Blog Posts

Professor Nicholas Aroney delivers 2019 Clark Lectures on law, religion and education

6/11/2019

Professor Aroney with members of the Centre for Public Christianity, for whose podcast 'Life and Faith' he was interviewed during his visit

Towards the end of 2019, the College hosted leading constitutional law academic Professor Nicholas Aroney as the 2019 Clark Fellow for a week. Named in honour of eminent scientist, inventor of the bionic ear, and Scots Old Boy ('51), Professor Graeme Clark AC, the annual Clark Lecture Series aims to inspire the best of thinking about faith, learning and leadership by bringing to Sydney the world’s finest scholars.

Professor Nicholas Aroney is Professor of Constitutional Law at The University of Queensland. He is also a Fellow of the Centre for Public, International and Comparative Law, a Research Fellow of Emmanuel College at The University of Queensland, a Fellow of the Centre for Law and Religion at Emory University and an External Member of the Islam, Law and Modernity research program at Durham University.

While at the College, Professor Aroney led a number of seminars, forums and lectures for staff, students, parents, principals and leading educators from other schools. Professor Aroney navigated the College community through the complex conversation of law and religious freedom currently taking place in Australia.

His visit to the College culminated with his keynote address at the annual Clark Lecture. Held at the Sydney Opera House, Professor Aroney explored the intersectionality of Law, Education, and Religion, discussing the manner in which these pathways of formation shaped a good society in Australia’s current day and age. It was a tremendous honour hosting Professor Nicholas Aroney as the 2019 Clark Fellow, and we look forward to seeing many members of our community at the 2020 Clark Lecture with distinguished parent educator Professor Nancy Hill, who holds the Charles Bigelow Chair of Education at Harvard.

To find out more about Professor Nicholas Aroney, please click on the link here.

Mr Toby Castle
Research Officer

Scots staff shaping global expertise in the Character and Care of Boys

25/10/2019

Mr Duncan Kendall and Ms Elisabeth Smith presenting their IBSC Action Research on the power of old boys’ stories to develop character in Year 5 boys.

The 2019 International Boys School Coalition conference was preceded, as usual, by a series of meetings of the Board of Trustees and Committees. The Principal currently serves on the Board of Trustees as Vice-Chair (Australasia) and Chair of the Research Committee, where he is supported by Dr Hugh Chilton (Director of Research and Professional Learning) and Dr Caitlin Munday (Research Fellow). Leaders discussed the challenges and opportunities facing boys' schools, and ways the IBSC can continue to be a leading voice. One such exciting initiative launching soon is a major research project, a major study of the impact of new and emerging technologies (including AI) on the learning relationships in boys' schools. We look forward to contributing to this important research.

Our membership with IBSC also allows opportunities for staff members to participate in Action Research projects. Mr Duncan Kendall and Ms Elizabeth Smith were the 2018/2019 IBSC Action Research Participants. Over a period of two years, they participated in an Action Research Project of their choosing. The topic of their research was 'The Power of Old Boys' Stories to Develop Character'. They believe that through the storytelling of Old Boys' personal narratives and Year 5 Boys' narratives, meaningful connections could be made for students, with boys deepening their understanding of these qualities and how to enact them.

Four recent Old Boys of the College were chosen to share their personal stories, which richly exemplified one of the
attributes of the ‘Fine Scots Boy’ (Faith, Courage, Compassion or Integrity). The Old Boys were specifically chosen
because of the strength of their personal character and exemplary role modelling for younger students, their age
and the connection their stories had to boy’s interests.

After sharing his personal story in a campus wide context, the Old Boys and Year 5 Boys took part in a ‘fireside chat’,
sharing their personal stories together, debating the attribute, answering questions and together considering how
they could display these attributes in everyday contexts of their own lives. This action was intended to develop a
real-life, meaningful connection to the qualities of a ‘Fine Scots Boy’, thereby developing a rich understanding.

Key findings from the Action Research Project are revealed below:

1. The attributes of a Fine Scots Boy became personalised: They changed from being abstract, to being lived out
in a physical example of the Old Boys.

2. Boys learnt the meaning of the qualities to their own lives and asked for guidance and wisdom from the Old
Boys on how to apply these qualities.

