Priority Schools Programs Student Equity Action Research Sydney Region

2. Forum outcomes As a result of participating in the forum you will: think about the meaning of equity and social justice in education consider the importance of student voice in our schools find out more about Priority Schools Programs (PSP) and the Student Equity Action Research (SEAR) project learn about action research and collecting data develop a research question and plan a project to run in your school

3. Student voice How can students be powerful voices for improving learning? in classrooms across the whole school at home and in the local community within the public education community at a national and international level

4. Why is student voice important? Education is for students and therefore students should have a say in it. (student researcher)

5. What do we mean by equity? Reflection question: What does equity mean to you? What does social justice in education mean for our schools? Share your ideas with the person next to you.

6. What we know Currently there is a significant and unacceptable gap between the average achievement of low SES students as a group and all students. Socio-economic status (SES) can intersect with other factors including gender, geographic location, cultural background and literacy and numeracy levels to prevent students from gaining the full benefits of schooling.

7. What we know Factors over which students have no control should not predetermine the outcomes of schooling for individual students or groups of students. Students from low SES backgrounds are a diverse group encompassing the full range of learning abilities. Students from low SES backgrounds can and do achieve high standards with appropriate opportunities and active support.

8. Achievement of students from low SES backgrounds There is no research that supports the view that students from low SES backgrounds will have less learning potential than more advantaged students or that their failure is inevitable. Henderson and Berla, 1995

9. Aim of PSP Priority Schools Programs aim to: reduce, with a view to eliminating, the achievement gap in student learning outcomes for concentrations of students who may be adversely affected in schooling due to their socio-economic circumstances.

10. Priority Schools Programs: include the Priority Schools Funding Program and the Priority Action Schools Program are equity programs based on principles of social justice in education target schools with the highest concentrations of students from low SES backgrounds focus on improving students' literacy, numeracy and participation outcomes

11. PSP Action Areas

12. Our easy way of encapsulating complex social and educational issuesOur easy way of encapsulating complex social and educational issues

13. What is SEAR? Student Equity Action Research project Priority Schools in the Sydney Region Student/teacher research teams design an action research project and share the results with: their own school communities other schools in the project other Priority Schools (PSP website)

14. Action Research People involved in action research work together to identify issues and develop processes for improvement. The central goal of action research is positive educational change. (NSW DET Professional Learning and Leadership Development Directorate 2007)

15. Action Research Another way to understand action research Is to look at the words in its title: It requires ACTION It requires RESEARCH

16. Action ACTION means the research team agrees on a plan to do something and then the takes the agreed action. ACTION also means not getting bogged down in talking and thinking. Instead, after careful reflection and planning, try out something, learn from it and share what you find out.

17. Research RESEARCH in its simplest form means to find out. RESEARCH is about asking and answering questions. RESEARCH means that actions taken are based on evidence.

18. Research Dictionaries also define RESEARCH as: methodical investigation into a subject in order to discover facts, to establish or revise a theory, or to develop a plan of action based on the facts discovered a detailed study of a subject, especially in order to discover new information or reach a new understanding to investigate carefully

19. Action research cycles The steps that we go through to do action research are usually described as a cycles.

20. Action Research Cycles (Zuber-Skerritt, 1992)

21. PLAN What is our research question for this project? What do we want to happen? Who will be involved? What data will we collect? What is our timeline for action? Clarify roles – who will do what? How will we record and share our results?

22. ACT Implement the plan (do what we said we were going to do). Communicate with others involved in the action research project. Keep track of what happens by collecting and recording data.

23. OBSERVE Look at what is happening. Examine the data on what is happening. Get different viewpoints on what is happening (students, teachers, parents). Report on what is happening.

24. REFLECT Think about what happened and share with others. What worked well? What changes do we need to make? Plan for the next action research cycle.

25. Action research cycles When you start an action research project the first step is to identify the issue you want to research. It’s helpful to turn the issue into a question – this then becomes your research question.

26. The research question An effective research question should: be relevant to the group involved in the research (eg. Year 6, your English class, Year 5 boys/girls, Year 7 parents) be based on what you already know about the situation be collaboratively developed with the people involved in the research be manageable in terms of what you want to achieve – think about time, resources, who will be involved, what data you can reasonably collect

27. SEAR research questions Remember our aim is to improve learning outcomes for students in Priority Schools…. Research questions should link to one or more of these areas: literacy numeracy student engagement quality teaching home/school/community partnerships classroom and school organisation

28. Sample research questions How can we describe what quality teachers do to help students learn? What does a successful lesson look like/feel like/sound like? How could we improve student engagement by identifying some of the barriers to learning (for a particular year group or class)?

29. More research questions How does classroom/school organisation effect student learning? What do the four equity principles look like in our school/classroom? How could we improve this?

30. What do we mean by data? What the dictionaries say about data: a collection of facts from which conclusions may be drawn information, often in the form of facts or figures obtained from experiments or surveys, used as a basis for making calculations or drawing conclusions

31. What do we want to find out? What do people know? What do people think? How do people feel? What’s working well? What would people like to change? How would people like things to be?

32. Data Collection Think of at least three groups of people you could collect data from for the question being investigated What data collection tools could you use (surveys, questionnaires, interviews)? This is called triangulation - it involves collecting data from different sources to check how reliable it is Everyone involved should have a voice – teachers, students and parents should be considered as a means of triangulating data.

33. Triangulating data

34. Formulating a data collection plan

35. Strategies to promote reflection action research can’t be carried out on your own – build a team reflection needs time – make sure some reflection time is built into the project use tools to encourage discussion and reflection (eg. warm and cool feedback, Langford tools) make connections with key focus areas already in place in your school– eg. Quality Teaching, numeracy,

36. Giving good feedback Warm is clear and focused helps identify strengths lets us know what’s working well Cool raises issues or questions shows how to improve helps us think more deeply about what we’re doing

37. Advice for using action research start with a small group - you can always include more people later in the project give all participants an equal say in decision making keep the project as simple as possible don’t overestimate what can be achieved have a detailed plan and timeline seek advice and information from a variety of sources

38. Advice for using action research data must be collected and analysed at all stages make time for team building and teamwork there are no quick fixes or guarantees be prepared to learn from mistakes and accept this as part of the project – this applies to everyone involved in the research.