Dr Michele Bruniges AM
Director-General of Education and Communities
Why school improvement matters
Australian Council for Education Research conference, Sydney
26 August 2012
I’d like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the
Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I pay respect to their Elders, past and present,
and extend that respect to Aboriginal people here today.
I want to begin with a reminder about why school improvement matters.
Our students are at the heart of every decision we make in education. That’s the
bottom line and that’s why school improvement matters.
If we improve our schools – and specifically, the teaching and learning that occurs
within the classrooms – then we improve the educational experience and the
opportunities available to this generation of young people and to future generations.
This is an urgent priority because education in the 21st century is a high stakes
enterprise.
Internationally, we are part of a virtual learning environment where personalised
learning is more important than ever, where content access is at historically high
levels and where students increasingly learn at their own rate and often out of
traditional school hours.
Our students compete on a global stage and they need new skills to prepare them
for further study and jobs – many of which have not yet been created.
We are preparing them for a world where technology is creating previously
unimaginable possibilities -
where ‘sociable’ robots not only keep lonely people
company, they help in the treatment of autism; a world where computers can assist
in surgical procedures and guide mining machinery.
This is why we now talk about the 4Cs as well as the 3Rs – creativity, critical
thinking, communication and collaboration. (1)
Students starting school this year will probably be working until the 2070s.
We know that the rate of change in technology and in society is so rapid that if we
are going to prepare young people to live, work and be successful in the 21 st century,
they will need the ability to think both creatively and critically, problem-solve and
work collaboratively.
Our challenge, as educators, will be to constantly adapt teaching and learning to new
technologies and the demands of a global environment where knowledge and skills
are the new global currency.
We know that education is the key driver of economic growth. It is also a key social
equaliser.
For individuals, there are personal and social dividends gained from higher levels of
education – a greater likelihood of employment, higher wages and better health, to
name just a few. (2)
For countries, higher levels of education are linked with higher levels of GDP per
capita. (3)
But we now know the relationship between education and national economic
wellbeing is more complicated.
It is the quality of that education – not necessarily the quantity or number of years
in education – that has the greatest positive impact. (4)
That is why school improvement is so important.
Our challenge in Australia is not just to ensure that all children access their
educational entitlement. Nor is it to extend that educational entitlement.
Rather, our challenge is to improve the quality of the education young people receive
for the entire duration of their schooling.
Naturally, this is easier said than done.
But no educator seriously disputes the broad agenda of school improvement: ...
better outcomes for all students.
Nor could they dispute the intermediate objective of school improvement: ... the
improvement of teaching and learning information.
I want to outline today how school improvement depends on effective teachers
using data and evidence to improve classroom practice in a trusting school
culture that embraces collaborative planning and reflection.
Firstly, teaching must be an inquiry-based profession with a strong school culture of
collaborative planning and reflection.
Secondly, teachers need ready access to the latest evidence about effective
teaching and we need to systematically identify and disseminate this evidence.
And, thirdly, I will outline why lesson observation is critical to understanding and
improving teachers’ practice – and requires trust and a collaborative approach.
If we are serious about school improvement we need great teachers in every
classroom to inspire our young people to achieve.
We know that teaching is the single largest in-school determinant of success at
school.
McKinsey and Company (2007) analysed the world’s top performing school systems