3. Boys could communicate through their own personal stories their understanding, explaining why the
attributes were important and how to apply them to their lives.

4. The ‘fireside chat’ changed the hierarchical structure usually observed in a classroom. The Old Boys and Year 5
students felt it was a shared experience, developing community and camaraderie.

Scots boys learn entrepreneurship at Chinese summer school

13/9/2019

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

Leading Philosopher shares what works best in growing boys' character

12/6/2019

As part of our Patribus Initiative in educating for the Character and Care for Fine Scots Boys, last Thursday evening an audience of boys, parents, staff and friends of the College were treated to a masterful talk by leading American philosopher of character Professor Christian Miller (Wake Forest University). His talk, entitled ‘The Character Gap: What it is and why it matters for raising boys’, addressed what we mean by character, why it matters, and what approaches are more or less effective in helping boys develop it.

The Character Gap from imageseven on Vimeo.

Drawing on his recent book The Character Gap: How Good Are We? (Oxford, 2018), which reviews the insights on moral behaviour from hundreds of psychological studies over the past 50 years, he argued that:

Moral character, or virtue, leads to morally good actions and motives, displayed stably and reliably over time in a variety of situations.
We are generally not as good as we think. While we are not generally morally bankrupt, there is a significant gap between what we want to be and what we tend to be — a ‘character gap’. For example, studies on the ‘bystander effect’ reveal that the vast majority of us will follow the crowd rather than do what we know is right.
It’s best in schools to concentrate on a few, developmentally appropriate virtues consonant with the values of the school, rather than a broad swathe.

Strategies for promoting virtue at home and at school can vary in their effectiveness. Those which the evidence suggests are more likely to succeed include:

reminding boys of morally good behaviour (e.g. by an honour code);
encouraging boys to emulate virtuous role models (e.g. consider which films to watch and discuss as a family);
teaching boys about the virtues and helping them put them into practice (e.g. via a gratitude journal);
teaching boys about their own character flaws, such as hidden cognitive biases;
encouraging boys to engage in Christian practices (e.g. prayer, giving, worship) which have character improvement as as byproduct (e.g. humility, generosity, gratitude)

For more parent and teacher resources from Professor Miller, visit The Character Portal. If you are interested in finding out more about how we are building expertise in Character and Care, please don’t hesitate to contact me or Dr Tom Cerni, Head of Counselling, Character and Care.

Dr Hugh Chilton
Director of Research and Professional Learning

International Adventurer Adrian Hayes speaks on 'Adventure' at ScotsIdeas

12/4/2019

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

Leadership Development

8/3/2019

2019 Leadership Program cohort at the Leadership Retreat

Dr Lambert speaking with Mr Leigh Hatcher at the Leadership Summit

For several years I had a quote on my wall from the late Rear Admiral Sir David Martin KCMG AO, an Old Boy of the College, the man who officially opened Glengarry, and one of New South Wales’s most respected governors. As a 16 year old I had discovered it on a crumpled up piece of paper lying on the floor of my school’s locker room, and was so struck by its sentiment that I had it stuck up beside my desk. While its precise wording is lost to me, it went something like this: ‘Management is about budgets, floppy discs and spreadsheets. Leadership is about inspiration, motivation, will. It is a matter of the heart.'

Equipping our staff across the College to lead in this spirit is central to our mission of serving God faithfully by inspiring boys to learn, lead and serve as they strive for excellence together. The Research Office runs two main professional learning programs aimed at developing our current and future leaders. The Leadership Program, launched in 2017, provides an applied, cohort-based approach to developing the knowledge, skills and values of aspiring leaders in the College. The 2019 cohort of 18 staff commenced the program in February with a retreat in the Southern Highlands focused on the nature of servant leadership. Candidates are now underway working in teams on a design thinking-based approach to improving aspects of College life such as communications, administration, and pastoral care.

New for 2019, the Leadership Summits are aimed at bringing together all staff in middle and upper leadership roles to be inspired and equipped to build our culture and achieve our strategy. Our Term 1 Summit featured the Principal sharing about what it means to know oneself as a leader, along with practical training workshops on communication, mediation, self-care and building a great team culture. One attendee had this to say:

‘Listening to the Principal discuss his own leadership style, transformative approach or 'over the horizon' considerations, made me think deeply and reflect about my leadership and the people I work with here at the College, as well as the boys and parents I interact with. The words humility and service really stood out. Leadership really requires a human touch and sensitivity to consider those around you more than ourselves.’

