Summer 2006

Innovation in education

Forward to New Basics

Lesley Friend reflects on what has been achieved by the New Basics project and pays tribute to the work of teachers and school communities who have embraced this innovative teaching and learning framework as part of school reform.

I was recently reminded about how far we had come when a principal of a New Basics school told me this: ‘I wish I had had the foresight to have a camera running in classrooms and staffrooms before the implementation of the New Basics to show my teachers how far they have come in terms of innovative practice.’ She commented on their improved pedagogy in the classroom, their knowledge about assessment, their attention to detail in terms of enacting intentional curriculum and their ability to work together as a team. That same principal, I remember, once told us that we would never be on her teachers’ Christmas card list but that she was ever thankful we had kept up the ‘hard line’ to implementation.

What is the New Basics project?

New Basics is an ambitious project for years 1–10 that has been implemented in some Queensland state schools, with the prime concern being to enhance the social and academic outcomes of the diverse student population that characterises Queensland schools and to prepare them with the necessary skills and knowledges to participate effectively in future economies and society.

The prime mover behind this approach is a focus on pedagogy driven by the Rich Tasks—specific activities that students do that have real-world value and use. The Rich Tasks, constituting both curriculum and assessment, are built from the New Basics’ curriculum organisers. These are sets of real-world and futures-oriented practices that are necessary for students to survive and flourish post-schooling. This pedagogical focus is supported by the Productive Pedagogies, an array of classroom teaching and learning practices and strategies that teachers can select from to improve classroom instruction.

Thus the New Basics is an integrated framework of curriculum, assessment and pedagogy. Enacting such a framework was and is hard work for many schools as it requires them to work in ways that depart markedly from regular practice.

For instance, as the Rich Tasks are the culmination of three years’ work, teachers need to collaborate with one another up and down the year levels to ensure that the necessary skills and knowledges are mastered in order to complete the Rich Tasks. In secondary schools, the transdisciplinary Rich Tasks call for teachers to work as a collective and pool their expertise. The authentic nature and real world-ness of the tasks means that teachers must harness and source important knowledges and skills from local and global communities, a practice not common in most schools.

Who ‘does’ the New Basics?

The New Basics continues in about 60 state schools in Queensland (now called Schools Enacting Rich Tasks) and is centrally coordinated by the Rich Task Team. Currently, to ‘do’ the New Basics, schools must commit to bringing samples of student work from enacted Rich Tasks to a Local Consensus Event for standards validation and reporting purposes.

What gains have been made in schools?

The New Basics Research Report provides a comprehensive analysis of the trial of the New Basics. Among its findings and of particular note are an improvement in pedagogy, the growth of an assessment system, the positive effect of moderation and the richness (in terms of intellectual depth and connectedness to the world) of the Rich Tasks.

Since the publication of the Research Report, much more has been achieved under the New Basics. I will elaborate on some of these achievements using several snapshots of school practice witnessed by Rich Task Team members.

A growing confidence

Twice yearly, teachers meet to have the assessment judgements they have made about student performance on the Rich Tasks moderated and validated. As organisers of these events, we have noticed a growing confidence in teachers in their ability to practise sound assessment techniques. We are continually impressed by the way teachers (and many of these are primary teachers who may have never had anything to do with standards) apply standards to student work, with intense dialogue over how the words in the standards’ descriptors match the particular student work they are reviewing.

Teachers tell us that these meetings provide a forum for them to share different ways of enacting the Rich Tasks. At such events they are always open to the ideas of others and are often seen catching up in breaks. The commitment displayed by all teachers at these events is worthy of credit. This process of judging another school’s decision making is hard work. At the end of the day, the job is always done and there is a sense of satisfaction from teachers.

Productive working relationships

From our research we know that synergy between key players is important for a system to work well. If central authorities and school communities work together to support the needs and demands of each other, the goals of the entire system are more likely to be realised.

Recently I had a request from a small group of schools to help their teachers with pedagogy. The principals of these schools understand that the Rich Tasks can not be implemented without the Productive Pedagogies and were eager that their teachers had the opportunity to be re-acquainted with them.

After the teachers had taken a short course in Productive Pedagogies, the Rich Task Team designed a template that enabled teachers to map the pedagogies onto the Rich Tasks. Applying what they had learned about pedagogy to actual classroom activity was immediately useful for them. The outcome of such a partnership meant that teachers taught the Rich Tasks better and the Rich Task Team knew more about how teachers go about enacting the Rich Tasks. We were then able to take this important development and use it with other schools in a similar way.

Structural change in support of learning and teaching

A few years ago I worked as a critical friend to a large traditional high school struggling with New Basics implementation. Their immediate problem: the timetable. ‘We can’t have flexible and integrated learning episodes to teach these Rich Tasks as the timetable won’t allow it!’ Indeed this was not the only school grappling with this dilemma.

This school community, ably lead by several visionary leaders, did in fact conquer their problem and today the timetable supports learning and teaching and not the other way around. The school created a timetable that allows teachers to work together to build curriculum knowledges and skills in order that students have the best shot at the Rich Tasks.

At the end of seven years there have been many more achievements than can be elaborated here. Teachers have risen to the challenge of reform and in so doing made vast improvements in school and classroom practice. Queensland teachers have shown that it is possible to up the ante in schools.

Can we sustain these important achievements?

The educational literature on reform suggests that it is very difficult to implement and even harder to sustain (Fullan 1999). But the New Basics continues to survive and sometimes flourish in schools in Queensland and we know from a constant stream of international and national visitors that the concept of the New Basics has been taken up in other States in Australia and even worldwide.

In the current climate of negativity, blame and open attack, one wonders if there is capacity to sustain what is good, what has been so richly achieved by the hard work of teachers and schools. Governments are often guilty of leaping before looking and find ways of dumbing down the serious and complex nature of educating our precious youth for tomorrow.

For those interested in learning more about the New Basics journey in Queensland please visit our website http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics/

References

Education Queensland (2004). The New Basics Research Report, Department of Education, Brisbane. See also http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics/html/library.html#resreport

Fullan, MG (1999). Change forces: The sequel, Falmer Press, New York.

Lesley Friend is team leader of the Rich Task Team, Education Queensland.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au