought home with him from his studies at the London Institute with James Britton, Harold Rosen, Douglas Barnes and others in the early 1970s.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE Garth also envisioned a curriculum that included even more. He wondered, … what might be expected of an educated Australian? In particular, we need to re‐ energise the move of the mid‐eighties to ‘Australianise’ the curriculum, not narrowly nor jingoistically, but with global awareness that gives due attention to our original inhabitants, our politics, our environment, our economy, our multicultural populace, our history and our arts, on the one hand, and issues of world resources, ecology, peace, trade and communication, on the other. [Curriculum and Teaching in Australian Schools, 1960‐1990; reproduced in Green, 1999 pp.142]

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 4 ACARA has delivered this curriculum feature as the Cross‐curriculum Priorities:  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures  Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia  Sustainability.

CURRICULUM CONTENT AND ACHIEVEMENT STANDARDS The third, and most substantial component of the Australian Curriculum is the curriculum content and achievement standards. Garth’s contribution to the clear historical roots for this component lies in the national Curriculum Statements and Profiles initiative of the late 1980s and early 1990s By the time he returned to SA in the late 1980s Garth was already leading curriculum directors around the nation through the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Project (ACAP) and laying the groundwork for this national collaborative curriculum initiative — spurred on by the Australian Education Council’s 1989 Declaration on National Goals for Schooling in Australia. He believed in making explicit what we value most in the school curriculum. It was a challenging time in Australian school education. Many criticised Garth for ‘selling out’ to conservative pressures for greater accountability for education resources. In the midst of this growing angst he offered this explanation at the 1991 conference in Adelaide. On ‘National Explicitness’. I would wager with some confidence that quite a few in this audience ‐ probably at lunch time ‐ are worried, have reservations or have fears about what they picked up on the circuit about current moves to develop a national statement and subject profile for English.

…Because of the speed with which things are moving and because the move towards more national collaboration conjures up for some, for some, visions of a new era of curriculum totalitarianism; there’s a good deal of rumour, misinformation and paranoia abroad. Though granted, paranoia may be a heightened form of awareness [audience laughs]. …Let me from my acknowledged position of vested interest as an advocate; give you in brief some… some information and some opinions. In the first place, Australia in the Years 1‐10 has been working for the past thirty years on a system of considerable implicitness with regard to valued outcomes for reading and writing in our schools. And… where… where regime is implicit, the old things continue to be valued. Schools have tended also to operate fairly implicitly. …I’m strongly in favour of teachers, schools and systems making quite explicit along with criteria and rich exemplification, what it is they intend to value in English. Until these things are explicit, they are not available for critique and improvement. Until they are explicit, students and parents will have to continue a kind of educational guessing game.

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 5 For Garth, the most critical element in this new framing of the curriculum was not so much the content described in the Statements but the Profiles which aimed to describe developmental levels of achievement against which teachers would be able to make professional, on‐balance judgements about each student’s learning progress.

We’ve had good and valued reasons for fearing the self‐fulfilling effect of grading and competitive regimes. But it’s now clear that we need to find more explicit educationally sound developmental ways of reporting on and accounting for our children’s progress. I won’t rehearse here other political and economic forces which are conspiring to put pressure on us all to measure up. The key battle it seems to me ‐ and this is what I want you really to think about – the key battle it seems to me, will be over where the locus of control of student assessment will reside. Within schools, with teachers or with external testers. The subject profiles work nationally and the attainment levels work… locally is based on an approach which is been called Standards‐referenced Assessment. This is premised on the view that if standards are built up out of the actual work and practice of teachers and if they are described, illustrated and exemplified in detail, then teachers, without relying on one‐off tests can make judgements at any point of time about where their children individually stand in relation to those standards. Clearly there’ll be a need to review and settle down the work in the light of broader feedback from schools. I acknowledge that there’ll need to be safeguards and this does not necessarily head off national testing. But I also contend that the documents, when prepared, will be – and I hope you would agree – will be the most eagerly devoured and debated curriculum documents ever produced in , in Australia. They will institutionalise and publicly value the very things your association has fought for, for years. They will broaden possibilities and create productive anxieties for teachers who’ve been performing precariously on a narrow curriculum gymnastic beam. They will stimulate innovation and new ideas, by providing national windows on good assessment practice. Or so I believe. This is not meant to co‐opt or muffle your critiques. But I hope it does serve to suggest that the national work underway could make a significant contribution to making it explicit and making… making it possible in ways which rightly keep teachers at the forefront in terms of professional judgements about student performance.

