Ms Brittany Shapcott shares why she chose to undertake her journey into the vocation of teaching through the Teaching Schools Alliance Sydney.

Teaching is a funny business. It’s a science and an art, an activity that is not just complicated (like putting a man on the moon) but complex, with infinite variables shaping the way a child learns and grows to maturity. It’s also often a fairly solitary business, with much of what a teacher does happening on their own, in their classroom, with their students. This has some real strengths. Even when increasingly burdened with regulations and compliance requirements, teachers still have a lot of agency to work with their students in ways they see best. It also has some real weaknesses. It’s hard to get better when you’re rarely seeing the work of others and having others see your work. Teacher education and professional learning is best when it’s in what the sociologist Etienne Wenger called ‘communities of practice’ — environments where our work, our beliefs, our thinking is positively shaped by those around us.

That’s one of the big reasons why we have a Research Office, seeking to bring teachers together in communities of practice, and open up the classroom and the College to shape and be shaped by best practice beyond ourselves. One of the most significant projects we have been part of is the establishment in 2020 of the Teaching Schools Alliance Sydney. With five Sydney schools coming together to train their own teachers, the TSAS uses the time-proven Clinical Teaching Model to encourage bright and vocation-oriented Christians into the teaching profession and form their thinking and practice, not just in textbooks, but ‘on the job’ from day one. 

Trainees work 1-day per week with a Teacher Mentor while completing their Bachelor or Master of Teaching in an online and face-to-face cohort. Rather than conducting a few practicum placements, they graduate with up to 350 days of classroom experience, as well as all that comes with being part of a school community. We have been delighted to see four Trainee Teachers join the College since last year: Ms Brittany Shapcott, Ms Tara Harman, Mr Ian Kim and Ms Elena Petschack. They have all been a blessing to the students and teachers they serve, and will go on to significant careers in education.

Dr Caitlin Munday leads the TSAS in addition to her part-time role at the College as Research Fellow (Professional Learning).

To find out more about this unique program, please visit the Teaching School Alliance Sydney website.

The Alliance be holding its final virtual information session for 2021 via Zoom on Tuesday 22 September, 7:30-8:15pm. Details and registration can be found here.

If you know someone who would make an outstanding Christian teacher, please share the details and invite them to contact Dr Munday, Director of the Teaching Schools Alliance Sydney, at director@teachingschoolsalliancesydney.org.

Dr Hugh Chilton
Director of Research and Professional Learning

Last Sunday, the Scots Research Office hosted the 3 Minute Thesis Competition during the College’s 125 Years Open Day. This competition was open to all staff members who had big ideas to share or were engaged in ongoing research. They were each given 3 minutes to present their key ideas in a succinct and engaging manner with the audience. A number of staff members stepped forward and presented on a large array of fascinating topics as listed below:

1. Dr Caitlin Munday: Constructing Community Within the Creative Arts Classroom: A Case Study
​2. Mr Jeff Mann: Issues for Boys in Middle High School – What Can We Do About It?
3. Mr Matt Pfeiffer: The Effects of Outdoor Education on Adolescent Self-Concept, Life Effectiveness and Locus of Control
4. Mr Chris Metcalfe: Blended Learning – A Way Forward
5. Mr Toby Castle: Western Privilege and Its Anodyne Influence in Cross-Cultural Peace-
Making
6. Mr Reece Condon: Experiential Education, Flourishing and Emotional Intelligence
7. Mr Eric Gibbings: The Tyranny of Numbers
8. Ms Monique Fewkes: Serving the Under-Served in Education

It was a real inspiration to see the ideas and passion brought forth by the Scots educators, indicating the growing expertise across the College. Members of the audience that included staff members, Old Boys, parents and students were duly impressed with the quality and depth of each presentation. Winners were ultimately decided based on a live voting system, of which Dr Caitlin Munday came in 1st, Mr Matthew Pfeiffer came in 2nd and Ms Monique Fewkes came in 3rd. 

The Scots Research Office would like to thank all members of the College who have played a part in making this event a successful one.

Ms Rachel Pan
Research Projects Officer

Last Thursday night a very large audience from the College and the wider public enjoyed a stimulating and engaging evening at the 2017 Clark Lecture by Professor David Smith. Exploring the 'social imaginary' - the values embedded in our actual practices and not just our stated ideals - he demonstrated the increasingly materialist and utilitarian themes in language textbooks since the Enlightenment. He challenged teachers and school leaders to rethink the habits in our classrooms and in our school life to better orient them towards the formation of character, service and a vision for human flourishing. You can read more of Professor Smith's thinking in this ABC Religion and Ethics article on 'Faith in Schools: What values are communicated in our teaching and learning?'

Professor Smith's visit to the College over the past two weeks also included seminars with staff on faith, language and teaching practices, keynotes on cultural difference at the Ethos Conference. we held at St Andrew's College, and other sessions with staff and students. The Clark Lecture Series, now in its fourth year, aims to inspire the best of thinking about faith, learning and leadership by bringing to Sydney the world's finest scholars. We look forward to seeing you at next year's Clark Lecture Series in our 125th Anniversary, with Professor John Haldane of the University of St Andrews, who has recently been named one of the 50 most influential living philosophers.

