Changing Environments: New literacy
demands, young people and digital
cultures
AEU Middle Schooling
Conference
12 November 2010
ARC Project Introduction – Barbara Comber
(QUT)
New literacy demands
in the middle years:
Learning from design
experiments
Australian Research
Council Linkage Grant
•AEU
•DECS
•UniSA
•University of Sydney
•University of East
Anglia
•Queensland University
of Technology
• Collaborators
• Lynn Hall - AEU
• Chris Thompson & Deb
Merrett, Tanya Scobie,
Theresa Andreucci, Jane
Foster, Helen Grant, Ruth
Trimboli & Marg Wells (DECS)
• Helen Nixon & Anne-Marie
Morgan (UniSA)
• Peter Freebody (University of
Sydney)
• Victoria Carrington (University
of East Anglia)
• Barbara Comber (Queensland
University of Technology)
Summary
• This project aims to document and improve student
literacy across the curriculum in the middle years, via a
suite of collaboratively crafted design experiments. It will
investigate the relationship between innovative
pedagogical practices and the wellbeing of classroom
teachers. In this study, two areas of educational research
that are often considered separately–-curriculum and
pedagogy and teachers’ work–-are deliberately explored
together. Combining analysis of state-wide data sets and
micro investigations of classroom practice, this research
will develop new understandings about sustaining
improvements in pedagogical practice, concomitant
improvements in student literacy outcomes, and the
professional identities and welfare of teachers.
Project design
•
•
Phase 1: Data analysis to identify sites for intervention
This phase will include:
– analyses of a large corpus of student data: various middle years
data sets that cross-reference student literacy achievement,
learning area outcomes, cohort measures, absenteeism and inschool disengagement, and behaviour management;
– analyses of a large corpus of teacher data: teacher well-being,
including for example reports of stress, safety and absences, as
well as teacher knowledge of literacy, and dispositions and
pedagogical strategies for approaching middle years education
•
Phase 2: Targeted interventions using Design Based Experiments –
Year 5 in 2010, & Year 9 in 2011
– Documentation of collaboratively constructed field experiments
of varying scale to enhance teacher manageability and
students’ learning of curriculum literacies
•
Phase 3: Meta-analysis of Design-based Experiments in the
context of DECS trend and cohort data
•
Pilot study 2009 – Investigating literacy Years 4-9
Three design experiments were developed and
implemented in collaboration with teachers:
• (i) Science/English curriculum specific digital literacies (CI
Freebody - & Tanya Scobie, Theresa Andreucci, Jane
Foster – Glen Osmond Primary)
• (ii) Digital cultures and youth (CI Nixon & Helen GrantGilles St Primary)
• (iii) Place-based pedagogies (CI Comber & Marg Wells &
Ruth Trimboli, Ridley Grove R-7)
• (i) Science/English curriculum specific digital
literacies (CI Freebody) - working collaboratively with
teachers to intensify the focus on the distinctive
leaning demands and opportunities arising in these
two curriculum areas.
• (ii) Digital cultures and youth (CI Carrington)
• working collaboratively with teachers and students to
(i) research and analyse the ways in which students
are using digital texts and technologies outside the
classroom to participate in a range of public and
private social spheres and (ii) work towards
developing and trialling classroom pedagogies and
literacy practices that build repertoires of basic skills
and critical analytic frames that work to value-add
students’ in and out-of-school engagements with a
range of texts.
• (iii) Place-based pedagogies (CI Comber)
• working collaboratively with teachers and students to
(i) to identify specific eco-social problems they wish to
address across the curriculum and (ii) negotiate and
design place-based literacy pedagogies that
capitalise on the affordances of the local
environment.
Project-specific presentations &
workshops
• Challenges in the middle years: curriculum literacy,
expertise and ‘good-enough’ knowledge – Peter
Freebody
• Science literacies – Tanya Scobie, Theresa
Andreucci, Jane Foster
• “It’s not an accident to make a film…”: digital
literacies and youth cultures, Helen Grant
• Place and community-based pedagogies – Marg
Wells & Ruth Trimboli
• Early adolescents and digital cultures – Victoria
Carrington
DECS & AEU Policy and Practice
presentations
• David Smith’s welcome to country
• Lyn Hall, Outline, context & AEU Curriculum
organiser online, closing
• Chris Thompson, Literacy demands: A text focus
• Deb Merrett, TfEL Framework: An introduction
• Ambra Scarlett & Carol Allen, Creating professional
e-portfolios.