What many people at this time failed to understand was that, in championing the development of the profiles of learning, he was trying to head off national testing, putting his faith instead in teachers’ professional judgement. He was championing assessment for learning and teachers’ professional capacity to monitor and report on, in ultimately valid and reliable ways, their students’ progress against agreed standards or levels of achievement. In December 1993, emerging from a significant shift in Australia’s political landscape, and less than six months after Boomer’s untimely death, Ministers of Education Australia‐wide pulled the plug on the national curriculum and referred the statements and profiles back to the states and territories. The newspaper headline read ‘STATES KILL NATIONAL CURRICULUM PLAN’.

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 6 A change of government in South Australia at about the same time ushered in the Basic Skills Tests and fewer resources were applied to developing teachers’ professional judgments against the profiles. Garth had warned us: The most powerful force acting on the bureaucracy is the ‘political will’ which will be in varying degrees in tension with the educational will, as felt by either the schools or the bureaucrats. [Democracy, Bureaucracy and the Classroom: 1989 reproduced in Green, 1999, p.107] But the fact was that while national adoption was effectively ‘killed’ the influence of the Statements and Profiles was long felt. The period 1993 to 2008 saw Australian jurisdictions continue their separate curriculum and assessment constructions. In the 1990s some, like South Australia, took up the Statements and Profiles as published by the Curriculum Corporation; others such as Victoria’s Curriculum and Standards Framework (CSF) transmogrified the material into their own documents; others including WA and NSW continued to develop local variants. The local variants became more diverse throughout the late 1990s and 2000s as jurisdictions’ curriculum development cycles continued to evolve. But without doubt there was a consistent focus across the nation on specifying curriculum content, learning outcomes and standards of achievement, whatever they were called.

ANOTHER GO AT A NATIONAL CURRICULUM In the early 2000s the stars aligned again and the idea of a national curriculum for Australia once more came to the fore on the agenda of both sides of politics. Under the new cooperative federalism that emerged from the 2007 federal election, the Interim National Curriculum Board and then the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) conducted a massive development and consultation process involving top subject area experts and the full range of stakeholders nation‐wide. As part of this process we now have:  a new construction of subject English represented as three strands Literature, Language and Literacy, and  a literacy continuum to reflect its critical role in all learning areas/subjects as a general capability. The English curriculum content and achievement standards bring our attention back to that most distinctively English learning area element ‐ Literature. The Language strand offers a timely, if challenging, increase in the application of systemic functional linguistics. The Literacy strand explores the use of all kinds of texts and contexts.

WHAT NEXT? So, we’ve got the ‘stuff’ as Garth might have put it. But, “So what?” he would likely have asked. What are we doing with it? Will a new curriculum, on its own change anything? What might he have said about the conference theme ‘Strong Minds’?

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 7 Strong Minds The English Australian Curriculum outlines skills, knowledge and understandings as required learning. How do we ensure teachers own the curriculum and shape it for their individual students? How do we keep the curriculum alive so learning is meaningful?