and concluded that the quality of an education system simply cannot exceed the
quality of its teacher. (5)
John Hattie’s research provided us with the statistic we use frequently – that teacher
quality accounts for 30% of the variance on student performance. (6)
We have many, many great teachers. But we need every teacher to be at the top of
their game.
We have witnessed a recent growing interest in, and focus on, quality teaching by a
number of states and territories. Last month the NSW Minister for Education, Adrian
Piccoli, released a discussion paper called Great Teaching, Inspired Learning. The
Victorian Minister has also released a discussion paper on Quality Teaching.
The NSW discussion paper aims to start a conversation about how we improve the
quality of teaching – along the life cycle of the teaching profession – from initial
teacher education and the practicum to how we identify, recognise and share
outstanding practice among the teaching profession. (7)
As a starting point we looked at what makes a great teacher.
The following characteristics are well known to all of us here today.
Great teachers know the content of the subjects they teach and have a deep
understanding of how learning happens. They have a rich repertoire of teaching
strategies and they know how to use specific strategies to optimise student learning.
Great teachers value collaboration, reflect on their practice and learn from others.
They are always looking at ways they can use data and research to become even
better teachers.
Great teachers are passionate about the subjects they teach and use this passion to
inspire a thirst for knowledge and a love of learning in their students. (8)
And great teachers never stop learning.
1. Teaching must be an inquiry-based profession with a strong school culture
of collaborative planning and reflection.
The most effective educational systems are those in which the responsibility for
student learning is widely shared.
While the actions of individual teachers matter, the concept that it takes a village to
raise a child has particular relevance for teachers.
School improvement depends on the presence of trust in learning environments
through which schools can realistically appraise their current practice and seek
evidence-based strategies to inform their school learning innovations.
This process relies on educational research and professional collaboration.
Research undertaken by my colleague Ann McIntyre [Director, Professional Learning
and Leadership Development Directorate], has shone a light on the vital role of
collaboration within schools. (9)
The research clearly shows that teachers in NSW public schools consider
collaboration with their colleagues as absolutely critical to improving their teaching
practice.
The longitudinal study of 6,000 NSW public school teachers conducted over three
years is one of the largest studies of its kind conducted internationally.
It asked teachers through surveys and in-school focus groups to list the types of
professional learning that had the most significant impact on the improvement of
their teaching practice.
You can see from the slide that for primary school teachers, collaborating with other
teachers to prepare lessons and resources was the most significant practice named
by 30% of respondents. The next most significant professional learning activities
were lesson observation and observing other teachers’ lessons, structured feedback
meetings and collaborative assessment and evaluation of student work.
For secondary schools, lesson observation was the clear favourite, listed by 32% of
respondents, followed by structured feedback meetings and collaborative lesson
preparations.
All of these practices, these professional learning opportunities, are about
collaboration. And they occurred largely within schools and within classrooms.
The structured feedback, for example, wasn’t about loose comments like “you’ve
done a great job”. It was looking at what the teacher did well, the impact of the
pedagogy on student learning and identifying the next steps required to improve the
teachers’ practice and the subsequent student learning.
It has also become evident in the past decade that school leaders who focus their
attention not only on student learning but also on the professional learning of
teachers have three times the impact on student learning outcomes than those who
do not. (10)
Three main themes emerge from the research on school leadership and the
commensurate effect on student learning.

