Lifting student achievement

• In Event: Quality Teaching Rounds: An Elegant Solution to Enduring Problems in Education?

Abstract

Despite decades of investment, student achievement is stagnating in many countries and inequities seem entrenched. In Australia, for example, despite more than $40 billion invested in Indigenous education, the outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students remain well below those of their non-Indigenous peers. Students from low SES communities continue to struggle, as do those in rural and remote areas. Such statistics are often quoted in the recent centralisation of curriculum materials and mandating of explicit and direct instruction approaches to teaching in many Australian jurisdictions. Whether these approaches are impactful in pursuits beyond de-professionalisation remains to be seen – although recent reports from the UK and USA suggest they often produce unintended negative effects such as loss of enjoyment in learning (Clark et al., 2024).
Our work on QTR is shifting these enduring inequitable patterns. Our RCTs have shown 2 to 3 months’ additional growth in academic achievement in both mathematics and reading in the 8-month study period for students whose teachers participated. Furthermore, our work with individual schools, including some that are severely disadvantaged, has demonstrated significant gains. One school that functioned well below state average for many years is now first in the district and eleventh in the state for value-added gains in the national standardised testing scheme (Duffy, 2024). Importantly, since engaging in this program centred on QTR, matriculation scores of the students at this school have increased year on year, expanding their post-school options.
We argue these gains in student achievement occur through several mechanisms of our approach. At the pedagogical level, the Intellectual Quality and Quality Learning Environment dimensions are significantly associated with student mathematics and reading comprehension growth when adjusted for student- and school-level covariates. The Significance dimension, while not directly associated with student achievement, is strongly related to the other dimensions in lessons.
At the teacher level, we treat teaching as a complex endeavour, acknowledging the unpredictability, simultaneity, and multidimensionality of classrooms (Jackson, 1968) and the critical importance of teachers’ adaptability and decision-making capacities. We treat schooling as being about more than the accumulation of knowledge, recognising how the social and emotional states of young people affect their learning. We understand that variations in context highlight the importance of teachers who can adjust experiences based on their students’ needs, interests, and reactions.
At the school level, QTR attends to the ubiquitous constructs of school improvement – a dedicated focus on the quality of teaching and a school culture centred on trust and genuine collegiality (Lee and Louis, 2019). The Quality Teaching Model aligns practice and language to ensure strong instructional coherence, while the process of Rounds not only changes practice in powerful ways but builds trust and respect among teachers for sustained engagement in instructional improvement.
In summary, we demonstrate significant impact on teachers, teaching, and schools, leading to positive shifts in student achievement, including narrowing of equity gaps. Importantly, while empowering teachers in their local contexts, our approach does not shy away from the complexities of teaching.

Authors

• Andrew Miller, University of Newcastle

• Jennifer M. Gore, University of Newcastle

• Leanne Fray, University of Newcastle

• Sally Patfield, University of Newcastle