Garth’s legacy provides inspiration. In particular, what he taught us about learning, teaching and the nature of schooling so that we look anew at his challenge that we think about how teachers create powerful learners who understand ‘the way the world wags’ and who can ‘read the world’. In a paper distributed though the SA department’s Language and Learning Unit that he headed up, Garth first described the principles of good teaching — where good teaching equals good learning (Boomer, 1978). Later, he urged us to ‘negotiate the curriculum’ (Boomer, 1982) by engaging students in worthwhile, meaningful content and getting them intending to learn by imagining themselves as competent. At the heart of all worthwhile learning is personal intention fuelled by imagination. [Designing for learning, 1988 reproduced in Green ed. 1999, p.61] Good teachers are dedicated to developing independent, critical thinkers who are self reliant, resilient and capable of acting constructively in the world’. [Education and the Media — Makers or Mirrors? 1989 reproduced in Green ed. 1999, p.77]

He told us also to watch out. In classrooms, seemingly compliant students may be outwardly compliant, but inwardly withholding their mental labour. The prevalence of such strike action in our schools would probably shock us all if it were known.

Could we agree perhaps, that informing and telling at the point of desire or need and remaining sharply vigilant about our tendencies to colonise is not a bad stance to take in the meantime.

Very recent international and Australian research in education and the neurosciences sends us the same messages. It clearly demonstrates that the quality of teaching is the single greatest determinant in improving student engagement and achievement. What happens in classrooms with our learners, matters. But, as Garth also told us, we cannot decide how to teach before we understand how children learn. The long term OECD learning research (2010), the more recent work of Carol Dweck (2006) and John Hattie (2003) and the insights gleaned from neuroscience about human cognition, provide educators with clear directions for their pedagogy – their teaching practice. The pedagogical choices that teachers make determine whether we are producing the kinds of learning experiences that cultivate improved student

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 8 achievement and the ‘resilient inquisitiveness’ needed for their 21C skills toolkit or, students with good results but with more ‘dependent and passive habits’. An animation produced recently for our education leaders’ convention was designed to remind them of Garth Boomer’s learning legacy (available online, DECD, 2014). It raises the following questions. And so today what do we mean by powerful teaching and learning? And what’s important in leading this? What type of learning do we want to create? What type of learning is effective for this? What outcomes do we want to achieve> Do my 1991 quality learning litmus tests still hold true? 1. Who’s asking the questions 2. Who’s doing the talking 3. Do learners know what the learning intentions are? 4. Is the teachers clear about the learning plan? 5. Is group work genuine collaboration? 6. What level of challenge is there? So what is the leadership required today to develop teacher capacity for powerful learning like this?

ABOUT TEACHING Here is some of what Garth said and, deliberately breaking the genre, sang about teaching in 1991. These days, I speak about teaching more than I used to. I still hold as tenaciously as ever to a learning theory that turns on the question of student intention and operates out of a constructivist framework which sees the learner as a theory‐building scientist…

…As a teacher, the teacher teaches most powerfully, what it is like to think and do what he or she is thinking or can do. Now this can either be demonstrated implicitly by being immersed in an [French accent] ‘ambiance’, which pulses with what teacher is and does, or it can be rendered more explicit by the teacher, often taking the opportunity to think aloud about he or she… how he or she does it or what is on his/her mind about what is going on. Not in a way that says, “Copy me” but in a way that says “Let me give you at least my perspective. My information.” Please do not confuse what I might term the ‘demonstrative explicit teacher’, with the ‘direct instruction teacher’. The former, that is the demonstrative teacher, does not front‐end load into a passive mind, but waits to explain and show at points of puzzlement or obvious desire. The latter instructs at the front‐end, on the assumption of a malleable mind upon which knowledge can be imprinted. We need to make that distinction quite clear. I would argue, however, that whether a teacher is operating out of a bad theory ‐ in my terms ‐ or a good theory; explicitness will enable children to know where they stand, what the rules are and if necessary, to have some ideas on how to defend themselves against the worst effects of what is coming at them…

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 9 …[Singing] “There’s no business like show business Like no business I know Everything about it is so gripping Everything about it so clear When the children get it and can do it You’ll hear them cheer”.