Dr Hugh Chilton
Director of Research and Professional Learning

Teaching for Character (TFC) Groups - Curiousity

8/2/2019

Dr Caitlin Munday talks about: why TFC teams, why curiosity, and what excites her about this year’s professional learning.

Curiosity quote:
“Research shows unequivocally that when people are curious about something, they learn more, and better”
Susan Engel (2013), The Case for Curiosity.

We kicked off our staff exploration into Curiosity this week, with 34 teams of staff across the College meeting to discuss how they can incorporate Curiosity into their teaching! There was a burgeoning of energy and creativity by facilitators and team members (see photos below), with a wide variety of Curiosity project topics for the year.

Some TFC groups are still refining their Curiosity project. There are lots of Curiosity resources to inspire you and provoke your thinking at https://tinyurl.com/PD2019, including a list of 33 practical ideas from Wendy Ostroff’s book - “Cultivating Curiosity in K-12 Classrooms” (book available in the Stevenson Library).

Thought Piece: Can we make students more curious?
Are some people just born curious and others are not, or can teachers help every student to be curious?

Psychologists love to ask if a personal quality is inherent to some people, or a situational experience possible for anyone. We can all think of someone who is incessantly curious (sometimes to the annoyance of those around them!), and there is research support for this notion of curiosity as a personal ‘trait’ (eg. Kashdan, Rose & Fincham, 2004). On the other hand, we can also recall times when we have been more curious than usual, which fits with definitions of curiosity as a motivational ‘state’ (eg Kashdan & Silvia, 2009).

These two concepts of state and trait curiosity can be brought together if we acknowledge that some of our students are naturally more curious than others, but we can create a classroom climate which provokes every student to be a bit more curious than they would otherwise have been.

Master Teacher Fellowships

28/6/2018

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.

Celebrating excellence in teaching and learning

15/3/2018

Dr Caitlin Munday, recipient of Dr Robert Iles Award for Outstanding Classroom Practice

Ms Chloe Collett, Richard Blackett Medal for the Inspirational Teaching of Boys

The success of a Scots boy’s journey is fundamentally shaped by the quality of his teachers. More broadly, developing and recognising expertise in teachers is critical to both the continued improvement of teaching and learning across the College and within the guild of teaching at large. To celebrate some of the many outstanding educators at the College, two special staff prizes are awarded annually at Speech Day.

The Dr Robert Iles Award for Outstanding Classroom Practice was instituted by the former Principal, Dr Robert Iles AM, to recognise the impact of early career teachers on their students and colleagues. In the presence of Dr and Mrs Iles, this award was presented in 2017 to Dr Caitlin Munday. With a background in drama education and arts research, Dr Munday has served at the College since 2014 as a Research Fellow with a focus on staff professional learning. Along with her creative and consultative leadership of the Staff Professional Development days, she has been responsible for the development of a wide range of outstanding new programs to celebrate and deepen teachers' expertise. She has also taught Drama, Christian Studies, and HSC Studies of Religion with great passion and care for her boys.

The Richard Blackett Medal for the Inspirational Teaching of Boys was endowed by Old Boys in honour of one of the College’s longest-serving and most-respected teachers. In 2017 the Medal was awarded in 2017 to Ms Chloe Collett who teaches in the Preparatory School. Ms Collett represented Scots in the 2016-2017 International Boys' Schools Coalition Action Research cycle. Her project on 'Encouraging perseverance in Year 5 boys through collaborative problem-solving in Mathematics', presented at the 2017 IBSC Annual Conference in Baltimore, was judged as among the top ten presentations worldwide. Ms Collett is a passionate, wise, and caring educator who truly demonstrates the spirit of Mr Richard Blackett and the ideals of a Scots education.

We look forward to continuing to celebrate the growth of expert communities of knowledge, practice and formation among our staff, both teachers and our committed support teams, as we seek to cultivate ‘higher learning for the common weal’.

Dr Hugh Chilton
Director of Research and Professional Learning

Growing expert communities of knowledge

9/2/2018

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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