Environmentally sustainable schools

Recent web resources
How green is your school?
Around 7,000 schools in England have signed up to the Eco-Schools programme and more are joining every week says the Teacher Expertise website. Set up in 1994, the programme is run by the Foundation for Environmental Education with the aim of involving young people in finding solutions to environmental and sustainable development challenges. It is a concept which is proving highly popular. It sets out to show children that by taking small steps, such as recycling or composting, they can have a big impact on the global environment as well as their own community. For the full article on this topic click here.

Planning and funding environmental improvements to your school grounds
This article from Teachingexpertise website summarises a number of environmental programmes in the UK. One programme run by REEP (Religious Education and Environment Programme) aims to provide unusual and thought-provoking resources for teachers promoting the links between religion and the environment. It works with all faiths and is non-denominational. Central to its work is the REEP awards. These are open to schools in England, Scotland and Wales, regardless of age group or spiritual orientation. The task is to design a garden that reflects spiritual and community values and to submit the design using ICT. The website www.reep.org provides free resources to schools and the organisation also holds training days to support entrants into the garden awards scheme.

Eco school project at Kirkley High School
A case study of Kirkley High Schools plan to establish itself as an eco-school. To achieve the aim, local and global environmental issues had to be developed through discrete curriculum time, through cross curricula links and through extra- curricula activities.

Other online resources
On Holy Ground
This site enables easy access to an ecological vision statement (On Holy Ground) for Catholic Schools and agencies.
On Holy Ground provides a rationale and planning framework to assist catholic schools and organisations to become more ecologically sustainable and live out their ecological vocation
Catholic Earthcare Australia
Earthcare Australia's mission is to help promote understanding among people that Creation is sacred and endangered, and must be protected and sustained for present and future generations yet unborn.
NSW Sustainable Schools network
Catholic schools are joining the NSW Sustainable Schools community
http://www.sustainableschools.nsw.edu.au/
Australian Sustainable Schools Iniatitive
(AuSSI) involves a holistic approach to education for sustainability with measurable environmental, financial, educational and social outcomes. It implements improvements in a school's management of resources and grounds and integrates this approach into the existing curriculum and daily running of the school. Students participate in an action learning - or learning by doing - process.
Sustainability Education (Aust. Govt Dept of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts)
Sustainability education develops skills, knowledge and values that promote behaviour in support of a sustainable environment. It is not confined to formal schooling. It also occurs in a wide range of non-formal education settings at work and at home.
Living Sustainably: the Australian Government's National Action Plan for Education for Sustainability
The aim of Living Sustainably: the Australian Government's National Action Plan for Education for Sustainability, launched in April 2009, is to equip all Australians with the knowledge and skills required to live sustainably. The plan has been prepared in conjunction with the National Council on Education for Sustainability by the Australian Government Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
Education for Sustainability in School Education
This site aims reviews a number of programs to attempt to answer the following questions:

• What does a Sustainable School look like?
• Is there a formula for 'how' to run an effective and wide reaching whole-school sustainability program?
• Is there evidence of effective methods to engage the community in these endeavours?
• What are the critical success components?

Cleanup the world

Cleanup Australia

Selected resources held by TLRU
Available for borrowing

• The Garden Planet DVD
• Awakening Universe DVD
  
• Care for creation
• Ecology at the Heart of Faith
  
• Leaving smaller footprints
• Best practice in environmental education in New South Wales schools
• Activate your students : a problem-based learning approach to sustainability
• Cradled in human hands : a textbook on environmental responsibility
• Literacies in place : teaching environmental communications
• Blueprints for greening schools : principles, policies and practices for environmental education in Australian secondary schools

St Andrews Marayong, John Paul II school and their environmental activities

Find more videos like this on Experiment

Staff Bullying in Australian Schools

Research on Staff Bullying in Australian Schools has recently been released in a report "Investigation of Staff Bullying in Australian Schools" by Dan Riley, Deirdre J. Duncan and John Edwards. It is the result of national survey which gathered responses from primary and secondary schools in both the Government and non-Government sectors.
The report covers:
Who are the bullys
Who are the targets
What forms of bullying of staff occur
The effect of bullying on the individual

This book is available for borrowing from TLRU or you can purchase a copy for your school from the Co-op bookshop for $19.95.

An executive summary is available for viewing online via University of New England Schoolbullies website.

Learning stories / Narrative assessment

Learning stories
This document by Professor Susan Hill, Associate Professor in Early Childhood Education, University of South Australia describes the use of learning stories in capturing the context of the learning environment that appears to be enabling or constraining learning.

Learning and Teaching Stories: New Approaches to Assessment and Evaluation
Podmore V. & Carr M. 1999. Paper presented at the AARENZARE Conferenceon Research in Educaion, Melbourne, December.
This document outlines the research in New Zealand on using Learning stories for assessment and evaluation and details the frameworks and procedures used.

An ABCD of Developing Curious Minds
2007 Conference on Thinking: Curious Minds Think and Learn by Exploring the Unknown
Norrköping, Sweden
Margaret Carr (University of Waikato, New Zealand)
Wendy Lee (Educational Leadership Project & University of Waikato
In this short paper Margaret and Wendy discuss their interest in the ways in which teachers notice, recognise, respond to, record and re-visit episodes of learning, including curiosity in action. In particular, they look at how early years teachers in New Zealand are writing ‘Learning Stories’ as formative assessments to encourage an orientation towards exploration, curiosity, and resilience in the face of failure.

http://education.ed.pacificu.edu/bailey/resources/papers/Lstories/whatare.html
Mark Bailey, 2004
This paper focuses on the use of Digital Learning Stories (DLS) as an approach for constructing and presenting understanding . Student-documented DLS tend to be more effective with children who are a bit older and therefore more capable of documenting their learning, and reflecting on the process and contents.

Learning Story template
The Learning Story template is intended to allow LEOTC providers and schools to create their own Learning Stories. The template has been developed on the basis of best evidence of learning research in LEOTC environments both nationally and internationally. It has been widely circulated for comments and feedback, and formatted with the teachers and students (the end users), meaningfully taken into account.

Examples of learning stories
These Learning Stories have been produced using the Learning Story template in full or by adapting the template and creating short films. The venues were chosen to show best practice, and a range of curriculum learning areas and student age groups. The 'teacher’s voice' is from the teacher responsible for the visit. This may not always be the person who arranged the LEOTC visit but will be the teacher responsible for the management of the visit on the day.

Using children’s learning stories to assess their mathematics learning in preschools and schools
Elspeth Harley Bob Perry Nicole Hentschke, AARE.
This paper reports work done with preschool educators ,tracing how powerful ideas in mathematics were identified in current preschool practice, how they were linked to the Developmental Learning Outcomes in the mandatory curriculum documents and how the technique of learning stories (narrative assessment) was established as a valid assessment regime compatible with key principles of preschool education.

Learning Stories and Children's Powerful Mathematics
The professional development focus on children’s powerful mathematical ideas, combined with action research that encouraged educators to identify these ideas within children’s experiences and to document these through learning stories, form the basis of this paper.

The stories we share: Using narrative assessment to build communities of literacy participants in early childhood centres
Ann Hatherly
AJEC, Vol. 31 No. 1, March 2006, pp. 27-34.
This article draws on data collected as part of the development of Kei Tua o te Pae, Assessment for Learning: Early Childhood Exemplars (Ministry of Education, 2004), a New Zealand resource designed to engage teachers in reflection about assessment practices within the framework of Te Whāriki. It tells the story—the author’s story—of the ways in which documented assessment, using techniques more associated with storytelling than with observation, invites participation of children, families and teachers and thereby becomes the means through which a community of literacy-learners and participants is developed. It is argued that, given the increasing pressure on centres to provide for literacy, documented assessments offer many possibilities for not just describing but also constructing literacy learning in meaningful contexts.

Connected learning stories: mathematics
http://www.cli.nsw.edu.au/cli/e-learning/Stories/stories_maths.shtm
Provides example stories of successful classroom practice the Mathematics KLA illustrate a range of approaches and strategies for incorporating information and communication technologies (ICT) into teaching and learning.

Using children’s learning stories to assess their mathematics learning in preschools and schools
Elspeth Harley Bob Perry Nicole Hentschke, AARE
This paper reports work done with preschool educators as part of the Southern Numeracy Initiativ. It traces how ‘powerful ideas’ in mathematics were identified in current preschool practice, how they were linked to the Developmental Learning Outcomes in the mandatory curriculum documents and how the technique of learning stories (narrative assessment) was established as a valid assessment regime compatible with key principles of preschool education.

Narratives for learning: Sharing giftedness through learning stories
Valerie Margrain, Massey University
Paper presentation to Reaching Forward: National Conference on Gifted Education, Rotorua, March 13-15, 2009.
Learning stories, as a narrative assessment method, provide rich opportunities for documenting and sharing examples of giftedness in social contexts. The documentation method is one that it accessible to teachers, parents and students, and able to capture broad multicategorical aspects of giftedness, including creative, cultural and leadership domain, and dispositions for learning. Examples of two learning stories of 4-year old precocious readers are included in this paper to illustrate assessment for learning and to make learning visible.

