The TL as Expert in the Implementation of the New History Syllabus in NSW

The new NSW Syllabuses for the Australian Curriculum present exciting opportunities for teacher librarians. As specialist information literacy (IL) teachers, the skills of the TL  will be in high demand. IL is particularly important in the new inquiry-based K-10 Syllabus documents (Board of Studies NSW, 2012) Science & Technology, Geography (draft) and in particular,  History. TLs are in fact uniquely positioned to deliver effective, practical PD to classroom teachers.

Information literacy and the New Syllabus Documents

Firstly, what is information literacy? I'm a fan of the  definition offered by Annemaree Lloyd (2010). It is sufficiently broad to be applicable to any workplace setting, yet comprehensive enough to address the complexities of IL as a sociocultural practice. Lloyd’s concept of ‘information landscapes’ allows for an understanding of the complexities of information contexts and the importance of social and cultural practices within such landscapes. Every school is different and this makes context important. Also, Lloyd’s sociocultural approach is holistic and takes into account multimodal sources of information, not just the written word. It also incorporates a critical element- requiring a questioning of what is deemed valuable by others in the community and why. Such a definition could be fittingly applied to the professional development of teaching staff in an educational setting.

While there is no specific mention of information literacy in the NSW syllabus documents for the Australian Curriculum (Board of Studies NSW, 2012), there are aspects of IL present. The NSW History, Science and the draft Geography syllabus documents, for example, all make heavy use of inquiry learning, providing an ideal platform from which to embed information literacy into teaching practice (Lupton, 2012). Also, ‘general capabilities’ (Australian Curriculum, 2014) such as the Information and Communication Technology Capability, Critical and Creative Thinking and Ethical Understanding have been embedded in the NSW documents and are all fundamental to the development of IL.

In particular, the History Syllabus lends itself to the incorporation of information literacy pedagogy and practice. As stated in the rationale, students will:           

 “..develop problem-solving, research and critical thinking skills…..learn to critically analyse and interpret sources of evidence and….engage in research involving traditional methods and ICT, including evaluating web-based sources and using a range of technologies for historical research and communication”

(Board of Studies NSW, 2012, K-10 History, Rationale, para.3).

Significant Challenges & Issues

Delivering IL professional development opportunities based on the new NSW  K-10 History Syllabus to teachers in both primary and secondary sectors will present challenges. 

The complex learning required by the demands of the new syllabus means that PD will have to be delivered to scale and in an innovative manner. The traditional skills based model (NSW Department of Education and Training, 2007) of IL is no longer adequate.  Lloyd states that it is important to avoid teaching IL as a “decontextualized and abstract process” (Lloyd, 2010, p. 33). Context is important and the contextual landscapes of primary schools differ greatly to those of secondary schools. Furthermore, Lloyd argues that the PD should be designed in such a way that initial text-based information is followed by the necessary social and physical modalities. This in turn will lead to the deep and complex IL development which will ensure improved teacher practice (Lloyd, 2010, p.38).


The target audience presents its own set of challenges. Teachers are a diverse group. While teachers in regional areas tend to be more experienced; many of the smaller rural and remote schools are staffed by beginning teachers. This diversity also extends to academic qualifications. While many of the secondary teachers have history as a major in their undergraduate degrees, many primary school teachers have not studied history as a subject in any great depth and would not be familiar with the concepts and skills underpinning the new K-10 History Syllabus ('contestability' is a good example). Providing PD that is relevant and authentic and designed in such a way that it is supportive, job-embedded, instructionally focused and collaborative to such diverse learning communities, will prove challenging.  

Given the challenges, how can TL's help with the implementation of the new History Syllabus... 

By interacting in their own information landscape and communities of practice and by using other modalities of information besides just text; TLs are in a position to improve teacher IL proficiency and classroom practice, ultimately giving them a deeper knowledge of the new NSW History Syllabus and improving learning outcomes for their students. 

Lloyd, A (2010). Lessons from the workplace: Understanding information literacy as practice. In Lloyd, A & Talja, S ( Eds.,) Practising Information Literacy: Bringing together theories of learning, practice and information literacy together. Wagga Wagga:  Centre for Information Studies, 29-49.

Lupton, M. (2012).  Inquiry skills in the Australian curriculum [online]. Access, Vol. 26, No. 2, 12-18.Availability: http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/documentSummary;dn=584040093322031;res=IELAPA ISSN: 1030-0155. [cited 28 Sep 14].

