I have always been a big believer in the efficacy of parenting books. Some can offer wonderful advice and others great comfort when we realise that the behaviours or issues that keep us awake at night can be regarded as normal. For me, the greatest benefit of these books is that they tend to inspire a cognitive shift where upon reading them, we become reflective of our practice and far more purposeful in our choices. In my experience, after reading a book I would parent much more consciously and tended to think far more carefully about how I used language.

This is one of the reasons that I believe that it is so important to offer professional learning opportunities to our staff. When we get teachers talking about the art of teaching, they tend to follow a similar pattern – they become less automatic and far more thoughtful about the implications of implementation of particular teaching strategies.

Professor John Hattie of the University of Melbourne has undertaken extensive research throughout his career into analysing the range of factors that most influence student outcomes. Hattie explains that teachers have a tremendous capacity to positively shape student learning when they focus on their collective impact.

In launching his most recent metastudy analysis in 2023, Hattie summarised that: “It confirms the finding that high impact is still the most important factor when it comes to student learning. This describes teachers who focus on the impacts of their teaching and who work together with other educators to critique their ideas about impact – about what was taught well, who was taught well and the size of the improvement.”

In order to facilitate this culture at our school we focus on providing our teachers with rich opportunities to develop their professional practice and to reflect collaboratively on how we can best elevate student learning.

One great opportunity for this was our Professional Learning Day that we provided to staff this Monday. Staff across the School utilised the day to gain exposure to new strategies and to reflect on current practices.

The ELC staff worked closely with Dr Roslyn Muir who, along with our Vice Principal Teaching and Learning, Russell Kaplan, founded the SOWATT Program. We utilise this to elevate the impact of learning opportunities in order to foster executive function skills in our youngest students at a time where research indicates that a boost in such higher order thinking capacity will prove enormously beneficial to their development. Our educational team benefited greatly from exploring the key strategies that will deliver this goal.

Our Junior School staff worked with Occupational Therapist, Yakira Abrahams. She led them in a focus on the classroom experience of students. This enabled discussion on body awareness, physicality, handwriting and the merits of breaking up learning blocks with movement such as dance. 

Across Magid Campus, our teachers worked in their learning areas and continued to explore the Walkthrus model which is comprised of high impact pedagogical strategies. Walkthrus is a key program that we are using to develop our teachers’ capacity to use evidence-based techniques that are likely to facilitate deeper learning.  In small groups staff members examined examples of particular strategies and discussed how they could be leveraged to enhance learning. 

Having the opportunity to participate in targeted and relevant professional learning opportunities with close colleagues creates a culture of thoughtfulness, support and curiosity which encourages our development as educators. It is so energising for staff members to seriously engage in discussions about their professional practice. I am aware that the benefit is both in the novel information that they learn and also in the shift of mindset that leads to more reflective practice.  I am certain that investing our collective time in this way will provide rich benefits for our students.