A logic of appropriation: enacting national testing (NAPLAN) in Australia

This paper explores how the strong policy push to improve students’ results on national literacy and numeracy tests – the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) – in the Australian state of Queensland influenced schooling practices, including teachers’ learning. The paper argues the focus upon improved test scores on NAPLAN within schools was the result of sustained policy pressure for increased attention to such foci at national and state levels, and a broader political context in which rapid improvement in test results was considered imperative. However, implementation, (or what this paper describes more accurately as ‘enactment’) of the policy also revealed NAPLAN as providing evidence of students’ learning, as useful for grouping students to help improve their literacy and numeracy capabilities, and as a stimulus for teacher professional development. Drawing upon the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, the paper argues that even as more political concerns about comparing NAPLAN results with other states were recognised by educators, the field of schooling practices was characterised by a logic of active appropriation of political concerns about improved test scores by teachers, for more educative purposes. In this way, policy enactment in schools is characterised by competing interests, and involving not just interpretation, translation and critique but active appropriation of political concerns by teachers

Funding, reputation and targets: the discursive logics of high-stakes testing

This paper provides insights into teacher and school-based administrators’ responses to policy demands for improved outcomes on high-stakes, standardised literacy and numeracy tests in Australia. Specifically, the research reveals the effects of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), and associated policies, in the state of Queensland. Drawing suggestively across Michel Foucault’s notions of disciplinary power and subjectivity, and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of social fields, the research utilises interviews with teachers and school-based administrators to reveal how high-stakes, standardised testing practices served to discursively constitute performative teacher subjectivities around issues of funding, teacher and school reputation and target-setting within what is described as the ‘field of schooling practices’. The paper argues that the contestation evident within this field is also reflective and constitutive of more educative schooling discourses and practices, even as performative logics dominate

NAPLAN and the performance regime in Australian Schooling: a review of the policy context

The National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a Federal Government initiative directed at providing parents, teachers, principals, state and federal governments with diagnostic information on student performance. As a national performance measurement system (PMS), its implementation has been swift, although contentious. It sits at the nexus of the Rudd-Gillard education reform efforts and is positioned as the tool for effecting change. This summary attempts to describe the complex policy context from which the Rudd-Gillard education reforms emerged. It reflects on the contested relationship between the commonwealth, state and territory governments, school accountability, the development of a national curriculum, the emergence of the knowledge economy and an international policy agenda as well as teacher professionalism. It then examines the justifications behind NAPLAN and briefly details the strategy employed to ensure its successful implementation as a PMS within a wider performance regime

Focusing on the learner: charting a way forward for Australian education

This paper argues that Australia is unlikely to reach its goal of becoming a top 5 nation in education by 2025 without a major change in education policies.Executive summaryThe Australia in the Asian Century White Paper has set the laudable goal that: “By 2025, Australia will be ranked as a top five country in the world for the performance of our students in reading, science and mathematics literacy and for providing our children with a high-quality and high-equity education system”. This is a challenging goal and it demands that every child receives a first class education; however, this paper argues that the policies currently on the agenda will not deliver the standard of education required.The big picture for Australia’s education system is being held back by a confused and often incoherent debate. While discussion at the political level focuses on issues such as funding, public/private schooling, principal autonomy, performance pay, student and teacher tests and sector comparisons, policy makers risk oversimplifying teaching and missing the most important point.When it comes to achieving the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper’s goal, these issues are relatively irrelevant and lacking a strong evidence base on how they make an impact on student learning. Moreover, they imply a simplistic view of teaching as nothing more than information transmission and behaviour management, with an underlying message that for Australia’s education system to improve, teachers just need to work harder.This paper argues that teaching is far from simplistic but rather a complex, challenging, clinical practice profession that requires high calibre individuals. It outlines a way forward that has the potential to make a significant impact on the learning outcomes of all young Australians, focusing on the issues that matter: teachers and teaching

The shared work of learning: lifting educational achievement through collaboration

This report argues that leaving the momentum of educational improvement to the status quo will result in widening inequality and stagnation in Australia. Key findings: Overall, student performance in Australia is not improving. But some schools in Australia, serving highly disadvantaged students and families, are successfully using collaboration to support student achievement. Common features of the practices in these diverse schools can be applied to strategies for wider, systemic change. This research examines how the schools and their partners use: Professional collaboration to support, sustain, evaluate and refine professional learning, and to access expertise, data and relevant practice. Local collaboration with other schools, universities, employers and community organisations to provide structure and resources for student achievement. Collaboration with students, parents and local community to build trust and social capital. Collaboration – the sharing of effort, knowledge and resources in the pursuit of shared goals – is created through a wide range of flexible, trust-based relationships. The high impact schools featured in this research: actively seek connections and resources that create value for students; develop ‘local learning systems’ to translate connections and resources into concrete actions; and apply a consistent rationale, focused on student learning, to choose and prioritise collaborative projects and relationships

What works best: evidence based practices to help improve NSW student performance

\u27What works best\u27 brings together seven themes from the growing bank of evidence we have for what works to improve student educational outcomes. The seven themes addressed here are:  1. High expectations 2. Explicit teaching 3. Effective feedback 4. Use of data to inform practice 5. Classroom management 6. Wellbeing 7. Collaboration These themes offer helpful ways of thinking about aspects of teaching practice but they are not discrete. Rather, they overlap and connect with one another in complex ways. For example, providing timely and effective feedback to students is another element of explicit teaching – two of the more effective types of feedback direct students’ attention to the task at hand and to the way in which they are processing that task. Similarly, being explicit about the learning goals of a lesson and the criteria for success gives high expectations a concrete form, which students can understand and aim for. Wellbeing and quality teaching are mutually reinforcing – if students with high levels of general wellbeing are more likely to be engaged productively with learning, it is also true that improving intellectual engagement can improve wellbeing.  The seven themes are not confined to what happens in classrooms. While they offer sound strategies for individual teachers to consider as part of their repertoires, evidence suggests that their effectiveness is stronger when they are implemented as whole-school approaches. For example, the literature indicates that teachers are more likely to make effective use of student data when working together than when working alone. Ideally, everyone associated with a school – including school leaders, parents, students and community members – will share a commitment not only to the school’s vision for development but to the mechanisms for achieving these goals, and will engage collaboratively in responding to the challenge