Narrative Assessment: identity and equity for disabled students
Geoff Moore, Sue Molloy, Missy Morton, Keryn Davis
University of Canterbury, UC Education Plus, College of Education, New Zealand.
Assessment that is student-referenced and related to the learner’s dispositions, (competencies) is a hopeful way forward for these students. This project is highlighting how the use of narratives (Learning Stories), enables teachers to capture rich descriptions of learning in relation to The New Zealand Curriculum key competencies and learning areas, in the context of culturally responsive pedagogy (Bishop & Glynn, 1999). Learning Stories not only look back, but they are constructive and forward looking through providing teachers and learners a process of seeking and interpreting evidence to open up possible learning pathways. They are also enabling teachers to view the students as mindful and competent in learning contexts; able to access learning in and through The New Zealand Curriculum.

Curriculum accountability in the early years
From August 2005–July 2006, sixteen preschools engaged in a practitioner research project to critically examine and investigate the interweaving of learning and pedagogical objectives, and to document children’s learning and development against the DLOs, using narrative assessment called ‘Learning stories’. As part of the project, a draft matrix underpinned by a social pedagogical approach, was developed for piloting. The matrix has a focus on educational effort and commitment, shifting from expectations in terms of output to expectations in terms of inputs for each child.

Exploring narrative assessment to promote empowerment of educators and parents of children with special educational needs
The use of narrative assessment by early intervention teams is explored in two case studies in New Zealand where early intervention provisions are guided by an inclusive special education policy. Team members, including parents and teachers, received professional development on the use of learning story assessment, and shared their learning stories at planning meetings. The project highlighted the empowerment of parents and educators through the use of learning stories for assessment and planning. Challenges to the adoption of narrative methodologies in inclusive early intervention contexts are identified.

Selected Books

Developing early literacy: assessment and teaching
Susan Hill 2006
Held CEO 428.0071 HIL

Patterns of narrative discourse: Multicultural life span approach
Alyson McCabe
Held CEO 401.41 MCC

From observation to reflection: A practitioners guide to programme planning and documentation
Joy Lubawy, 2008.
This book provides practical examples at how to observe learning, how to document this in a learning story framework and then connecting your reflections and understandings with the curriculum and your program. Joy’s work in this book has drawn inspiration from the New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum document Te Whariki, the theories og Multiple Intelligence by Howard Gardner and the work of Reggio Emilia.
Held CEO

Assessment in early childhood settings.: learning stories
Margaret Carr 2003

Programming and Planning in Early Childhood Settings (4th Edition), Thomson Learning
Arthur L (2008)
Held CEO

Education reform via Charter schools?

We must consider radical ideas in education reform
Jennifer Buckingham a research fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies discusses the need for reform to improve education for our most disadvantaged children.
Indigenous children who live in very remote Queensland have failure rates of 58 per cent. A further 28 per cent just meet the minimum benchmark in reading. That's a rate eight times higher than the national average.
One idea is Charter schools.
Read more here

The Charter Connection from The Centre for Education Reform provides more details on Charter schools in the US.
Charter schools are...

* innovative public schools
* designed by educators, parents or civic leaders
* open and attended by choice
* free from most rules and regulations governing conventional public schools
* and accountable for results.

Imagining the future of the school library

Imagining the future of the School Library

Without a doubt, the school library remains one of them most symbolic, protected, and expensive ’spaces’ on any campus. But will future designers of school libraries be recreating sacred book spaces of the past or will technology and the ‘consumer’ inspire new design strategies for the future?
With this in mind, DesignShare spoke with 2 passionate library experts — Doug Johnson and Rolf Erikson — to gain better insight into serving the information needs of students, schools, and communities via the future of school library planning and design. Doug is the author of The Indispensable Librarian: Surviving (And Thriving) in School Media Centers and the Blue Skunk Blog; Rolf is the lead author of Designing A School Library Media Center for the Future.

Welcome to the Library say goodbye to the books
The article is about Cushing Academy's move from a traditional library to a learning centre.
Instead of a traditional library with 20,000 books, we’re building a virtual library where students will have access to millions of books,’’ said Tracy, whose office shelves remain lined with books. “We see this as a model for the 21st-century school.
As part of this plan administrators plan to distribute the electronic book readers, which they’re stocking with digital material, to students looking to spend more time with literature.

Alternative new teacher training/education models

The Underpinning Knowledge Bases of an Alternative Teacher Education Model
From 1999 the Faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong has run an alternative model of teacher education known as the Knowledge Building Community (KBC) Project. This program has been acclaimed nationally. What makes this program so unique is its design that abandons the traditional model of teacher education that consists of lectures and tutorials; instead this alternative model of teacher education is based on several underpinning pillars of professional knowledge. The KBC program has been described as a “negotiated evaluation of a non-negotiable curriculum based on a constructivist model of learning and knowledge building”. However, the basic aim of this program is to deal with the perennial problem of contextualising students’ professional learning, by linking abstract theory as closely as possible to the contexts and settings to which it is applied, i.e. the primary school classroom.