Find out more about the Clark Lectures here.

In very large schools like Scots with boys from ages three through to 18, there can be the perception that most of the deep reflection on educational practice takes place in the Senior School, when things 'get serious'. When you look at the Early Learning Centre, however, that assumption could not be further from the truth. Under the leadership of Mrs Gaye Entwistle, the ELC has built a rigorous, reflection-rich professional culture, seeking to provide the best experiential education for our youngest boys in a critical stage of their development. That culture was on display this week as each full-time teacher presented the fruits of their action research on developing a philosophy for the ELC that integrates the best of the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood formation. This project was conducted as part of a joint study with the Early Childhood Education team at Macquarie University. Mrs Entwistle explained the process of collaboration between academics, teachers, boys and families, the questions teachers explored, and the fruit of this research in enriching practice:

A focus group of families and boys were given opportunity to meet with the lecturers to discuss the heart of the Centre. What was the evident practice that made the Centre unique? How was the impact of the reflective Reggio Emilia practice part of the Centre's philosophy?

Each teacher then chose an action research question and became part of a practitioner inquiry to research the question in their class. The research was diverse and was refined over a year as small groups and teachers refined their thinking and saw evidence of change in their practice. Data was collected, practice changed and re-evaluation in teams and classes meant at the final presentation of the work, teachers had not only found some answers but continued with a further question or line of inquiry. Many felt it had finished with a new beginning. Shared ideas and experiences have provoked new directions with year levels and teams reexamining documentation, classroom designs, furniture, small group combinations and programs.

Parent participation has given us a great collection of ideas and information to rebuild our website and to offer different ways of communicating our learning while reinforcing the much loved portfolios and celebration materials we currently share.

Questions explored included:

Gaye Entwistle
What starts aggressive play in the playground?
Kindergarten

Deborah McMurtrie
How does the outside environment impact learning?
Cubs

Kitty Joson
How do we normalise IT in the Lions program?
Lions

Christa Sheaffe
Do parents value/understand our practice or do they think we should be more formal?
Lions

Kathy Gibson
How can I prioritise reading skills and strategies during guided reading time?
Kindergarten

Markie Calle
What strategies impact phonetic development in the EALD boys?

Sam Nealson
How do we build a class community?
Kindergarten

Sarah Jane Marmion
Can problem solving maths strategies be productive in low skill sets?
Year 1

Adelaide Brown
How can I utilise the best class arrangement with boy's voices to build community?
Year 1

Penny Ryder
What impact is fidgeting having on learning?
Year 1

Kate Stoddard
How can I encourage a student voice in curating the class displays?
Year 1


The research confirmed our list of essential philosophy components in the Centre.

• The agency of the child is paramount.
• Knowing the child deeply is the beginning to growing.
• Choice of the child is heard.
• Voice of the child in the environment of the room and Centre, in documentation and celebrations of learning is important for connection and comprehension.
• The environment must be a place of provocation to learning both beautiful and engaging.
• The experience of play is needed to reinforce and consolidate learning in a social, linguistic and physical domains.
• The environment is the third teacher.
• The differentiation of the program to meet the child's needs is foundational to design of programs.
• Connection and community are important for a sense of belonging, confidence and respect.
• All boys can contribute to learning.

These key points will now become the basis for our document outlining the philosophy for the Centre. We are not a Reggio Emilia 'all of us thinking a bit differently about it' school. We are The Scots College and we do Early Childhood Education this way. We seek to reflect world's best practice, influences and research, in an Australian context.

How do we engage boys in transformative learning experiences? That is the question every teacher at Scots asks every day as we seek to bring out the best in our boys and form them into fine young men. To help us create rigorous, reflection-rich learning designs connected to real-world practices and places, the College has been developing its own model of Experiential Education in line with our Strategic Intent 2015-2025.
 
Last week a number of teachers from across all areas of the College had the opportunity to encounter, understand and begin to apply Experiential Education (or ‘ExpEd’) practices at a special workshop conducted by the Glengarry Leadership Team and the Scots Research Centre. Staff began the day in the blackness of the basement of the Main Building, simulating the caving activity boys undertake at Glengarry. They were guided through a modified version of the Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle – framing, immersion, direct debriefing, bridge-building and assimilating – and shown how an outdoors experience such as caving can be powerfully connected to other curriculum areas, discussing Plato’s conception of the cave and listening to poetry on the nature of darkness and light in Christian formation.
 
Staff then participated in interactive sessions exploring the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of ExpEd at Scots, before exploring ways of embedding it in their own practice. Hearing from exemplars such as Mr Phil Atkinson’s Year 9 Mathematics Fishing Hike, Year 10 Australian Business Week and the Vanuatu Mission Trip, we had the opportunity to imagine the rich possibilities for transformative learning experiences which we could provide for our boys. A number of pilot programs are now taking shape to test and refine our model of ExpEd, while wider training and conference programs are being developed to further enrich our collective understanding of ExpEd. 