The school leaders who have the greatest impact on student learning have
clearly articulated the targets for improvement by defining what matters most
for the improvement of their students’ learning.

These school leaders place at the centre of their strategy a relentless focus
on the learning of both their teachers and their students.

And they have established formative feedback mechanisms to enable the
constant evaluation of the effectiveness of their actions and interventions. (11)
Kenneth Leithwood highlights the importance of school leadership to school
improvement:
“There is not a single documented case of a school successfully turning around its
student achievement trajectory in the absence of talented leadership. One
explanation for this is that leadership serves as a catalyst for unleashing the potential
capacities that already exist in the organisation.” (12)
2. Teachers need ready access to the latest evidence about effective teaching
and we need to systematically identify and disseminate this evidence.
To achieve significant and sustained school improvement we must attend to the
‘bread-and-butter’ of the educational process ... – what goes on in our classrooms.
As Lee Shulman argued nearly 30 years ago:
“The teacher is the primary agent of instruction.
Therefore the teacher must remain the key.
Without capable teachers – the literature on effective schools is meaningless.
Without capable teachers – the debates over educational policy are moot.
The teacher must remain the key." (13)
So a vital question for school systems seeking to improve is: “How do we support
teachers to offer each and every student the best educational experience possible?”
One way we can support teachers is to help them make better decisions and to
make better informed decisions, in order to build a stronger culture of teaching as an
inquiry-based profession.
Teaching has always required the capacity to make decisions. Decisions are made
in a wide range of contexts ... across many areas ... and often very quickly.
Effective use of data by teachers is the crux of school improvement. For student
outcomes to improve, teachers need an accurate understanding of individual
students’ strengths and weaknesses.
They then need to translate this understanding into good teaching decisions, and
explicit learning activities, in order to extend student learning.
Data is one of the most important diagnostic tools for teachers and schools but it has
become entangled in the ideological debate about school accountability.
The significant risk is that the data becomes devalued, particularly in the eyes of
teachers who, paradoxically, have the most to gain from the proper use of data.
This is a danger because data has always been at the heart of the educational
process. It has been part of our core business in NSW for many years and it is used
to improve teaching practice or to target pedagogy to particular student needs or
groups.
As early as 1922, Edward Thorndike wrote:
‘“The task of education is to make changes in human beings. To master this
task, we need definite and exact knowledge of what changes are made and
what changes need to be made.” (14)
In other words, schools and teachers need accurate and actionable information
about what students know and can do.
Schools need this information so they can plan effectively for student learning. A
teacher needs to know what a ‘band 2’ or a ‘7 out of 10’ means in order to know what
to do next. What three questions did the student get wrong? Is there a pattern in the
responses? .... Teachers need to be asking these sorts of questions as a routine part
of their business – and have the rich curriculum linked information at hand to be able
to answer them.
Education systems have a responsibility to support the teaching profession to
strengthen teachers’ practice, knowledge and decision making through the effective
analysis, evaluation and dissemination of evidence of what works and why it works.
Two weeks ago in NSW, we launched the Centre for Education Statistics and
Evaluation, a dedicated hub in the Department of Education and Communities for
education data and evaluation.
Data must inform teaching practice.
Data tells us stories. It tells us what students can or cannot do, what their strengths
and weaknesses are; what teaching practices are working or not working; it tells us
the lessons of great schools – what are they doing that other schools are not, for
example.
We are very good in education at adding on another program, another strategy. But
we are not so good at critically analysing those programs and asking the question:
“Is it working?” We are not so good at ending or even changing programs that are
not working.
The Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, or CESE, will be the central point
for education statistics and evidence in NSW and will conduct in-depth analysis of
education programs and outcomes across the continuum of education – from early
childhood, through school, training and higher education.
It is a key plank in our drive to base our best practice on the best and latest research
and evidence.
It will provide information about what works and what’s effective. It will deliver
evidence for educators to critically examine their practices and will clarify the best
way to support them to learn from each other and continue to develop their
professional practice.
CESE will turn data into knowledge by developing intelligent tools to make complex
data easy to use and understand.
Importantly, schools will be able to find out what works in different situations and be
better placed to make informed choices about effective practices for use in their
classrooms.
The work of the Centre will be guided by an independent Advisory Council of
eminent international and Australian experts. We have been transparent in our
desire to open up our work to scrutiny outside of the Department and beyond the
external oversight of the Auditor-General and the Ombudsman.
We are asking the advisory council to guide us and to apply a level of scrutiny to our
data and programs that hasn’t been done before – in order to give teachers the best
possible information so they can improve their practice.
It is also a mechanism to connect the wider education community. CESE will partner
with universities and education systems around the world to ensure that NSW
educators have access to the most up-to-date research, data and information.
The Centre’s first publication has just been released – it examines the correlation
between PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends
in International Mathematics and Science Study) results with students’ experience of
certain teaching practices. (15)
The data, in this instance, shows us there are some specific teaching practices
which appear to promote higher levels of student achievement. These were core,
basic practices that can make a real difference in student outcomes – up to the
equivalent of one year of school learning.
For example, the four teaching practices associated with the biggest differences in
reading literacy mean scores are:

asking students to explain the meaning of a text

giving students the chance to ask questions about reading assignments

asking questions that challenge students to get a better understanding of a
text, and

