DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION AND TRAINING www.deet.nt.gov.au

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Middle Years Team2008

Our Values: Respect; Professionalism; Inclusiveness; Integrity; Innovation

Our Context: • A newly formed team (1/5 has a recent history with the past Middle Years Teams). • All are employed variously under contracts that will complete in December 2008. • 3 new ET2 positions are filled by individuals who have all come straight from schools. • Semester 1 focus: induction into Teaching, Learning & Standards Division & working as

Teaching and Learning Educators across regions.

Our Team: Middle Years Manager – Julianne Willis, 89994349, 0448868520Project Manager Middle Years – Sonya McKenzie, 89994323, 0427872149Teaching and Learning Educator, Darwin – Natalie Ede, 89994200 Teaching and Learning Educator, Alice Springs – Lisa Hall, 89517007Teaching and Learning Educator, Arhnem – Jason Motbey, 89993794Teaching and Learning Educator, Katherine – vacant

Current Focus Areas:

How we began:

A large platform of material has been inherited from the previous Middle Years Team.

This material supported schools to create and implement the new NT Middle Years Stage of Schooling Policy.

Full implementation of this policy began in schools at the beginning of 2008.

In 2008, all Middle Schools in the Northern Territory are:• Physically established;• Actively creating new cultures;• Trialling new structures and practices;• Grappling with student learning data & APIF implementation;• Valiantly working within their new worlds to do their best to make things

work;• Stressed about change – new schools, new teams, new practices, new Ce-Tool,

NAP, and forced movement.

Current Focus Areas:

We began:

By identifying that schools were at various places along the Julia Aitkin professional learning continuum and largely:

• Preparing – mostly remote schools;• Initiating – provincial and some remote.• Consolidating - Some school believe they are.

Our work needs to focus on:1. Small trials and Action Learning;2. Reframing, Redesigning & Vision reflection; and 3. Supporting evidence based decision making to grow capacity.

THE CRITICAL QUESTION IS:What MAKES Middle Years, MIDDLE YEARS?

Current Focus Areas:

DEET PRIORITIES: TEACHING LEARNING & STANDARDS PRIORITIES:

• Accountability Performance Improvement Framework – strategic improvement cycles

• Excellence in Literacy, Numeracy and Learning• Strong community commitment to school attendance

& completion• High quality teaching & education services to

maximize student learning & well-being• National Curriculum and Assessment• Intervention outcomes – remote• Strong partnerships, research & innovation, evidence

based approaches, targeted, rigorous & reflective, & explicit change facilitation

• Reconfiguration – regionalization of Teaching, Learning and Standards

• Stages of Schooling• National Assessment Program• National Curriculum• New South Australian Certificate of Education• Northern Territory Curriculum Framework renewal• Teaching and Learning Framework

2008 MIDDLE YEARS PRIORITIES:

• Building our own community of learners• Modelling a culture of learning using an evidence

base for action• Using assessment for designing learning with schools• Researching, consolidating & embedding Middle

Years ‘best practice’ (what makes middle years middle years?)

• Building and sustaining high quality Middle Years artefacts

• Reviewing & aligning Middle Years Coordination, Policy and Assurance

• Mapping pathways & transitions through stages of schooling

• Essential Learnings

Link with Delivery Agreement:

Our Systems:Strategic meetingsOperational meetingsDarwin / PARCS Middle Years Leaders NetworkRegional Offices & Networks?Professional Learning ProgramsRegional Termly ‘think tanks’?

Middle Years Scope:

Professional Learning Models:

Professional Learning Models: Educational Leadership in Community

Rivers ELICO:Building capacity in leadership in the Middle Years

• NT DEET Principles of Professional Learning

• NT DEET Leadership Framework

• Experiential Learning

• Action Learning / research cycles

• Learning Community and Individual

• Face to face and IDL

• Increasing capabilities of Principals as coaches for learning

• Safe learning environments

• Challenging perceptions, understandings and practice

Professional Learning Models: Educational Leadership in Community

Rivers Coaching & ELICO:To produce self-directed professionals with the cognitive capacity for high performance both independently and as

members of a community

• All behaviour is produced by thought and perception

• Teaching is constant decision making

• To learn something new requires engagement and

alteration in thought

• Humans continue to grow cognitively

Efficacy, Consciousness, Flexibility, Craftsmanship, Interdependency

Professional Learning Models: Educational Leadership in Community – Cognitive Coaching

Planning

Reflecting

Event

(Observation)

Professional Learning

Darwin and PARCS Analysing Student Learning Outcomes

As a part of the commitment to ensure improvement in student learning occurs the Middle years have been:

• Working with schools to make assessment authentic, valid and reliable

• Using assessment data to monitor progress and to plan for improvement

Facilitating – Site based, targeted facilitation of learning aligned to school, NT DEET and National priorities. Data and research informed.

Supporting and Encouraging - Authentic Learning Grants, Classmates

Celebrating – Wed site, Darwin Convention centre Middle Years Event, Team members achievement and milestones.

Connecting – Darwin Leaders Network, Middle Years portal, P&L, CDU, SSD, Regionally targeted personnel, Middle Years Wiki

Innovating – Trialling and encouraging new models, tools and methodologies - ELICO, Cognitive Coaching, IDL, Batchelor Area School site based TaLE coach, Professional Learning accreditation

Honouring Collegiality – Setting and maintaining the foundations conducive to individual and team growth, support and wellbeing.

The Best of Where We Are Now

KNOW:There’s a restructure

Regionalisation

New org chart being developed

NTCF renewal and TaLF released in next 12 months.

MYCAM materials available in next 12 months

Four stages of schooling with unique, individual student needs and teacher understandings

Civics & Citizenship National priorities becoming a focus

Band width / IDL capabilities expanding

Recognition of need for PL accreditation.

Know intervention has increased focus of Indigenous Ed

What we know and our concerns re 2009:

What we know and our concerns re 2009:

CONCERNS:Infrastructure to support regionalisation

Staffing- Insufficient security & sustainability and career pathways due to lack of long term recruitment. Repetition of work and gaps of work occur due to staff turnover and lack of communication / handover.

Communication – lack of whole picture clarity across teams and corporate DEET. Consistency of messages out to schools

NTCF / TaLF – implementation in schools / training

DATA – Need across division consistency of 4 domains of data to inform practice. With data informed practice our image in schools as a division is not those that hold the ‘big stick’. Current inability to access up dated data NOW creates a message of corporate DEET incompetency to schools.

Professional Learning – difficulty in releasing teachers for professional learning particularly in remote context. Lack of relief teachers. With the focus of the restructure will the NT initiative of Middle Years be effectively supported.

Middle Years established via infrastructure – but much more work required to create & consolidate Middle Years curriculum, pedagogy and assessment educational reform.

With schools:• Have simplified access to timely & accurate data• Clear goals of where TL&S are heading.• Clear TL&S organisational structure & understanding of roles and

responsibilities within and across divisions• Actively facilitating learning which is data informed, underpinned by research

based models of PL and student needs.• Working with schools, not for, or doing things to them.Across TL&S:• Set up systems so ALL staff have access to information at all levels eg open

the floor to managers meetings, portal, general staff meetings• Set up a friendly inviting work space. Physical and cultural Eg pot-plants, nice

coloured walls, funky carpet, low dividers or no dividers. Windows that open. Social club – not left to individuals trying to make a difference but set up properly.

Where do we need or want to be in 2009?: