Professor Yong Zhao, world-leading educational thinker, has spoken twice at ScotsIdeas events in the last two years on how we can be Reinventing Education at Scots. Seeing the strength of entrepreneurship already underway at Scots, he invited the College to join a small number of schools from around the world to participate in a special cross-cultural entrepreneurial learning program in China this August. 

Mr Jeff Mann and Mr Jonathan Le took four Year 9 boys to Chongqing, China, for two weeks to join the inaugural ICEE Festival. The main principle underlying the program is that every student has a unique set of talents and passions, and therefore can contribute value to others. Forty international students from the UK, US and Australia joined 200 local Chinese students to produce products which promote the city of Chongqing to the world. During this entrepreneurial process, the international students brought leadership skills and English speaking ability, whilst the Chinese students were experts on the treasures of their city. Eight production houses designed and created: video documentaries, coffee table books, websites or music videos.

The Scots boys had a rich experience of Chinese lifestyle (including squat toilets!) and made friends from across the globe. It was also a great opportunity to use their personal growth from Glengarry to serve others in leadership, as they each coordinated a team of five local students. Some of them commented that they had a new-found appreciation of how hard teachers work, and were either inspired or forever put off the idea of becoming a teacher! 

We look forward to further opportunities to be involved with Professor Zhao and ICEE Festivals in future. 

Mr Jeff Mann
Coordinator of Student Experience

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International Adventurer tells of his two attempts to climb K2, and staff panel describes the place of adventure at Scots.

In our second ScotsIdeas event for 2019, we welcomed international adventurer Adrian Hayes to tell the story of his recent attempts to climb the world’s second highest mountain. Hayes’ resume of adventures across the globe is formidable, including trekking to the South and North poles, crossing the Arabian desert by camel, traversing the length of Greenland by kite-ski, and climbing Mt Everest! Notwithstanding this amazing achievements, Hayes described to our keen audience of parents, staff and boys that climbing K2 is a level beyond even it’s taller counterpart, with few ascents and a deadly statistic of one in four K2 climbers not returning alive. The unrelenting steep angle of the mountain, technical rock and ice climbing, lack of flat ground for siting tents, and deep snow conditions turned back Hayes’ first expedition, however he prevailed the following year and managed to both reach the summit and return alive.

Hayes also discussed the motivation for people to undertake adventures, and suggested that we need to be honest with ourselves and others about how we search for significance through our activities. He drew a parallel to our society’s obsession with projecting a desired image through social media, and through gaining value through the display of material possessions.

A panel of Scots staff helped to connect Hayes’ extreme adventures with adventure in the life of a Scots boy. Kym Mcmaster (Coordinator of Experiential Education) explained how adventure fits into the Brave Hearts, Bold Minds philosophy of education at Scots, and is embodied in our Experiential Education approach of ‘learning through doing’. Jeff Grundy (Director of Glengarry) talked about the essential elements of adventure in the Glengarry program, and how this ‘scripted adventure’ prepares young men for adventure in the world. Former Scots staff member and doctoral researcher at ACU, Matthew Pfeiffer, described his research showed that adventurous experiences at Glengarry developed important life skills such as self concept, internal locus of control and resilience.

Stay tuned for further exciting opportunities to be involved in shaping the future of education in Australia through bold, new approaches to imagining learning at Scots. If you missed the presentation, you can soon view this and all past ScotsIdeas events at scotsresearch.org/scotsideas.

Jeff Mann
Coordinator of Student Experience

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2019 Leadership Program cohort at the Leadership Retreat

The 2018 Master Teacher Fellowships

The future effectiveness of education in Australia depends on the cultivation of expert communities of knowledge, practice and formation, bridging the divide between schools, universities and workplaces. This is the vision that lies at the heart of our Strategic Intent and our 125th anniversary campaign, Reinventing Education. It’s one thing to have a big vision, but another to make it happen ‘on the ground’, in the experience of every boy, every day. The broader picture on teacher improvement and efficacy indicates that teacher quality is the most important in-school factor in student achievement and learning outcomes (Hattie, 2003; OECD, 2005). How, then, do we work to help our teachers develop expertise? One important strand is encouraging highly experienced, inspiring and effective teachers to stay in the classroom and pass on their expertise to the next generation of teachers.