telling students in advance how their work is going to be judged. (16)Students
who experienced these teaching practices in most or all lessons achieved
mean scores equivalent to more than a whole school year ahead of students
who rarely experienced these teaching practices.
TIMSS reports higher average results in Mathematics for Year 4 and 8 students
when they work on problems on their own. The same is true for Year 8 students in
Science.
It also showed that in both Mathematics and Science more frequent memorising of
facts and procedures is associated with higher average results for students in Years
4 and 8. Memorising is critical to embed information and students with a level of
instant recall of basic facts will be better able to pursue higher-order thinking. (17)
Why is it important to ground our practice in data and evidence?
There is a strong link between effective assessment and the use of data to improve
student learning, as recognised by a number of researchers. (18)
We have strong foundations here in Australia to work on.
According to the OECD’s 2011 Review of Evaluation and Assessment in Education:
Australia, our country already has the broad conditions in place to successfully use
assessment data to inform school and system evaluation. And, subsequently, to
enact school and system improvement. (19)
In Australia, and internationally, there is growing recognition that using information
about student learning and progress to inform school and classroom practices is an
important component of supporting improvement. (20)
But there is still room for improvement.
In particular, the OECD report on Australia notes that examples of actual change in
classroom practice that has resulted from the use of assessment data are not clearly
recorded.
This is an issue.
It’s an issue because the only way of truly judging whether attempts to reform
classroom practice are helpful or not is by evaluating their effects on classrooms
themselves.
The first step in improving the capacity of teachers to make quality
educational decisions is to support ongoing improvement in teachers’
understanding and use of data.
Teachers today are required to make more and more nuanced decisions.
The expectations of education are changing.
The expectations of schools are changing.
And it is important that the decisions made to meet these expectations are as sound
as possible ... across every classroom ... in every education system.
Sound decisions are based on data and the use of evidence is one of the hallmarks
of a profession. (21)
Evidence-based teaching, after all, is the explicit and thoughtful use of the best
evidence to make decisions about the education of individual students.
What we as education systems need to do is find effective and timely ways for
systematically identifying, interpreting, contextualising, packaging and disseminating
robust knowledge about effective teaching practice.
So let’s have a look at how well the teaching profession currently uses data and
evidence to make better informed decisions.
It’s a mixed picture.
It’s one thing to be data savvy but data has limited pedagogic purpose unless we
transform this understanding into improved classroom practice. As the late Dr Ken
Rowe put it:
“despite all the evidence that identifies educational effectiveness in terms of
teaching and learning ... the general beliefs in schools and universities that
surround effective teaching practice are typically not grounded in findings from
evidence-based research.” (22)
New Zealand researcher Adrienne Alton-Lee highlights examples of unintentional,
yet ongoing, harm done in education:
“It is possible for teachers ... well-intentioned, caring and experienced ... to
unknowingly have negative impacts on students. Which is ... of course ... the
direct opposite of what they intended.” (23)
Alton-Lee cites the New Zealand example where attempts to match teaching
approaches to learning styles can isolate Maori and Pacific Island students into
‘hands-on’ learning activities involving concrete material and procedural activity while
other students engaged in metacognitive strategy instruction.
The US National Council on Teacher Quality recently released research involving
180 US undergraduate and graduate teaching programs, which found that only 3%
of teaching programs provided sufficient coverage of assessment.
Only 2% exposed students to the means of analysing test results and a meagre 1%
addressed how to come up with an instructional plan once test results had been
analysed. (24)
The OECD reports that there are some inadequacies in the skills of Australian
teachers when it comes to assessing students and then actually using the resulting
assessment data.
These OECD findings are supported by a recent Australian pilot study designed to
evaluate teacher intentions to use national literacy and numeracy assessment data.
The study found that less than 30% of teachers could access NAPLAN data directly.
Almost 20% of teachers chose not to access the data at all. Their reasons included
negative perceptions of the data’s value and a lack of confidence in how to use the
data. (25)
If we are really serious about school improvement and evidence-based teaching then
we must increase our efforts to make this data and research readily available to our
teachers – and they must be able to interpret and analyse it to improve their teaching
practice.
We can already see school improvement in action in those schools that are making
effective use of data.
In NSW, all of the teachers involved in the Smarter Schools National Partnerships
have now had access to training in the effective use of data.
Preliminary evaluations of the National Partnership Schools indicate that this training
has been positively received.

34% of teachers involved in the partnerships for two years said they
experienced large or very large increases in their use of student achievement
data to inform lesson planning.