The problem of helping too much Recent research in SA classrooms (DECD, in preparation) shows us that there can be an unintended outcome from our strong support of learners. We can be so supportive of our learners, that we inhibit their intellectual struggle with the unfamiliar and the complex. In other words, we rescue them from thinking. Learning about what to do when you don't know something and not being thrown by new contexts is at the heart of learner resilience needed for academic and future life success. Garth called this phenomenon the helping hand strikes again [to prevent real learning]. Generous teacher help is often allied with learned helplessness. Holt, of course, was most vitriolic about direct instruction, a particularly lethal form of the terrorism of helping. [The Helping Hand Strikes Again: On Language, Learning and Teaching: 1988, reproduced in Green ed. 1999, p.23]

Pedagogical stasis Garth was deeply disturbed by the ‘pedagogical stasis’ he observed as characteristic of teachers’ practice and reflected on why it was so. In 1990 he noted that after years of curriculum change, ‘Pedagogical change has proven glacial’. [What Are Teachers Up To?: 1988, reproduced in Green ed. 1999, p.40] and that, ‘The basic relationship between teacher and student has not changed. Nor has the basic epistemology or view of knowledge, which is seen as stuff’ to be transmitted.’ [Education and the Media — Makers or Mirrors?: 1989 reproduced in Green ed. 1999, p.77] He talked about the low impact on pedagogy of educational documents despite their high‐minded intentions (such as those in the 1980 SA document I referred to earlier). Interestingly such documents have very few ‘teeth’. They are signposted wishes without the state machinery to enforce them. Thus schools are shaped by what society expects (as opposed to the Department’s espousals); by what is ultimately valued and assessed; and by what teachers can do. [Teaching against the grain: 1984 reproduced in Green ed. 1988, p. 181] He also lamented the emerging evidence that despite enormous resources invested in professional development across the country ‘low level crap’ persisted in classrooms nation‐wide. It could well be that the last thirty years has been a matter of change on paper, rather than change in essential practice.[Curriculum and Teaching in Australian Schools, 1960 —1990: 1991, reproduced in Green ed. 1999, p.127] The curriculum is, in the final analysis, what teachers enact in classrooms. If we do not find ways of supporting and ensuring pedagogical change, we might as well save our

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 10 money and [invest] effort in other directions. How best do we promote ‘high powered learning’? [Curriculum and Teaching in Australian Schools, 1960 —1990: 1991, reproduced in Green ed. 1999, p.136] In effect he was asking, what has all our ‘curriculumese’ (and indeed professional learning) actually added up to? How best do we promote ‘high powered learning’ and reverse the pedagogical imbalance he observed? This country, in facing and economic/cultural crisis, therefore faces a pedagogical crisis. We urgently need to transform teaching. We need to change the present balance of 90% transmission/10% constructivism… to 90% constructivism / 10% transmission. [Education and the Media — Makers or Mirrors?: 1989 reproduced in Green ed. 1999, p.78]

In our work to implement the Australian Curriculum are we at risk of missing Garth’s most salient point – the quality of teaching and learning?

He observed and made explicit what he saw as the real root of the problem but first, it is very important to note that he never blamed teachers for the persistence of pedagogical stasis. Rather, he celebrated their voices and their work ‘against the grain’. Instead, he turned to analysing the ‘deep seated habits of schooling’ to understand what was going on and to find a new way. Thus was hatched his concept of the ‘pragmatic radical…’

Here’s what he said to us about this problem in 1991. But I have come somewhat painfully to understand that schools are not natural places, so that natural learning theories and natural learning conditions are not fully possible. One cannot go immaculately from a theory based on how we learn naturally, in lives outside schools; in reaction to our own the daily flux of business, in relation to our own business, to a natural classroom. Schools are on as much about societies business, the business of tribal initiation, as they… are about the business of individual children. Architecturally, schools represent a metaphor of control, order and compartmentalisation. …Technologically, teaching is aided by textbooks, machines and time tables which strongly produce or pre‐figure, certain ways of being in schools. I’ve written at some length elsewhere about the ways in which teaching and learning in schools is framed. Amongst other things ‐ and by the way, I therefore think that the national press to improve the quality of teaching at the moment is dangerously close to blaming the victim. That in fact we’re trying to change teachers when we should change the frames. It’s… that’s in my view. Of course, try to change teachers or to have teachers growing and changing, but I’m suggesting that teachers are framed in such ways that they continually get pushed back into certain modes. …Amongst other things, this means that a learning theory ‐ in my case, strongly premised on how children learn before they get to school ‐ must be conjoined with organisational management theories.

