Catalyst: Changing Practice

Case study of Dimboola Memorial Secondary College


March 2009

Globalism Research Centre RMIT

Dimboola Memorial Secondary College

About the school
The school's motto is facta non verba, meaning by deeds and not words. It is hoped that students will use this as the basis for the many decisions they will have to make in their lives. The college has a lot to offer students and we have extensive facilities. Some of these are: a broad curriculum for the VCE; a well-resourced computer centre with Mac and Windows computers, network throughout entire school including wireless networking; a music centre and Brass Band; a sports stadium; three sports fields and two tennis courts; a clay target trap; a technology centre, facilities for automotive, food, textiles, metals, woodwork and graphics;
Extract from http://www.dmsc.vic.edu.au/school.html

Dimboola Memorial Secondary College (DMSC) is in the DEECD Grampians Region and is located 340kms North West of Melbourne. The school sits atop a hill in this predominantly flat area a few kilometers from the main highway between Melbourne and Adelaide. Dimboola is in the drought affected wheat-growing Wimmera area – it has a population of approximately 1600 people, about 200 of whom are students at DMSC. The school has 24 teachers and 11 administrative and support staff which makes it one of the biggest employers in town.

Catalyst goals and directions Feb 2008

The principal’s view

The principal, Rob Pyers, noted in the initial Catalyst interview that what makes DMSC special is its culture, ‘central to our culture is that we are a memorial school, the only one in the state. The community built the main school building in 1924…this is a community school and we are very proud of that…’ Pyers also noted that the school has ‘a really good mix of staff in terms of levels of experience’ and ‘we are pretty proud of the fact that we work together, students, staff and the community’. He added, however, ‘like all schools we are struggling to make sure we keep everyone focused in the one direction.’ Pyers also identified the social welfare challenges associated with being in a country town in the midst of twelve years of drought ‘while providing students with the best possible opportunities for the long term’.

We are very fortunate starting off with the Catalyst program. My predecessor has provided us with a springboard in terms of clearing a path. We use ICT in every classroom, literally every day of the week. …When I asked my year 9 History class last year how many of their teachers actually use the interactive whiteboards and their laptops in the classroom they said “Mr Pyers you’re the only one who doesn’t at the moment”. So clearly… ICT is embedded in the school culture.

Pyers highlighted the impact of DMSC’s involvement in the Leading Schools Fund which involved peer-coaching associated with training in how to use the IWBs. Peer coaching has become a feature of how staff are trained at DMSC. Pyers believed that the size of the school and the relatively small number of staff was an advantage in bringing about and supporting change. However, he was keen to use ICT-rich learning environments and the school’s collaborative learning space to make a dramatic impact on kids literacy and numeracy skills. When asked about the tendency to judge a schools use of ICT by the number of computers and IWBs that were in place Pyers responded:

Don’t worry about the technology, worry about what’s actually happening between the teacher and the students and what’s actually going on there. You can provide any teacher with twenty-five computers and an interactive whiteboard, all the latest in terms of equipment, but that might not change how that relationship is progressing. And really, that’s what we need to work on – making sure the relationship between the teacher and the kids is not that of instructor but facilitator for kids to learn.

He thought that ‘although we have a way to go’ the school was ‘starting to move down that track’. However he believed that the teachers at DMSC were further advanced in terms of peer coaching and use of IWBs than they realized. As a consequence he saw a need for teachers to ‘understand where they’re at and to … track that journey’.

Pyers also highlighted the multiple ways in which DMSC was involved with the community which included participation in committees and enterprise partnerships with local businesses - ‘kids working on real-life everyday community based projects’.

The action research plan

DMSC’s action research plan is focused on collaborative learning and collaborative learning environments and how such collaboration can lead to better learning processes for building literacy and numeracy. Their research is centred on the Year 7 cohort of 35 students and involves seven teachers and two peer coaches.

DMSC’s interest in collaborative learning is grounded in their experiences with a purpose-designed collaborative space that has three Interactive Whiteboards (IWB) and about twenty small modular tables which can be variously configured. The freshly painted large space is well-suited to team teaching. It is open, bright and airy, all the furnishings and fittings are new – this is in contrast with much of the physical infrastructure of the school which is in need of refurbishment. DMSC’s initial research, prior to the Catalyst project and mostly via observations, indicated that students using this large space interact and collaborate more effectively than when working in other socio-spatial settings. Although not explicitly stated the idea of collaborative learning extends to the teachers themselves via their team teaching. The DMSC researchers are also interested in how ‘new learning relationships’ can be developed through the combination of the collaborative space, the IWBs and team teaching.

In terms of gathering evidence and tracking the impact on students the DMSC team have undertaken to focus on: “assessment as learning” and assessment as outlined in VELS; via “alternative strategies to collect evidence enabled through a collaborative learning environment”; pre- and post-tests to assess student numeracy and literacy levels; and ePotential survey data. On the teacher side they will analyse Realia-sourced teacher reflections and observations made by visiting peers.

During 2008 the DMSC team have surveyed Year 7 students; conducted literacy and numeracy testing at several points throughout the year; and captured teacher reflections via the innovative use of a tabletop whiteboard. The peer-coaches have been active in facilitating the development of a pedagogy of team-teaching in the Year 7 Maths and English classes and in supporting teachers’ uses of the Interactive Whiteboards.

The peer coaching plan

There are two peer coaches, Gary Schultz and Daryl Thorsen. ICT Peer coaching has been in place at DMSC for three years supported by previous Leading Schools funding. DMSC’s Peer Coaching Plan is explicitly linked to the school’s ICT vision statement:

DMSC envisages a classroom where the use of information and communications technology (ICT) is regarded as an integral part of teaching and learning so that it is used in a routine and natural way. We aim to continually integrate changes in technology into the curriculum. Learning technologies will be a part of the learning process and provided in a manner that leads to more sophisticated methods of communication and information gathering or sharing. Planned and appropriate use of learning technologies will assist the attainment of student outcomes and improve the quality of programs offered.