Almost half of the teachers involved in the partnerships for two years reported
significant increases in their understanding of what they need to do to be a
more effective teacher.
The impact of this change in practice is seen in the classrooms where teachers are
using data to tailor their teaching practices to better differentiate where individual
students are at ... and determine what steps they need to take next.
We can see the impact at the school level – where principals and school leaders are
analysing data to inform resource allocation decisions – and at the system level,
where School Education Directors are able to use data as the basis for robust
conversations with school leaders about student outcomes and needs.
Our investment in data literacy ... under the Smarter Schools National Partnerships
... is helping create the conditions for future success.
NSW has a strong record in identifying and disseminating knowledge about good
teaching practice. We only have to look back at the Quality Teaching Model
developed almost a decade ago.
However the research base continues to evolve. And we have an ongoing
responsibility to guard against fads.
We have a responsibility to highlight robust evidence that identifies ineffective
practice, especially if this practice is commonplace ... or was once deemed
beneficial.
As an education system ... we also have a responsibility to ensure that professional
learning reflects the evidence base and that we share this responsibility with teacher
educators in our universities.
This may seem obvious ... but it doesn’t always occur.
3. Lesson observation allows teachers to learn from each other and is critical
to understanding and improving teachers’ practice. This requires trust and
a collaborative approach.
The classroom is often considered the private domain of the teacher. In my own
teaching career I remember this well. Once inside my classroom, the students were
under my instruction and care for the day or for that particular period.
The thing is, teaching is personal – we think of the classroom as our own space
because we want to make a difference.
But I don’t think we do teachers any favours when we put them in a classroom, tell
them to teach and then professionally isolate them. It sounds like a paradox to talk
about teacher isolation when the classroom is such a hive of activity. But there is
research, mainly from the United States, that points to teacher isolation being a
contributor to teacher attrition rates, stress and illness.
There’s a seminal American social portrait of teaching by Dan Lortie, called
Schoolteacher, written in 1975 that describes teacher isolation as one of the main
structural impediments to improving teaching and learning in American public
schools. In Lortie’s world, teachers worked in a series of “cells” within the school but
were isolated from each other. (26)
He argues that since the 19th century teachers have worked behind closed doors,
rarely collaborating with colleagues on improving teaching practice or examining
student work.
A recent study by the Gates Foundation shows that little has changed in the US
since 1975. It estimated that American teachers spent only about 3% of their
teaching day collaborating with colleagues – the majority plan, teach and examine
their pedagogical practice alone. (27)
But in other jurisdictions like Finland, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Korea and Singapore –
all high-performing education systems – there is a strong culture of collaboration,
mentoring, feedback and sustained professional development.
High performing systems enable their teachers to learn from each other. They focus
their professional learning on high levels of classroom observation and teacher
collaboration.
Teachers are provided with the time and are taught how to observe other teachers’
classroom practice and give well-reasoned feedback. Their schools have an opendoor approach where teachers are encouraged to observe and work with each other
as professional colleagues.
Lesson observation is ‘business as usual’ elsewhere in the world.

In Hong Kong classroom observation is a standard tool used to improve
pedagogy.

Beginning teachers in Shanghai sit in on three to four of their mentor’s classes
every week. They also have two to three of their own classes observed.

In Shanghai teachers are also researchers. They spend a great deal of time
analysing the way their students learn and sharing this research with their
colleagues.
Building a strong culture of collaborative inquiry ... both within and across schools ...
will involve breaking down the assumption that teaching is an independent
profession.
Teaching is not an independent profession.
Teaching is a collaborative profession.
I have already mentioned the research by my colleague Ann McIntyre but I want to
talk about some of the specific themes that emerged.
The teachers in NSW public schools who took part in the longitudinal study spoke
about:

the power of observing another teacher’s practice and then discussing and
dissecting what worked and why

the power of other teachers observing a teacher’s lesson and providing
structured and constructive feedback

the importance of teachers preparing lessons together – collaborating, for
example, on how they would meet syllabus outcomes or engage their
students