In light of this, Dr Caitlin Munday, Research Fellow (Professional Learning) has been piloting a Master Teacher Program over the past three years, exploring how teachers develop mastery and how they might pass it on through mentoring of those new to the profession. This program has proved quite transformative for the pilot group of master teachers and junior teachers. From 2018 the pilot is being taken to scale with the awarding of annual Master Teacher Fellowships in the Senior School to teachers of both experience and expertise, who have demonstrated excellence in the classroom, and who are recognised as pedagogical leaders within the College. These Fellowships provide professional pathways for keeping excellent teachers in the classroom while making their expertise available to the broader College community, boys and teachers alike. Over the course of the year, Master Teachers participate in a tripartite program of mentoring, research, and professional engagement within and beyond the College, centering on teacher development.

After a rigorous selection process, the 2018 Senior School Master Teacher Fellowships were awarded to:

• Mr Eric Gibbings (Science)
  
• Mr Mark Halstead (History)
  
• Ms Caudia Brin (PDHPE)
  
• Mr Patrick Barker (TAS)
  
• Mr Bryan O’Meally (Visual Arts)
  
• Mr Neil Smith (English)
  
• Mr Anthony Chandler (Maths)
  

Under the direction of Dr Munday, the Fellows are already well underway in mentoring their colleagues, designing research projects, and reflecting on what it means to develop genuine mastery.

We look forward to seeing how these exemplary teachers will demonstrate the Brave Hearts and Bold Minds educational philosophy of the College in action, and encourage others to do the same.

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The unique and compelling adventure of a Scots education has, from the very beginning, called for staff to be on a quest for excellence, striving for expertise. The Right Reverend James Smith White, in the inaugural address in 1893, proudly said that the College’s teachers would be men (and, subsequently, women) who had ‘won the highest honours in the University of Sydney, have had long experience at teaching Australians, and to whom teaching is a work of faith, a labour of love and a patience of hope.’

One of the critical challenges for education in Australia is the development and concentration of genuine expertise. A persistent focus on the acquisition of skills abstracted from depth of subject knowledge, the ubiquity of instant information in a digital world, and, most recently and alarmingly, a disdain for traditional sources of authoritative comment (think ‘fake news’) — all such shifts challenge the place of the teacher in the classroom and in wider society. While there is a vast wealth of tacit knowledge in the teaching profession, and there are incredible examples every day of genuine and transformative learning taking place, much in education that is described as ‘expert’ or ‘best practice’ is, in reality, just ‘what seems to work in this particular setting, or so we claim’.

For teachers, schools and whole educational systems to really know that their considerable energies of time and talent and creativity are resulting in real growth for their students, we need to recover the meaning of true expertise. We do not need more educational gurus hawking the latest ideas, techniques and programs. Far from it! Developing expertise means cultivating a culture of research, where staff (and boys) are constantly asking reflective questions about what we do, exploring possible answers based on the best literature from the academy, designing and piloting interventions that fit the particular challenges of their setting, reviewing how well they work, trying again, and taking successful ideas rapidly to scale. A cycle of diagnosis, intervention, and evaluation is the key to moving from success by accident to success by design. At Scots we call this our Patribus Knowledge Model, moving towards a more rigorous approach to understanding how knowledge is created and passed on, how it is applied in ‘real-world’ settings, and how it forms the lives of young men.

In this vein, this week’s Principal’s Assembly boys were introduced to staff in the College who hold PhDs, encouraging them to seek curiosity and pursue ‘higher learning for the common weal’. Such staff include:

• Dr Caitlin Munday, who is also a research fellow in the Scots research department, and a teacher of Studies of Religion. She conducted her PhD in education and teaching.
• Dr John Montgomery is the Head of Curriculum here at Scots, and completed his PhD in the field of drama education.
• Dr Sara Zitner is a visual arts teacher and the director of the Artist-in-Residence Program. Her PhD was in visual arts.
• Dr Arun Mehta is a high-level mathematics teacher. He completed his PhD in material science and engineering in Australia after leaving India.
• Dr Tom Cerni is the Head of Counselling Services at Scots. He completed his PhD in the field of applied psychology, specifically looking at transformational leadership.
• Dr Ian PM Lambert is the Principal and completed his PhD at Cambridge in education.
• Dr Hugh Chilton is Director of Research and Professional Learning and completed his PhD in intellectual and religious history.

A number of other staff are working towards their own higher degrees through our cohort model with the University of Newcastle, as well as other PhD tracks. We look forward to developing our expertise within the College, transforming the experience of boys and staff, and sharing our knowledge with others. In so doing we aim to fulfil the calling of our founders to promote ‘higher learning for the common weal’.

Dr Hugh Chilton
Director of Research and Professional Learning

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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.