The DMSC Peer Coaching Plan is built on the foundations of their work over the previous three years and is supported by the data they have obtained from their ePotential surveys. The current data indicates that the school is above state averages in almost all areas with the exception of school leadership which they identify as an area for improvement. This is interesting particularly as this finding is framed up as ‘no surprise, as teachers have been developing their own skills and teaching abilities’. DMSC note that 21% of staff who have completed the ePotential survey have been identified as being in the ‘Innovative Phase of ICT Leadership’. They see this as representing ‘a high level of professional capability’ that will allow them to provide assistance to each other. In terms of structure and process DMSC have initially concentrated on the seven teachers involved in the Action Learning Plan, bringing these teachers together in small groups of 2 to 3 ‘to share ideas and progress’.

Critical friend feedback

During 2008 DMSC did not establish a critical friend school. Dimboola’s geographic location and relative isolation were offered as reasons this had not happened. At first it was not clear to the DMSC team as to which school would be ‘a good match with the college’. They expressed the view that in some ways they felt further advanced than some schools, both in terms of their previous experience with peer coaching and in terms of their IT skills. As the year progressed the impetus for such an initiative petered out.

The potential benefits which could develop from a critical friend relationship with another school may not be clear to DMSC, even if they were to be the ‘lead’ school in terms of their ICT or peer-coaching capabilities. Often it is through a dialogue and sharing of skills or ideas that understanding is deepened. Questions from ‘learners’ can illuminate previously overlooked ideas or lead to new perspectives or innovations and the dialogue which characterises such critical-friend relationships can lead to significant insights for everyone. Rather than seeing their geographic isolation as an impediment to establishing and maintaining a critical friend relationship DMSC could reframe their circumstances as an opportunity to explore web-based collaborations using video-conferencing, blogs, wikis and file sharing. Such initiatives could spill over into other forms of inter-school and inter-student collaborations.

For this to happen DMSC will need to take the initiative.

Progress made during 2008

The DMSC Catalyst team have made very good progress in 2008 particularly in the final few months of the year where they have; assembled and pulled together multiple forms of data – quantitative, qualitative, images and sound recordings; met in small groups and as a project team to analyse and discuss their data; captured data from these meetings in innovative ways; and published their research via the web.

When the evaluation team first visited DMSC there appeared to be a particular emphasis on the role of the two peer coaches as ‘the researchers’. Lack of time and competing demands were raised as issues however it also seemed that the teachers were not clear on their role or what was expected of them. During this first meeting several teachers gave the impression that they would not be altering their current practices and saw the research as offering a means of documenting and affirming already good practice.

The ways in which the project unfolded in the second half of the year meant there was perhaps some shift in this sentiment, particularly in the Maths classroom and also a shift in the perception that the two peer-coaches were ‘the researchers’. However, the two coaches remained at the centre of the research in terms of leading the project and organizing various research initiatives.

The key issues for DMSC in the first part of the year related to time, competing demands and clarity of roles and purpose. In this first part of the year there was evidence that the team needed additional support and guidance in terms of gathering, tracking and analysing data – in short they needed some coaching around the practice of research and being teacher-researchers. This coaching was provided through two in-person sessions and via a number of phone-calls and web-based exchanges of material.

The research coaching and the enthusiastic take-up of suggestions has resulted in some exemplary work in the second half of the year as explored in the end of year update.

Reflection on outcomes

The story emerging from Dimboola Memorial Secondary College is rich and multi-faceted with the team members making significant progress along all four of the major developmental continuums explored in the Catalyst project: (1) practice-focused, teacher-led research; (2) more effective pedagogy; (3) ICT know-how and application skills; and (4) leadership in its many guises. It is the evaluators’ view that DMSC’s progress along these continuums is the product of: a clearly articulated research question; the capturing and collecting of a good range of data; thoughtful engagement with, and analysis of this data; a productive and respectful dialogue between everyone involved in the project –between teachers, between teachers and peer-coaches, and between teachers, peer-coaches and the departmental and research mentors – and practical leadership support from the school’s administration.

1. Teacher-led research

Perhaps the most outstanding outcome of the Catalyst project at DMSC is the way in which the members of the team have been learning to become practice-focused teacher-researchers, grounding their research in a multimodal evidence-base and presenting their data and findings in a thoughtfully designed, analytically-framed and easy to understand web-report. Interestingly, the project-leader at the school describes the report as ‘a living document’ in which the content is ‘being updated progressively’. Such an approach mirrors the unfolding, dialogical character of their research – perhaps only missing an option for people to add comments, ask questions or make suggestions.

http://www.dmsc.vic.edu.au/catalyst/actionresearch/yr7litnum2008/index.htm

A number of examples drawn from DMSC’s report serve to illustrate their professional development as teacher-researchers: the use of system-sanctioned tests to measure and track performance; the innovative use of a table-top whiteboard to promote dialogue and document teacher perceptions; audio-recordings and digital images to capture what happened in this dialogue; and a simple survey which explored student perceptions of their learning experiences.

Measuring and tracking performance

In order to measure and track the development of numeracy skills in Year 7 students the teacher-researchers chose the ACER Progressive Achievement Tests in Mathematics (PSTMaths) 'designed for use in Australian schools to provide objective, norm-referenced information to teachers about the level of achievement attained by their students in the skills and understanding of Mathematics'. Students were tested in February and November.