the importance of collaborative assessment of students’ work – discovering
what the teacher did to get that result from that student, or finding a new
direction to take to improve the students’ learning outcomes. (28)
In a separate study, by Ann McIntyre and the Professional Learning and Leadership
Development Directorate completed last term, 700 NSW public school teachers were
asked what types of feedback were the most useful in developing their practice.
Evidence from the assessment of student work was found to be the most useful,
closely followed by three different forms of collaborative partnerships: feedback from
students, feedback from other teachers and feedback from the supervisor.
The feedback allowed the teachers to constantly adjust their practice, translating the
feedback into changes in their pedagogy. It is also interesting that student feedback
is such a critical feedback mechanism and suggests again that a key driver of school
improvement is what’s happening inside the classroom and the day to day work of
the teachers. (29)
John MacBeath, a world leader on school improvement strategies, talks about the
importance of teachers being able to change their practice to meet the demands of
21st century learners.
He says it’s the motivation of teachers – that driving impulse to return to the
classroom day after day, year after year – that is so important:
“What motivates teachers to remain within the profession and to give of their best is
the buzz of a ‘magic moment’; when ‘the penny finally drops’, when the pupil’s
puzzled gaze gives way to a smile of recognition.
“It is in these ‘magic moments’ that teaching meets learning.” (30)
The effective use of data allows us to facilitate more of those ‘magic moments’. And
the effective use of data also plays a key role in a collaborative school culture.
We need to ensure that we don’t fall into the trap where data access and data
analysis is more commonly undertaken by the school executive than by classroom
teachers – particularly because evidence suggests that data analysis is most
effective when undertaken in groups. (31)
It is therefore important that we develop processes that acknowledge teaching
excellence while also acknowledging that school improvement is dependent upon
collaboration, leadership, professional learning and self-evaluation.
Most significantly ... we need to build a culture of trust.
Finland, we know, has made remarkable progress in raising its education and
teaching standards over the past 30 years and is acknowledged today as an
international leader in education, consistently ranking among the top performers in
international benchmarking [PISA].
Finland has undertaken many reforms in education, too numerous to detail here
today. But I would highlight the fact that developing the trust of the teaching
profession has been a key factor to this success.
Pasi Sahlberg, Finland’s Director-General of the Centre for International Cooperation
and Mobility, has made the point that the education reform strategy was based on
collaborative partnerships with teachers in designing student learning programs and
assessment strategies.
This developed the relationship of trust that Pasi Stahlberg describes as “making the
reform for ongoing development sustainable as it is owned by the teachers”. (32)
We need to make sure that our teachers feel able to interrogate student performance
data not only for its insights into their students’ strengths and weaknesses, but also
for its insights into the teacher’s own strengths and weaknesses.
Research shows that gaps in student outcomes can be much greater between
classes within schools, than between different schools.
But we also know that the differences within schools – and differences between
teachers – can be difficult to discuss.
Teachers tend not to question their own – or each other’s – academic expertise.
(33)
Instead, research indicates that they continue in the belief that the teaching practices
of their colleagues are acceptable. And Hattie claims that this belief persists purely
because there is no evidence to the contrary. (34)
Teachers need to be provided with new theoretical understandings that help them
make informed decisions about their practice.
Supporting teachers’ capacity for quality educational decision-making is about
expanding teachers’ understanding of effective teaching practice.
I believe that this could be fostered through a collaborative approach to
professionalism.
Early research into teacher decision-making found that at the micro level ... teachers
were highly unlikely to vary the individual teaching styles they adopted in their
classrooms.
For example, research shows that when responding to a particular type of question
in class, teachers do so without variation.
The research goes on to say that when combining this lack of variation with the
widespread tendency to view each other’s teaching styles as sacred, the consistency