This week the Preparatory School enjoyed hosting Dr Ron Ritchhart, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Graduate School of Education and Principal Investigator of the Cultures of Thinking Project. A well-known educational researcher, Dr Ritchhart has been working with various teachers across the College over the past two years to help us think harder about developing the ‘intellectual character’ of our boys. Dr Ritchhart works with schools and universities around the world to create ‘cultures of thinking’, where the thinking of a group is ‘valued, visible and actively promoted’, and where students are equipped with the meta-cognitive tools to articulate not just what they have been taught but what they have learnt and understood. You can watch footage of Dr Ritchhart’s presentation to Preparatory School parents here and find more of his resources at www.ronritchhart.com.

ScotsResearch also conducted an interview with Dr Ritchhart about his work on the Cultures of Thinking Project, his understanding of the place of thinking routines in experiential education, and his views on the relationship between thinking in schools, universities and industry. You can watch the full video above, as well as other Research Bites here. 

How can we motivate our young men to achieve their best?
Over 100 parents, staff and members of the community enjoyed a stimulating evening at the Motivating Boys: A ScotsIdeas Symposium. Our panel of guest speakers offered thoughtful, honest and entertaining answers to the audience's questions about such topics as:

• Components of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic
• Differences between boys and girls
• Myths around the need for more male teachers
• Technology and distractions
• Boys and reading
• Feedback and goal-setting in sporting and academic settings
• The pros and cons of homework

Guest panelists included:

Professor Herb Marsh, Australian Catholic University
Recognised as one of the world's most productive educational psychologists and the 11th most productive researcher across all disciplines of psychology, he is an expert in measuring motivation and teaching effectiveness.

Dr Helen Proctor, Senior Lecturer in Education at The University of Sydney
Author of several books in education history and policy, including Controversies in Education (2015), A History of Australian Schooling (2014), and School Choice: How parents negotiate the new school market in Australia (2009).

Mr Scott Monk, novelist and editor at The Australian
Author of acclaimed novel Raw (an HSC set text), Beyond the Knock Knock Door and other books that have ‘got boys into reading’, now an editor at The Australian newspaper.

Mr Lee Morley, The Scots College
A former professional rugby player in the UK, now a Scots Business Studies and Economics teacher and winner of the College’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 2014.

Video of the symposium can be viewed here.

Scots seeks to be a place where teachers bring to the classroom deep knowledge of their discipline and deliberate reflection on their approach to teaching boys, drawing on and contributing to the best of pedagogical and discipline specific research. A number of staff at the College are engaged in 'action research', where the lines between theory and practice are broken down and teachers work collaboratively to design interventions in their own classrooms or programs. In the latest Research Bite, Dr Sarah Zitner, an accomplished artist (whose work includes the much loved statue of a Scots boy outside Aspinall House), formerly a lecturer in art theory and practice at the University of New South Wales and now a visual arts teacher at The Scots College, reflects on her own journey to bring together academic and artistic worlds, as well as recent experimentation with collaborative teaching practice in visual arts classrooms. See here for other Research Bites profiling staff research at The Scots College.

31 October is World Teachers' Day. The Australian Council for Educational Research shares some findings on the characteristics of inspiring teachers. 
What would you add to the list?

Why aren't boys reading as well as girls? And what can be done to counter underachievement? In response to the widely-documented 'boys' literacy crisis' and the gender gap revealed in Year 5 NAPLAN and PISA results, Scots Prep teacher Ms Donna Procter set out to tackle such questions. As part of The Scots College University of Sydney Masters of Education (Leadership) Program, Ms Procter reviewed academic literature on the problems of boys' literacy and conducted a research project examining attitudes to reading and testing a variety of classroom literacy strategies.

Ms Procter identified four factors influencing boys' reading ability: genes, cultural perceptions of 'real' masculinity, socio-economic status, and school-based programs. Using a wide-ranging survey, focus groups and teacher interviews, she gained detailed insight into the reading habits of Year 5 boys. She found that only 15 per cent of students were reading with parents/caregivers at home, and only three per cent with a father or older male figure - a significant concern given how much research points to the need for boys to read aloud to an adult every night and see good reading habits modelled to them. Vocabulary, intonation and fluency are greatly enhanced when students regularly read and are read to at home.

Utilising a number of interventions, including online reading programs, drama-based novel studies and cross-age buddy reading groups, Ms Procter explored strategies teachers could use to improve boys' engagement and effectiveness in reading. She found all three interventions equally increased boys' literacy abilities, with students especially engaging with the Drama Program, learning both literacy and empathy.

Ms Procter reflects on the opportunities in teacher-parent collaboration and classroom creativity for boys to enjoy and excel in their reading:

The full report on Ms Procter's research project is published in the Scots Research Papers series, no. 2 (February 2014), which can be downloaded here.