(gentle ambient music)
- The state schools improvement strategy,
Every Student Succeeding, is Queensland's plan
to lift the educational performance and wellbeing
of each child and student in our state schooling system.
The strategy acknowledges the range of diverse context
for our schools and communities across the state
and provides clear guidance to support all
of us in our shared work.
That is achievement, engagement and continuous improvement
for Queensland state school students.
In essence, school improvement.
The School Improvement Hierarchy tells us where we are
in our journey of continual improvement,
but what does it look like in practise
and what role does each member of a school play
in ensuring that every student is succeeding?
- The School Improvement Hierarchy is the foundation
for everything we do at the college.
Over the last six years,
the leadership team has developed three pillars that drive
all of our improvement in college.
Those three pillars are pedagogical practises,
professional practise and connectedness and wellbeing.
Each of the School Improvement Hierarchy aspects
is represented within those three pillars
and they inform everything
we do in the college going forward.
In our colleges work around projecting forward
and developing our vision for the future
and around our enduring relevance, we've done some work
in the past 12 months around our infinite game thinking.
In that process we revisited our colleges just cause
and decided on nurturing globally competent
learners, leaders and citizens as our touchstone
and our just cause for the college.
Clearly out of that, you look at what
are the skills required for a globally competent
learner, leader and citizen
and digital technologies are front and centre in that space.
And that informs and gives Sue an imprimatur
as the HoD of e-learning to drive that agenda.
- Having that structure
as a Head of Department is fantastic.
It gives really clear direction
about what our priorities are,
how we need to implement them.
With the digital technologies
national curriculum being so new,
there's not a lot of data that we can look
at and use for continuous improvement.
So we scan outside of the college those industry needs
and identify those priority areas
and make sure we are implementing those within our planning
within our curriculum implementation.
- We continue to engage our community.
We learn from them around what the next set of skills
or technologies are that they're using in the workplace.
They also learn from us about the current skillset
and the attributes that a 21st century learner has,
which is often a real eye opener for them.
- Having an expert teaching team,
apart from those teaching skills is so critical
to be effective in the classroom,
is for our IT teachers to have a really strong knowledge
and skills related to their curriculum.
The knowledge of the curriculum, but also that connectedness
into industry, understanding what's happening in industry
how the technology's being used
and that openness to learning all the time.
So maybe an industry mentor
and my role is all about supporting them to do that.
Having that trust in them
that they are excellent teachers who know their stuff,
but me being able to provide any support that I can
as a Head of Department.
Targeting the use of school resources,
testing and trialling devices,
establishing learning communities and supporting teachers
and students to have a go, is also a big part
of how we maintain an expert teaching team.
- We have a school-wide pedagogical framework, so that
helps us as teachers to know
that we are teaching effectively.
And we use the gradual release of responsibility
with a strong focus on collaborative learning.
- Yeah, and effective pedagogy,
it's all about continual learning with the team,
with your students.
We meet regularly with Sue to improve our practise.
- [Bianca] Yeah, she gives us feedback and comes and,
you know we talk about areas we want to improve in
and she helps us to achieve that too.
- Something I've learnt that I could implement
at any school would be the importance
of connecting with industry
and with networking and finding out what expertise exists
in our local community.
- Making those connections is really important
because it helps also to show students what pathways
are available to them
and getting them connected earlier to potential employers.
- So differentiated teaching and learning in our classroom
looks like setting individual goals for students.
Finding out what their pathway is beyond school,
what sort of skills they want to acquire in our subjects.
- Yeah, that's right.
We get a lot of students who have different exposure
to coding, so different levels.
We have some students who have never done any coding before.
So, the key is we do a lot of collaborative learning,
so those differing abilities can learn from one another
and just pick up different skills.
So that's a big part of it too.
- Well I think the hands-on learning
we do is just really fun
and helps us get a better understanding of what
we're exactly looking at.
Yeah, with all the hardware we're learning about
it definitely helps.
- Yeah, I agree.
It's really fun with the hands learning,
but I also like the persistence that you have to have,
where you like make a plan.
You have to keep refining it and refining it again.
It just like, yeah it's cool to see how
it all comes together in the end
and like that you created it.
It's really cool.
- When I leave school, I definitely want to do something
involving technology, whether that's coding or engineering,
or even making music for games.
- Currently I'm in the Queensland ballet programme.
So I'm looking at going into dance.
But then after that I'm interested
in going into physiotherapy
and it'd be cool to see how technology works with that.
If there are any wearables that let you know
how your patient's going and things.
- Technology, it's evolving
and it's going to become part of everyday lives soon.
And so it's just good to know how it works,
what it does, even like how to make it.
- The aspect of like how it's going to be involved
in every single job in the future
means it's really important for us,
to like, learn about it.
So yeah, like the adaptivity that you
have to have to, like, keep learning about
the new technologies that come out
is like, going to be really important in the future.
- Differentiated teaching and learning
ensures every student is succeeding.
To learn more about school improvement journeys,
search OnePortal for the State Schools Improvement Strategy,
the STEM School Reflection Tool
and the EDTV website for snapshots of practise.
Knowing where we are in our school improvement journey
is important because it supports informed decision-making
and guides our next steps.
- [Narrator] There's a range of facets
to our improvement journey in technologies,
but what's important is that we have a plan,
an explicit improvement agenda
and for us partnerships with community
have been a huge part of that.