ends up blocking the ability of teachers to broaden their range of teaching practices.
(35)
I propose that what teachers need is ready access to evidence-in-action ... examples
of other teachers doing things differently ... yet well. And this involves collaboration
and trust, throwing open the classroom doors and letting others in to observe and
provide feedback.
The metaphor of the classroom as a black box – like the ‘egg-crate’ image of a
school – is an apt representation of a teacher’s closed domain.
We need to build a culture of trust that will facilitate genuinely collaborative planning
and reflection.
To effect real, systemic improvement in the conditions for ... and outcomes of ...
teaching and learning in our schools, we need to improve the quality of the decisionmaking that informs practice at all levels.
This means embedding the use of data – and evidence-based practice – where they
belong: ... in the service of teachers in classrooms.
CONCLUSION
I have focused mainly on teachers being at the heart of the school improvement
agenda, but we cannot ignore the crucial impact of the school and the school
community in facilitating and supporting school improvement.
We cannot expect teachers to develop and demonstrate an increasingly datainformed, evidence-based and collaborative professional practice if they are
operating in a dysfunctional school environment.
There are also challenges for us, too, as education leaders and policymakers.
We must build our capacity to interrogate data sets for insights into strengths and
weakness.
We too need to adjust our practices accordingly.
It’s not going to be easy.
Why? Because school improvement is hard.
And it may be even harder for schools and systems already performing
comparatively well.
It is a moral ... as well as an economic imperative ... that we continue to improve
both the quality and the equity of student outcomes.
Our individual and collective wellbeing are intertwined ... and our students are the
key to our future wellbeing.
I’d like to leave you with a quote from Frank Crowther which goes to the heart of why
we need to align our structures, our policies and programs to recognise that school
improvement depends on teachers’ professional practice, on teachers being datainformed, evidence-based and collaborative.
Crowther writes:
“Most fundamentally a school’s success in education depends upon the competence
and commitment of its staff members. When school conditions do not allow teachers
to work together to develop programs and strategies that suit the student body and
to raise the expectations and commitment of students and staff, it is difficult for even
the most gifted teachers to make a positive difference.” (36)
Thank you
References
1. Fadel, C. (2012). What should students learn in the 21st century? Educationtoday, OECD
website, accessed at: http://oecdeducationtoday.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/what-shouldstudents-learn-in-21st.html
2. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2009). National Health Survey: Summary of Results 2007-09,
Catalogue no. 4364.0. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2010) ‘Measuring Economic Returns to
Post-School Education in Australia’, Catalogue no. 1351.0.55.032 Feinstein, L. (2002)
Quantitative Estimates of the Social Benefits of Learning, 2: Health (Depression and Obesity)
(London, UK: Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning, Institute of Education).
3. KPMG Econtech (2010). Measuring the Impact of the Productivity Agenda, Final Report
(Canberra: Dept. of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, 2010). Business Council
of Australia (2004), Economic Growth and Social Change in Australia 1976-2025, Research
paper for Scenario Planning Project ‘Aspire Australia 2025’.
4. Hanushek, E. A. and Woessman, L. (2010). ‘The High Cost of Low Educational Performance’
(Paris: OECD).
5. Barber, M. & Mourshed, M. (2007), How the world’s best-performing school systems come out
on top, McKinsey & Company.
6. Hattie, J.A. 2003, Teachers make a difference: what is the research evidence? Background
paper to address at the Australian Council for Educational Research conference, Melbourne,
19-21 October 2003.
7. Great Teaching, Inspired Learning (2012). NSW Department of Education & Communities.
8. Great Teaching, Inspired Learning (2012). NSW Department of Education & Communities.
9. McIntyre, A., 2012, School improvement research [longitudinal study of 6,000 NSW public
school teachers], NSW Department of Education & Communities.
10. Robinson, V., Lloyd, C., & Rowe, K. (2008). The impact of leadership on student outcomes: An
analysis of the differential effects of leadership types; Educational Administration Quarterly 44.
11. McIntyre, A. (2011).. Continuous School Improvement – What Matters Most, The Winston
Churchill Memorial Trust: 9.
12. Leithwood, K., Seashore, L.K., Anderson, S., & Wahlstrom, K. (2004). How leadership