NSW Department of Education and Training (2007). School Libraries and Information Literacy. Information Process Chart. Retrieved from http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/schoollibraries/teachingideas/isp/

Assessment, Technology and Putting the Joy Back Into Learning

High Stakes & Stress

Increased testing in our classrooms has significantly increased stress levels in our students (Willis, 2006). This is having an effect on student brains. Neuroimaging and neuroscientific research have exposed the negative impact stress and anxiousness have on the brain’s neurotransmitters. Stress and stressful learning environments block learning. Alfie Kohn writes in his article Feel- Bad Education: The cult of rigor and the loss of joy (2004), that the deepest critical thinking occurs when students are at their most creative, making connections in an atmosphere of “exuberant discovery”. In other words, teachers need to bring the joy back into learning. Recent studies have shown that ‘cognitive playfulness’ is aligned to a willingness to engage with new ideas, creativity and innovation - skills highly valued in a 21^st Century economy. It was also found that if more emphasis is placed on the learning goals rather than performance goals, then strategic thinking and cognitive playfulness is a more likely outcome (Tan & MacWilliam, 2008, p.7).

 In other words, if we take away performance-based anxiety and replace it with a focus on the actual learning, our students’ creative capacity will increase.

 Dylan Wiliam argues that assessment should be central to education (2011, p.46). Specifically, Wiliam  points to formative assessment, (gathering evidence about what students have learned in order to inform teaching practice and decide what to do next) as the most effective way of bridging teaching and learning.  He shows that the same assessment task used formatively, rather than in a summative way, has a far greater impact upon student learning.  

Indeed, in many cases, internal summative and performance-based tasks can often be replaced with formative assessment strategies that are ongoing, diagnostic and from a student’s perspective, non-threatening. Summative assessment often takes the form of a grade or mark on a page with a few accompanying teacher comments. For most adolescents (and many other students for that matter), grading practices only serve to emphasize competition and this feedback often has a negative impact. We know that students often go straight to the score and ignore the comments. By using comments as feedback (what works well- what needs improving) in the absence of a score or grade, students are encouraged to improve upon their work and teachers are given an ideal opportunity to enhance their learning (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall & Wiliam, 2004).

Tapping Into Technology

In many cases, middle schools have been slow to embrace technology in their classrooms and multiliteracies are still being “understood as ‘garnish’ to the ‘pedagogical roast’ of traditional code-based and print-based academic literacies” (Tan & McWilliam, 2009, p.213). Schools are meant to be educating students for their digital future, but are still faced with a standardized testing culture that is driven by flat literacy practices. A growing body of evidence suggests that digital and Intelligent Web technologies can have a profound impact upon student learning. Even more importantly, these technologies can be used to work with the enormous changes that adolescents are undergoing at this particular stage of their development.

Digital tools can be used by students to pursue passionate interests. They can engage students on an emotional level, build metacognitive skills and provide a social context for learning. Students could be encouraged to write about what they are passionate about on publically accessible blogs. They could be analysing and creating genre features and hybrid genres across a vast array of multimedia forms, while at the same time, communicating with each other via social media to critique what they see as good and bad examples (critical literacy). Over time, such deep learning experiences fire their creativity and knowledge of the genre so that they are much better placed to create their own genre specific texts (Armstrong, 2006).

Learning is not just about the retention of content. If students do not come up with their own answers, learning is superficial (multiple choice tests are a good example of this). Using tools like the SAMR Model (Puentedura, 2014) to guide them, teachers should be attempting to incorporate technology as a means of providing an alternative to the high stakes, top down approach to pedagogy. Digital technologies offer interactivity, informative feedback and intrinsic motivation (Shapiro, 2014).  Students can work collaboratively and interdependently to explore content curiously, deepen their understanding through imaginative activities, create new content by adapting to new situations and scenarios and passionately express their learning in new and creative ways. It is through these collaborative approaches to learning that students’ metacognition and social skills are sharpened and they become more self-directed, critical thinkers.

Assessment and the 21st Century Learner

"When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative; when the guests taste the soup, that’s summative".      Robert Stake

The Australian Curriculum Studies Association's (ACSA) 2014 Symposium focused on assessment. Keynote speaker Stephen Dobson asserted that we need to establish safeguards against an over reliance on testing. This advice is backed by the research of Black and Wiliam (2010) who state that: "teachers' feedback to pupils seems to serve social and managerial functions, often at the expense of the learning function". Tests like NAPLAN and the HSC (in NSW) are deemed to be high stakes assessments of student learning, but are they measuring what we really value in students?

Assessment in our schools has become increasingly analytical (think marking rubrics) and consequently, more compartmentalised and narrow. How do we assess a deep thinking student with creative answers who doesn't necessarily follow the rubric we've given them? 

Almost every presenter at the ACSA symposium stressed that assessment needs to be more in tune with the continua of learning - more holistic and less analytical. Teachers are professionals and experts at what they do. Our tacit knowledge of students' strengths and weaknesses needs to be trusted. 