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 11 …Theories about technologies and their effects and socio‐political theories which encompass how schools got to be as they are. What function they serve in society and how they are constrained and influenced. …but an all‐encompassing teaching theory may emerge in which perforce, armistices and compromises are reached between one what… what one ought to do in the light of the learning theory and what it is possible to do in the light of the other theories. …This does not have to be and should not be a capitulation. The classroom can still be transforming, productive and intentional from the student standpoint. The teaching is however, what I have termed… the teachers are what I have termed, ‘pragmatic radicals’. One feature of the teaching of my pragmatic radical would come out of a realisation that in the final analysis we teach what we are, what we know, and what we can do.

What can we do? While we have the ‘stuff’— explicit curriculum content and achievement standards, Garth reminds us that we also have the many external constraints that force teachers back into traditional pedagogies. The question becomes what can we do to ensure that… ‘the classroom can still be transforming, productive and intentional from the student standpoint. … the teachers are what I have termed, ‘pragmatic radicals’ (Boomer, 1991). Enlivening the curriculum, making learning meaningful and teaching at the point of need were oft repeated messages from Garth. He urged us to get our theories and practice aligned, warning of the danger — especially for teachers of English and literacy —of theoretical incarceration. In the next excerpt from his 1991 address Garth is reflecting on the then current (and perhaps still?) process vs. genre theory debate.

Of course, I’m guilty of caricature and polarisation. Any regime, any method or non‐method taken to extremes will be toxic. I see similarities between untouched cultures and immaculate theories. The teaching of literacy, language arts, English teaching that is, is prone to virulent attacks of hand‐me‐down theory, in the form of new approaches. Trace the virus back to its theoretical source and you will usually find healthy thinking and intelligent, well‐based insights ‐and you’ve had some at this conference. Sadly, as you all very well know, we too often find in English teaching the rapid cultification of theory. It’s one thing to have information that you passionately believe students should get, it’s another to teach in such a way that students make this information their own and integrate it into their own world view. I must say, that some of material purporting to assist teachers in the teaching of aspects of genre, carries with it many of the things I thought we’d learnt about what not to do in the teaching of grammar; that is front‐ end loading it and teaching as prescription in a transmission mode.

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 12 And what are the deeper reasons? Well, I think that they’re a desire to let students into the secrets of power through language, so that they can effectively… say effectively what they want to say.

In South Australia we have used short animations to help our teachers think about the ‘deeper reasons’ for teaching and learning Australian Curriculum learning areas and subjects, and to identify and engage with ‘the essence’ and the ‘grand narrative’ of each learning area that lies —often hidden — within the swathe of material provided in the Australian Curriculum. The introductory helicopter view for English is available online in the Leading Learning resource (DECD, 2015a). This animation challenges teachers to engage learners’ minds in purposeful problem solving that will lead them to become powerful learners. I think it also reflects the essence of Garth Boomer’s view of how genuine learning occurs, the power of language and, that teachers who engage students — creatively, powerfully and personally — with a range of texts can make ‘hearts leap’. Garth was an advocate of being explicit and of challenging learners to think for themselves. He understood the power of language but warned us not to confuse being explicit with simple direct instruction — of front end loading ‘stuff’ into learners’ minds when they saw no need for it; when they had no purpose or ‘intention’ to learn; before they were able to imagine themselves as powerful actors in the world who needed the knowledge and skills that their teacher could offer them. He regaled us to teach children as if they have brains; to demand that they learn to plan and design and construct their own understandings, assisted by excellent demonstration and instruction at the point of need. The Australian Curriculum has delivered broad national consensus but has, perhaps, fallen prey to the same pressures that have beset curriculum developments before it — too much ‘stuff’ that can push teachers into focussing on content coverage rather than deep learning. The ACARA monitoring and evaluation process will soon tell us how this aspect of the curriculum is playing out. In the meantime in SA government schools we have invited our teachers to think about the big ideas, the ‘grand narrative’ or the ‘essence’ of each learning area or subject and to sharpen their content knowledge as well as their pedagogical practice.

