A Professional Learning Journey
St Patrick’s College
St Patrick’s College is a co-educational school situated in Sydney’s South. The College was co-founded in 1956 by the Christian Brothers and in 1960 by the Presentation Sisters. Thus began a tradition in education that has fostered and promoted quality learning, fidelity to the Gospel, academic excellence and an orientation to the service of young people and their families. At the end of 2012, St Patrick’s College became part of the Newman Research and Development Project.
St Patrick’s College has an excellent history of academic performance, and has had a selective streaming running for over 10 years. With a highly trained, experienced and well established staff, there has been significant focus on differentiation and revitalising the curriculum in recent years. The focus on ‘backward design’ in the last year also contributed to the invigoration of the professional learning community at St Patrick’s College. The introduction of the Newman Research and Development Project challenged the staff at the College to evaluate and develop their methods of catering for the academically selected class.
A Professional Learning Community
The key success of the Newman Research and Development Project at St Patrick’s College is that there has been a change in teacher practice. Without time to reflect, develop and create real change, there is stagnation. The Newman Team of 2013 at St Patrick’s College has each individually made a significant change in their teacher practice. This team of teachers, all trained in gifted education, formed a professional learning community which regularly reflected on their own teaching philosophy and practice, and as a result, they created change. Regular high quality professional development, opportunities for professional dialogue, teacher observation and feedback made this reflection and change possible. In essence, the Newman Team formed a Professional Learning Community.
The creation of a Newman Team added energy and passion to the learning community at St Patrick’s College. There is now a group of professional, passionate colleagues who meet regularly and discuss the intellectual and affective needs of the Newman class. They discuss, debate, research and, most crucially- they care about the educational opportunities offered for gifted children.
These meetings gave the Newman teachers a comprehensive understanding of the needs of individual students- both academically and pastorally. Teachers shared the results of their pre-tests and assessment tasks, as well as informal, anecdotal evidence about student progress. They would discuss ideas for extension tasks, create cross-curricular links, and ensure that they were maintaining academic rigour in their teaching and learning activities. The meetings created a strong sense of responsibility for each of the individual learners. Leigh Richards, HSIE teacher, said she would walk away from the meetings asking herself “Am I really catering for this student? Could he/she take this work further? Could I bring in an expert to provide mentoring for him? Is he stimulated enough? How can I provide scaffolds for this student to help him reach this extension task?”
The professional development opportunities provided by the Eileen O’Connor Centre further invigorated staff. Dr Maureen Neihardt’s video conference on the Social and Emotional Needs of Gifted Students was attended by members of the team, and the key concepts were presented to parents at a parent information evening. Time in Pastoral Care lessons was provided for the Newman class to discuss with their Pastoral Care teacher issues such as “working at the edge of competence”, eating enough protein and setting SMART goals. The principles of Flexible Grouping presented by Dr Karen Rogers was directly applied to the classroom, with teachers using the results of pre-tests to group students appropriately in the classroom. Finally, Lannie Kanevsky’s principles of choice, control and complexity were a key feature in the Newman Extension Tasks created by the St Patrick’s College Newman Team.
A crucial part of the Newman program at St Patrick’s College was the inclusion of three KLA co-ordinators on the Newman team: the Science co-ordinator, the HSIE co-ordinator and the RE assistant co-ordinator. The involvement in these staff members in piloting the program assisted with moving towards a whole school focus by infusing gifted education practices across faculties. In 2014 the assistant co-ordinators of TAS, Art and HSIE will join the team to further this process.
The Newmam Team at St Patrick’s College did not allow this professional learning to stay within the team. All year they strove to make this learning accessible to all members of teaching community at the College. Each member of the Newman Team had a responsibility to pass on their knowledge, expertise and discoveries to the rest of their department through KLA meetings and informal dialogue in the staffroom. Newman Staff were empowered with this responsibility to share all learnings from their Professional Development, and in 2014 the Newman Program will become a standing agenda on all KLA meeting agendas.