In their presentation 'Stop Marking, Start Learning' , Haesler and Paterson highlighted the concerning statistics on student disengagement by the time they reach year 12. Part of the reason for this great 'turning off' is due to students receiving (way too many times through the course of the year) a mark with an accompanying narrative about performance. These 'marks' and teacher feedback are not leading to deeper learning or improvement. This process simply reinforces the pass/fail perception of tasks and abruptly enforces a "full stop" to student learning . 

This is not to say that teachers should not be accountable for student learning and that collecting evidence of student learning is not necessary. As Debra Bateman argued, a curriculum policy designed with integrity demands this. 

We could,  however, make assessment a whole lot better. Students need to experience feedback as information about their performance, not as a pass or failure. 

As a profession, we have to be careful not to penalise our deep and creative thinkers.

Black and  Wiliam's (2010) philosophy on assessment is holding sway with both academics and classroom practitioners. They assert that: " feedback to any pupil should be about the particular qualities of his or her work, with advice on what he or she can do to improve, and should avoid comparisons with other pupils." 

A powerful way of delivering this advice is by means of peer-assessment. Students, especially, adolescents, value the opinions of their peers and research has shown that peer feedback has a far greater impact upon student learning  than teacher correction (Boscolo & Ascorti, 2004). Student to student feedback provides an intermediate check of the performance against the criteria, accompanied by feedback on strengths, weaknesses and/or tips for improvement.There can also be learning benefits for the peer assessor, arising from seeing other examples or approaches, and from internalisation of criteria and standards.

Incorporating multimedia in assessment design can also be of great benefit and lead to a more authentic kind of assessment. Rather than testing science students on their literacy and reading skills in a science test, for example, the incorporation of audio or video can remove much of the 'reading load' in an assessment and assist visual learners. 

Digital platforms such as blogs, wikis and Google Docs support knowledge construction by allowing students to reflect upon what they have learned (the metacognitive), they involve everyone in the learning process (social), they provide a real purpose (a real audience - their peers) and evidence of their learning is produced (assessment). 

ASSESSMENT = ENGAGEMENT + RELATIONSHIPS+ AUTONOMY+ PURPOSE+ MASTERY

 

The Ladder of Feedback Guide: an approach to assessing for

understanding that establishes a culture of trust and

constructive support.

Here's to a lot more tasting by cooks....something that will ultimately  improve the broth.

Black, P & Wiliam,D (1998). Assessment and Classroom Learning.Assessment in education:Principles, Policy and Practice, 5:1, 7-74.

Boscolo, P., & Ascorti, K. (2004).  Effects of collaborative revision on children’s ability to write understandable narrative texts.  In L. Allal, L. Chanquoy, & P. Largy (Eds.), Revision:  Cognitive and instructional processes. In Rijlaarsdam, G. (Ed.). Studies in writing, Vol. 13 (pp. 157-170), Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer.

The Benefits of Blogging

“Blogging and wikis are useful practice for the development of higher order learning skills, active, learner-centered pedagogy, authentic learning, associative thinking, and interactive learning communities”                                                                                                                                               (O‘Donnell, 2006; Farmer, 2006).

 In my experience, teachers rarely get to choose their own learning opportunities, pursue professional passions, or engage in meaningful, ongoing conversations about instruction. Most of the time, the latest PD is drawn directly from the latest educational fad (often based on models from the business world). 

A series of very ordinary professional development experiences has left a lot of teachers jaded and cynical when it comes to P.D.  ENTER the Blog!!!

Blogs act as fresh "portals through which new knowledge about teaching and learning can enter schools" (Elmore 2002).

Blogs ( truncated expression of web log) are becoming increasingly significant as an interactive Web 2.0 tool for professional growth in education and I believe could be the 'silver bullet'  we need as far as P.D in the 21st century. 

 In every content area and grade level and in schools of varying sizes and from different geographic locations,  accomplished teachers  are actively reflecting on instruction, challenging assumptions, questioning policies, offering advice, designing solutions, and learning together. And all this collective knowledge is readily available for free.

Indeed, the new Australian curriculum requires us to foster new literacies. It is not just a matter of transferring classroom writing into digital spaces. Blogging allows teachers to write for a public audience, to show how to cite and link and why, and how to use and comment on pedagogy.

Blogging will enable us to teach students to critically engage media. Students need instruction on how to become efficient navigators in these digital spaces where they will be obtaining a majority of their information. The potential of Blogging is enormous - see below for a list of the key reasons why teachers need to start incorporating blogging into their professional and classroom practice....