THE WHAT AND THE HOW IN SA GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS From 1994 to 2000 SA took up the Statements and Profiles as our curriculum reference points and in 2001 we launched a refined SA Curriculum, Standards and Accountability (SACSA) framework (DECS, 2001) that included a refined version of Garth’s 1990 ‘Essential Skills and Understandings’ as ‘Essential Learnings’. 20 years on from his vision for the impact of greater explicitness of curriculum content and achievement standards I think Garth Boomer would be pleased that we have finally managed to produce an Australian Curriculum — a settlement among all

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 13 jurisdictions on what is to be taught and learned. However, I also think that he would probably lament the continuing existence of ‘pedagogical stasis’. In recent years considerable attention has been given to pedagogy and the nature of ‘quality teaching’. Queensland’s (2004) ‘Productive Pedagogies’ project, New South Wales’ (2006) ‘Quality Teaching Model’, Victoria’s (2006) ‘Principles of Learning and Teaching’ and South Australia’s (2010)‘Teaching for Effective Learning’ framework have all recognised the critical need to focus on what teachers do in their classrooms as much as what the written curriculum says they should teach. In South Australian government schools, the Australian Curriculum has provided us with a unique opportunity to think deeply about not only what we want our students to learn, but also how we want them to learn so that they become powerful, expert learners. We strive to create a strategic shift — of bringing together engaging, high challenge pedagogy and the curriculum in ways that:  engage our students in their learning  intellectually stretch their minds, and  develop them as powerful, resilient learners.

All of this is hard work for our dedicated teachers. There is a lot of unlearning to do. The societal forces pushing teachers into traditional instructional practice that is more typical of the early 20th century than the 21st still exist. Aligning theories and getting coherent, clear and consistent messages across all of the change initiatives currently running in our education system is tough work for those who strive for change and to give leaders and teachers the best possible support. We are enacting different ways of making the transformation Garth envisioned 25+ years ago by making visible and doable the kind of teaching that engages students, stretches them intellectually and develops them into powerful learners. We have in mind Garth’s receptive but judiciously sceptical teacher… … ‘Convince me that you can contribute to improving my performance as a curriculum designer and teacher. Make things easier for me and my students. If you cannot get me to imagine how I and my students will be better off, through using the tools you have designed, then I shall not use them… I shall be a hard headed pragmatist... I am overloaded, stressed, sometimes bewildered by the growing complexities of my job. Ease my burdens. [Designing for Learning; 1988 reproduced in Green ed. 1999, p.62]

A strong theory of learning True to Boomer’s legacy our foundation is a shared theory of learning. With local, national and international experts and the input of our own teachers we have developed a pedagogy framework — Teaching for Effective Learning (TfEL) (DECD, 2010) — that puts learning and learners at the heart of teachers’ work. The framework provides teachers and leaders with a common professional language through which to reflect on and develop their practice. After a number of years of

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 14 field work to build understanding, capacity and acceptance, in 2013 this framework was made our department’s formal policy on pedagogy. It complements and elaborates the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers that were developed later by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) . The TfEL framework comprises four domains that work together and act as a reference for thinking about, reviewing and improving the quality of teaching and learning. Domain 1 – ‘Learning for effective teaching’ invites leaders and teachers to see themselves as learners, reflect on their practice and create opportunities to develop their professional expertise The other three domains comprise three big ideas: Domain 2 — Creating a learning environment that is safe for learners to be challenged and to take risks Domain 3 — Developing expert learners Domain 4 — Personalising and connecting learning. Our key messages are that:  learning is a way of being  find every learner’s strengths  high expectations with the appropriate support make the difference  teaching is a highly intentional act.