Victorian Aboriginal economic strategy 2013-2020

The Victorian Aboriginal Economic Strategy was launched by the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs on 6 December 2013. The Strategy leverages the strengths of Aboriginal Victorians and the State economy to build opportunity and economic prosperity and deliver better life outcomes for Aboriginal Victorians. Economic participation and development are central to the Government\u27s reform agenda for closing the gap, the Victorian Aboriginal Affairs Framework 2013–2018. The Strategy extends from education, to more job opportunities with career pathways, and growing Aboriginal business enterprise and investment. Actions under the Strategy build on efforts across the Victorian Government and leverage private sector partners, to deliver strong outcomes in education, training employment and business enterprise. A Victorian Aboriginal Economic Board will be established in 2014 to support delivery of the Strategy, cut through red tape and build strategic connections with industries and the finance sector. The development of the Strategy has been informed by Ministerial Roundtables and targeted consultations held during 2013, discussions at the Victorian Aboriginal Economic Development Summit hosted in 2012 and the work of the Victorian Aboriginal Economic Development Group. The Strategy is available at the following links: Victorian Aboriginal Economic Strategy 2013 - 2020 (Word 3.51 MB) Victorian Aboriginal Economic Strategy 2013 - 2020 (PDF 4 MB

Equity program principals : policy mediation for equity

This study investigates the ways in which six principals from a range of government school contexts in NSW, Australia, implemented the Smarter Schools Low SES (SSLSES) School Communities National Partnership program to achieve equity in their schools. After analysing the ways in which principals were made accountable and positioned by policy discourse underpinned by economic rationalist principles, the thesis explores how the six principals mediated policy accountabilities for student equity. Using a number of Foucauldian conceptual lenses, each principal’s practices are examined as they implemented accountability, leadership and quality teaching governmentalities of the policy reforms. The study is underpinned by constructionist epistemology to better enable an understanding of the complex interrelationships of principals, as enactors, within the contexts of their schools; and as subjects, in interaction with educational policy discourses. Its design is informed by two main methodological approaches comprising a critical policy discourse analysis, and case studies of a sample of six SSLSES National Partnership principals. The policy analysis utilised Gee’s (2005) ‘D’/’d’iscourse concepts. Case study methods utilized semi-structured interviews with each principal and staff and/or community recommended by the principal, together with analysis of relevant artefacts. Data gathered was examined using Foucauldian notions of power, governmentality, resistance, ethics and technologies of the self to investigate how principals negotiated governmentality discourses directing their implementation. By undertaking the analysis of principals’ practices in selected domains of accountability, leadership and quality teaching, the thesis demonstrates that power relations and governmentality operated on and through principals to create them as disciplined subjects who were largely compliant to specific accountability pressures. This included acceding to standardised testing regimes, entrepreneurialism, and targeted continuous school improvement practices. However, principals also demonstrated the further capacity for contestation, re-articulation and mediation of a range of other key governmentalities, designed to normalize them, but seen to be at odds with their school community’s priorities, the principal’s own subjectivities and/or their vision for equity. Foucault’s notions about power relations, ethics and resistance were important in the study to show where and how principals operated counter to the conduct required of them in their local contexts. The study also demonstrated how policy governmentalities can be appropriated in ethical ways to implement reforms for equity. The study’s importance stems from its governmentality approach which demonstrates that in key domains, principals are not only enactors wholly ‘’responsibilised’ by policy accountabilities and discourse, but are educational leaders enmeshed within complex histories, with ethical stances and acceding also to the contingencies of their local contexts. They are therefore careful and selective mediators and purveyors of both normalizing and resistant practices and principal-co-producers of complex reform in the education marketplace. Despite disciplining practices of accountability regimes, principals have seized opportunities for agency over equity practices in their complex school contexts

Out of care, into university: raising higher education access and achievement of care leavers

Around 40,000 children are estimated to require out-of-home care in Australia and this number has risen every year over the past decade (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2014a). Young people up to 18 years who are unable to live with their birth families are placed in different forms of out-of-home care, including kinship care, foster care, residential care, family group homes, and independent living. People who spent time in out-of-home care before the age of 18 are subsequently referred to as care leavers when they transition out of the system. Care leavers rarely transition to higher education. They are largely excluded from the level of education that brings the highest wage premiums and lifetime rewards. Despite their extremely low university participation rates, there is no national agenda for improvement. This research project was conducted by La Trobe University and funded through an external research grant provided by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) at Curtin University. This report aims to provide the basis for such an agenda by highlighting the nature and extent of the problem, and suggesting practical solutions within both the education and community service sectors. Our research adopted a mixed methods approach and included: a literature review; an examination of national data sets; an online survey of public universities in Australia; and interviews with senior representatives from major out-of-home care service providers. We provide recommendations targeted to the Australian Government, state and territory governments, higher education institutions, and community service organisations. Three reforms are required to improve the access and achievement of care leavers in higher education: The collection of nationally consistent data on higher education access and outcomes for care leavers. Policy reform within the education and community service sectors including greater recognition of this under-represented student cohort and support for the transition of young people from out-of-home care to adulthood. An over-arching need for cultural change that challenges the often low expectations for care leavers