Professional knowledge and research was shared through staff publications, staff meetings and KLA meetings. Staff awareness and attitudes to gifted education and classroom practice was monitored through whole staff surveys. Surveys showed there was a sound awareness amongst staff of the characteristics and affective needs of gifted students. There are still some misconceptions and concerns which will be addressed by the Newman Team of 2014. All staff were exposed to the Blooms and the KAPLAN models of curriculum differentiation through whole staff presentations and information dissemination. Staff members beyond the Newman team shared examples of their use of these models with the rest of staff through the staff information sheet.
To consolidate and extend the knowledge of gifted education amongst staff, a number of strategies were put in place. Each year four to five new staff complete the Leading Gifted Education Pedagogy course run by the Southern Region CEO.
This year a mini-certificate of Gifted Education ‘refresher course’ was offered to those staff who had training in Gifted Education. This course covered identification of gifted students, pre-testing, differentiation and curriculum models- Williams, Maker, Kaplan and Blooms. Again, staff with gifted training were encouraged to take responsibility within their KLA to share their learning, differentiate assessment tasks and become advocates of gifted children in their KLA.
Authentic Differentiation
Ultimately the professional learning of the Newman Team led towards a focus on authentic differentiation. What is ‘authentic differentiation’? Kaplan dispels the notion that there is a simple provision for gifted children with her unequivocal statement “There cannot be a single curriculum for the gifted since there is not a single prototype of a gifted learner”. The Newman team, armed with research supporting the importance of catering to the needs of gifted students through a differentiated curriculum, began the journey towards authentic differentiation in the classroom.
The process of differentiation for the Newman Team involved pre-testing the students, using flexible grouping strategies, compacting or accelerating the curriculum, then providing extension opportunities.
The Newman Team tackled head on any suggestion that differentiating for gifted students was a form of elitism. They challenged the notion that all students should have the same opportunities. Some opportunities are not appropriate for all students. It would be an injustice if we did not provide a different curriculum. Indeed Passow challenges gifted educators to ask – WOULD all students be able to do this work? COULD all students do this work? SHOULD all students do this work? The answer, when providing opportunities for gifted students, should be a firm ‘NO’ or we are doing these students a disservice.
Tomlinson defines differentiation as “ensuring that what a student learns, how he/she learns, and how the student demonstrates what he/she has learned is a match for that student’s readiness level, interests and preferred mode of learning” (Tomlinson 2004). The Newman Team used pre-testing to determine the level of student readiness, and the Kanevsky Learning Survey to determine the students preferred mode of learning. It was in this way that the Newman Team at St Patrick’s College created the ‘Newman Task’. Students completed the Newman Task in English, Maths, Science, PDHPE, HSIE and RE. All Newman Tasks were to follow Van-Tassel-Baska and Brown’s suggestion of best practice for gifted eductation: “Best practice, then, calls for the use of student-centered learning opportunities that are issue- or problem-based and relevant to the student’s word.” (Van Tassel-Baske & Brown 2007 p352) . All Newman tasks, therefore, follow these principles: open-ended tasks (Kanevsky 2002), the element of choice (Kanevsky 2002 and Betts 2004), appropriate level of complexity and challenge, acknowledgement of learning styles and characteristics, the teacher as facilitator with students as learners and producers of knowledge (Betts 2004, p51).This may involve students writing their own question or area of study, choosing a particular text/person/historical period, or choosing their own form in which to present their discoveries.
Van Tassel Baska & Little challenge gifted educators to provide a differentiated curriculum which is specifically for the gifted: “one that is tailored to the needs of groups and/or individual learners……delivered by a trained educator of gifted learners.” (Van Tassel-Baska & Little 2011) All the Newman team members have some training in gifted education, and are passionate about their area of expertise. Feedback from student surveys throughout the year indicated that they appreciated the passion and expert knowledge of their teacher. When creating the Newman Tasks, teachers considered the particular strengths and interests of the students, and allowed for variation in presentation styles and content. Those students who struggled with the complexity and open-endedness of the Newman Task were given scaffolds and word banks to help them achieve success in this task.