Bringing together the ‘what’ and ‘how’ is the fundamental principle underlying our system‐wide strategy for introducing the Australian Curriculum and further supporting teachers’ use of the TfEL framework. This time, as we make curriculum change, we must also make a difference to pedagogical practice. ‘Learning Design’ (DECD, 2015) is a process we have developed for scaffolding teachers’ capacity to design quality learning experiences for all learners — experiences that are both intentional and responsive in the way they engage all learners so that they develop as powerful, resilient learners who can achieve their best. We ask teachers:  What do you want your students to learn?  How will you know when they’ve got it?  What will you do to get there?

Resources for leaders and teachers The Leading Learning website (DECD, 2015) is a 21st century suite of online resources for leaders and teachers to support them to consider and engage with the strategic intent of the Australian Curriculum. We developed them in response to local research and the patterns observed in the field — the most notable being many teachers’ retreat to ‘content coverage’ due to feeling overwhelmed with the new Australian Curriculum. The resource provides educators with practical tools that support them to understand more deeply and work with the Australian Curriculum to design intentional and

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 15 responsive learning experiences that engage and intellectually stretch all learners. The resources examine the essence of the learning areas, their ‘grand narratives’ and the teacher practice that can generate what Garth Boomer referred to as ‘fair dinkum teaching and learning’ (Boomer, 1985). Among the resources on the website is the Bringing it to Life online tool (and app) which incorporates aspects of the Australian Curriculum learning areas and high challenge pedagogy. The tool poses a series of questions that position the learner to do the thinking. It helps teachers to engage learners as scientists, as mathematicians, as historians, geographers, artists and as great communicators – so that they not only know about the important understandings and develop the skills within each learning area, but can bring this understanding to bear powerful ways in their everyday lives. Quality and timely feedback can improve teacher effectiveness by 20 to 30%. So we have also developed tools and processes to enable teachers to review their practice against the TfEL framework. The most recent is the TfEL Online Compass (DECD, 2015b) an online tool that enables teachers to reflect on their teaching and learning practices through triangulated feedback of self‐reflection, feedback from students, and observations by trusted colleagues. The Compass includes guides, tutorials and videos for use in professional learning communities. It also generates reports for users with customized developmental practice suggestions. All of the review tools help teachers develop a language to describe practice, to develop common understandings and a shared vision of effective teaching and learning, and to take the ‘blinkers’ off and see elements of their practice they may have overlooked or did not recognise as strengths. Resources to make TfEL visible and doable in classrooms have and continue to be developed. These include:  TfEL Teachers’ Companion (DECD, 2015c) – a yearly teaching planner that breaks down the TfEL guide into small parts in day‐to‐day planning, design and classroom practice  TfEL Think Cards (DECD, 2015d) – quick strategies and questions to stretch student thinking through individual TfEL elements  TfEL Workshop Modules (DECD 2015) – to support teachers to understand and develop skills for high student achievement through the key messages of Engagement, Intellectual Stretch, and Powerful Learning. Our aim in producing these resources is to be responsive to what our teachers tell us they need to engage their learners as powerful, resilient learners who have not only mastered the basics but can apply what they know to new and puzzling situations. To grow the capable thinkers and learners that Garth Boomer set his sights upon 40 years ago. Garth’s conclusion to his 1991 address at the ARA conference in Adelaide still inspires me with hope that together …with nous and with support, with clear heads and cunning strategy, much is possible. That we can realise and, with new knowledge and technologies, build upon his vision for education in Australia.

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 16 I began on a sombre note, reminding you of hard times. The question as we end is “What now?” I hope that I have suggested hope rather than despair. I hope also, that you have picked up my belief that now more than ever: teachers need to work in support of each other; with parents and people in higher education to secure explicitly, education which serves educational ends. While these are hard times, there are also times of opportunity. In such times, I always remind myself that all experience is an arch where through gleams that un‐travelled world, whose margin fades forever and forever as we move. If Matthew Arnold started us in a low‐key, I now have no better and more rousing way to end, than with the greatest poem I know about possibility: “Come, my friends, Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The surrounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles; And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.”