Why Teachers Should Blog:

•Grow communities of discourse and knowledge — a space where teachers can learn from each other.

•New perspective on the meaning of voice. Other professional voices are essential to the conversations we need to have about learning.

•Encourages global conversations about learning–conversations not previously possible in our classrooms.

•Records ongoing learning. It facilitates reflection and evaluation.

•Opportunity for collective and collaborative learning is enormous.

Why Students Should Blog:

•Opportunity to read their classmates’ blogs and those of others.

•Connecting with experts on the topic students are writing.

•The interactivity creates enthusiasm for writing and communication.

•Engages students in conversation and learning.

•Blogging provides the opportunity for our students to learn to write for life-long learning.

•Opportunity to learn about responsible public writing. Students can learn about the power of the published word and the responsibilities involved with public writing.

 With the millions of blogs out there, how do I choose which ones to follow?? 

      The answer to this problem is the RSS Feed (Rich Site Summary). I have found several blogs that target my professional interests and I've organised them to be delivered to me via an RSS feed (I use Feedly - there are hundreds to choose from). 

     I'm automatically notified when there has been an new post. By dedicating a few minutes each day to browsing the changing content in Feedly, I am able to find topics that motivate me and challenge my thinking. I can leave comments for the authors and see whether they respond. I can also engage other readers in conversations or friendly debate. 

In short, blog platforms build a viable base of shared experiences and mutual relationships. They are becoming an increasingly important interactive learning tool for communities of practice in education. They encourage professional interaction and critical reflection. 

     As a source of personalised, directly delivered, free P.D,  the opportunities offered to teachers by tapping into the blogosphere are staggering!  

Matching Quality Literature to Key Concepts & Cross Curricula Priorities

Most school and regional town libraries in Australia  have a decent selection of  literature that qualifies as 'quality literature'. 

Using the picture books in a small  K-6 library, I was able to create a mapping grid of key concepts from the NSW English syllabus with suitable literature. The literature chosen lends itself to the teaching of specific concepts. Keep in mind that these quality works can also be used to teach other concepts - the grid is a guide only. This list, was to be used by teachers in their Scope & Sequence documents over a two year period based on the class breakdown of straight and composite classes for 2014. 

Many of the titles suited the integration of  the cross curricula priorities of Sustainability, Asia and Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander history & cultures. These were then colour coded accordingly .

Please note this list of picture books is by no means exhaustive. Be aware too, that more & more quality childrens' and young adult literature is produced every year. The Children's Book Council is a great place to keep up to date with new titles. 

Worthy of consideration also,  is subscribing to Australian Standing Orders. For a set subscription fee each year, a choice of high quality picture books, novels and non-fiction will be sent directly to your school or organisation at greatly reduced prices. From experience, most of the shortlisted books each year from the Children's Book Council of Australia are included in the subscription packs. 

With the emphasis on QUALITY and MULTIMODAL texts, a picture book subscription from Australian Standing Orders is a worthwhile investment; even for the smallest of schools.

  Key Concepts from the NSW English K-6 Matching Quality Picture Books

                                   Image: Creative Commons http://farm3.staticflickr.com/

Action Plan for Using Authentic Texts in Literacy Programs

Big Ideas, Key Concepts and the English Syllabus

Regardless of what type, texts need to be used in such a way as to encourage deep, contextualised learning to support the teaching of key concepts.  

Multimodal texts where print and image work together provide the perfect platform for such learning.They provide for the development of critical analysis of visual/verbal codes and viewpoints, and importantly, they allow students to construct alternative views. In other words, we are moving away from the simple code breaking model to a process of interpreting, constructing, reconstructing and reflecting on knowledge and skills gained.

Jay McTighe argues that we should start with a 'big idea' or essential question - 
"a conceptual lens through which to address specific content and standards". The curriculum should be framed and developed in terms of desired performances by the learner, not simply as a listing of content inputs (in other words start with a key concept or 'big idea' and map backwards).

SCIS image

SCIS image

                                

Using this model, how might teachers approach their planning to incorporate deep learning using literary/multimodal texts?

1. Start with a 'big idea'- this will be the mental template for students to build upon. For a definition of 'What is a big idea?' see Grant Wiggins' blog.

2.Choose a text that will support your teaching of key concepts. Look particularly at objectives C, D & E in the K-10 English syllabus (they represent deeper learning). Get to know the text with others in your PLCs.

3. Start planning learning activities. Think about how the text might be useful in your local context.What other multimodal texts might be useful in teaching and learning activities?

4.Link activities to syllabus outcomes, possible assessment tasks.

5.Reflect upon what you have learned in the planning process. 

    

http://www.edugains.ca/newsite/plc/index.html