The role of teacher training schools in the basic education of Finnish teachers.
Discusses the role of teacher training schools (TTSs) in the basic education of Finnish teachers. Advantages of TTSs for practical training; Problems of TTSs; Future of Finnish TTSs.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tfh&AN=9511031132&site=ehost-live

Employment based teacher training
Employment-based teacher training (EBTT) comprises training programmes that allow trainees to work in a school and follow an individual training programme leading to qualified teacher status (QTS). The school pays the trainee as an unqualified teacher.

Apprentice teacher scheme attacked
Teenagers with just a handful of GCSE passes are to be recruited to secondary schools to work as teaching assistants. The Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, wants to recruit more than 4,000 apprentices to work full-time in schools. They would work as teaching assistants with youngsters up to the age of 14. If they liked the job, they would be able to train as teachers.

Teacher training scheme praised
Inspectors have heaped praise on a training scheme which is helping to produce some of the best young teachers in Leicestershire. The project, started by a group of primary schools, has trained 100 new recruits to teaching, and many of them have already gone on to successfully teach thousands of children in the city and rest of the county.
Normally people who have finished a degree and want to become a teacher go on to a postgraduate course in education at a university.
But graduates of Leicester's Scitt (School-Centred Initial Teacher Training) spend much of their time in the classroom, and it is this that has so impressed Ofsted.

Apprenticeship for Teaching: Professional Development Issues Surrounding the Collaborative Relationship Between Teachers and Paraeducators

The collaborative apprenticeship model: Situated professional development within school settings
Professional learning is a social enterprise where peers rely on the expertise and support of one another to adopt innovative practices. Reciprocal interactions in a community of practice, where teachers take responsibility for each other’s learning and development, may provide an effective means of supporting situated professional learning. We propose a collaborative apprenticeship model featuring reciprocal interactions as an approach to promote professional development, encouraging peer-teachers to serve as modelers and coaches of strategies and ideas aimed at improving instruction. collaborative apprenticeship is designed to help teachers learn and implement new teaching skills and strategies through four development phases, beginning with implementation of best practices from a mentor to the development of their own. Teachers, in turn, contribute new ideas to their teaching environment and become future mentors in order to sustain skills and strategies across a community of teachers. In addition to the model, we discuss various influences related to affect, beliefs, environment, culture, cognition, and personality that characterize the nature of reciprocal interactions in order to stimulate collaborative apprenticeship.

Web­based Cognitive Apprenticeship Model for Improving Pre­service teachers performances and attitudes towards instructional planning
Through web-based conferencing, the expert teacher leads pre-service teachers to observe his/her cognitive modeling displayed by web-based multimedia and guides them to
constructing initial conceptual models of how to write and implement an instructional plan. During this procedure, web-based multimedia is used to demonstrate the cognitive modeling of an expert teacher in a real
classroom context by simultaneously presenting the instructional plan and the video case for the expert teacher’s articulation of why and how to write the instructional plan, or the instructional plan and the video case about teaching demos based on the instructional plan. Moreover, through issues posed in discussion forums, expert teachers guide pre-service teachers to focus on key points of cognitive modeling displayed by web-based multimedia and to share ideas with others. Finally, by interacting with expert teachers and peers in the internet chat room, pre-service teachers construct their own personal conceptual models through sharing, debating, modifying, and discussing.

Does School-Based Initial Teacher Training Affect Secondary School Performance?
(Citation only but its findings interesting from abstract)
This article investigates the effects of trainee teachers on secondary school student outcomes. The additional resources which schools receive from being involved in teacher training offer them an opportunity to raise standards, but this has to be set against the possible losses due to school students being taught by inexperienced beginning teachers and the diversion of mentors' efforts away from the classroom. Inspection evidence is used to assess whether trainee teachers affect school students' test and examination results. The findings of this research are that the number of trainees has no significant effect on school results at A-level or General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), or on the overall value added between Key Stage 3 and GCSE level. However, at Key Stage 3 level at age 14, while there appears to be a very small depressing effect on achievement in schools with low numbers of trainees, there is a significant positive effect on achievement in schools with larger numbers of trainees. (Contains 3 figures and 3 tables.)

Stephen Heppell on school design

Building learning futures: a research project at ultralab within the CABE/RIBA "Building Futures" programme, Stephen Heppell et al, 2004
This report focuses directly onto the evolution of pedagogy in the school sector and its implications for design. It contains details drawn from the most eclectic of sources over a full year; it offers some solid recommendations which need to be
acted on and it offers some lightly drawn scenarios to provide a provocation for the many creative people involved in this whole debate.

Learning Environments of the future, Stephen Heppell et al, 2004.
This report looks at the influences impacting on the effectiveness of the
design process: changing pedagogy; new technologies; political policy and will.