“Tho’ much has taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

‘Ulysses’ by Lord Alfred Tennyson

REFERENCES Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) (2015) Australian Curriculum V7.4 www.australiancurriculum.edu.au . Boomer, Garth (1978) The principles of good teaching ‐ where good teaching equals good learning Language and Learning Unit, Education Department of SA. Boomer, Garth (ed) (1982) Negotiating the Curriculum: A teacher‐student partnership Ashton Scholastic, Gosford, NSW. Boomer, Garth (1985) Fair Dinkum Teaching and Learning: Reflections on Literacy and Power, Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc, New Jersey.

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 17 Boomer, Garth (July 1991) Closing Address to the Australian Reading Association national conference Private audio recording, Adelaide. Boomer, Garth et al (eds) (1992) Negotiating the Curriculum: Educating for the 21st Century, The Falmer Press, London. Department for Education and Children’s Services (DECS), South Australia, (2001) SA Curriculum, Standards and Accountability framework, DECS Materials Development Unit, Adelaide. Department for Education and Children’s Services (DECS), South Australia (2010) South Australian teaching for effective learning framework Curriculum Services, TfEL Team, Adelaide. Department for Education and Children’s Services (DECS), South Australia (2011) South Australian teaching for effective learning review tools handbook Curriculum Services, TfEL Team, Adelaide. Department for Education and Child Development (DECD), South Australia (12 March 2014) ‘Leading powerful teaching and learning’ www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aee5a6TGE0s. Department for Education and Child Development, (DECD), South Australia (2015a) Leading Learning: Making the Australian Curriculum Work for Us online resource, www.acleadersresource.sa.edu.au. Department for Education and Child Development (DECD), South Australia (2015b), TfEL Online Compass www.learningtolearn.sa.edu.au/tfel/pages/tfelresources/tfelcompass/?reFlag=1. Department for Education and Child Development (DECD), South Australia (2015c) ‘TfEL Teachers’ Companion’ https://www.facebook.com/groups/tfeltalk/. Department for Education and Child Development (DECD), South Australia (2015d) ‘TfEL Think Cards (in publication). Department for Education and Child Development, (DECD), South Australia (in preparation) SA Teaching for Effective Learning Pedagogy Research Project 2010‐ 2013, Final Report, Adelaide. Dweck, Carol (2006) Mindset: The new psychology of success, Ballantine Books, New York. Green, Bill (ed) (1988) Metaphors and Meanings: Essays on English Teaching by Garth Boomer, Hawthorn, Vic. The Australian Association for the Teaching of English. Green, Bill (ed) (1999) Designs on Learning: Essays on Curriculum and Teaching by Garth Boomer Australian Curriculum Studies Association Inc., Canberra. Education Department of South Australia (1980) Our schools and their purposes: Into the 80s Publications Branch, Adelaide.

AATE/ALEA National Conference, Garth Boomer Address, July 2014, Darwin Helen Wildash page 18 Education Department of South Australia (1990) Educating for the 21st Century: A charter for public schooling in SA Darlington Materials Development Centre. Hattie, John (2003) Teachers Make a Difference: What is the research evidence? www.decd.sa.gov.au/limestonecoast/files/pages/new%20page/PLC/teachers_make_ a_difference.pdf NSW Department of Education and Training (2006) NSW Quality Teaching Model, www.det.nsw.edu.au/proflearn/areas/qt/ Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development ‐ OECD, (2010) The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. South Australian English Teachers Association (SAETA) Journal (1984) Opinion Vol 13, No 3. Queensland Department of Education and the Arts (2004) Productive Pedagogies, www.focuseducation.com.au/Products/ITC/Primary_Pedagogies.pdf Van Damme, Dirk (2012) 21C Learners Demand Post‐industrial Education Systems Innovation and Measuring Progress Division, OECD. Victorian Department of Education and Training (2006) Closing the Loop: Curriculum, Pedagogy, Assessment & Reporting, , www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/teachlearn/student/closing_the_loop.pdf

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