Pre-test, Compact, Accelerate, Extend!
Through pre-testing, the Newman Team ensured there was time to pursue a curriculum that was in-depth, challenging and complex. Teachers used the results of the pre-test to give them the evidence they needed to differentiate the core curriculum. Where pre-testing showed it was appropriate, teachers would accelerate or compact the core curriculum.
Teachers of the Newman Team developed more effective and rigorous pre-testing procedures throughout the year. They moved beyond the common practice of a classroom ‘brainstorm to find out what we know’, which provides a ‘whole class’ picture of abilities, and towards individualised analysis of results. Teachers applied the principles of flexible grouping, re-grouping the students to reflect their level of understanding and skill in each particular topic area. Newman students became comfortable with the notion of pre-testing, understanding the role of assessment for learning as evidenced by one student who said, as result of gathering data, the‘teacher understands more about where I need to learn’.
While this was time consuming, teachers reaped the benefits of this practice as their teaching moved towards individualisation, and students as a result were more focused and passionate about their learning. Pre-testing using the ‘traffic light system’ : green = the student has already met this outcome, yellow= the student has some understanding of this outcome and red = this outcome is not yet met, has become common place in staff practice. Students were grouped according to their skill level in a particular topic, allowing the teacher to individualise their instruction effectively. At the initiation of the Curriculum Coordinator, pre-testing has become an expectation across all classes and faculties in 2014. This decision reflects the impact the Newman Program has had at a whole school level, and the growing awareness of the need to cater for gifted learners.
The pre-testing process created precious time in the curriculum for extension tasks which were open-ended, relevant, offered a variety of presentation styles, involved choice, and most importantly, were beyond the core curriculum. Instead of providing ‘more of the same’ – teachers “released the brakes” and let students pursue an area of study they were passionate about. When creating the Newman tasks, teachers used above-level outcomes, or they adjusted the year level outcomes to include higher order verbs such as synthesise, evaluate and create. Taking the ‘ceiling’ off the tasks allowed students to aim high, as one student reported: “I’ve been given multiple chances to extend myself, and to show what I can do.”
CHOICE, CONTROL & COMPLEXITY
The Newman class completed Kanevsky’s Learning Preferences Survey, and teachers discovered that students like to work on independent projects, they like working in groups they have chosen, and they like working on topics they have chosen. Kanevsky challenges gifted educators to allow students this level of choice and control over their learning, which in turn allows students to reach Vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’. This process of working on a self-chosen task for an extended period of time helps students to develop self-regulation skills and recognises the integrity of their intellect (Kanevsky COGE 2011).
The Newman Team used the results of the Kanevsky Learning Preferences Survey and the guiding principles of differentiated assessment (open-ended, choice, relevance and above-level) to create an extension task which truly challenged and stimulated our students. In English, students wrote their own thesis style question showing their understanding of representation in a chosen area of visual literacy eg/ film, poster, picture book. One looked at the representation of teenagers in greeting cards, another the representation of masculinity in Bond films and another the different methods of representation used in posters for charities. This focus on representation, a stage 5 concept, not only challenged students, but allowed students to develop a critical awareness of the world in which they live.
In Science, students created an open-ended Science investigation and presented their results in the form of a Science Fair. Students were given the opportunity to choose their own investigation within an area of their interest. They were asked to perform background research of this area to formulate a question/hypothesis to test scientifically. Students were then challenged to design their own scientific method to test this hypothesis and record relevant results. This is usually done in Stage 5 Science and the students enjoyed the challenge. Those who struggled with the multi-layered task were given extra scaffolding to assist them.
In Maths, students investigated various number systems. In History and RE, students considered how life today would be different without a specific and historical historical event or person eg/ the Holy Wars. All of these tasks covered content beyond the year 7 curriculum, allowed for choice, complexity and ultimately, for the student- control.