influences student learning. A review of research for the Learning from Leadership Project. New
York: The Wallace Foundation, Centre for Applied Research and Educational Improvement and
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
13. Shulman, L. (1983).‘Autonomy and Obligation, The Remote Control of Teaching’, in Handbook
of Teaching and Policy: 484-504.
14. Heritage, M. and Yeagley, R. (2005). Data Use and School lmprovement: Challenges and
Prospects’, Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 104.2: 320-339..
15. Teaching quality: effective teaching practices for improving student achievement. (2012). Centre
for Education Statistics and Evaluation, NSW Department of Education & Communities.
16. Teaching quality: effective teaching practices for improving student achievement. 2012. Centre
for Education Statistics and Evaluation, NSW Department of Education & Communities: 2.
17. Teaching quality: effective teaching practices for improving student achievement. 2012. Centre
for Education Statistics and Evaluation, NSW Department of Education & Communities: 3-6
18. OECD (August 2011a) OECD Reviews of Evaluation and Assessment in Education: Australia
(Paris: OECD).
19. OECD (August 2011b) ‘Educational Evaluation and Assessment in Australia: Strengths,
Challenges and Policy Pointers’ (Paris: OECD).
20. Campbell, C. and Levin, B. (2009) ‘Using data to support educational improvement’, Educational
Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability 21:47-65. Van Barneveld, C. (2008) Using Data to
Improve Student Achievement, What Works? Research into Practice series, Research
Monograph no. 15 (Ontario: The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat and the Ontario Association
of Deans of Education). Australian Council for Educational Research (2008) ‘What does
research tell us about how schools and teachers can use data to inform teaching in ways that
lead to improvements in student achievement?’ The Digest Number 2 (Sydney: NSW Institute of
Teachers).
21. Matters, G. (2006) Using Data to Support Learning in Schools: Students, Teachers, Systems
(Camberwell, VIC: Australian Council for Educational Research).
22. Rowe, K. J. (2007) ‘Educational Effectiveness: The Importance of Evidence-Based Teaching
Practices for the Provision of Quality Teaching and Learning Standards’, Standards in
Education, ed. D. M. McInerney, S. Van Etten and M. Dowson (Carlotte, NC: Information Age
Publishing): 59.
23. Alton-Lee, A. (2011) ‘(Using) evidence for educational improvement’, Cambridge Journal of
Education 41.3: 303-329.
24. National Council on Teacher Quality (2012) Teacher Quality Bulletin (TQB) Monthly Newsletter,
June. Accessed at: http://www.nctq.org/p/tqb/viewBulletin.jsp?nlIdentifier=290
25. Pierce, R. and Chick, H. (2011) ‘Teachers’ intentions to use national literacy and numeracy
assessment data: a pilot study’, Australian Education Research 38: 433-447.
26. Lortie, D.C., (1975) Schoolteacher: a sociological study, University of Chicago Press.
27. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation & Scholastica. (2011) Primary Sources: America’s
Teachers on America’s Teachers, reported in The Atlantic Monthly, 17 April, 2012.
28. McIntyre, A. (2012) School improvement research [longitudinal study of 6,000 NSW public
school teachers], NSW Department of Education & Communities.
29. McIntyre, A. (2012) Survey of 700 NSW public school teachers on the most effective forms of
feedback, NSW Department of Education & Communities.
30. MacBeath, J., & Galton, M. (2008). Pressure and professionalism: the impact of recent and
present Government policies on the working lives of teachers in England. Paper presented at
21st International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Auckland, New Zealand,
p14.
31. David, J. L. (2008) ‘Collaborative Inquiry’, Educational Leadership 66.4: 87-88.
32. Sahlberg, P. (2011). Conversation with McIntyre, A., quoted in Continuous School Improvement
– What Matters Most, The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust: 39.
33. Rowe, K. J. (2007) ‘Educational Effectiveness: The Importance of Evidence-Based Teaching
Practices for the Provision of Quality Teaching and Learning Standards’, Standards in
Education, ed. D. M. McInerney, S. Van Etten and M. Dowson (Carlotte, NC: Information Age
Publishing): 59-92.
34. Hattie, J. (1999) ‘Influences on Student Learning’, Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Education,
University of Auckland, 2 August.
35. Borko, H., Roberts, S. A. and Shavelson, R. ‘Teachers’ Decision Making: from Alan J. Bishop to
Today’, Critical Issues in Mathematics Education, ed. P. Clarkson and N. Presmeg (New York:
Springer): 37-67. Bishop, A. J. (1976) ‘Decision-Making, the Intervening Variable’, Educational
Studies in Mathematics, 7.1-2: 41-47.
36. Crowther, F. (1997). ‘A Matter of Learning About Education’, The Courier Mail, 11 February,
1997: 15